Sunday, June 3, 2012

Justice for Lynne Stewart and the growing criminalization of free speech

Justice for Lynne Stewart:

'via Blog this'


(I wish people would stop saying "white" and "black"-if people were to report on specific deeds without mentioning buzzwords that automatically make people bristle, what would happen? People might actually pay attention to the content of the story?)




------------------------------------------

I urge everyone to read something quite amazing: Mehanna’s incredibly eloquent, thoughtful statement at his sentencing hearing, before being given a 17-year prison term.


All those videos and translations and childish bickering over ‘Oh, he translated this paragraph’ and ‘Oh, he edited that sentence,’ and all those exhibits revolved around a single issue: Muslims who were defending themselves against American soldiers doing to them exactly what the British did to America. It was made crystal clear at trial that I never, ever plotted to “kill Americans” at shopping malls or whatever the story was. The government’s own witnesses contradicted this claim, and we put expert after expert up on that stand, who spent hours dissecting my every written word, who explained my beliefs. Further, when I was free, the government sent an undercover agent to prod me into one of their little “terror plots,” but I refused to participate. Mysteriously, however, the jury never heard this.


(If you know anything about courtrooms, judges, lawyers, or "justice" you know this is not only plausible but likely the norm, now. The jury hears limited facts and is not allowed to make an informed decision.)


from:
http://lynnestewart.org/




Two warnings to all from my own experience.  First, as immigrants anxious to be part of the American dream DO NOT join the part of it that says I can get past on skin color and I can advance myself by being racist and exploiting “those” people just as every preceding immigrant group has done.  My other alert is to People of Color—Do not blame the immigrants for your plight in white America, they came to work and made themselves indispensable. It is the same old white power structure that exploits both labor and race and racial differences for their own advancement that is responsible. Don’t adopt convenient scapegoats when the battle is there to be fought with the courage to do so against the true enemy.

Poem from Prisoner

May 13th, 2012(From Carole Seligman)
Lynne sent this poem, which was sent by a prisoner at ADX Florence “as a reflection on the ‘exercise’ yard and other things!”
From the Paris Zoo — The Panther
By Rainer Maria Rilke (German)
His vision from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.
As he paces in cramped circles over and over,
the movement of his powerful strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.
Only at Times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly — , an image enters in,
Rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.
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Tarek Mehanna’s Sentencing Statement

