Yesterday's State Dept. Briefing - Cuba's "dissidents" (plus a good laugh)

[magbana]

Okay, US, as soon as you release all of your political prisoners . . .
magbana

STATE DEPARTMENT DAILY BRIEFING
Robert Wood

Acting Department Spokesman
Daily Press Briefing

March 18, 2009

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2009/03/120510.htm

QUESTION: On another subject, this week is another anniversary of the ⒠ Cuba⒠s imprisonment of the 75 dissidents, and I wonder whether ⒠ are you planning anything or any awareness or any comments to the Cuban Government, or have you any position?

MR. WOOD: Sorry, could you repeat the last part of that? I didn⒠t quite --

QUESTION: Whether you are planning to make any comments to the Cuban Government or anything for international awareness or --

MR. WOOD: You⒠re talking about the Black Spring? Is that what you⒠re referring to specifically? Let me just read you a little something I have for you.

Today represents the sixth anniversary of the Cuban Government⒠s arrest and prosecution of 75 journalists, human rights monitors, librarians and other civil society activists across the island.

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

MR. WOOD: I⒠m sorry?

MR. WOOD: Oh, okay, 75 --

QUESTION: I thought you said Liberians.

MR. WOOD: Did I say Liberians?

QUESTION: No. Librarians. (Laughter.)

MR. WOOD: Librarians. Sorry. Hang with us, Matt. (Laughter.)

Okay, let me just continue. The 75 were sentenced to jail terms ranging from 14 to 30 years<1> for their non-violent advocacy of political, social, and economic reforms in Cuba. Fifty-five of the original<2> 75 detainees remain in prison, many of them under harsh conditions. We call upon the Cuban Government to immediately release these and other political prisoners being held in Cuban jails, and to undertake measures to improve human rights conditions in Cuba.

[Judi Lynn]

1. As former US Interests Section head in Havana, Wayne S Smith said,

Cuba has the same effect on U.S. administrations as does the full moon on werewolves.

[Peace Patriot]

2. LOL! nt

[Mika]

3. Librarians? The US's ALA doesn't recognize these persons as librarians, nor their "libraries"s.

Their analysis of the Cuban "independent libraries" was that they aren't libraries and they aren't independent - they are fronts for RW exile interests from Miami.

[magbana]

4. Yes, Mika and,as a result, they are bonafide traitors.

Working with another gov't to overthrow your gov't is treason.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Thanks for your reference to the ALA. It reminded me of material I've read already.

Robert Kent is the name surface readers usually associate with the "dissident" "librarians." He's clogged up the machinery with statement after statement. It takes a determined researcher to get beyond so much surface! This is a helpful article on the subject:

Librarians as Spooks?
The Scheme to Infiltrate Cuba's Libraries
By DIANA BARAHONA

The U.S. has been pretty successful at mobilizing world opinion against Cuba since the late 1980s. Emboldened by the fall of the Soviet Union it has gone to considerable trouble and expense to bring down the revolution that refuses to be defeated a scant 90 miles off the empire's shore. Part of this effort has involved creating an artificial opposition movement on the island and enlisting liberal organizations and intellectuals to support it. But U.S. librarians, targeted by name in the State Department's 400-page destabilization blueprint, the Report to the President of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, not only refuse to play the game but are trying to assist their Cuban colleagues to improve their libraries.

The rent-an-opposition has several components: independent trade union groups, independent journalists, independent political parties and independent libraries ­ all paid and directed by the U.S. Interests Section. They are also composed of the same people; one person may be an independent press agency, a political party, and run a library out of his house. The depth of U.S.-style "civil society" was evident May 20-21 at the Congress of the Cuban Dissident Movement in Havana. Financed with a special congressional grant of $6 million and featuring a videotaped greeting from Bush himself, this gathering was supposed to bring together 360 dissident organizations; it barely drew 100 people.

Cuba not only has libraries, it has a lot of them ­ 400 to be precise, plus 6,000 school libraries. So why has the State Department created a network of independent libraries there? What exactly is an independent library? Rhonda L. Neugebauer and Larry Oberg, both university librarians, went to Cuba to meet with colleagues and study the library system in 2000. But they also visited the so-called independent libraries run out of people's houses. What they found were carefully-chosen drop-off and contact points for personnel from the U.S. Interests Section and others, who visited them on a regular basis to deliver materials and money. They also discovered that by keeping bookshelves with these materials in their homes, the "librarians" qualified for a monthly stipend ­ "for services rendered," as one of them put it. They found no evidence that anyone ever checked out a book, and when they enquired of neighbors, nobody even seemed to know the libraries were there.

