American Nurse Charged with Sedition

international | anti-war / imperialism | other press

Saturday February 11, 2006 21:37

by redjade

“The Agency is bound by law to investigate and pursue any act which potentially represents sedition,”

Laura Berg is a clinical nurse specialist at the VA Medical Center in Albuquerque, where she has worked for 15 years.

Shortly after Katrina, she wrote a letter to the editor of the weekly paper the Alibi criticizing the Bush Administration.

After the paper published the letter in its September 15-21 issue, VA administrators seized her computer, alleged that she had written the letter on that computer, and accused her of “sedition.”

[....]

After her computer was seized, Berg wrote a memo to her bosses seeking information and an explanation.

Mel Hooker, chief of the human resources management service at the Albuquerque VA, wrote Berg back on November 9 and acknowledged that “your personal computer files did not contain the editorial letter written to the editor of the weekly Alibi.”

But rather than apologize, he leveled the sedition charge: “The Agency is bound by law to investigate and pursue any act which potentially represents sedition,” he said. “In your letter . . . you declared yourself ‘as a VA nurse’ and publicly declared the Government which employs you to have ‘tragically misplaced priorities and criminal negligence’ and advocated, ‘act forcefully to remove a government administration playing games of smoke and mirrors and vicious deceit.’ ”

Berg, who is not talking to the press, is “scared for her job” and “pretty emotionally distressed,” says Peter Simonson, executive director of the ACLU of New Mexico.

“We were shocked to see the word ‘sedition’ used,” Simonson tells The Progressive. “Sedition? That’s like something out of the history books.”

read the rest at
http://progressive.org/node/3037/print

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Comments (3 of 3)

'Wake Up, Get Real'

Sat Feb 11, 2006 21:39

By Laura Berg....

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.

read the rest at....
http://www.alibi.com/editorial/section_display.php?di=2...14093

What is Sedition?

Sat Feb 11, 2006 22:34

Sedition
1. Conduct or language inciting rebellion against the authority of a state.
2. Insurrection; rebellion.
3. Etymology: Latin seditio, literally, separation, from sed apart + itio act of going, from ire to go
: the crime of creating a revolt, disturbance, or violence against lawful civil authority with the intent to cause its overthrow or destruction —compare CRIMINAL SYNDICALISM, SABOTAGE
4. an illegal action inciting resistance to lawful authority and tending to cause the disruption or overthrow of the government

see... http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=Sedition

Bill of Rights [null and void since 11.9.01]
Amendment I
'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.'

see... http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.bi....html

Bush using Active Duty Mil Soldiers for Repub Party Propaganda

Sun Feb 12, 2006 22:25

»
Bottom line seems to be US Govt personel are free to speak for the War, especially for the Party of War - but if US Govt personel speak against the War or against Dear Leader you will be charged with Sedition.

Is it time to use the F-Word?
«

———

Josh Marshall writes:
One of Karl Rove's deputies is arranging for active duty military personnel to make speeches at Republican party events? The president is commander-in-chief. He's also head of the Republican party. But he's supposed to make at least some effort to show that the two jobs aren't melded into one.

The military, for good reasons, actually has quite detailed regulations about how active duty military personnel can and cannot participate in political events.

[....]

In the United States, hearing from soldiers fighting in foreign wars has long been a way to maintain morale on the home front. But soldiers (& sailors, airmen and marines) aren't supposed to be dragooned by the president's political operatives into the GOP spin operation.

more at
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/007661.php

Robert Schlesinger explains:
'...what makes these partisan, poltiicized events is the fact that they are being organized by (a) the White House's political affairs office and (b) local branches of the Republican Party.'

more at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-schlesinger/white-....html

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American Nurse Charged with Sedition

Comments (3 of 3)