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Little Red Book Draws Government Attention
narcolepticjim writes "An unnamed Dartmouth student was visited by Homeland Security for requesting a copy of Mao Zedong's Little Red Book for a class project." From the article: "The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said."
Why did he have to provide his "name, address, phone number and Social Security number" ... to read a book?
Cue discussion of RMS's paper on "The Right To Read", but still. Is this just sensationalism, or does one actually have to give all one's personal information to read this?
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
Everyone go checkout Mao's book from your local library. If enough people do this, the FBI will have to give up on this type of spying as I don't think they can visit 100,000 people.
Well, it's not as though this kind of thing is unexpected. Once the
government is given power, it is human nature to abuse it. What I
don't understand is why people fall hook, line, and sinker, for the
same techniques throughout history over and over again.
1) Instill fear in the population somehow, by either orchestating or latching on to
a catastrophic event,
2) Tell the population that you will take care of it, blame enemies of the state,
3) Go to war, claim critics of the war are unpatriotic, out of touch, part of an "elite".
This is all classic power grab politics, and yet it happens again and again in
history.
Why do people not learn from history? It is clear that those in power have a
vested interest in having a sheeple populace. A critical thinking, well informed
electorate, is the biggest enemy to would be dictators in a democratic society.
Start with the children. I guess fear really is the mind killer. And, at the risk of
pulling a Godwin, two quotes from Hermann Goering, leader of Hitler's Luttewaffe.
"Education is dangerous - Every educated person is a future enemy"
"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
Finally, just a minor nit. The submitter claims the student was a "Dartmouth" student, whereas the article states that the student was from "U Mass-Dartmouth".
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
To quote Will Rogers, "Be happy you don't get all the government you're paying for."
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
Luckily his next assignment is on George Orwell's 1984.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
"Fuck you, get a warrant".
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I'd understand if the feds paid someone a visit after they bought - for example - large quantities of chemicals that can be used to build a bomb, or something similar, and I'd expect them to pay someone a visit who tries to buy a large number of guns and ammo for them, and similar things. That's OK.
But a *book*? And what's more, a book that contains nothing but *quotations*? It's not even the anarchist's cookbook or something - just a collection of quotes. Sure, it was Mao who wrote it, but seriously - this is no more justified than McCarthyism was. You could just as well advocate paying someone a visit for trying to obtain a copy of, say, de bello gallico (Julius Caesar was a dictator, too, and not exactly squeamish when dealing with his enemies).
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
the point was not investigation, it was intimidation. That is how Totalitarian countries work.
Typical "the government needs to be totalitarian to protect me" BS. Don't let them run roughshod over my rights and it's my fault if something happens? Let me give you clue, Einstein. Reading Mao or anything else like it isn't a good marker for a potential terrorist threat. It's a great marker for someone who may be thinking for themselves, not like the direction this country is going, and actually might stand up and say something about it. And if you think that isn't the danger that the people in power are currently most worried about, you're even more naive than you sound.
yes your absolutely right.
Instead of enforcing constitutionally protected freedom of speech, its better for you to choose what people can read. Your constitution doesnt really matter.
yup, there's no chance that anyone could possibly read the book and not come away a devout communist. Yup, no one has ever read the writings of such figures purely to try and figure out how they think, with the understanding that it will lack a true representation of what happened to the people.
If you choose this repression, then you are simply walking down the same path that Mao himself followed.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
War Is Peace
Freedom Is Slavery
Ignorance Is Strength
(http://www.studentsfororwell.org/)
http://www.TheGamerNation.com/Forums
And you all thought the McCarthy era was over... Nope.
... then you must be unaware of how the patriot act allows your government to monitor all activity of people signing out books at libraries.
... be unaware, give away all your rights at the slightest startle, ... then wonder why the special police aren't letting you, an innocent person even contact your family, let alone tell you why you've been arrested.
But that's the american way
But that's just inside your borders. It's far worse if you include the atrocities your country commits outside your borders, pretending that you don't need to uphold your own values when its not US soil, and not US people, as if they are any less human than you.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
This is a good point.
At which point do we surrender our liberty to travel the world and have the freedom of conscious to learn about anything we want to a world where people who deviate from the norm of being a Patriotic American(tm) are investigated and grilled for not being "normal"?
Unfortunately, most people support this kind of thing. What can we do? Not much. The very constitution that Bush claims he loves by nominating "strict constructionists" is "just a damned piece of paper". Pretty soon, the "strict" interpretation of the constitution will mean that anyone who mentions the Bill of Rights is a "liberal activist" who likes to misinterpret our "rights" to be "protected" from evil terrorists weilding Mao's book.
Lord High Crapflooder The Right Honourable Vlad Craig Esther McDavenpherson III
Destroyer of Mercatur.Net
Wow, you really are a prime example, you don't even see (or at least admit too) your own repression.
Your repression is the act of trying to substitute another book in the place of what a FREE person CHOSE to read.
He was not looking for a historical perspective, he wanted to read the actual propaganda for himself.