May 13th, 2012Lynne wanted folks to know about the importance of this case saying, “I think this case is of great significance as it could break the anti-terrorism law and help lots of folks including me.”
Glenn Greenwald:http://www.salon.com/2012/04/13/the_real_criminals_in_the_tarek_mehanna_case/singleton/
NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/opinion/sunday/a-dangerous-mind.html?pagewanted=all
TAREK MEHANNA’S SENTENCING STATEMENT
APRIL 12, 2012
Read to Judge O’Toole during his sentencing, April 12th 2012.
In the name of God the most gracious the most merciful Exactly four years ago this month I was finishing my work shift at a
local hospital. As I was walking to my car I was approached by two federal agents. They said that I had a choice to make: I could do things the easy way, or I could do them the hard way. The “easy ” way, as they explained, was that I would become an informant for the government, and if I did so I would never see the inside of a courtroom or a prison cell. As for the hard way, this is it. Here I
am, having spent the majority of the four years since then in a solitary cell the size of a small closet, in which I am locked down
for 23 hours each day. The FBI and these prosecutors worked very hard-and the government spent millions of tax dollars – to put me in that cell, keep me there, put me on trial, and finally to have me stand here before you today to be sentenced to even more time in a cell.
In the weeks leading up to this moment, many people have offered suggestions as to what I should say to you. Some said I should plead for mercy in hopes of a light sentence, while others suggested I would be hit hard either way. But what I want to do is just talk about myself for a few minutes.
When I refused to become an informant, the government responded by charging me with the “crime” of supporting the mujahideen fighting the occupation of Muslim countries around the world. Or as they like to call them, “terrorists.” I wasn’t born in a Muslim country, though. I was born and raised right here in America and this angers many people: how is it that I can be an American and believe the things I believe, take the positions I take? Everything a man is exposed to in his environment becomes an ingredient that shapes his outlook, and I’m no different.  So, in more ways than one, it’s because of America that I am who I am.
When I was six, I began putting together a massive collection of comic books. Batman implanted a concept in my mind, introduced me to a paradigm as to how the world is set up: that there are oppressors, there are the oppressed, and there are those who step up to defend the oppressed. This resonated with me so much that throughout the rest of my childhood, I gravitated towards any book that reflected that paradigm – Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and I even saw an ehical dimension to The Catcher in the Rye.
By the time I began high school and took a real history class, I was learning just how real that paradigm is in the world. I learned about the Native Americans and what befell them at the hands of European settlers. I learned about how the descendents of those European settlers were in turn oppressed under the tyranny of King George III.
I read about Paul Revere, Tom Paine, and how Americans began an armed insurgency against British forces – an insurgency we now celebrate as the American revolutionary war. As a kid I even went on school field trips just blocks away from where we sit now. I learned about Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, John Brown, and the fight against slavery in this country. I learned about Emma Goldman, Eugene Debs, and the struggles of the labor unions, working class, and poor. I learned about Anne Frank, the Nazis, and how they persecuted minorities and imprisoned dissidents. I learned about Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King,
and the civil rights struggle.
I learned about Ho Chi Minh, and how the Vietnamese fought for decades to liberate themselves from one invader after another. I learned about Nelson Mandela and the fight against apartheid in South Africa. Everything I learned in those years confirmed what I was beginning to learn when I was six: that throughout history, there has been a constant struggle between the oppressed and their oppressors. With each struggle I learned about, I found myself consistently siding with the oppressed, and consistently respecting those who stepped up to defend them -regardless of nationality, regardless of religion. And I never threw my class notes away. As I stand here speaking, they are in a neat pile in my bedroom closet at home.
From all the historical figures I learned about, one stood out above the rest. I was impressed be many things about Malcolm X, but above all, I was fascinated by the idea of transformation, his transformation. I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie “X” by Spike Lee, it’s over three and a half hours long, and the Malcolm at the beginning is different from the Malcolm at the end. He starts off as an illiterate criminal, but ends up a husband, a father, a protective and eloquent leader for his people, a disciplined Muslim performing the Hajj in Makkah, and finally, a martyr. Malcolm’s life taught me that Islam is not something inherited; it’s not a culture or ethnicity. It’s a way of life, a state of mind anyone can choose no matter where they come from or how they were raised.
This led me to look deeper into Islam, and I was hooked. I was just a teenager, but Islam answered the question that the greatest scientific minds were clueless about, the question that drives the rich & famous to depression and suicide from being unable to answer: what is the purpose of life? Why do we exist in this Universe? But it also answered the question of how we’re supposed to exist. And since there’s no hierarchy or priesthood, I could directly and immediately begin digging into the texts of the Qur’an and the teachings of Prophet Muhammad, to begin the journey of understanding what this was all about, the implications of Islam for me as a human being, as an individual, for the people around me, for the world; and the more I learned, the more I valued Islam like a piece of gold. This was when I was a teen, but even today, despite the pressures of the last few years, I stand here before you, and everyone else in this courtroom, as a very proud Muslim.
With that, my attention turned to what was happening to other Muslims in different parts of the world. And everywhere I looked, I saw the powers that be trying to destroy what I loved. I learned what the Soviets had done to the Muslims of Afghanistan. I learned what the Serbs had done to the Muslims of Bosnia. I learned what the Russians were doing to the Muslims of Chechnya. I learned what Israel had done in Lebanon – and what it continues to do in Palestine – with the full backing of the United States. And I learned what America itself was doing to Muslims. I learned about the Gulf War, and the depleted uranium bombs that killed thousands and caused cancer rates to skyrocket across Iraq.
I learned about the American-led sanctions that prevented food, medicine, and medical equipment from entering Iraq, and how – according to the United Nations – over half a million children perished as a result. I remember a clip from a ’60 Minutes‘ interview of Madeline Albright where she expressed her view that these dead children were “worth it.” I watched on September 11th as a group of people felt driven to hijack airplanes and fly them into buildings from their outrage at the deaths of these children. I watched as America then attacked and invaded Iraq directly. I saw the effects of ’Shock & Awe’ in the opening day of the invasion – the children in hospital wards with shrapnel from American missiles sticking but of their foreheads (of course, none of this was shown on CNN).
