Admin Expands Intelligence War on Me

by Dan on December 18, 2005

in Education, The World, US Politics

This is the second related story in two days which confirms that the Bush Administration’s war is not with terrorism, but rather with people like me. The South Coast Today is reporting on an incident in which a Dartmouth student was visited by Homeland Security agents because he requested Chairman Mao’s “Little Red Book” on interlibrary loan. The book was requested as part of writing a final paper on communism for a class on fascism and totalitarianism, but the Dept. of Homeland Security wasn’t concerned with any logical reason for requesting the book.

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.

So let’s see, the administration has a list of banned books not unlike the governments covered in the student’s class, and the only other trigger to getting a visit by the Spooks is time abroad. Well, I own that book and I have spent four months abroad, so I guess I will soon be getting a knock at my door as well. I hope it is on Christmas day so that I can invite the goons in for a nice cup of egg nog and a round of caroling.
But seriously, this policy is atrocious. In what legitimate way can the administration justify a watch list of books, especially one that contains books completely unrelated to the current situation? And why is it that traveling abroad is an automatic trigger for the suspected terror list? Maybe this is a tacit acknowledgement from the administration that information and opinion is being stifled in the US.
The Progressive Magazine’s website has a feature called McCarthyism Watch which has chronicled over 150 cases of political repression since September 11, 2001. This is not an isolated case.

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