But the story doesn't end there. For years Neugebauer has been trying to set up a program of exchange and assistance to Cuba's real libraries, which not only lack funding for books and journals, but also for copying and computer equipment, and phone lines and technical support for internet access. But she and others are confronting a heated campaign to get the American Librarian Association and related organizations to condemn the Cuban government and support the independent libraries, waged by a New York librarian named Robert Kent.

Kent founded an organization called Friends of Cuban Libraries in 1999. When he traveled to Cuba in May of that same year, Kent made contact with Aleida Godínez, an intelligence agent posing as a dissident. According to Godínez, Kent introduced himself as Robert Emmet and even held a passport with that name. He said he had come as an emissary of Frank Calzon, executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba.

http://www.counterpunch.org.nyud.net:8090/kent.jpg

"Robert Emmet" and Aleida Godinez.

Emmet" didn't bring books or spend any time studying libraries; "He put a lot of emphasis on the role of the independent press," says Godínez. "He said absolutely nothing about the so-called independent libraries. He barely mentioned to me that he was a librarian."

Instead, Kent arrived with surveillance equipment ("a camera, a shortwave radio, a 10-band transmitter and receiver, and a watch, a Cassio brand") and lots of cash, which he passed out to various dissidents. But the most disturbing aspect of the librarian's visit was that he allegedly asked Godinez to help him ­ with drawings and photographs ­ map out the security measures at the home of Vice President of the Council of State, Carlos Lage Davila. Godínez says he gave her $100 for film for that purpose. Understandably, "Emmet" was detained and expelled for espionage.

As if this weren't weird enough, 1999 is the same year the founder of Reporters Without Borders, Robert Menard, went to Cuba, and the behavior of the two men was identical. Both came as friends of Calzón and both arrived with cash and electronic equipment and sought out dissidents. Both asked questions unrelated to the ostensible purpose of their trips: Menard asked his contact, also an undercover agent, if he knew of any "disgruntled" people in the Cuban armed forces. Kent says his numerous trips to Cuba were financed by Freedom House, a Miami-based outfit funded by the State Department.

For an idea of the pressure Kent is putting on U.S. librarians, here is an open letter from his web site sent on June 5 to the president of the ALA, titled "Time to Take a Stand":

"e in The Friends of Cuban Libraries are inviting you to make a decision which will establish, for all time, your stand on one of the most important intellectual freedom issues confronting librarians today: the persecution of Cuba's independent library movement. We are asking you to use your authority as ALA president to invite Ramon Colas and Berta Mexidor, the co-founders of Cuba's independent library movement, to be speakers at the upcoming ALA conference in Chicago.

"For six years, a small but powerful extremist group within the ALA has used falsehoods, evasions and coverups to prevent the ALA from fulfilling its duty to condemn the systematic persecution of people who, in an historic challenge to tyranny, are opening uncensored public libraries for their fellow citizens in Cuba. Exploiting the inattention of the majority of ALA members on this issue, over the past six years the extremist faction in the ALA has tried to ignore the numerous reports by respected human rights organizations and journalists which have documented the systematic persecution of library workers in Cuba. Sadly, for the past six years reports and resolutions engineered by the ALA's extremist group to deny and coverup Cuba's grim reality have been naively and unthinkingly approved by the well-meaning but negligent majority on the ALA's governing Council."

This "extremist faction" Kent routinely lambasts includes Neugebauer, who says Kent has traveled to Europe and enlisted support from individuals in former communist bloc countries, including some library associations. Kent also finds the time to write press releases full of wild disinformation and has gained favorable coverage for his cause, putting the ALA on the defensive; Nat Hentoff of The Village Voice has become one of his attack dogs against the organization.

For those who appreciate the art of propaganda, the reason Kent gives for refusing to meet with Cuban librarians and virulently opposing professional exchanges is that they are working for the "state." It seems to have escaped him that at his job for the New York Public Library he also works for the state, as do most of his colleagues. And given his possession of a fake passport and shady activities and associations, "Agent Emmet" is undoubtedly a lot closer to the "state" than any Havana bibliotecario.

http://www.counterpunch.org/barahona06182005.html

[Judi Lynn]

6. I have to snicker every time I see that photo. His face reveals one truly ####ed up guy, doesn't it?

Truly a pompous, snotty, anal wreck of a man.