I learned about the town of Haditha, where 24 Muslims – including a 76-year old man in a wheelchair, women, and even toddlers – were shot up and blown up in their bedclothes as the slept by US Marines. I learned about Abeer al-Janabi, a fourteen-year old Iraqi girl gang-raped by five American soldiers, who then shot her and her family in the head, then set fire to their corpses. I just want to point out, as you can see, Muslim women don’t even show their hair to unrelated men. So try to imagine this young girl from a conservative village with her dress torn off, being sexually assaulted by not one, not two, not three, not four, but five soldiers. Even today, as I sit in my jail cell, I read about the drone strikes which continue to kill Muslims daily in places like Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen. Just last month, we all heard about the seventeen Afghan Muslims – mostly mothers and their kids – shot to death by an American soldier, who also set fire to their corpses.
These are just the stories that make it to the headlines, but one of the first concepts I learned in Islam is that of loyalty, of
brotherhood – that each Muslim woman is my sister, each man is my brother, and together, we are one large body who must protect each other. In other words, I couldn’t see these things beings done to my brothers & sisters – including by America – and remain neutral. My sympathy for the oppressed continued, but was now more personal, as was my respect for those defending them.
I mentioned Paul Revere – when he went on his midnight ride, it was for the purpose of warning the people that the British were marching to Lexington to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock, then on to Concord to confiscate the weapons stored there by the Minuteman. By the time they got to Concord, they found the Minuteman waiting for them, weapons in hand. They fired at the British, fought them, and beat them. From that battle came the American Revolution. There’s an Arabic word to describe what those Minutemen did that day. That word is: JIHAD, and this is what my trial was about.
All those videos and translations and childish bickering over ‘Oh, he translated this paragraph’ and ‘Oh, he edited that sentence,’ and all those exhibits revolved around a single issue: Muslims who were defending themselves against American soldiers doing to them exactly what the British did to America. It was made crystal clear at trial that I never, ever plotted to “kill Americans” at shopping malls or whatever the story was. The government’s own witnesses contradicted this claim, and we put expert after expert up on that stand, who spent hours dissecting my every written word, who explained my beliefs. Further, when I was free, the government sent an undercover agent to prod me into one of their little “terror plots,” but I refused to participate. Mysteriously, however, the jury never heard this.
So, this trial was not about my position on Muslims killing American civilians. It was about my position on Americans killing Muslim civilians, which is that Muslims should defend their lands from foreign invaders – Soviets, Americans, or Martians. This is what I believe. It’s what I’ve always believed, and what I will always believe. This is not terrorism, and it’s not extremism. It’s what the arrows on that seal above your head represent: defense of the homeland. So, I disagree with my lawyers when they say that you don’t have to agree with my beliefs – no. Anyone with commonsense and humanity has no choice but to agree with me. If someone breaks into your home to rob you and harm your family, logic dictates that you do whatever it takes to expel that invader from your home.
But when that home is a Muslim land, and that invader is the US military, for some reason the standards suddenly change. Common sense is renamed ”terrorism” and the people defending themselves against those who come to kill them from across the ocean become “the terrorists” who are ”killing Americans.” The mentality that America was victimized with when British soldiers walked these streets 2 ½ centuries ago is the same mentality Muslims are victimized by as American soldiers walk their streets today. It’s the mentality of colonialism.
When Sgt. Bales shot those Afghans to death last month, all of the focus in the media was on him-his life, his stress, his PTSD, the mortgage on his home-as if he was the victim. Very little sympathy was expressed for the people he actually killed, as if they’re not real, they’re not humans. Unfortunately, this mentality trickles down to everyone in society, whether or not they realize it. Even with my lawyers, it took nearly two years of discussing, explaining, and clarifying before they were finally able to think outside the box and at least ostensibly accept the logic in what I was saying. Two years! If it took that long for people so intelligent, whose job it is to defend me, to de-program themselves, then to throw me in front of a randomly selected jury under the premise that they’re my “impartial peers,” I mean, come on. I wasn’t tried before a jury of my peers because with the mentality gripping America today, I have no peers. Counting on this fact, the government prosecuted me – not because they needed to, but simply because they could.
I learned one more thing in history class: America has historically supported the most unjust policies against its minorities – practices that were even protected by the law – only to look back later and ask: ’what were we thinking?’ Slavery, Jim Crow, the internment of the Japanese during World War II – each was widely accepted by American society, each was defended by the Supreme Court. But as time passed and America changed, both people and courts looked back and asked ’What were we thinking?’ Nelson Mandela was considered a terrorist by the South African government, and given a life sentence. But time passed, the world changed, they realized how oppressive their policies were, that it was not he who was the terrorist, and they released him from prison. He even became president. So, everything is subjective – even this whole business of “terrorism” and who is a “terrorist.” It all depends on the time and place and who the superpower happens to be at the moment.
In your eyes, I’m a terrorist, and it’s perfectly reasonable that I be standing here in an orange jumpsuit. But one day, America will change and people will recognize this day for what it is. They will look at how hundreds of thousands of Muslims were killed and maimed by the US military in foreign countries, yet somehow I’m the one going to prison for “conspiring to kill and maim” in those countries – because I support the Mujahidin defending those people. They will look back on how the government spent millions of dollars to imprison me as a ”terrorist,” yet if we were to somehow bring Abeer al-Janabi back to life in the moment she was being gang-raped by your soldiers, to put her on that witness stand and ask her who the “terrorists” are, she sure wouldn’t be pointing at me.
The government says that I was obsessed with violence, obsessed with ”killing Americans.” But, as a Muslim living in these times, I can think of a lie no more ironic.
-Tarek Mehanna
4/12/12
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Lynne’s Thoughts for May Day 2012

