Feds dont like "Mao's Red Book"

[sapho]

I could not believe this story when it was reported on "Democracy Now" yesterday. Bush doesnt want us to own "Mao's red book"....

Federal Agents Visit Student Over Library Book
Meanwhile in Massachusetts, questions over the extent of the government's domestic surveillance apparatus have arisen after federal agents recently visited and questioned a student at Umass Dartmouth after he requested a book through the school's interlibrary loan program. Two agents from the Department of Homeland Security reportedly visited the house of the student's parents and said the book - Mao's "The Little Red Book" --- was on a "watch list." One of the student's professors said it appears that the Department of Homeland Security is monitoring inter-library loans.

[spartafc]

funny and curious.

[Organic Revolution]

do you have a list of thebooks on the watch list? i wonder how many of the books i have read are on this list.

[fpeppett]

cant even count the amount of similar stories i here today. Recently heard of someone doing an anti-bush, anti-capitalist art project in the US and he got visited by the feds and the art project was 'void'.

Fuck them

[Tekun]

U gotta link bro to Democracy Now, I can't find it and I wanna read the whole article?

But...., it doesn&#39;t surprise me, even at the library <_<

[amanondeathrow]

U gotta link bro to Democracy Now, I can&#39;t find it and I wanna read the whole article?

But...., it doesn&#39;t surprise me, even at the library

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/19/1515204

[Tekun]

Originally posted by Dee&#39;s [email protected] 20 2005, 08:55 PM

U gotta link bro to Democracy Now, I can&#39;t find it and I wanna read the whole article?

But...., it doesn&#39;t surprise me, even at the library

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/19/1515204
Thanks brother, shit is getting crazy
So I guess next time I request a book of my ideology through the University of California system, Im gonna get a visit from the phukin G-men

[Master Che]

And americans say their free? This is the begining totalitarianism what i cant understand is how foolish americans can be in not noticing this?

[Ownthink]

Originally posted by Master [email protected] 20 2005, 04:16 PM
And americans say their free? This is the begining totalitarianism what i cant understand is how foolish americans can be in not noticing this?
Most Americans will simply brush it off as "securing our freedoms" and "Fighting islamic terrorism" and any other party spewed and sponsored line.

[DisIllusion]

We have a WATCH LIST for books?

Pretty soon we&#39;re gonna have large posters of a certain man with a bushy mustache all over the place whose eyes seem to follow you around.


This is sickening.

[Fidelbrand]

Didn&#39;t you guys see the movie "Seven"?

[Scars]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20 2005, 10:29 PM
We have a WATCH LIST for books?

Pretty soon we&#39;re gonna have large posters of a certain man with a bushy mustache all over the place whose eyes seem to follow you around.


This is sickening.
Yes, yes they do. It&#39;s fairly standard, most countries monitor library records as well as internet use. I&#39;m fairly sure the SIS (New Zealand&#39;s equivilant to the CIA) has a record on me.

[Red Heretic]

I would encourage you all never to check out communist literature from a library... and buy it instead.

[Hefer]

Didn&#39;t you guys see the movie "Seven"?

Yes, but it&#39;s been quite a while that I can&#39;t remember......... <_<

[BattleOfTheCowshed]

Originally posted by [email protected] 21 2005, 06:14 AM

Didn&#39;t you guys see the movie "Seven"?

Yes, but it&#39;s been quite a while that I can&#39;t remember......... <_<
Word. Care to fill us in on the connection? You piqued my interest...

Anyway, yeah, this shit is fucked up but its been happening for a while yo, COINTELPRO anyone? They&#39;re just getting more open about it, probably because they can...

[bcbm]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20 2005, 04:29 PM
We have a WATCH LIST for books?

Pretty soon we&#39;re gonna have large posters of a certain man with a bushy mustache all over the place whose eyes seem to follow you around.


This is sickening.
My local university&#39;s mascot is a badger and all over are campus are these signs with a picture of the mascot and the phrase "Our badger eyes are everywhere" three times.