But yes, you are right books are not harmless, they are bad bad dangerous things because they make you think. I'll see you at sunday's book burning.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
Step 1 - Assemble numerous cells in the US.
Step 2 - Have all but one or two act as decoy cells. Keep decoy cells separate from the real cells with no contact whatsoever.
Step 3 - Members of decoy cells check out hundreds of books from librares, surf dozens and dozens of terrorist websites, etc., etc.
Step 4 - While Feds waste time chasing down book readers and web surfers, the real cells continue on with their plans.
Step 5 - As the US government expands powers and searches, create more decoy cells that create more needless searches and wild goose chases.
Step 6 - Repeat steps 3 to 5 as needed.
Step 7 - Obtain US citizenship and vote for politicians that expand the powers and searches in Step 5.
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
Uh. Isn't that the referral system is for? He is, after all, providing easy access to something.
"There are more important things than stopping terrorism. Upholding the Constitution is one of them." - Ars Forumer.
-- Leon Poliakov, Harvest of Hate, quoted in Kornberg, "Kristallnacht and the Politics of Anti-semitism Nazi Germany"
-- Albert Fuchs, My Experiences From November 9th to 16th, 1938 (Written on November 19, 1938 on the way from Strasbourg to Paris)
Now I'm not saying the situation in contemporary America is anywhere as bad as the situation in Nazi Germany. What I am trying to point out is that beliefs like yours, that, it "can't be that bad", have consistently been disproven.
Will things become as bad here as they got in Nazi Germany? Like you, I doubt it. But it can happen here. Just ask any Japanese American who sat out WWII in an American internment camp. Hell, ask any black person over age 40 who grew up in the American South, or anyone caught up in the anti-Communist hysteria of the 1950s.
Was Soviet Communism a real threat in the 1950s? Definitely, just as terrorism is a real threat now. But just as in the 1950s, it's also an excuse for government excess and the curtailment of personal liberties in the name of "security".
You can't belive governemtn agents are tracking people who check out books? This has all happened before, rght here in America.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Helping the police do their duty is a responsibility of a citizen, even in, especially in, a free country.
What if their duty is to make a list of all the {Jews | Japanese-Americans | Communists | Bourgeois Capitalists | Anarchists | Muslims | Armenians | crypto-Christians | Quakers | students reading Mao} on your block?
Will you answer "Jawohl, mein Polizei, Herr Kohn in apartment 103 is one?"
It really amazes me that so many "good Christians" believe in always helping the cops. I mean, their Christ was executed, according to the law of the times, after being seized by the cops for being a troublemaking radical. You'd think they might remember that.
Sometimes, the only decent thing to do is to not help the cops.
Ihre Papiere, bitte!
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
... the DHS to harass a college student working on a paper, especially when we have missing truckfulls of radioactive materials, unchecked illegal immigration linked to terrorism, and gross negligence in disaster preparedness? (cause, you know, let's not forget that FEMA is in the DHS now)
<sarcasm>I'm so comforted that a noticable portion of my paycheck gets usurped for such important security concerns.</sarcasm>
If you are a taxpaying U.S. citizen, I advise you to see how your contributions to the government are apportioned and spent.
when it rains, it gets real soggy. when it pours, i'm under the tap just _waiting_ for the joy
My mother mentioned once that, back in the 50's, she took a class while at university for which she found it useful to get a subscription to the Daily Worker.
The FBI promptly showed up at her doorstep for a little interview.
My, how far we've come.
If you're really dealing with jack booted thugs, the only person these words are likely to make miserable is you.
What better way to learn about fascism and totalitarianism than to live under 'em, eh?
Yes, I'm feeling sardonic today.
what's the big deal with them stopping by to see who was reading the book, and why?
It's people like you who are a threat to our civil liberties. I don't want to check in with my friendly local FBI agent every time I want to check a book out of the library.
So, to remind everyone, we have exactly one source for this, the professor, who is at best relaying the story secondhand to all of us - we do not have an eyewitness report, in that the student to whom this supposedly happened hasn't given his version to anyone else, including the paper in which this was reported. Hell, it doesn't look like the paper even bothered to contact DHS for any sort of comment.
I dunno, I really think I'd like a little more info. More than just the say-so of some professor dude, who may or may not have a vested interest in telling tales.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
I believe his point was that, regardless of how the agents acted, he should have raised a much larger stink about the whole situation instead of just posting some lackadaisical story about it on an unknown blog. As the parent mentioned, he was lucky that he was even able to do that.
In 10-20 years everyone will be wondering "How the hell did we get in this crappy position to begin with?" Until that time, the uninitiated masses will just continue to ignore everything and mutter "in this day and age we just have to give up some things, I guess."
Translation: the government is not currently acting as a civilian government.
If the g'vt kept the data on you that google does you'd better believe you'd be calling it "doing evil"
The parent poster's unlikely premise of college students starting a peasant revolt, as the basis for Dubya/CIA/DHS/FBI/NSA investigating a student for wanting Mao's "Little Red Book" evokes !WTF!.
