U.S. Government-Obama Regime Murdering Lynne Stewart in Slow Motion

Lynne Stewart is dying of terminal cancer, locked in a cell with seven other prisoners in a Federal dungeon in Texas. Deprived of proper medical care, the Obama regime's plan is to watch her die.

Lynne Stewart is the disbarred lawyer who is imprisoned for “conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism” and lesser charges. (Originally the charge was actually “providing material support to” etc. “Conspiracy” is a lot easier to prove. It basically means “planned to do” something.

Terrorism, huh? Ooh, sounds bad! She must have done something awful!

Indeed she did. She handed a press release on behalf of her client to Reuters. Her client was the “blind Egyptian sheik,” Omar Abdel-Rahman, an established “bad guy” in U.S. political culture, who is serving life in a U.S. prison- but not just life, life being held incommunicado. The Bureau of Prisons imposed a set of special rules for this special prisoner on his lawyer, requiring her to help them block all contact between him and the outside world. [Because he's a “terrorist,” any messages from him are ipso facto “terrorist messages.” Just as if he said something to you, that would be a “terrorist statement.” Or if he smiled, that's a “terrorist smile.” And Lynne Stewart is a “terrorist (ex-) lawyer.” See how that works? It's like something radioactive- touch it, and you become radioactive. In this case, politically radioactive. You can be sure that anyone who protests Stewart's treatment is similarly radioactive, their names added to various secret “terrorist” databases in the bowels of the secret police state bureaucracy.]

But let's be fair and balanced here. Look at it from the other side. In the eyes of the U.S. power structure, Lynne Stewart is a traitor who endangered America. Well, American “interests.” That is, Abdel-Rahman's missive was aimed at stirring up (so it is alleged) his followers in Egypt, which was ruled at the time by U.S. client-dictator and helpful torturer Hosni Mubarak. (Decades of support for Egyptian military dictators, first Sadat and then Mubarak, being an example of how the U.S. “promotes freedom and democracy and human rights around the world,” but that's another story. Or rather, the Big Story that this story is a small part of, but one I've discussed extensively in other essays.) Abdel-Rahman was calling on his followers to resist Mubarak, not attack the U.S. So why should the U.S. consider what Stewart did such a grave crime? The U.S. is an empire. So trying to make trouble for its client is the same as attacking it. Which is “terrorism,” of course. (Disagree? You're “supporting terrorism.” Better watch that! You're either on “our” side or “the terrorists' side.” “Our” being guess who? The people in power, especially the permanent, gigantic police state bureaucracy.) So if you help the “terrorist” try to make trouble for the dictator, you “provided material support for terrorism.” (1)

So when she broke the rule created by the prison, the Bush II regime brought the “terrorism” charges against her. Duly convicted in “liberal” New York City in Federal District Court, she was originally sentenced to about two years (28 months) in Federal prison. (One of her two co-defendants, a postal clerk accused of being a “leader” of Abdel-Rahman's “terrorist group” in Egypt, got 28 years. Maybe the judge thinks 28 is his lucky number?)

This “light” sentence outraged the prosecutors. Amazingly, a Federal Appeals Court, similarly outraged, in its decision on Stewart's appeal excoriated the trial court judge for the sentence, considering the gravity of the offense, and provided tutoring on the proper duties of a Federal judge in a political case (couching it in suitable euphemisms of course) and in no uncertain terms ordered that a harsher sentence be applied.

The trial judge, John G. Koeltl, duly chastened, got the message and, cravenly eager to get back in the good graces of his superiors, multiplied the sentence by five, making it an even ten years. (To prove he learned his lesson, I suppose. Hey, you want to get promoted to the Appeals Court someday, you better learn what's expected without having to be told!) Stewart, under treatment for breast cancer, was also clapped in jail immediately on orders of the Appeals Court, using as an excuse the fact they they deemed her to have committed “perjury” during the trial. (Defendants who testify in their own trials often lie, and the usual practice by the courts is to overlook this. Also, FBI agents, police, and government officials routinely lie at trial, and this is virtually never sanctioned at all, much less prosecuted.) The Appeals Court also cited statements she made out of court that expressed opinions they found offensive as grounds for increasing her prison sentence. (When this was appealed, the same Court exonerated itself of violating Stewart's free speech “rights,” as they are facetiously called.) The Appeals Court judges apparently felt that Stewart hadn't "learned her lesson," as they say, with the 28 month sentence, despite a contrite letter she had sent to the trial judge before her original sentencing. [See Wikipedia entry under Lynne Stewart, which cites the NY Times on the letter.]

Now, Lynne Stewart isn't a young woman. She's 73 now and has been in prison since November 2009. She would have been freed about a year ago under the original sentence.

There are conflicting reports on how she came to be at death's door, languishing in a Federal dungeon with terminal cancer. One version is that she was prevented from having scheduled surgery by being whisked into prison while an appeal was still pending. Another version says her cancer was in remission. What's for sure is that medical care for American prisoners is generally abysmal. We can assume that subsequent surgery was subpar, at best. Obviously since she's denied access to good cancer treatment, her cancer was allowed to spread. She has not been given needed medications. Her cancer has metastasized to her bones and other organs and is now incurable.

Apparently dissatisfied with the degree of her suffering, the U.S. is is adding to it by keeping her in Texas, thousands of miles away from family and friends in New York and from supporters in California- i.e. as far away as possible from support unless they'd shipped her to Alaska. Apparently she doesn't “deserve” to have visits from people while she's dying.

It's hard to sate the sadism of political persecutors. Cf. the Inquisition, part of “our Western Heritage,” or Bashar Assad's regime, for more gruesome examples.

By the way, another political prisoner being even more slowly murdered, is Leonard Peltier, who they've already partially blinded by medical neglect.

In sum: apparently feeling that Stewart's sentence was still too light, the Obama regime has in effect sneakily resentenced her yet again, this time to death. Their chosen method of execution is untreated cancer. This time no judge issued any public verdict. The re-resentencing is de facto, not de jure. It's an off-the-books execution.

So the sinister people in power have decided to execute Stewart, without officially sentencing her to death and without having to lash her down to a gurney and sticking a needle in her vein and injecting her with poison, or strapping her to a chair and shooting electricity through her body, or tying a noose around her neck and dropping her body through a trapdoor in a gallows. And they will smarmily pretend not to be responsible for murdering her.

As is traditional in U.S. assassinations of dissidents, there is no official acknowledgment or public record of the killing. This allows the U.S. Government and political system to keep up the ruse of running a “free” country where people have “rights.” (No one has rights in America, only privileges, revocable at any time if one crosses certain invisible lines and enters a political taboo zone.) The murders are hidden from public view, while a terroristic message is transmitted to dissidents. So the U.S. establishment gets to have its cake and eat it too. It commits a no-cost murder, it applies the old Chinese ruling dictum “kill one, frighten a thousand,” yet gets to pose as defenders of freedom and democracy. (“Imprison one, intimidate a thousand” works too.) Its legitimacy in the eyes of the general populace is preserved, because they remain ignorant of the murders. (This is partly the populace's own fault for their laziness, lack of curiosity, and willingness to continue to rely on the corporate propaganda system- called “the media,” like there is no other- for information and knowledge about, and understanding of, the world they live in.)

And there won't be any “official” records or “mainstream” (aka “reputable”- a sick joke) media reporting of the effective execution. So future historians will, it is hoped, be misled about what happened.

Or if you think this is all a bit of a stretch, you can look at it this way. Lynne Stewart was actually sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for issuing a press release. Is that arguable?

I don't think that can be disputed. And call issuing a press release “material support for terrorism” if you like. Where was the terrorism? What violence occurred? None, except the violence done to Lynne Stewart.

Not only was there no violence, which is what most people are conditioned to immediately think when the word “terrorism!” is blared at them. There weren't even attempts. There were no “foiled plots.” No “attempted bombings.” But the phrase “material support for terrorism” allows the rulers to demonize their victim and trick the already-brainwashed public as to what really occurred.

And defense lawyers got the message by what happened to Lynne: don't try to hard to help people we brand “terrorists.” Or else. (The Government prosecutors, in their demand during the original sentencing procedure that Stewart be sentenced to the maximum, 30 years in prison, spelled it out: "We hope that this sentence of 30 years will not only punish Stewart for her actions, but serve as a deterrent for other lawyers who believe that they are above the rules and regulations of penal institutions or otherwise try to skirt the laws of this country.")

You see, our bourgeois masters take it very personally when someone defies them on political or ideological grounds. Witness the hysterical, enraged, public demands that Julian Assange be assassinated for revealing some of their dirty secrets. These are ruthless people, capable of merciless hatred and rage. Of course with Obama and Holder you never see hot emotions. They may not even have any, for all I know. They may be totally cold and calculating gangsters, not hot and emotional ones. That's certainly how they come across. Janet Reno, Holder's boss during his previous stint as a high “Justice” Department executive during the Clinton regime, was another emotionless, totally ruthless apparatchik, completely inhuman in her absence of affect.

