Related posts

• Stop Jewish A-bomb. Say what? Whose? (1)
• Today’s US Flag (0)
• Demo Uniform, until the lawyer comes (0)
• Honor heroes not war criminals (1)
• Pianist Krystian Zimerman to boycott US (0)

You can send a letter of support to Lynne Stewart at the following address.

Lynne Stewart
53504-054
MCC-NY
150 Park Row
New York, NY NY 10007

Here’s the interview she gave Democracy Now, in her way to turn herself in:

AMY GOODMAN: Civil rights attorney Lynne Stewart has been ordered to prison to begin serving a two-and-a-half-year sentence after a federal appeals court upheld her conviction on Tuesday.

Lynne Stewart was found guilty in 2005 of distributing press releases on behalf of her jailed client, Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, also known as the “Blind Sheikh,” who’s serving a life sentence on terror-related charges. Prosecutors had sought a thirty-year sentence, but Stewart was sentenced to two-and-a-half years after the judge rejected the prosecutors’ argument that she threatened national security and ruled there was no evidence her actions caused any harm.

On Tuesday, a three-judge appeals court panel ordered the trial judge to revoke Stewart’s bond and said she must begin serving her twenty-eight-month sentence. The panel rejected Stewart’s claim she was acting only as a “zealous advocate” for her imprisoned client when she passed messages for him. The appellate ruling said, quote, “a genuinely held intent to represent a client ‘zealously’ is not necessarily inconsistent with criminal intent.”

The panel also described Stewart’s twenty-eight-month sentence as, quote, “strikingly low” and sent the case back to the trial judge to determine whether she deserved a longer prison term. The ruling said Stewart, who’s seventy years old, was to surrender to US marshals immediately, but her lawyers won her an extension until at least 5:00 p.m. today.

Well, Lynne Stewart has come to our studios here in New York. And we welcome you, Lynne, to Democracy Now! Can you describe your reaction to the ruling?

LYNNE STEWART: Well, in its sweeping and negative tone, I must say I was first a little bit shocked, because we had expected, or had hoped, at least, that some of these important constitutional issues would be decided, and then very disappointed, on my own behalf, certainly—personally, you can’t discount—but actually, for all of us, Amy, because these important constitutional issues—the right to speak to your lawyer privately without the government listening in, the right to be safe from having a search conducted of your lawyer’s office—all these things are now swept under the rug and available to the government.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you, for people who haven’t followed your case, explain exactly what happened, why you were charged?

LYNNE STEWART: I represented Sheikh Omar at trial—that was in 1995—along with Ramsey Clark and Abdeen Jabara. I was lead trial counsel. He was convicted in September of ’95, sentenced to a life prison plus a hundred years, or some sort—one of the usual outlandish sentences. We continued, all three of us, to visit him while he was in jail—he was a political client; that means that he is targeted by the government—and because it is so important to prisoners to be able to have access to their lawyers.

Sometime in 1998, I think maybe it was, they imposed severe restrictions on him. That is, his ability to communicate with the outside world, to have interviews, to be able to even call his family, was limited by something called special administrative measures. The lawyers were asked to sign on for these special administrative measures and warned that if these measures were not adhered to, they could indeed lose contact with their client—in other words, be removed from his case.

In 2000, I visited the sheikh, and he asked me to make a press release. This press release had to do with the current status of an organization that at that point was basically defunct, the Gama’a al-Islamiyya. And I agreed to do that. In May of—maybe it was later than that. Sometime in 2000, I made the press release.

Interestingly enough, we found out later that the Clinton administration, under Janet Reno, had the option to prosecute me, and they declined to do so, based on the notion that without lawyers like me or the late Bill Kunstler or many that I could name, the cause of justice is not well served. They need the gadflies.

So, at any rate, they made me sign onto the agreement again not to do this. They did not stop me from representing him. I continued to represent him.

And it was only after 9/11, in April of 2002, that John Ashcroft came to New York, announced the indictment of me, my paralegal and the interpreter for the case, on grounds of materially aiding a terrorist organization. One of the footnotes to the case, of course, is that Ashcroft also appeared on nationwide television with Letterman that night ballyhooing the great work of Bush’s Justice Department in indicting and making the world safe from terrorism.

