Feds visit student over communist book

Agents' visit chills UMass Dartmouth senior
By AARON NICODEMUS, Standard-Times staff writer

NEW BEDFORD -- A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's tome on Communism called "The Little Red Book."
Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the UMass Dartmouth library's interlibrary loan program.
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.
The professors said the student was told by the agents that the book is on a "watch list," and that his background, which included significant time abroad, triggered them to investigate the student further.
"I tell my students to go to the direct source, and so he asked for the official Peking version of the book," Professor Pontbriand said. "Apparently, the Department of Homeland Security is monitoring inter-library loans, because that's what triggered the visit, as I understand it."
http://www.rawstory.com/
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/12-05/12-17-05/a09lo650.htm

Books are on watch lists now????
Anyone who is under the assumption that we are still a free society has some serious issues. Fascism is here baby.
Unfuckkingreal.

We can't have that, now, can we? :sarcasm:

1984 was considered fiction.
Now it looks like a frigging playbook!

;-)

Thought crimes. Oh my!

Next thing you know he'll be creating thought experiments
and having thoughtful discussions!

Can't have that...

Then one of those paid government operatives will have
to join the discussion in order to attack the lefties and bring
the discussion down!

(That's happened on mb's where I've participated.)

Sue

In the December 1 issue of Rolling Stone, there's an article "Inside the Secret Campaign to Sell the War." They interview John Rendon, the contractor who ran this stuff. It's amazing and scary.

have a job with AOL and monitoring? I thought I read something about her and AOL.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/8798997?rnd=1134875197875&has-player=true&version=6.0.12.1212

damning stuff.

We're fucked?

In 1987, the FBI’s Library Awareness Program was brought to light through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by the National Security Archive and People For the American Way Foundation


http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=10341

to the gestapo:

i have a copy i bought in some used bookstore somewhere. i've never read it. do i need to turn myself in? do i need to turn *them* in? what if i truly can't remember where i bought it? will waterboarding help?

sincerely,
the right reverend, ambiguously leftist, and thoroughly asphyxiable, enki the 23rd


(you know, i suppose you can't blame them, given the obvious connection between maoism and fundamentalist islam)

given the obvious connection between maoism and fundamentalist islam

I miss seeing you post more, my friend.

Maoism & Islam share several consonants and a vowel! The connection couldn't be more obvious.

;-)

dupe

Your friendly "Neighborhood Watch"

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/002-6961692-0232064?url=index%3Dstripbooks%3Arelevance-above&field-keywords=The+Communist+Manifesto&Go.x=7&Go.y=7

and also from Amazon: Mao Tse-Tung

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/ref=pd_kk_sr_1/002-6961692-0232064?index=stripbooks&field-keywords=quotations%20from%20chairman%20mao

I was followed for about a week! I had no reason to believe I was being followed, except there was a car with two men very well dressed that would follow me from work to home on a daily basis for about a week. I never connected that event to the book til I heard about Nixon's enemy's list! I don't think I was on the list, but I can see how the list got complied.

after working in pro-choice groups in my hometown. One time during a poli-sci class one of them asked me if I'd ever read the Communist Manifesto and I said "yeah, wasn't it great!" I meant it. She was so horrified she left me alone after that. She probably had never read the whole thing, just heard that it was godless.

middle class? Makes one wonder? Of course the prolitariet being about say 5 billion and the bourgeois being oh, I don't know..about 1 billion...who will ultimately win this class warfare?

You can read it for free here:

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm

Though chimpy will know about it if you do!!!

I just thought it was funny that Amazon sells books that could get you a visit from our Homeland Defense Department. Or is that just if you go through a library?

"All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned..." - kinda ties in to the "War on Christmas" threads.

OTOH, I never managed to plow through Das Kapital. When I was in college, I took a German class that focused on translating works in one's major. I got off easy with an organic chem paper; one of the students was a Poly Sci major who decided to tackle Das Kapital. Each class session ended up dissecting one of Marx's ueber-complicated sentences, which killed any lingering enthusiasm I might have had for Marxism.

Getting back to the topic: I bought a copy of Mao's Little Red Book when I was in high school back in the 60s. It was offered via Scholastic Press (they had some service for students to order a variety of classic texts, some under their imprint, some mass market paperbacks IIRC). I think I still have it somewhere.

It's required reading in the required core class freshman year. Wage-Labor and Capital, too.

Oh, and Darwin's Origin of Species.

Hell in my world they'd have read them before they got to college.And some Adam Smith too just for the compare contrast thingy and to learn that Smith had some reservations about capitalism.You musta gone to one of them thar pointy-head liberal arts colleges.