If I didn't know any better, we have corporate national socialist running the USA these days, and what is good for GM or WAl-Mart is good for the country. Considering that China is one of the USA's largest suppliers, largest customers, and largest creditors, you would think that the PRC (China) is the USA's newest bestest friend.
What's next? Any college student caught studying Taoism or Confucianism will be turned over to the neo(Con)artist religious fundamentalist Inquisition and put on trial for blasphemy?
The real reason this kind of thing is stupid in general is because it prevents us from studying our enemies. If you can't understand what your enemies are thinking, then it is much more likely that they are going to be able to blindside you.
I'll give a concrete example that is actually related to real threats. I have a number of friends and acquaintances of various Islamic persuasions. They would naturally have different perspectives on the real threats of Islamic-based extremism. However, given the ideological climate of America as exemplified by this kind of incident, I'm certainly not going to risk causing them any problems by asking them for their insights.
On the other hand, worrying about potential communist sympathizers at this time is just plain stupid. You'd think the president who'd allow such a thing would have to be some kind of moron.
Oh, wait...
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Seriously.
The only way to teach these crooked cops is to make them actually do real detective work instead of taking the lazy route by trying to harass a large number of people to get their information.
No sane judge is going to sign off on a search warrant for the entire customer list of a company that sells joysticks that look like real cockpit controls.
The five golden words: "I have nothing to say" also come in handy.
Stuff like 9/11 happened because of this type of lazy and slacked police work that targets the wrong people when instead they could have connected the dots and got the RIGHT people.
Lord High Crapflooder The Right Honourable Vlad Craig Esther McDavenpherson III
Destroyer of Mercatur.Net
The interesting thing is that under the so-called USA PATRIOT Act the library is forbidden from confirming that the incident took place. Not only do the police get to review your choice of reading material but the librarians will go to prison if they tell anyone that an investigation actually happened. That way people like you can say "well, there isn't any confirmation so it probably isn't true". Isn't that nice?
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
Your translation is wrong. We have a civilian government, but the country is at war, and the President is exercising his powers, granted by the Constitution and Law, to prosecute the war.
How long will we be at war? Is the war on terror ever over?
This sounds eerily similar to 1984 - as long as we're at war with somebody, we have to sacrifice our liberties so that Big Brother can protect us.
"I know it is fun to bash Bush and the current administration. People always do it when thier party isn't in control. "
... leaders. They are still people. The Geneva convention was set in place as much a protection for our own citizens that are captured in a conflict as it is just a moral guidline for human treatment of people (that happen to be cannon fodder in a conflict).
Actually it is the most painful thing to have to speak out about presidential malfeasance ( Misconduct or wrongdoing, especially by a public official. )
There are some constitutional issues here about illegal search and seizure that the Federal courts will undoubtedly have to deal with.
This administration plainly want the freedom to torture anyone that can provide them information about their enemies (not necessarily my enemies or your enemies but the enemies that the administration percieves as enemies to the State or themselves or their interests). This is clearly shown by there research and stance (a stretch) that they can legally torture some people. These people are "enemy combatants" and who determains who are enemy combatants? The White House. There seems to be a trail of the practices of torture at Gitmo were transfered to IRAQ with the visit of one of the Gitmo people in charge of that sort of thing. Now we find that the CIA probably has had secret prisons that detained and possible tortured individuals.
There is a deep morality issue here. Not whether something is legal but the very idea that our elected leader would treat anyone in the world with the reckless disregard that seems to be the case. The Geneva convention sets up some standards for the treatement of prisoners of war (people remember like you and me, with a mother and father, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, with maybe different ideas (which our Constitution protects here), or a different religion (which our Constitution protects here). But maybe just an asshole set of demagogic leaders which have issues with our
Back to my point. It is my opinion that that attitude and the carrying out of that attitude by action to spy on our citizens, torture individuals (certainly setting it up so our military and intellegence arm felt that it was alright to do) constitures wrong doing and missconduct of a public official. That kind of conduct should be held up to legal and constitutional standard and possibly even the international court (funny how this administration did not want to have anything to do with the international court).
We are having to deal not only with the fundemetalism abroad but here at home.
So it is not fun to bash Bush. It is painful and sad not only that these things seem to have been done. But the destroying in 5 short years what it took 200+ years to establish in the world as a moral authority.
Don't get hung up on the legal issue too much or what others have done. Bush has to live with and answer for His actions and his actions alone. If he does not want the critisim, don't torture people and don't spy on us, and certainly don't send agents out to interview the parents of a boy that ordered a copy of one of the worlds most infuential political books!
That student just got a whole lot of first hand experience in totalitarianism. The kind that you just can't get from a book or a classroom.
He even refuses to give his name now because he "fears repercussions".
You just can't get that kind of gut-level understanding without a visit from the authorities. That is one kid who will have a deeper understanding of the material now than anyone else in class.
Or more to the point how does the public know when we have won the "war" on terror? Will the terrorist sign a peace treaty or cease fire or is it only when our dear leaders tell us that the war has ended?