The course of the case followed. We tried the case in 2005 to a jury, of course sitting not ten blocks from the World Trade Center, and an anonymous jury, I might add, which I think went a long way to contribute to our convictions. And all three of us were convicted. Since that time, the appeals process has followed. The appeal was argued almost two years ago, and the opinion just came like a—actually like a thunderclap yesterday. And to just put it in perspective, I think, it comes hard on the heels of Holder’s announcement that they are bringing the men from Guantanamo to New York to be tried. That—I’ll expand on that, if you wish, but that basically is where we’re at. It’s said that I should be immediately remanded, my bail revoked.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Lynne Stewart. She could be going to prison at any point. Lynne, I wanted to read to you from the Times, their description, saying,

“In addressing whether [Ms.] Stewart’s sentence was too lenient, Judge Sack wrote that Judge Koeltl had cited her ‘extraordinary’ personal characteristics, and had described her as ‘a dedicated public servant who had, throughout her career, “represented the poor, the disadvantaged and the unpopular.”’

“But Judge Koeltl had declined to determine whether Ms. Stewart had lied at trial, a factor he should have considered in weighing her sentence, Judge Sack wrote. ‘We think that whether Stewart lied under oath at her trial is directly relevant to whether her sentence was appropriate.’”

What they talking about? What is their accusation about you lying at trial?

LYNNE STEWART: Well, of course, I’m not rendering a legal opinion here, Amy, because I’m officially disbarred. But I will say that my understanding of the law is that the judge may consider whether or not a client or a person who testified in their own defense lied or even shaded the truth to their own benefit. And my sense of reading—and I haven’t read them over recently, but my sense of the sentencing was that the judge did consider it, at least in a manner. He basically said he did not think it was relevant, and the court of appeals argued with this.

I, of course, committed no perjury. I spoke on my own behalf. I described what I did. I’m not sure that the court of appeals may have liked what I said, but that is, you know, because the US attorney went into my politics at great length, as if to say, “See, she has radical politics, so we know she would have done something radical.” I’ve always said my politics are very, very different from the sheikh’s politics, and that was an unfair cut. But notwithstanding that, they do have the right to consider it. It can be something, if the judge believed you lied, that can increase your sentence.

I have every reason to believe that Judge Koeltl, who is a most careful judge, a most—a judge described, in the opinion by Judge Calabresi, as being someone who makes very wise decisions, considered it—considered it, rejected it, and went ahead. This was the number—the sentence he arrived at, twenty-eight months, and we hope that he will retain the courage that he had in making that sentence, to stick with it now that the government, through the Second Circuit, has challenged it.

AMY GOODMAN: Lynne Stewart, as you were being sentenced in 2006, you had breast cancer. How are you today? How’s your health?

LYNNE STEWART: The breast cancer is good; I have no recurrence. I just had a mammogram, even though I’m seventy. I don’t know how that falls into the new warnings. But at any rate, I’m cancer-free. I have some other aging problems, woman plumbing stuff, which I actually am scheduled for surgery on December 7th. My lawyers are hoping to be able to go to the Second Circuit and ask them to extend the period of time that I would have to surrender, in order that this surgery may be accomplished right here in New York at Lenox Hill Hospital. We’re not sure of that. It does seem that they’re—

AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain how this happens today, because at this point you have an extension until 5:00 p.m. today—

LYNNE STEWART: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: —before going to prison? What will happen today?

LYNNE STEWART: Well, the judge has asked the lawyers to research whether he has the power at this point—I mean, this is like ancient English Magna Carta law. You know, the case has been appealed. It’s in the Second Circuit. In order for him to order me to prison, it has to be before him. In other words, the papers, I guess, have to be carried from the upper floor to the lower floor to the district court. He wanted them to research whether or not he can do anything before he has that mandate. He, of course, can decide that I’m turning myself in tomorrow. He can also decide that he doesn’t have it until—usually the mandate takes a week to ten days to come down. So we’re sort of on the edge. It will not preclude my lawyers from going to the circuit directly and asking them to stay their order of my immediate remand and revocation of bail. So we’re sort of on the edge. We’re—

AMY GOODMAN: Do you know where you will be imprisoned?

