From the American Libary Association:
A senior at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth says he was visited at his parents’ home by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security who were investigating why he had requested a book by former Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong through interlibrary loan. The student, who has asked university officials to shield his identity, told two UMD history professors that the incident took place in late October or early November after he attempted to obtain a copy of the first English edition of the Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, published in Beijing in 1966 and popularly known in China as the “Little Red Book,†for a class on communism.
The story broke in the December 17 New Bedford Standard-Times as the result of an interview with UMD faculty members Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, who mentioned the incident as an example of government monitoring of academic research. Williams told American Libraries, “The student told me that the book was on a watch list, and that the books on this list had changing status. Mao was on the list at the time, hence the visit, which was also related to his time abroad.â€Â
UMD Library Dean Ann Montgomery Smith told AL that the student had requested the book by phone from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, not through the UMD interlibrary services as originally reported.
The UMD chancellor’s office released a statement December 19 that said, “At this point, it is difficult to ascertain how Homeland Security obtained the information about the student’s borrowing of the book. The UMass Dartmouth Library has not been visited by agents of any type seeking information about the borrowing patterns or habits of any of its patrons.†Chancellor Jean F. MacCormack stated, “It is important that our students and our faculty be unfettered in their pursuit of knowledge about other cultures and political systems if their education and research is to be meaningful.â€Â
Kirk Whitworth, a spokesman for the DHSâ€â€the U.S. cabinet department that oversees the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, the Secret Service, and Citizenship and Immigration Services, among othersâ€â€said in the December 21 Standard-Times that the story seemed unlikely. “We’re aware of the claims,†he said. “However, the scenario sounds unlikely because investigations are based on violation of law, not on the books and individual[s who] might check [them] out from the library.â€Â
An earlier report that the incident occurred at the University of California at Santa Cruz has proven false.
[my emphasis]
Of course, when lying liars lie about what they are lying about, the only thing that suffers is TRUTH! And whether the facts of this particular story turn out to be true or not, one thing is certain: somewhere, right now, DISSENT IS BEING CHILLED.
Fake but accurate, you know. So please—take the denial with a grain of salt.
(h/t Instapundit)
****
update: Ted Kennedy throws his considerable weight behind the meaning of this story in advance of learning that it’s likely a hoax. How very…er, Democratic.
(h/t Tom)
****
update 2: It’s official: Teddy gets egg on his face. Which he will brush off, put on a cracker, and have as a snack after a few gin gibsons.
One of the benefits of having no shame.
You can’t trust those neocon Bushitler lovers at the American Library Association, anyway.
The book is on a watch list? Someone better tell Amazon – many copies available.
BECAUSE OF THE FORTUNE COOKIES!!
I had a feeling, but didn’t want to go out on a limb in case some well meaning but backward local agent did something stupid.
“the book was on a watch list”.
Yes, but whose watch list?
For this story to make any sense, the librarians would have to be cooperating with DHS, or DHS would have to post agents at libraries, so as to alerted to books requested as matching the watch list.
First, this would’ve been widely reported by now, were it the case. Second, DHS doesn’t have any sort of personnel to devote to such tasks, and it would be a huge waste of resources. Third, communism, as a threat? Please, get over yourself.
And lastly, if your gonna make a splash with such a story, you’d better report that it was a “top-secret” watch list.
“Cuz if you’re speaking truth to power…exposing the corruption…you need to set the proper DNC talking points so that it sounds possible…OK…another hit…off the bong…and straight to nirvana…
I thought this was particularly funny since I just bought a copy of the Little Red Book myself.
No one from DHS called me.
Charlie:
It’s the holidays.
They won’t have anyone available to check up on you until Tuesday the 27th at the earliest.
It’s like UPS.
The story is sounding like the fraud I’m sure it is.
Don’t you hate it when someone deliberately misleads you into thinking something is true when it’s not? Liberals have cornered that market for sure.
I’m starting to get a little nervous about my IP address being recorded by my ISP as having visited Protein Wisdom.
I mean, let’s face it, Jeff. You’re a helluva guy, but you’ve got to be on somebody’s watch list.
The only watch list that Mao’s Little Red Book is on, is the one to see if anybody is still stupid enough to read it.