[Fidelbrand]

Originally posted by BattleOfTheCowshed+Dec 21 2005, 04:08 PM--> (BattleOfTheCowshed @ Dec 21 2005, 04:08 PM)
[email protected] 21 2005, 06:14 AM

Didn&#39;t you guys see the movie "Seven"?

Yes, but it&#39;s been quite a while that I can&#39;t remember......... <_<
Word. Care to fill us in on the connection? You piqued my interest...
[/b]
In the movie, it was said that the US government has records of people who borrow "fishy" books from the public libraries.

Borrowers of books such as "Meim Kempf", "The Communist Manifesto" are automatically [b]higlighted[/b[ by the Us government&#39;s intelligence and placed under certain surveillance.

[DaCuBaN]

I would encourage you all never to check out communist literature from a library... and buy it instead.

If I remember correctly, during the Chinese Revolution those who could read and write would copy out by hand the texts (someone could perhaps enlighten me as to the word used for this practice?) and read them to those who could not themselves - it is this practice that we are slowly but surely being forced into following. Fortunately, as we (generally) have access to computers, scanners and printers it is not impossible to easily recreate a piece of work and assist in it&#39;s distribution, although to practice this is HIGHLY ILLEGAL.

If you don&#39;t mind that (and I have to say it&#33;) copy these books, distribute them by hand and online (via protocols like bittorrent, which is almost impossible to see what is actually being transferred due to the way it "splits" files into parts for ease of distribution) and, of course, the moment you fear that your reading habits are arousing suspicion, move on. Get your books from somewhere else, and buy them with cash - plastic leaves a trail.

Better yet, if you can, drop off the "radar" entirely. If anyone can help me there, I&#39;m dying to know how.

[bolshevik butcher]

You have to wonder if most other communist litreature is on the list. Trotsky, Marx, Engles, Lenin, Luxemburg, Baukain banned?

[sapho]

I never heard of the movie "Seven". I will look for it. :P

[Scars]

Originally posted by Clenched [email protected] 22 2005, 10:57 AM
You have to wonder if most other communist litreature is on the list. Trotsky, Marx, Engles, Lenin, Luxemburg, Baukain banned?
I&#39;d imagine any book that could promote behaviour that is unacceptable to bourgeois society, from Marx to the Marqui de Sade, would be tagged.

[Sabocat]

Let the Palmer Raids begin.... again. :angry:

[Jimmie Higgins]

Reading the news today is like reading radical newspapers and internet sites from 3 years ago.

Oh, no real weapons of mass destruction. Wow, thanks for breaking this story 4 years after most of the left had already discovered this.

Oh, the patriot act encourages the government to take back some of the pre-watergate powers of domestic spying and so on. Gee, I remember radical websites making the same argument several years ago when the patriot act was first voted through.

[bolshevik butcher]

Wanan bet a lot of these journalists will now get awards and praise as being exposures of the truth as well. When a load of ameature leftists did this yrs ago and got branded as &#39;mad commies&#39; &#39;stupid reds&#39; &#39;daft hippies&#39; etc.

[Fidelbrand]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22 2005, 09:51 PM
I never heard of the movie "Seven". I will look for it. :P
Pic for your reference.
http://members.cscoms.com/~suwat/poster/seven.jpg

[Andy Bowden]

I&#39;ve seen Se7en. Just cos the serial killer has a library card doesn&#39;t make him Yoda :D

[celticfire]

Just so everyone knows, this turned out to be completely false.

The Source (http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/12-05/12-24-05/a01lo719.htm)


Federal agents&#39; visit was a hoax
Student admits he lied about Mao book
By AARON NICODEMUS, Standard-Times staff writer

