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Yahoo! June
30, 2003.
Bush pushes "free Cuba" in Florida
Mon Jun 30,12:09 PM ET Add Politics - AFP to My Yahoo!
MIAMI (AFP) - US President George W. Bush reminded supporters that he
supports a "free Cuba" without Fidel Castro in power, as he made his
first reelection stop in Florida, a key state in the 2004 contest.
"We believe in a free Cuba," Bush told a cheering audience at
retirement home in the heavily Cuban neighborhood of "Little Havana." "Under
the current leadership in Cuba, there will never be freedom."
"One thing we believe in in America is freedom, for everybody," he
said, adding: "We love it for people of Cuba, we love it for the people of
Iraq, we love it for the people of Afghanistan."
Heavily populated Florida, which was ground zero for the conflict over the
2000 presidential contest, will also have considerable political weight when the
US leader faces reelection in November 2004.
Bush also paid tribute to his younger brother, Jeb Bush, who governs the
state, referring to him in Spanish as "el gobernador" and calling him "mi
grande hermanito" (my big little brother) in reference to their relative
heights.
McCartney considering concert in Cuba: report
HAVANA, 28 (AFP) - Former Beatle Paul McCartney is considering holding a
concert in Cuba next year, and is sending his agents to the island in July to
work out the details, it was reported.
Cuban authorities, including Culture Minister Abel Prieto, have already
approved the concert, according to the Juventud Rebelde newspaper, as it quoted
writer Ernesto Juan Castellanos, who attended McCartney's June 1 concert in
Liverpool.
"I know for sure that he wants to come. His representatives have asked
me about many things," he told the paper.
McCartney traveled to Cuba with his children in January 2000, to find out
more about the island's traditional music.
Castellanos took the opportunity to grab a quick word with McCartney at the
end of his concert in Liverpool, and asked him when he would go back to Cuba.
McCartney jokingly replied: "Next week."
A Library in Cuba: What Is It?
By Felicia R. Lee. The New York Times. Sat Jun 28, 8:53 AM
ET.
One of the last places you might expect a debate over free expression is the
American Library Association, the world's oldest and largest organization of its
kind and a longtime champion of open access to information. But when the subject
is as politically charged as Cuba, anything is possible.
So during the association's annual conference in Toronto, which ended
Wednesday, a little cultural cold war broke out among members over what are
known as independent libraries in Cuba. Small lending libraries run out of
people's homes, they circulate materials that the librarians say are banned by
the government. To some members, the association has been ignoring the
repression of their colleagues and the cause of intellectual freedom; to others,
a small group has been trying to hijack the organization to pursue an
anti-Castro agenda.
The latest battle began after the arrests of about 75 Cuban dissidents in
March. Convicted of "mercenary activities and other acts against the
independence and territorial integrity of the Cuban state," according to a
statement in Granma, the Cuban Communist Party daily, the dissidents received
prison sentences of up to 28 years. Fourteen were independent librarians.
Robert Kent, a New York librarian and in 1999 (a year after the independent
libraries began) a co-founder of an informal group of librarians and others
called Friends of Cuban Libraries, has been pushing the association to speak out
on the harassment of the librarians. "For at least four years, the A.L.A.
has ignored, covered up or lied about the persecution of people in Cuba whose
only crime is to have opened libraries," he said.
After the latest events, Mr. Kent and his supporters asked the association
to hold a separate debate on Cuban restrictions that would have included five
Cuban librarians all working for government libraries who went to the Toronto
meeting. They also asked the 64,000-member A.L.A. to pass a formal resolution
denouncing censorship in Cuba and demanding the release of the 14 jailed
librarians.
In the end, the association allowed an "open mike" discussion with
the Cuban librarians after they gave presentations, but deferred a resolution
about Cuba to its next meeting in January, saying its members needed more
information.
"The reputation of the American Library Association will be damaged by
this," declared an outraged Mr. Kent about the deferment of the Cuban
resolution.
But Maurice J. Freedman, who has just finished his one-year term as
president of the association and is the director of the Westchester County
library system, dismissed Mr. Kent's charges. The association is concerned with
intellectual freedom everywhere, but the facts on Cuba are still murky, he said.
Winston Tabb, the outgoing chairman of the library association's
international relations committee, agreed. "There was unanimous agreement
that the resolution was not ready," he said. "It's really complicated.
There were contradictory statements. People are positional about Cuba."
"One of the questions was whether there was too much focus on Cuba, and
whether we should focus on freedom of access to information and freedom of
expression, generally," he added. "Those questions arise in Cuba but
they arise in other places, too." Mr. Tabb, also the dean of university
libraries at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, cited Turkey and Zimbabwe.
(In the past, the association has spoken against library censorship in South
Africa and recently condemned the destruction of the national library in Iraq
(news - web sites).)
Some members contend that it is important that most independent librarians
there are about 100 still in Cuba are not professionally trained and are de
facto political dissidents.
"If you have 100 books in your home and you make them available to
friends, are you a librarian?" asked Edward Erazo, the outgoing chairman of
the association's Latin American subcommittee and coordinator of library
instruction at Broward Community College in Davie, Fla. "It's political. It
has nothing to do with the fact that they operate independent libraries."
"But who knows?" he continued. "It is Cuba. Are there books
that are not circulated?"
For others, the wave of arrests in Cuba offers compelling reason to speak
out. "Just this latest crackdown, when you have independent librarians
imprisoned, is evidence enough that intellectual freedom is imperiled in Cuba,"
said Laura Y. Tartakoff, a professor of political science at Case Western
Reserve University in Cleveland. "The A.L.A. record when it comes to Cuba
is deplorable. The fact that a regime makes it a crime to establish a library in
your home is sinful."
Michael Dowling, director of the association's international relations
office, says the problem has always been competing versions of the truth. Even
with several library associations making fact-finding missions to Cuba, there
has been no definitive evidence that books are banned and librarians harassed
there, he said.
President Fidel Castro (news - web sites) has said that no books are banned
but that Cuban libraries lack the money to carry every available title. A 2001
American Library Association report on Cuba said, "Considering the small
readership of the private collections and the lack of trained librarians, if the
U.S. government wishes to get information into the hands of the Cuban people,
the most effective way is to deliver books directly to the extensive and active
public library system."
"By the same token," the report continued, "if the Cuban
government wishes to make information available without censorship, it will
allow the independent collections to operate without interference."
Mark Rosenzweig, the director of the Reference Center for Marxist Studies, a
research center in New York City, contends that Cuba has one of the finest
library systems in the developing world and that no books are officially banned
by the government.
He said he believed that the independent librarians had no connection to
professional librarians and were supported by American anti-Castro groups. "These
are a ragtag bunch of people who have been involved on the fringes of the
dissident movement," Mr. Rosenzweig said of the independent librarians.
Mr. Freedman, the former library association president, said some
association members had even accused the independent librarians of being "paid
agents of the U.S. government."
Mr. Kent acknowledged that some of his 10 trips to Cuba were paid for by
Freedom House, a human rights group, and the Center for a Free Cuba, an
anti-Castro organization, which have received grants from the United States
Agency for International Development. And the co-founder of the Friends group,
Jorge Sanguinetty, is a Cuban exile and economic consultant whose main client is
the aid agency. But those government ties, Mr. Sanguinetty said, do not change
the reality of government-confiscated materials and the harassment of librarians
and their families.
Brigid Cahalan, a librarian at the New York Public Library and a member of
the Friends group, says she hopes that by the January meeting, tempers will have
cooled, and more details will have been clarified. "Many in A.L.A. have not
seen it as an intellectual freedom issue," she said. "Maybe they've
started to rethink things, based on what they've heard and read."
Mother leaves Cuba for US after release of kidnapped children
HAVANA, 27 (AFP) - A US woman flew back to the United States from Cuba with
her two children, seized in August 2001 by her ex-husband, who had demanded a
one-million-dollar ransom.
The Cuban government cited "solid and irrefutable" evidence for
its decision to hand the children, aged eight and 10, back to Cornelia Stretter
of Boston, Massachusetts, after a nearly two-year separation.
Stretter, the children's legal guardian, wrote to Cuban President Fidel
Castro Tuesday to say that her ex-husband Anwar Wissa, wanted on an
international arrest order, was in Cuba with her children.
Wissa, who faces charges of kidnapping and international extortion in the
United States, was arrested Wednesday aboard a yacht at a marina outside Havana.
In a statement, the Cuban authorities said Stretter had "suffered
atrociously" as a mother deprived of her natural rights.
Wissa "will be tried for the crimes imputed to him and for the grave
and outrageous use of Cuban territory as part of his actions in going ahead with
his kidnap of the children," the Havana government said. | 