LYNNE STEWART: Say that again?

AMY GOODMAN: Do you know where you will be imprisoned?

LYNNE STEWART: No. See, that’s one of the other reasons. It’s not only my surgery. It also is the fact that I’ve never been designated and also the fact that the pre-sentence report on which they usually base these designations is three years old at this point. It doesn’t take into account anything that has happened since then.
So we think there are some grounds for extending the time, but I think it’s fair to say that at this point I have brought my books and my medicines with me to go to court this afternoon, and I expect—I expect the worst, being Irish, but hope for the best, because I’m a leftist and always optimistic.

AMY GOODMAN: What books have you brought with you?

LYNNE STEWART: I have Snow by—I never pronounce his name right—Orhan Pamuk. I have The Field of Poppies; I can’t remember the author, terrible, given to me by a dear comrade, Ralph Schoenman. And I have a couple of mysteries, because I’m an addict of mysteries, and it passes the time quickly for me.

AMY GOODMAN: Lynne, would you do anything differently today, or would you do anything differently back then, if you knew what you knew today?

LYNNE STEWART: I think I should have been a little more savvy that the government would come after me. But do anything differently? I don’t—I’d like to think I would not do anything differently, Amy. I made these decisions based on my understanding of what the client needed, what a lawyer was expected to do. They say that you can’t distinguish zeal from criminal intent sometimes. I had no criminal intent whatsoever. This was a considered decision based on the need of the client. And although some people have said press releases aren’t client needs, I think keeping a person alive when they are in prison, held under the conditions which we now know to be torture, totally incognito—not incognito, but totally held without any contact with the outside world except a phone call once a month to his family and to his lawyers, I think it was necessary. I would do it again. I might handle it a little differently, but I would do it again.

AMY GOODMAN: Lynne Stewart, I want to thank you for being with us. I hope we can talk to you in prison. Lynne Stewart has been sentenced to two-and-a-half years in jail, to be served beginning today, unless a judge is able to intervene. Thanks so much for being with us.

Related posts

• Lynne Stewart visits Churchill Trial (38)
• US media takes shoe, makes lemonade (2)
• Amy Goodman looks at Barack Obama (0)
• The Shock Doctrine at Colorado College (2)
• Autocracy Now! (0)

People were calling in to “Gunny” Bob and Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin, all the usual Hate-Speech Cowards… demanding that Muslims be rounded up as suspected Terrorists.

The difference in the three shootings, really, was only one of Scale. People have done similar shoot-em-ups  and most were subdued  or killed before reaching the same count as Ft Hood.

When a Hate-Freak named Akinsson at the urging of The Hate Radio Chorus started to shoot up a Liberal church in Knoxville Tennessee, fortunately he was subdued before mowing down the entire congregation, especially the first group he was targeting, the children of the Church, (Why do “conservative” Terrorists like killing kids?) but unfortunately not before he managed to kill two church members. Had he succeeded, his body count would probably have tripled the body count from Ft Hood, but there was no Outcry from the Right Wingers, no calls from Michelle Malkin and Beck and Limbaugh and “Gunny” Bob or any of the other Cowards who infest Hate Radio, and the local Lunatics worship them as gods… NO call from them to have Right Wing “christian conservatives” rounded up and detained indefinitely as “potential terrorists.”  Nor for Eric Rudolph, same thing, set a Nail-bomb and then said he didn’t actually want to hurt or kill anybody… as an act of “christian” Terrorism. Scott Roeder, same kind of murderous bullshit.

NO outcry. After the other two shootings within a day of Ft Hood, NO outcry to treat ex-employees or ex-sexual partners as Terror Suspects.

No calls to intern anybody who gets fired or dumped by his girlfriend on the same Guilty Until Proven Innocent In a Kangaroo Court system.

Of course, that’s probably because the Hate Freaks like Malkin and “Gunny” and Beck openly incite the murders of Americans who they believe forfeited their rights as Americans by being politically, racially, ethnically or religious Non-Conformists, as in, daring to not be the Lily White Christian Right Wing Freaks they Demand that we be.