NEW BEDFORD -- The UMass Dartmouth student who claimed to have been visited by Homeland Security agents over his request for "The Little Red Book" by Mao Zedong has admitted to making up the entire story.
The 22-year-old student tearfully admitted he made the story up to his history professor, Dr. Brian Glyn Williams, and his parents, after being confronted with the inconsistencies in his account.
Had the student stuck to his original story, it might never have been proved false.
But on Thursday, when the student told his tale in the office of UMass Dartmouth professor Dr. Robert Pontbriand to Dr. Williams, Dr. Pontbriand, university spokesman John Hoey and The Standard-Times, the student added new details.
The agents had returned, the student said, just last night. The two agents, the student, his parents and the student&#39;s uncle all signed confidentiality agreements, he claimed, to put an end to the matter.
But when Dr. Williams went to the student&#39;s home yesterday and relayed that part of the story to his parents, it was the first time they had heard it. The story began to unravel, and the student, faced with the truth, broke down and cried.
It was a dramatic turnaround from the day before.
For more than an hour on Thursday, he spoke of two visits from Homeland Security over his inter-library loan request for the 1965, Peking Press version of "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung," which is the book&#39;s official title.
His basic tale remained the same: The book was on a government watch list, and his loan request had triggered a visit from an agent who was seeking to "tame" reading of particular books. He said he saw a long list of such books.
In the days after its initial reporting on Dec. 17 in The Standard-Times, the story had become an international phenomenon on the Internet. Media outlets from around the world were requesting interviews with the students, and a number of reporters had been asking UMass Dartmouth students and professors for information.
The story&#39;s release came at a perfect storm in the news cycle. Only a day before, The New York Times had reported that President Bush had allowed the National Security Agency to conduct wiretaps on international phone calls from the United States without a warrant. The Patriot Act, created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to allow the government greater authority to monitor for possible terrorism activities, was up for re-authorization in Congress.
There was an increased sense among some Americans that the U.S. government was overstepping its bounds and trampling on civil liberties in order to thwart future attacks of terrorism. The story of a college student being questioned for requesting a 40-year old book on Communism fed right into that atmosphere.
In Thursday&#39;s retelling of the story, the student added several new twists, ones that the professors and journalist had not heard before. The biggest new piece of information was an alleged second visit of Homeland Security agents the previous night, where two agents waited in his living room for two hours with his parents and brother while he drove back from a retreat in western Massachusetts. He said he, the agents, his parents and his uncle all signed confidentiality agreements that the story would never be told.
He revealed the agents&#39; names: one was Nicolai Brushaev or Broshaev, and the other was simply Agent Roberts. He said they were dressed in black suits with thin black ties, "just like the guys in Men in Black."
He had dates and times and places, things he had signed and sent back in order to receive the book. The tale involved his twin brother, who allegedly requested the book for him at UMass Amherst; his uncle, a former FBI attorney who took care of all the paperwork; and his parents, who signed those confidentiality agreements.
But by now, the story had too many holes. Every time there was a fact to be had that would verify the story -- providing a copy of the confidentiality agreements the student and agent signed, for example -- there would be a convenient excuse. The uncle took all the documents home to Puerto Rico, he said.
What was the address of the Homeland Security building in Boston where he and his uncle visited the agency and actually received a copy of the book? It was a brick building, he said, but he couldn&#39;t remember where it was, or what was around it.
He said he met a former professor at the mysterious Homeland Security building who had requested a book on bomb-making, along with two Ph.D. students and a one pursuing a master&#39;s degree who had also been stopped from accessing books. The student couldn&#39;t remember their names, but the former professor had appeared on the Bill O&#39;Reilly show on Fox News recently, he said.
The former professor&#39;s appearance on The O&#39;Reilly Factor did not check out.
Other proof was sought.
Were there any copies of the inter-library loan request? No.
Did the agents leave their cards, or any paperwork at your home? No.
His brother, a student at Amherst, told Dr. Williams that he had never made the inter-library loan request on behalf of his brother.
While The Standard-Times had tape recorded the entire tale on Thursday, the reporter could not reach the student for comment after he admitted making up the story. Phone calls and a note on the door were not returned.
At the request of the two professors and the university, The Standard-Times has agreed to withhold his name.
During the whole episode, the professors said that while they wanted to protect the student from the media that were flooding their voice mails and e-mail boxes seeking comment and information, they also wanted to know: Was the story true?
"I grew skeptical of this story, as did Bob, considering the ramifications," Dr. Williams said yesterday. "I spent the last five days avoiding work, and the international media, and rest, trying to get names and dates and facts. My investigation eventually took me to his house, where I began to investigate family matters. I eventually found out the whole thing had been invented, and I&#39;m happy to report that it&#39;s safe to borrow books."
Dr. Williams said he does not regret bringing the story to light, but that now the issue can be put to rest.
"I wasn&#39;t involved in some partisan struggle to embarrass the Bush administration, I just wanted the truth," he said.
Dr. Pontbriand said the entire episode has been "an incredible experience and exposure for something a student had said." He said all along, his only desire had been to "get to the bottom of it and get the truth of the matter."
"When it blew up into an international story, our only desire was to interview this student and get to the truth. We did not want from the outset to declare the student a liar, but we wanted to check out his story," he said. "It was a disastrous thing for him to do. He needs attention, he needs care. I feel for the kid. We have great concern for this student&#39;s health and welfare."
Mr. Hoey, the university spokesman, said the university had been unable to substantiate any of the facts of the story since it first was reported in The Standard-Times on Dec. 17.
As to any possible repercussions against the student, Mr. Hoey said, "We consider this to be an issue to be handled faculty member to student. We wouldn&#39;t discuss publicly any other action. Student discipline is a private matter."
Dr. Williams said the whole affair has had one bright point: The question of whether it is safe for students to do research has been answered.
"I can now tell my students that it is safe to do research without being monitored," he said. "With that hanging in the air like before, I couldn&#39;t say that to them."
The student&#39;s motivation remains a mystery, but in the interview on Thursday, he provided a glimpse.
"When I came back, like wow, there&#39;s this circus coming on. I saw my cell phone, and I see like, wow, I have something like 75 messages and like something like 87 missed calls," he said. "Wow, I was popular. I usually get one or probably two a week and that&#39;s about it, and I usually pick them up."