You’re all BIBLIOPHOBES!
Well to prove your point Jeff, I had my knuckles rapped for reading a Spiderman Comic instead of Dick and Jane. I just know that teacher was a minion of Bushitler.
TW “present” well no shit, I was there man!
Oh, about the Kennedy article you linked to. Does anyone outside of Massachusetts take this gin soaked windbag seriously?
C’mon Teddy, is your staff a union outfit? Don’t they research anything for you? Are you so quick to try and capitalize on any and every perceived wrong of this administration that you jump, unthinking like a shark in a feeding frenzy to the bait?
The swamp yankee bloater then goes on to say,
Wrong administration pal. You’re six years too late.
Indeed the Kennedy saga was played out the first time as tragedy, only to be followed up the second time as farce.
Continued proof the left hasn’t had a new idea in 40 years.
I mean, if they had half a brain they’d realize if he checked out the Islamic Holy book, then the FBI assuredly would show up at his door…
If we were to follow the psychological pathology of this little episode back to its beginning, we will find a UMass student with both (a) a scorching persecution complex and (b) a hard on for Mao.
That should narrow the pool of potential rumor-starters down to, say, 80% of the UMass student population, I figure.
Sez the guy with a fake name and URL.
My favorite bit of this story is Aaron Nicodemus’ quote from the mystery student’s fruitbat professor:
Oh ho! Wouldn’t he just love it if it were only interlibrary loans? But, no! It’s much worse:
Obviously for the incantatory powers such unbowdlerized genius as the Peking James Version possesses.
I think I’ve got it. Back in the Clinton administration, the right (let’s face it), jumped on an awful large number of claims that often turned out false. The left looked at this, and told the Republicans: “You guys are Podunks. Here, you think you know how to throw crap? WE”LL show you how to throw crap! “
They brought in the earsplitting harpy’s and shriekers- Pelosi, Mckinnon; the Momma-guilt throwers- Feinstein, Reid; piled on the bullshitters- Dean, Gore, Kerry; outright liars like- well, most of them, really; and, through a special arrangement with the Unions, a big canal digging, dam building shoveloader- Teddy. His job was to poor steaming heaps of gravy, gravity, and gravitas over the whole miasma.
Its getting lathered, spilled, spewed, chewed, glued, thrown, tossed, placed and dropped, heaped, creaped, shaked and baked. When its all done, in Jan. 2009, as President Bush hands over his position to the next sorry son of a bitch to get the job, The Left will say: Now THAT’S how to get results. The BASTARDS gone!
te: theory, no, more of a rant, actually.
It was a nod to “ol’ Kennedy” for the big dig.
Damn, that’s the last time I push “preview”; anyway – it’s funny to point out that Ted “The Floater” Kennedy thinks Mao wrote the “Communist Manifesto”. Maybe that was one of questions on test he cheated on.
Just this past week there were public reports that a college student in Massachusetts had two government agents show up at his house because he had gone to the library and asked for the official Chinese version of Mao Tse-tung’s Communist Manifesto. Following his professor’s instructions to use original source material, this young man discovered that he, too, was on the government’s watch list.
Think of the chilling effect on free speech and academic freedom when a government agent shows up at your home—after you request a book from the library.
With Joe Biden at the controls, just to keep it honest.
Weren’t they arguing just the opposite after Katrina?
In the meantime Charlie’s doors and windows have been lag bolted shut (with $495 bolts, 4 to each window), so he should just relax while he can, because he ain’t going anyhere until then anyway
Yes, it is possible, as I acknowledged, after further info came in on the subject FROM SOMEONE IN THE PEACE MOVEMENT, that this story might very well be false. One question to keep in mind, before starting in about lies and the lying liars who tell them (holy and meek cry the RW!) is: who is lying here? It appears that the student may be lying, but the professors only claim that the student so reported. The Bedford Standard-Times may easily have been taken in by the story, and it goes from there.
FYI, I noted several days ago that there were potential problems with the story, and emailed my suspicions (which I also believed I reported on another thread) to TruthOut. I also sent an email of corrxn at that time out to all the people who I had sent it to the first day the news became national on the web. And when I saw Ted Kennedy use the story, I sent an email to him.
Note how quickly and without serious consequences errors of fact are corrected by progressives, in contrast to the systematic extraction of useful misinformation, and then, when exposed to the world as false, persisting in trying to cover up the practice.(One key case was the supposed training of Al Qaeda people in WMD technix by Saddam, a useful if false statement extracted by reported torture in the context of extraordinary rendition, justified post facto on the preposterous grounds of the Egyptian ‘linguistic and cultural skills’ in interrogation. Note that if they needed such expertise, for the HIGHEST RANKING al-Qaeda operative in US custody, those experts could easily have been brought to us, without relinquishing control to another government.)
—-
At any rate, I reprint a c/c of the email I sent out, initially to Truthout, w/date & time, with the info suggesting the story was bogus that a peace activist had furnished (URLs reformatted for easier reading]:
Subj: corrxn: There is reason to suspect that student/Red Book story may be a hoax
Date: 12/19/2005 5:31:05 AM Eastern Standard Time
[url=”http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/121805C.shtml” target=”_blank”]
I recently sent an article from the Standard-Times in New Bedford, MA,
about a student at UMASS Dartmouth who allegedly was visited by federal
agents after seeking a copy of Mao’s Little Red Book on interlibrary loan.
Serious questions have arisen about its authenticity, and I am letting you
beware of it right away, in the interests of accuracy.
<a href=”http://www.tpmcafe.com/comments/2005/12/18/192757/65/1#1:” target=”_blank”>Here is a corrxn I posted recently at TPMCafe[/url]
In the interests of accuracy, I want to report come claims, which I have
also reported to Truthout, that the UMASS Dartmouth case might be a hoax.
First, at protein wisdom, a rightwing site, one poster called the story “obviously fake” because there are no “Homeland Security agents” that
would go around to anyone’s home.
Second, and more cogently, a librarian at a peace site suggested that the
story might be a hoax because it is not consistent with usual library
practice:
“Speaking as a librarian, this article sounds a little like the newspaper was taken in by a hoax. Some of the details seem implausible. The library
would have no reason to collect the student’s SSN, and given all the privacy requirements in place these days, most libraries would avoid ssns
like the plague. And why would the visiting agents be carrying a copy of the little read [sic] book? In addition, since the text is readily available online from reputable sources, why would a student be resorting to interlibrary loan to get it?
It might all be true, but it sounds more like a student prank. With all the late breaking news about serious and credible reports of surveillance by Homeland Security, it would be a shame to be distracted by a hoax.
Jim Morgan”
Now, of course, we have the question of whether the story, if fake, was a ‘prank’ or whether it was a plant. Much suspicion was raised during Rathergate about that issue, and the emergence of false stories at this time could be for the purpose of throwing dust of
obscurantism up in the air.
I had used the story myself as I consider Truthout to be a reputable source, and the sourcing to a local paper in SE Massachussetts to be also on the level. But they could both have been mistaken.
—
I simply included my email, for those concerned about the posting being to long, to provide concrete documentation of what was at issue, noting that the issue of falseness was raised,
spontaneously, at a reputable peace activist site
very early on. (note that my initial post of corrxn at TPM, should you check the URL, was verifiably: Dec 19, 2005—04:10:38 AM EST
Toby—Mao’s little red book is like the Necromonicon. If you don’t read the invocations in the original language, the Beast won’t rise…Iä! Iä! Dialectic!…
Bullshit, Cloudy. The “progressives” remain the largest and most egregious purveyors of falsehoods.
Not to mention the most egregious consumers of falsehood. Check out how many copies of her completely fraudulent book Mary Mapes has sold.
Cloudy, you really need to reunite with planet Earth.
I’d prefer not.
I am an ardent Maoist myself. As a supporter of peasant revolution, clearly the first thing you need for a peasant revolution is—PEASANTS!. OK, so we need more bona fide peasants folks.
Now, where are you going to find enough peasants here in the US to make a peasant revolution?
Import them! Well, with all the other jobs being outsourced, if we could bring in enough peasants we could have a truly Maoist peasant revolution.
Cloudy:
Are you the one behind this immigration mess on our southern border?
Jeff, if that last posting signed Cloudy was an imposter rather than the original, I would think that was an earned IP ban by the imposter.