Maybe I’d better shut up, eh? or Malkin and Gunny will incite some of their coward disciples to come after me.

Allegedly 2900 ALL WHITE people showed up for her book-signing.

How did they keep all the Gentlemen and Ladies and Children of Color from attending in Greater Detroit? Did they have the “paper bag test” like they use in still-segregated Louisiana? Where you go to a night club or restaurant or church or public park and they compare your skin tone to a paper lunch sack. Darker than the bag = No Admittance.

Kind of shines a light on the rapid-fire untruths coming from the right wing about how they’re not really bigots.

Related posts

• Sans-culottes, rednecks and Palin (1)
• Sarah Palin dons lipstick for Dog Dinner (0)
• Failin’ Palin blames everybody else for her defeat (8)
• Economy grows by 3%…. (3)
• They ask: Jonah, why the Bush-hatin’? (3)

Gosh, I was surprised, nay, SHOCKED that there was Republican opposition to anything that could improve the situation for America and Americans before the 2012 election.

Between Abject Greed and the notion that any improvement would be credited to President Obama, they really don’t want anything upsetting their gravy boat and our graves.

Sorry, that was a bad image.

I do wonder about the Chinese obsession with keeping food alive as long as possible. In the video the diners are laughing at the fish’s sudden reactions, which leaves the impression they are as surprised as we about this live novelty. But I doubt it is so rare an event among those who can afford it. I remember at outdoor markets in China, watching customers buy slices of fish meat cut directly from the sides of live fish. Does live fish keep longer than dead? Certainly it does.

Westerners won’t eat a lobster or crab that’s killed before it’s cooked. No doubt some Chinese think we are fools for believing dead fish is an acceptable substitute for live. Americans are already ridiculed for pretending frozen orange juice is any match for fresh squeezed. Who are Americans to opine on taste? For years we’ve eaten chickens fed on fishmeal, without realizing what Europeans could tell us from a table’s length away, American chicken smells fishy!

Now ask an American farmer about sweet corn and he’ll brag that it’s best boiled while still on the stalk. So there is consensus on a preference for fresh.

What constitutes fresh when we’re talking meat? If you ask a reptile or spider, it means live. Mammal predators kept at the zoo have to accustom themselves to eating pieces of steak where their nature is to grab from what’s on the run. What looks like Steak Tartar to us is what they usually leave to scavengers.

Has the human predator diet been converted to scavenger for the sake of convenience and civility?

In our contemporary quest for reclaiming nutrition, I’ll be curious to know if there’s a forbidden energy gone missing from our scavenged meals.

I’ll let the clip speak for itself about the inhumanity of devouring a meal as it looks on. And I’m really glad that no worse videos have emerged from China. As yet there are no Youtube videos of diners eating monkey brains straight from the skull of a live monkey strapped to the table, nor of the infamous “three squeals” delicacy of live rat fetuses.

Related posts

• You have forgotten what to remember (1)
• Obama ate a fish who knew Lincoln (2)
• Simplifying the Omnivore’s Dilemma (0)
• China, the capitalist land of ‘Communist Party’ billionaires (0)
• Top 10 secret armies of the CIA (0)

Sarah Palin, for instance, is willing to have her son go off and Kill and Die to benefit her bank account and provide Political Capital for herself. And to the people who supply her with bribe money. This is typical behavior for Rich Politicians. John McCain sent his son to the Meat Grinder, and he, like Simple Sarah, will rejoice (secretly) if his Piglet gets his stupid head blown off while murdering Iraqi and Afghan babies.

They will each put on the “Bereaved Parent” bullshit role and maintain it for as long as they can milk political and Cash capital from it.

It’s not any MORE hypocriisy than when they put wreaths on the graves of Other People’s kids and pretend to be saddened by their “sacrifices”.

That would not you madam, standing there dressed to the hilt all pink, but the mammogram/awareness purveyors.

What exactly can they pretend to want by way of research results? Ending cancer is going to mean eventually someone will no longer profit from it.

