Operation American Repression?

[MrBenchley]

A staff sergeant who wrote an article critical of the Bush administration now becomes the first soldier in 34 years to face prosecution. Astonishingly, it's a right winger who published an article on the neoNazi website lewrockwell.com; as Pink Floyd said, "got to keep the loonies on the path"....

"An Army Reserve staff sergeant who last week wrote a critical analysis of the United States' prospects in Iraq now faces possible disciplinary action for disloyalty and insubordination. If charges are bought and the officer is found guilty, he could face 20 years in prison. It would be the first such disloyalty prosecution since the Vietnam War.
Lorentz's essay contains no classified information but does include a starkly critical evaluation of how the Bush administration has conducted the war. "Instead of addressing the reasons why the locals are becoming angry and discontented, we allow politicians in Washington DC to give us pat and convenient reasons that are devoid of any semblance of reality," Lorentz wrote. "It is tragic, indeed criminal, that our elected public servants would so willingly sacrifice our nation's prestige and honor as well as the blood and treasure to pursue an agenda that is ahistoric and un-Constitutional."
The essay prompted a swift response from Lorentz's commanders. In an e-mail this week to Salon, Lorentz, declining to comment further on his piece, noted, "Because of my article, I am under investigation at this time for very serious charges which carry up to a 20-year prison sentence." According to Lorentz, the investigation is looking into whether his writing constituted a disloyalty crime under both federal statute (Title 18, Section 2388, of the U.S. Code) and Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. "

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/29/military_justice/index.html

[mhr]

1. Unbelievable That Things Have Become This Bad - Speechless!

eom

[MrBenchley]

2. Meanwhile, you'll notice the immediate response

by "superiors," which suggests they're reading a neoNazi website further up the chain of command....

[depakid]

11. That was EXACTLY my thought-

Just who's reading this site anyway?

[dumpster_baby]

3. wow! that guy is gonna be in a world of hurt if Bush wins

Poor dude....He better pray kerry wins.

[nolabels]

4. Another miserable failure, tell the truth get 20 years in the slammer

Criticize the governments foreign (war) policy because they are basically corrupt,inept and bogus and they will make every attempt to get back at you. We are in a fascist state attempting to make the one extra step into totalitarianism. Picking up old retired veterans because they refuse to go and kill innocent people for an AWOL and draft dodger whims.

Going after people who served in military or people that presently serve is would seem to be another tactic to separate people who protect from the people they are supposed to serve. Attempting to make the police, government workers and military an opposition to the people. These NeoCons are attempting make it a crime for people in the government to cooperate with the general public. Everything the government does is a secret and if some way anyone wants to reveal what they are up to they will go to jail. What kind of democracy is this :shrug:




What is Fascism?

Well, lets break down Italian Fascism so that you can see how it developed over the years of Mussolini's reign to his death. In Walter Laquer's The Essence of Fascism, he defines Fascism, not specific to Italy, as being:
1) Nationalistic
2) A leader, whom has unlimited power.
3) The Ideology is Faith, in the sense that it is almost dogmatic religion.
4) The use of Violence.
5) Anti-Democratic and Anti-Communist.
6) Expansionist
7) The usage of Propaganda
8) Militeristic
9) Anti-Liberalism
10) Extreme Right Wing
(snip)
http://www.dickinson.edu/~history/dictators/Mussolini_Ideology_Page.htm


A police state exists when federal and state police mechanisms:

1. Serve the central government instead of serving the citizens

2. Enforce the policies of the central government instead of responding primarily to criminal misdeeds

3. Spy on and intimidate citizens

All these conditions now exist in the United States!


* In a free society, police agencies respond to evidence of planned and actual criminal activity.

* Police officers in a free society keep the peace; they do not investigate citizens and activities unless there is some reason to investigate.

* In a free society, police do not investigate citizens' attitudes toward the central government, only their action.

