Sedition

From Random Hipatia

Laura Berg, a nurse employed by the Veterans Affairs Administration, has been investigated for “sedition” after writing an editorial critical of the Bush Administration. Here is what Laura wrote, which was printed as an editorial in her local newspaper:

I am furious with the tragically misplaced priorities and criminal negligence of this government. The Katrina tragedy in the U.S. shows that the emperor has no clothes! Bush and his team partied and delayed while millions of people were displaced, hundreds of thousands were abandoned to a living hell. Thousands more died of drowning, dehydration, hunger and exposure; most bodies remain unburied and rotting in attics and floodwater. Is this America the beautiful?

The risk of hurricane disaster was clearly predicted, yet funds for repair work for the Gulf States barrier islands and levee system were unconscionably diverted to the Iraq War. Money and manpower and ethics have been diverted to fight a war based on absolute lies!

As a VA nurse working with returning OIF vets, I know the public has no sense of the additional devastating human and financial costs of post-traumatic stress disorder; now we will have hundreds of thousands of our civilian citizens with PTSD as well as far too many young soldiers, maimed physically or psychologically-<>or both-spreading their pain, anger and isolation through family and communities for generations. And most of this natural disaster and war tragedy has been preventable … how very, very sad!

In the meantime, our war-fueled federal deficit mushrooms—and whither this debt now, as we care for the displaced and destroyed?

Bush, Cheney, Chertoff, Brown and Rice should be tried for criminal negligence. This country needs to get out of Iraq now and return to our original vision and priorities of caring for land and people and resources rather than killing for oil.

Katrina itself was the size of New Mexico. Denials of global warming are ludicrous and patently irrational at this point. We can anticipate more wild, destructive weather to occur as a response stress of the planet. We need to wake up and get real here, and act forcefully to remove a government administration playing games of smoke and mirrors and vicious deceit. Otherwise, many more of us will be facing living hell in these times.

For writing this editorial, government agents seized her computer and investigated her for “sedition” and “unlawful insurrection”, I kid you not, apparently with the full complicity of her employer, the VA administration. Are government employees (and others) who criticize the administration soon to be carried off to the FEMA camps?!

More realistically, and to the point, imagine if some government goons showed up at your employer investigating you for “sedition” for something you posted here. You do not need to use internment camps to effectively intimidate and silence most people. Blacklisting, a favorite tactic from the McCarthy period, or occasionally “visiting” their source of employment, would be sufficient, I think, to silence most voices of dissent.

At one time the U.S. did have an actual sedition law, during the presidency of John Adams, who, in addition to being obnoxious and disliked, apparently was also incredibly thin skinned! Fortunately such nonsense was put to rest by Jefferson, only to reappear briefly during the first world war.

Incidentally, government employees are in fact legally guaranteed the same first amendment rights everyone else enjoys, as well as protected against discrimination and other workplace practices that some private firms still do. They certainly do not surrender their right to association, or any of their other constitutional rights, by working for the government. Of course, next time Luara shows up for work, maybe it would be better if she just faced the portrait of Bush at the entrance way, and offer a hearty and good loyal sieg hiel to our new American Furer and only think and say “pure” thoughts about the homeland and it’s leaders, like this administration seems to expect a good loyal civil servent to do. Welcome to the American Insurgency, Laura!