Well, live and learn.
Oh. My. Gawd.
Obscurantism?
Obscurantism?
And revanchism, no doubt.
At least someone has a knowledge of the classics.
There’s a classic oxymoron.
There is a point Robert where oxymoron crosses into abject falsehood.
Good progress cloudy, now for the second step in your reprogramming: can you write us a brief essay on the absurdity of Ted Kennedy lecturing that no man is above the law?
C’mon, B Moe! Cloudy can’t write a brief essay on anything.
Why, yes! Chairman Mao’s Little Red, um, Manifesto…
I have a confession to make. I was issued Mao’s Little Red Book at West Point for a class in counter-insurgency warfare. I enjoyed it because it could be read during one visit to the crapper.
I’m sorry, guys. I really tried. I couldn’t do more than a paragraph and change of Teddy’s essay, and three sentences/paragraphs of Cloudy’s.
Note how quickly and without serious consequences errors of fact are corrected by progressives
Excuse the language..but Bullshit.
I’ll tell ya what Cloudy, take a step into the shoes of a simple Army wife for just a moment.
Do you remember the desecration of the Koran story? Yeah, no “serious consequences” to anyone – here in the US that is.
Now imagine that someone you love was in the town in Afghanistan where the rioting took place – where civilians were killed.
My soldier wasn’t there, but others in our battalion were.
No consequences? Tell that to them.
The problem isn’t “how soon it’s corrected”, the problem is that stories are constantly blared front page near and far. Stories that are NOT fact checked, stories that are NOT verified in any manner, stories that misrepresent the facts or conviently leave out any kind of context. It’s not the page 16 correction issued days or weeks later that is remembered, it’s the outrage of the day that sticks in people’s mind. You know it, the “peace movement” knows it, the politicians and media know it.
Tell me, when I say Gitmo what do you think of?
Do you think of soldiers and sailors being told on a daily basis “I kill you today”. Do you think of them having feces and urine thrown at them? Do you think of prisoners clogging their toilets to flood the cellblocks?
Or do you think “prisoners are tortured”!!!
Now guess which is closer to the truth of everyday life at Gitmo.
You may think I’m being an alarmist, but try living it, try living it just for a day when the consequences of one of those “hoax” may be a bullet to the back of a loved one’s head, and not just a political loss.
It’s amazing how many “hoaxes” make it into the media today. The media has turned into a gossip mill, no fact checking required. I mean, what the heck huh? It can be “fixed” later, gee, too bad the damage is already done.
You know, I was San Francisco born and raised. I used to believe I was a “progressive” and still have many strong beliefs that have nothing in common with the Republican party.
But until the Democrats clean up their act, put a decent candidate on a ballot, and quit with the Chicken Little “Sky is falling” bullshit, the “progressive” party has lost me and worse, they’ve lost my vote…just as I suspect they’ve lost many of the votes of those who read here at what you call a “right wing site”
All I know, is the Ted Kennedy or Ted himself never answers my request for him to admit his grotesque behavior in the Mary Joe Kopechne “issue”, and throw his grotesquely fat stomach on a fucking lance for once and for all. Never, and no storm troopers come to my house either.
Seig Mao!!
Tink—yes I would say that characterizing this site as RW is accurate.
Now for the “Koran desecration” story. There have been numerous reports through several channels of similar practices as means to abuse Islamic prisoners. That story is hotly disputed by the official line, to be sure, but it is far from being shown that this is not an SOP.
My question is, if the press ACCURATELY reports on abuses of that nature, for example the reports not only out of Abu Ghraib, and people around the world are angered, do you feel any similar opposition to the underlying policies that so anger people in the Islamic World, or only at the press for squealing on it? Note, this is not a fact argument about whether Korans are desecrated or how many times (reports of military disciplining for such acts suggest that they have happened, but that’s separate from my question). The question is, aside from the issue of getting the facts straight, which is incumbent upon all sides, are we more upset about the abuses or that they are made public?
The other question is the concern for accuracy and its consequences on the other side. Those who might be outraged about the very much disputed issue of Koran abuse are unwilling to consider the issues of, say the Downing Street Memos I and II, including the issue of ‘fixing the intelligence’ around the conclusion of going to war, and what that implies.