May 6th, 2012Some thoughts from Lynne for May Day:
May Day, a celebration of the Worker and May Day, a commemoration of the Immigrant migration has now become a single holiday—and how appropriate that is !! The massive immigrant influx of the late 19 century was primarily  a new supply of workers for the unending appetite of capitalism. Cheap Labor.  Europe had become a dead end — wars, a class and land system that allowed no upward mobility and less and less opportunity for their children to learn or be somebody.  My own Swedish great grandparents came over as indentured workers–having to pay for their passage by the sweat of their (yes, women too) brows doing farm labor for two years.  This is a story that had been repeated through all the waves of immigrants–Italian, Greek, Slavic, Eastern European, Asian (Chinese, Filipino), Caribbean and now Latin American and African.  What has shifted is the structure that now has the United States as the Great Imperialist, first ravaging their homes militarily and economically and then casting large numbers of newly created displaced people adrift on the economic seas.  As one Jamaican friend and immigrant once said to me “Why shouldn’t we come here?  You have everything stolen from us !!”
Before I go further, I have a word for two special groups of workers and their paths and current status in America.  Blacks were kidnapped and brought here 400 years ago because it was “difficult “to enslave native Americans on their own lands.  Africans were readily identifiable-and thus if you were  Black you were a Slave.  That has not changed much in 400 years.  Just Ask Travon Martin and the other “targets”. Through all the years and all the continued resistance and struggle, that simple fact has always been determinative.  Today, it is also being used as a wedge to separate natural allies into enemies.  In the days preceding the Civil War,  Workers and Abolitionists fought side by side to achieve equality for both.  And that of course continues to be the goal–to demonstrate convincingly that all the media and all the tricks cannot divide the 99%.  Black people can rightfully claim their fair share of all the wealth, they slaved for no pay, but that does not mean that others are not entitled as well.  Mexicans, whose land was stolen from them, the other special group that must be mentioned, have this year almost stopped coming to the US.  Does that mean more jobs for those already here?—NO NO NO that is a cruel and cheap hoax.  Mexican immigrants do not take jobs that Blacks and other Americans want. Like all newcomers they do the grunt and dirty work — no-one in New York City could have a meal in a restaurant if it were not for the immigrants–mostly Latino, who provide the infrastructure. This is not a competition for jobs except so far as those who control the dollars make it so.
Two warnings to all from my own experience.  First, as immigrants anxious to be part of the American dream DO NOT join the part of it that says I can get past on skin color and I can advance myself by being racist and exploiting “those” people just as every preceding immigrant group has done.  My other alert is to People of Color—Do not blame the immigrants for your plight in white America, they came to work and made themselves indispensable. It is the same old white power structure that exploits both labor and race and racial differences for their own advancement that is responsible. Don’t adopt convenient scapegoats when the battle is there to be fought with the courage to do so against the true enemy.
The only PROGRESS to be sought on May DAY 2012 by all of us is a unity of purpose, by truly believing that an injury to one is an injury to all and acting in self defense against the powerful, unscrupulous forces who seek to destroy our movement.  This year we are once again confronted with a Presidential Election that for many is choosing the “lesser of two evils”.  Let me remind you that as James Baldwin, the Black author, once said–evil is always evil and the politicians including Mr. Obama have demonstrated their total untrustworthiness over and over and over.  Promises ?– a hollow joke; and Programs?– on paper or words of the air — never put into practice.  This is not to be Tolerated!!!
May Day is for the beginning of new offensives and we certainly have a vast choice — there is so much wrong, so much that needs fixing.  We must band together until they are more afraid of OUR power than their greedy fear of losing their vast fortunes.  This we Must do — our children and grandchildren assure us there is no choice, if there is to be a world for them to live and work and raise the next generations in.
- Lynne Stewart
Posted in FROM LYNNE | No Comments »

Brief Update from Lynne

April 26th, 2012
From Lynne:
“My health condition being uncomfortable but Not life threatening. People will be notified if we decide on pressuring the prison and BOP in Washington to help us out. I do seem robbed of my usual energy.
Also a Short update on the pending Appeal–not unusual to wait and we are NOT about to pressure the august appellate court. We wait with hope in our minds and hearts.”
Posted in FROM LYNNE | 2 Comments »

New Photos – Lynne with Family

April 19th, 2012From March 2012.

Lynne with her son, his wife, and Lynne’s grandkids.

Lynne and Ralph.

Lynne and her grandkids.

Lynne with her son.
Posted in BEHIND BARS, MEDIA | No Comments »
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