That sounds about right!

Oh, and we did study Adam Smith in my high school AP American history class. I remember specifically because we knew a guy in band named Adam Smith and we would differentiate between the two by calling one "Adam Smith: Famed Economist" and the other "Adam: Clarinet Boy."

Yeah, we were nerds.:)

nt

:)

to make someone want to read the book - just to see what the hell they are so threatened by.

What jerks. . .

For sure no terrorist would ask for that book -- they would be trained how to fly under the radar.

Dumb asses running the government now -- bunch of dumb asses.

Could it be that the Bush gang is not really worried about a REAL terrorist attack, because they KNOW it's not going to happen? Look at all the signs that point to the neocons not really wanting to spend money on REAL "Homeland Security"? Look at how Bush has fought spending money on things like providing real security for transportation here in the homeland. Look at how they haven't wanted to spend money to check incoming shipping containers at our ports and borders. They check 2% of incoming cargo.

I think they Knew 9/11 was going to happen.

They damn well knew it would happen. Remember the memo "BinLaden Determined To Attack Inside the United States"? Of course they know. They probably even helped it. I'm also a very big believer that they helped in more ways than just ignoring it. PNAC plans anyone? They don't care about terrorism because they can control it to their will. If they were so serious about terrorism they wouldn't be spying on quakers.

at all times. Each of these kinds of trucks drives regualr routes and have huge explosive potential. A right wing group near Sacremento acutally got caught a few years back planning to blow up a propane depot using legal(wtf?) .50 cal sniper rifles. Yet all of these things go unguarded and they search people getting onto subways.

What the fuck are they thinking? Do they not know anyone who ever took a chemistry class? Homeland security is a joke.

If they investigated him for this, they have no doubt investigated a lot of other innocent people. It's an invasion of privacy, and a poor use of our tax dollars.

than he was bargaining for. Maybe we should all check out copies of that and similar books, just to give Homeland Security something to do.

and thousands of other business that trade with -communist china. they are trading with the enemy.

How times have changed.

Normally I'm the last to shout "fascism!" but that's a grotesque abuse of state power.

I'm sure they'd support this kind of an ideological purity right? I mean the Liberals cost Kennedy the 1960 election!!! oh wait I've been reading wyldwolfs posts again :eyes:

hell, an ancient poster for the Aug. or Sept. protest always gives me a little boost on the way home

I wonder if that would get me on the list. After all, the government basically destroyed the Panthers through OPeration Chaos, COINTELPRO and other assorted dirty tricks.

"completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism,"

I guess he got a firsthand look at totalitariasm in action. I wonder if he was able to include it as an example in his paper. I hope he got an A.

It doesn't mean he is some hardcore communist. They waste so much time going after people who aren't a threat. It was for a school assignment! Geez...

Tammy

which one has seized all levers of power in the homeland! :grr:

Then these really are keystone cops running the show.

That just makes me laugh. The only Maoists left are in Nepal-

In the days of JFK, Americans were encouraged to go abroad for good-will. Now only if it's carrying a rifle.

Oh yeah, I forgot, that's how a lot of us wake up to all the lies we've been fed since birth in this country.

Like this one:

"Single-Payer National Health Care Doesn't work"

LOL LMAO BWAHAHAHA! People are so goddamned brainwashed in this country that they think OUR SYSTEM, which gives lousy service for FIVWE TIMES THE COST "WORKS"! LOL LMAO!

And we're called kooks for drawing comparisons between these thugs and the nazis...


"Ziss boy has spent several months overseas! He may haff lurned seditious ideas from zose communists and radicals in France und Sveden! Take him avay for RE-EDUCATION!"

Hit all message boards and post the link. Do it.

:scared:

They can't seriously be tracking every single person who checks that book out of every single college or public library in the country.

I almost can't believe this happened. But... I can.

Whew!

Suckas.

These guys are out of control!

The other shoe has already dropped repeatedly.

Bush is much worse than Nixon.

on fascism in Germany and check out a book they're going to come to me perhaps? This is just over the line.

Nice to know the double-standards are alive and kicking; it'll make the impending crash entertaining... before we no longer need a microwave to pop microwaved popcorn...

Emigration is sounding better and better. Let the freeps have their fouled nest.

Because either the feds are regularly monitoring interlibrary loan networks (there are thousands of them, from regional consortia to national networks) or some Vichy librarian deliberately reported this kid to the feds.

Books about COMMUNISM are on the watch list? Is this the 1950's? Are they afraid the "Terra Attacks" are from communists?

Jesus.

Joe McCarthy was dead and Reagan "won" the cold war
:sarcasm: