[Buddha-l] Hoax?

[Richard P. Hayes]

Alex Wilding asks whether the story of DHS people gathering information
on someone ordering the copy of Mao's "little red book" through
interlibrary loan was a hoax. Yes, quite a few Internet sites report it
as a hoax. See, e.g.
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/12/24/hoax_little_red_book.html

That raises the interesting question: what if the hoax reports were
themselves hoaxes? I mean, would you believe a book called th Bible or a
website called Boingboing?

We live in epistemologically interesting times. Swami Vivekananda
predicted that the 20th and following centuries would be the Age of the
Shudra. All power, he said, will gravitate to the ignorant and the
incompetent.
  
Hell, if Ahmadinejad can convince himself and his followers that German
concentration camps were a hoax, and if George W. Bush can convince
himself that the theory of evolution and global warming are hoaxes, and
if Pat Robertson can convince himself and his millions of viewers that
Ariel Sharon's stroke is punishment from God for letting God's land be
divided, I suppose it is possible that the day is coming when we may
have to think for ourselves or live with the potentially unpleasant
consequences of being duped by our governmental and cultural leaders,
and even by newspapers and Curt Stienmetz. 

The older I get, the more I realize that the only reliable information
available these days is what is posted right here on buddha-l. (My
definition of the world "reliable" is what I believe, without evidence,
to be true and what I write, except when I'm joking or being ironic,
neither of which I have done for about eight years now.)

-- 
My Unitarian Jihad Name (http://tinyurl.com/6valr ) is:
The Logging Chain of Loving Kindness
You can get your own at http://homepage.mac.com/whump/ujname.html