By the way, if this site is not a rightwing site, what is? I have no problem describing some sites as “leftwing”, including those left wing sites, like blogressive, that I pretty much agree with.
Putting decent candidates on the ballot is a tricky issue.By the way, I agree that Kerry wasn’t the greatest candidate in the world, but, frankly, he is a far cry both in terms of knowledge of the issues as well as integrity, and other factors too, and so was Gore (who I liked better than either Clinton or Kerry) before him ahead of W Bush, although I suppose that strong W Bush partisans might not agree. But it appears to me that if we compare W Bush to Clinton, Gore, AND Kerry, the partisanship precedes the judgment of the quality of the candidates, rather than the other way around.
To me, it seems that the RW accepts their leaders as they are, reserving criticism for the “other side” as far as the quality of candidates, while liberals are if anything MORE critical of their own than of the other side. That is one of the features of “progressives” that are a problem all up and down the line—a ‘problem’ that is only partly due to a certain individual independence rather than a culture of obedience and toeing the line. There is in fact a lot of “getting with the program and justifying the lying” on the part of those actually or ostensibly on the left in trashing the leadership of the left.
As for “sky is falling”, mentality, that needs a referent. One issue progressive are warning about is global warming. It has been an issue for decades, and the truth of it becomes clearer by the day. Nuclear energy was another issue where the left was accused of “chicken little” thinking, at least until Chernobyl. I need examples of concrete warnings that have been widely embraced by progressives that have not come true; and after all, although global warming is a reality and not a danger, not every danger has to come true to be a legitimate basis for concern. Another thing that Democrats have warned of is that cutting taxes, rather than increasing revenues, would generate huge deficits, actually “strategic” deficits sought by the RW. But being spot on is not something one is likely to get credit for, especially from the opposition.
At any rate, here’s an interesting piece to consider, from a left-leaning journalist, on the issue of distorting the truth deliberately and its consequences.
“Good Guys Gone Wild” by Robert Scheer
Here are some relevant passages:
<snip>
Nor can the deficiency of our own personnel be simply a lack of language skills, religious familiarity, or cultural affinity between interrogator and subject, as apologists for the administration’s policy have suggested. Over the last decades, many billions of dollars have been spent in supplying our intelligence agents with precisely that sort of expertise.
[I would add that they could bring Egyptian experts here, or, less optimally, send a few US personnel there to keep watch 24/7 over what goes on—further giving the lie to the “cultural expertise” rationale for the extraordinary rendition]
What clearly is missing is the will to go all the way in “breaking down” prisoners. There are just too many decent people scattered throughout our military and intelligence forces who would object publicly to barbarism. They, and the American public when informed, would insist on limits, even when the president doesn’t.
That must be why the CIA failed in its interrogation of an alleged high-ranking al Qaeda official back in January 2002 to prove the connection between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Hey, no biggie, they just turned the captive, a Libyan named Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, over to Egypt’s inquisitors who miraculously transformed him into a virtual spokesman for the Bush administration’s case for invading Iraq.
Virtual, because he was shipped back to disappear in the Guantanamo Gulag, but his false witness was trumpeted by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, Vice President Dick Cheney and the president, who stated on the eve of the congressional vote that authorized the Iraq invasion: “We’ve learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and gases.’’ What Bush did not say was that eight months earlier, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the top coordinating agency in such matters, concluded that al-Libi’s testimony was totally bogus.
So, one must not jump to the conclusion correctly claimed by most experts on the subject that torture doesn’t work just because it yields mostly false results from prisoners who want the torture to stop. In the case of al-Libi, torture worked splendidly to produce exactly the critical false evidence that the president needed to make his case for war.
<snip>
{bolding mine}
I didn’t see this howler before:
Two words: plastic turkey.
TW: The finger you see is my middle one.
Update from Michelle Malkin on our industrious Dartmouth student.
Yep, the story is a hoax. What a surprise.
Looks like Senator Ted “Jabba The Hutt” Kennedy has another sterling example of his inspired leadership to put into his scrapbook.
Oh, and cloudy? Glad you shot a message off and all about the possible hoax, but reading your posts is like reading War and Peace in an airplane lavatory during a rough ride. Not only is is hard to do, it’s nauseating.