Spokesmen are scrambling to distance themselves from the new recommendations. Breast cancer survivors are making appearances to decry that they wouldn’t have survived except for the early detection via mammogram. Still none question why they contracted the cancer in the first place. That’s a chief problem I have with the committee’s announcement. Without alluding to the possibility that mammograms may induce breast cancer, the recommendations only suggest that the regular checkups are unnecessary. This leaves plenty of space for the medical industry –should we call it the breast cancer treatment industry?– to caution falsely against a lost stamina for prevention.

Everybody’s problem, it’s broadcast, is that insurers may decide to cut back on their coverage of mammograms. People who may want them, and especially people whose living is made giving them, are worried. So the Surgeon General has spoken out against the recent findings, assuring all that nothing’s changed and mammograms should proceed apace. The committee was only a committee and its recommendations are not binding.

News to me is that regardless of the official line, it’s still up to the health insurance companies to decide what they want to cover. Thus the Surgeon General’s comforting reassurances were only ceremonial edicts as well.

If the recommendations have done their damage, the insurance adjuster can’t be put back in the bag, then why not turn the bag inside out for the silver lining? The good news is that all these years of pink meditation on the problem of breast cancer has for once yielded a result! Stop the unnecessary mammograms. No one is at liberty to say they cause breast cancer because that would be a malpractice genie that no one can afford. Read it between the lines. Reduce the incidence of breast cancer by following the new recommendations.

Related posts

• Race for the cure, race to the source (0)
• Pink goes to war (0)
• Corporate Murderers get away with it… AGAIN!!! (2)
• Raise awareness to the CAUSE of cancer (1)
• The Cancer Cartel at work again (8)

Shaniya had only recently come under her mother’s custody:

The girl had only been living with her mother since last month. Her father, Bradley Lockhart, had previously raised the child but had agreed to let her live with her mother after she found employment and a place to live.

A second photograph in keeping with the “hoping there is a special place in hell” theme is of little Fatima Ahmed, born in Fallujah with two heads, among other deformities she shares with other Iraqi newborn and stillborn, representing an alarming 15 fold increase in birth defects.

Doctors attribute the probable cause as the depleted uranium and other exotic munitions employed by the American forces, but US military spokesmen urge caution in making a hasty judgement. Apparently as with smoking, and toxins with important industrial purposes, no causal link has yet to be established between DU, white phosphorous, other undisclosed agents and risks to human health.

Related posts

• Woe to the lowly in Rio (0)
• Iraq slipper thrower killed outright (4)
• OOOOOH! Bad news for the Right Wing Racist Mercenaries! (0)
• The American Sheeple given a ‘flower to the occupier’ (0)
• Phillip Garrido wants same deal as Pfizer (1)

So, to fact check them ONCE MORE…

The Founding Fathers never instituted either Christmas or Thanksgiving as national holidays.

Nor did the Pilgrims.
Nor the Puritans.
Abraham Lincoln did recognize both, but with the emphasis on Thanksgiving.
Some of Lincolns closest friends and advisers were rabid anti-Catholics.

King James First was crowned king because he was, at least in name, a Protestant.

King James invited the Puritans and the Pilgrims, not very courteously, to get out of England.

Because they said he was too Catholic.

Their major sticking point was Christmas.

He was for it.

They were against it.

The Hate Radio people insist that we’re supposed to rule America and just by consequential extension, the entire world, by the several bickering groups of Late Medieval Feudal Warlords who were killing each other and a whole bunch of civilians in Europe at the time, and had just begun to tear up America, over different interpretations of the Christian faith.

As usual in these Battles of (nit)Wits, the primary victims were Other Christians. Because in England at the time there were few openly Non-Christians to be had. Jews maybe. Jews who were burned at the stake, hanged, tortured etc etc right along with people suspected of Witchcraft.

Or Christian Blasphemy.

Which brings it to the central theme of the Hate Speech Radio Talkmongers.

Why, you might ask, did the “founding fathers” NOT establish a natoinal religion?

Well, I might answer, the slaughter of Christians by Christians was fresh in their memories. Washington had participated in an extremely bloody extension of an ongoing European “holy” war between Catholics and Protestants. In America the casualty count was comparatively low, mostly because the White Population was relatively low.

Which brings up that ugly business of the Founding Fathers being Anti-American, as in, anti-Indian.