* Citizen dissent is lawful in a free society and police agencies do not investigate citizens' attitudes toward the criminal justice apparatus.
(snip)
http://www.hermes-press.com/police_state.htm



For a more Myopic view ( :puke: )
(snip)
11. The nation as the State is an ethical reality which exists and lives in so far as it develops. To arrest its development is to kill it. Therefore the State is not only the authority which governs and gives the form of laws and the value of spiritual life to the wills of individuals, but it is also a power that makes its will felt abroad, making it known and respected, in other words, demonstrating the fact of its universality in all the necessary directions of its development. It is consequently organization and expansion, at least virtually. Thus it can be likened to the human will which knows no limits to its development and realizes itself in testing its own limitlessness.

12. The Fascist State, the highest and most powerful form of personality, is a force, but a spiritual force, which takes over all the forms of the moral and intellectual life of man. . . . It is the form, the inner standard and the discipline of the whole person; it saturates the will as well as the intelligence. Its principle, the central inspiration of the human personality living in the civil community, pierces into the depths and makes its home in the heart of the man of action as well as of the thinker, of the artist as well as of the scientist: it is the soul of the soul.

13. Fascism, in short, is not only the giver of laws and the founder of institutions, but the educator and promoter of spiritual life. It wants to remake, not the forms of human life, but its content, man, character, faith. And to this end it requires discipline and authority that can enter into the spirits of men and there govern unopposed. Its sign, therefore, is the Lictors' rods, the symbol of unity, of strength and justice.


(ii) Political and Social Doctrine


1. . . . Fascism was not given out to the wet nurse of a doctrine elaborated beforehand round a table: it was born of the need for action; it was not a party, but in its first two years it was a movement against all parties. The name which I gave to the organization defined its characteristics. Nevertheless, whoever rereads, in the now crumpled pages of the time, the account of the constituent assembly of the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento will not find a doctrine, but a series of suggestions, of anticipations, of admonitions, which when freed from the inevitable vein of contingency, were destined later, after a few years, to develop into a series of doctrinal attitudes which made of Fascism a self-sufficient political doctrine able to face all others, both past and present. . . .
(snip)
http://www.angelfire.com/home/government/faslaws.html

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

5. worth bookmarking and printing out...thanks

[el_gato]

7. We are obviously living in a fascist police state

no doubt about it.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

10. 20 years is what John Walker Lind got

And his crime was a lot worse.

[Supersedeas]

6. disciplinary action for disloyalty and insubordination-McCain got the memo

[marlakay]

8. That's why Elizabeth Edwards is going around with spouses

and moms of military. On the news last night CNN Elizabeth really rocked and so did the mother. They said that they were the voice for the ones not aloud to talk. Obviously they knew what would happen if their son's and daughters did talk!

[Minstrel Boy]

9. About your calling lewrockwell.com a "neo Nazi" site.

Could you please elaborate? "Neo Nazi" is a pretty heavy charge, after all.

Not picking a fight here; just want to know why you call it that.

I don't read it, but editorially isn't it conservative libertarian? And under "columnists" it links to the likes of Eric Margolis, Nat Hentoff and Ted Rall, and the "links" range from Noam Chomsky to Free Republic. I don't see a David Irving in the bunch.

So, where am I missing the Holocaust-denying, Jews-are-vermin, Hitler rocks material?

[54anickel]

12. I was about to ask the same thing. NeoNazi? I've read plenty of articles

there that were linked to from other sites, probably even posted one or two. I've never heard it referred to as a neonazi site before now.

[OutInTheBack40]

13. This repression started when lawmakers started making law-abiding

citizens criminals for arming themselves against real criminals. A small woman or man on the street in DC can not always defend their life against bigger and stronger rapists and muggers and these smaller men and women are not allowed to protect themselves even when our constitution gives them the right to bear arms against those that would harm them.

I hope you support the right of American citizens to keep and bear arms for their self defense. This includes concealed carry and other logical means of self defense.

[struggle4progress]

14. kick

:kick:

[funnymanpants]

15. empty threat

The article I read states that it is highly unlikely the soldier will face prosection. Most likely, his commanding officer is using the insubordination charge as a threat to keep him in line.

By the way, the site is not neo nazi. It is conservative libertarian.