As for the update on the story:
OK, now it has been confirmed to be bogus. Note that there was no conspiracy of false information, with the evils of liberal professors and dishonest journalists putting together an evil web of lies. It was one kid who evidently wants attention.
And, less than one week after it originally broke, the error has been corrected. I note again—airline lavatories or no (and trust me, the stuff of others’ at this site would have the SAME effect on the typical reader of, say, TPMCafe or Democratic Underground)—that the inconsistencies were noted, within the First 24 hours, by progressives other than and in addition to myself.
I contrast this, to use just one example, with the story about extraordinary rendition, where false information was extracted, reportedly by torture, to justify the invasion of Iraq. First, it was determined to be bogus EIGHT MONTHS before the president used it. Then, when the whole thing came to light, to use a time-worn phrase, the obviously fake excuse that the reason for the extraordinary rendition was because of the ‘linguistic and cultural skills’ of the Egyptians, who of course assured us of no torture-pooh. As I mentioned, we could always being THEIR linguistic and cultural experts to us, or, as a lesser measure of carefulness, with someone billed as Al Qaeda’s highest ranking operative in US custody at the time!, at least sent US personnel over there to keep an eye on the prisoner 24/7. At the very least, those measures would be a counter to any “false” claims of torture, as this one is likely to be assumed in some quarters.
Another uncorrected inaccuracy, from the uncopied portion of Scheer’s article, is the claim that the US does not engage in extraordinary rendition to countries that use torture (and how do we know which ones those are, anyway, since virtually no government other than the US will admit to torture?) We have the case of Canadian citizen Maher Arar, someone determined to be in no way whatsoever connected to terrorism, rendered to Syria, one of the leading torturers of all the governments in the world, according to Amnesty International and other expert assessors of the issue.
But I suppose I missed all the protests about the claim that we don’t practice extraordinary rendition to countries that practice torture, a still-uncorrected bald-faced lie; those concerns must have been voiced on a thread I never noticed.
Cloudy,
In case you didn’t know, Scheer’s already an established liar.
Nonetheless, if you think that a case of unreliable answers discredits an intelligence program, you are only demonstrating your own ignorance – nothing else.
I have been trying to decipher your posts cloudy, because I thought there might be glimmers of reason in there, but if you truly believe this bit of drivel I am going to write you off as a fool. The utter lack of honesty and itegrity of the leadership is what drove me from the party. As distasteful as I find W. Bush, he is head and shoulders above Kerry and the rest of the Democratic leadership.
And just who (besides Teddy) got suckered?
http://mu-warrior.blogspot.com/2005/12/molly-ivans-ted-kennedy-suckered-by.html
Molly Ivans, Ted Kennedy Suckered by Claim that Homeland Security Visited Student Who Requested Mao Book
http://mu-warrior.blogspot.com/2005/12/james-carville-suckered-by-claim-that.html
James Carville Suckered by Claim that Homeland Security Agents Visited Student Who Ordered Mao Book
Wrong.
This sorry episode also included a set of reporters, all faithful “progressives,” I am sure, who swallowed whatever this lying communist attention-whore felt like spewing, all because it fit oh-so-neatly into the dominant Demokratische Partei narrative: Buscho=Nazis.
Not to mention the Demokratische Partei leadership themselves, who, being the ones who propagate and profit from this very narrative, were naturally all a-twitter at the possibility that it might actually be true!
Ha fucking ha.
Alas, like the puddles of spooge that Carville-Kerry-Kennedy left on their respective bathroom floors as a result of having stroked themselves into a hearty partisam lather over the prospect of a Maoist fellow traveller being visited by the Bushite Gestapo, your Party’s dominant narrative is spent, wasted and worthless.
Merry fucking Christmas, you ass-munch.
Ew. Gross.
Like, wow.
One of those “truth-loving” progressives edited the UMass fraudulent story to have occurred in UC Santa Cruz and submitted it to that center of all fraudulent “news” sites, Indymedia complete with the name of a local professor as the one supposedly assigned Mao’s paen to mass murder.
Molly Ivans, Ted Kennedy, and James Carville lied to the American people!!!!!!