In the mad rush to cast the Puritans especially but also the Pilgrims as Pure Saints who get to make our daily decisions and run our Government from Beyond The Grave, they have to omit details. Lots of Details.

The scene replayed in countless Thanksgiving pageants of Racial Harmony between English Invaders and Americans has many dark corners that the Haters don’t want to illuminate. It complicates the simplicity of their “war on christmas” ranting. And if they encouraged their listeners to actually think it would be bad for their bottom line.

For instance many Puritans wrestled with the question of Where Did The Indians Originate? Because we’re not mentioned in Genesis.

Some, like the witch-hunter Cotten Mather,often quoted by the Hate-mongers on Fox News and Clear Channel as being a “Founding Father” whose original intent is Holy and Beyond Question, not only hated Christmas but also many of the toys which are now given for Christmas, meaning Dolls, were declared by him an his contemporaries as being Agents of the Devil.

And that Indians have no souls, since we’re not mentioned in Genesis, we must therefore be a construct of Satan. And they heartily endorsed killing us outright. Wiping us from the Earth.

According to Rush and Hannity and Beck that isn’t really a call for Genocide.

So, which is it going to be, do we let these Medieval Murderers decide every policy for America, from Beyond The Grave? Do we hold their every thought to be the guiding principle, using the “Original Intent” argument?

WHICH “original intent”? The intent (almost completed) to Murder every non-European American? The intent to prosecute CHILDREN for playing with Dolls?

You might remember the controversies over the Teddy Ruxpin dolls and the Furby dolls, Tickle-me-Elmo and some of us with long experience remember that Disney characters are considered Demonic as well… Which of you is willing to allow an arbitrarily selected (by people who have been DEAD for 300 years) to kick down your doors, drag your kids out and torture-execute them for playing with Barbies or G.I. Joe dolls? For having Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny products? (Talking Animals are Satanic… just ask any Pilgrim)

Those who support Israel because the Israeli government officials were born Jewish, would you allow the Pilgrim Purity Patrol to come into your homes and Kill You for supporting Jews?

Would you, using the King James As Christian Warrior theme, hunt down Radical Protestants, like for instance the Pilgrims and Puritans (both churches still exist) and Murder Them? Or go to the Other Original Intent and slaughter every Methodist, Baptist or other Episcopalian Church Member for being, as the Puritans said, “too Catholic”?

Those Disciple of Hatred like Hannity who insist on absolutes of Religious Purity say they’re not racist, what then would be done with those of us of Mixed Race? Since the Puritans also condemned Racial Mixing. At the time, according to one source, there were 6 black people in all of London. So which races exactly were the Pilgrims and the Puritans opposed to being intermingled with the Pure English Bloodline?

The Puritans and Pilgrims couldn’t agree on anything even amongst the people in their individual congregations. But we’re supposed to let that Massive Confusion dictate to us exactly how to live in America today.

At least according to Hate Speech Radio.

Oh, and by the way, the Fox and Clear Channel Hate Freaks would have had King James killed because he was gay.

Not for any of the bloody wars he initiated and or joined into, not for the murders and pillages committed in Hannity and Limbaugh and O’Reilly’s Irish ancestral home, none of that.

But because he was gay.

See how conoluted and unreconcilable the “logic” of their arguments bocome, once set side by side and compared?

Those who had difficulties following all those twists and turns into the “logic” that I took you through with this simple posting, maybe should refrain from imposing the “logic” on the rest of us as a course of National Policy and Law.

That would be “Violently” Imposing it upon us.

The entire “War on Christmas” hate-feast indulged in each holiday season is a blatant call for Violent Murder of Americans. And the ones calling for it don’t give a pass to anybody. They’ll have their Stupid Disciples kill Christians too. Simply by declaring them to not be Christian. Or like their Disciple Sarah Palin did, declaring them to not be Americans.

Related posts

• Buy Nothing Day 2009 now Wildcat Strike (0)
• “Pioneers” Racist Museum to be saved. (0)
• Boycott Israeli propaganda lecture at CC (0)
• Break the commandment, keep the commandment (0)
• Oderint dum metuant, crucifixion … Spartacus and Dracula (1)