Stewart's supporters are trying a last desperate throw of the dice, petitioning for “compassionate release” (the name the U.S. Bureau of Prisons cynically calls this runaround procedure) to at least let her die with friends and family in New York, thousands of miles from the Texas dungeon. Such release is virtually never granted to any prisoners, much less political prisoners. Theoretically, it is for prisoners with a short time to live due to terminal illnesses. In practice, it's for almost no one. (Another condition is that the prisoner must present “no danger to the public.” But anyone branded with the “terrorist” label is by definition dangerous until they are dead. Witness the hysterical dread that nixed “terrorism” trials in NYC, or transferring prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to Federal supermax prisons in the U.S., as if they have comic book supervillain powers of escape and destructiveness. In Stewart's case, the danger is ideological, the spread of her defiant words. And what if she doesn't die fast enough? They want to make sure she's good and dead first.)

The flaw in the plan to petition for compassionate release is that the people being petitioned don't have any compassion. Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and the various myrmidons who run the U.S. Department of “Justice” and its subdivision, the Bureau of Prisons, are hard-hearted, ruthless people. (No doubt they regard such a statement as a grave insult. Thus I write it with trepidation, as angering such powerful people is indeed dangerous, just as angering Vladimir Putin in Russia would be.) The Obama regime has shown itself to be even more merciless than his predecessor when it comes to granting pardons, for example. (He grants virtually none, in fact the fewest of any U.S. President, ever. With the U.S. prison population around record levels, I guess it's just hard to find any who deserve a break.)

I'm certainly not saying people shouldn't ask for, indeed demand, compassionate release. The refusal of the establishment will provide an opportunity to underline the heartlessness of those in power. Of course, there are a thousand such opportunities every day, but nevertheless, one might as well avail oneself of this one. Maybe the system will be more cunning than cruel in this instance and release her on the brink of death, so they can pose as having a heart. I certainly hope so, but I wouldn't bet money on it. (Just don't expect to be allowed on an airplane again if you sign the petition.)

1) Abdel-Rahman's followers in Egypt are designated “terrorists.” And his message aimed at them asked them to reconsider a “ceasefire” with the Egyptian dictatorship. Of course, since states insist on having a monopoly on violence, the Egyptian state's violence is legitimate, but its subjects' is criminal.

And maybe the U.S. figured it owed Mubarak one. After all, his torturers extracted a fake “confession” from someone the CIA sent to him, “proving” that Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction” and “links” to Al-Qaeda, said “information” subsequently bellowed by Colin Powell in his speech to the UN demanding war on Iraq. Bush too referred to this “information” from interrogations that “we know.”

A year later, after retracting this “confession,” when the victim was asked why he'd said untrue things, he explained they were killing him and he had to make the pain stop so he told them what they wanted to hear. Of course, the CIA obviously told the Egyptians what the CIA wanted to hear from the prisoner, Ibn Shaikh al-Libi. Later, the Mubarak regime handed him over to Qaddafi in Libya for disposal, where he was duly murdered in captivity. [“Al-Libi, Torture, and the Case for the War in Iraq,” Mother Jones, May. 14, 2009.] The case of al-Libi proves it doesn't pay to cooperate with the U.S. He had been talking freely to FBI agents when Bush gave the CIA permission to get their clutches on him, and they turned him over to Mubarak's torturers, and ultimately to his doom. He left behind a family. [See Wikipedia entry. But note that much of the entry is U.S. Government disinformation and bullshit. See Jane Mayer below. Wikipedia shows its bias by calling Mubarak regime torture "harsh interrogation." And having your arm blown off in an explosion would be "an unfortunate accident," I guess, if you adopt that system of extreme euphemisms.]

Watch this video clip, an excerpt of an hour long interview of Jane Mayer, The New Yorker writer who wrote a book on the U.S. kidnapping and torture programs in the “war on terrorism,” The Dark Side.

                                                            

The full hour-long interview is available on youtube

                                                 "How the War on Terror Turned into A War on American Values"

It is one of a series of interviews with various persons, ranging from Noam Chomsky, Christopher Hitchens, and Peter Dale Scott, to CIA officers (the one with Michael Scheuer has some interesting revelations) and various retired military officers, posted on youtube.com. The series is called "Conversations With History," and was done under the aegis of UC Berkeley.