[which doctor]

You just ruined my day.

[guerillablack]

LOL. Conspiracy Theorists. :)

[celticfire]

Originally posted by Fist of [email protected] 26 2005, 05:26 PM
You just ruined my day.
Well, this doesn&#39;t mean this ruling class is a pacifist one - it is actively spying on people, arresting and silencing critics, and committing horrible crimes globally -- everyday. And we should encourage the open mindedness that comes with "conspiracy theories" but also keep it real and recognize not all things are true.

[JazzRemington]

This whole story was a hoax, I thought.

[sapho]

It may be a hoax or not, but Homeland Security does monitor what you buy at some bookstore or borrow at a library. :ph34r:

[Axel1917]

Originally posted by Red [email protected] 21 2005, 04:56 AM
I would encourage you all never to check out communist literature from a library... and buy it instead.
That is what I do, but I don&#39;t think that libraries are unsafe, at least not yet.

I thought that the story was false when I saw it, and celticfire&#39;s post proved that. We also have the fact that I never got any visits from the reactionary feds for buying the 47 volume (45 volumes the works, the other two indexes) set of the English edition of the Lenin Collected Works.

[lei_lord_demon]

My grandpa&#39;s Red book&#33; Cleared Chinese-words in 1979-wartime&#33;
http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/3471/book14xv.jpg

[flames of the flag]

What an idiot. Why would he fake something that would get us all shaken up like that.
Even still, Im glad Canada doesnt have "Homeland Defense Agents"

[Tekun]

A hoax eh?
Well, I recently bought myself a copy of Mao&#39;s quotations from a Borders, here on the US West Coast
So, if I disappear and never post again on RevLeft, remember me

[Commie Rat]

I borrow shit like that from my library all the time, any one that tries to arrest me for it will get a cricket bat to the head

[ZACKist]

Just because this has now been branded a "hoax" doesn&#39;t mean this reactionary government doesn&#39;t do domestic spying. On the contrary, I don&#39;t know if all you guys have been hearing this, but there&#39;s been a lot of talk of taps on cell phones and email reading WITHOUT warrents. It&#39;s happening, and if you&#39;re subversive or radical there&#39;s a good chance they&#39;ve checked you out (or will try).