N E W S

 Havana. August 9, 2005

The Little Prince: confiscated by U.S. Customs

THE U.S. administration, which lays out millions every year to falsely accuse Cuba of blocking the free circulation of books, has just confiscated at the Mexican border hundreds of English-language texts destined for the University of Havana library.

As the crowning absurdity, the seized works include titles as controversial as The Little Prince, by Frenchman Antoine de Saint-Exupéry; and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, by Briton D.H. Lawrence.

The seized books are among the items taken from the Pastors for Peace Friendshipment Caravan by U.S. Customs agents at the McEllan border crossing to Mexico in Texas on July 21, under express orders from the Department of Commerce.

The list of books confiscated is incredible. Below are some of the authors whose works are currently behind bars in the warehouses of the Department of Homeland Security in Hidalgo, Texas.

• Sir Winston Churchill (Memoirs) a man whose political concepts were not exactly on the left. (Closing, The Ring, The Grand Alliance, The Finger of Fate, etc.

• Antoine De Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, the mythical story by the French writer and aviator.

• Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Grand Inquisitor (The Brothers Karamazov), with its warning title.

• Ernest Hemingway, the most famous U.S. writer, known for his love of Cuba, and The Sun Also Rises.

• D.H. Lawrence and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, a classic in romantic literature.

• Jean-Paul Sartre and The Age of Reason, which was listed in the Catholic Church List of Prohibited Books until 1948.

• The enchanting French author Jules Verne and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

Centuries after Brother Tomás de Torquemada initiated the destruction of books, which would open the way to the Inquisition, the Bush administration, which ordered a more thorough review of the donations transported by the Pastors for Peace, has gone to the extreme of retaining volumes that are in wide circulation in libraries or are on sale in Cuba in their original edition or in Spanish.

The measure would seem ever more absurd in relation to U.S. libraries being pointed to as possible collaborators in the annexation plan drawn up by the State Department – the report to the president by the so-called Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba – while these have repeatedly refused to lend themselves to this dirty U.S. maneuver against the island.

The most notorious representative of operations undertaken at the direction of the White House in support of this official policy is without any doubt New Yorker Robert Kent, alias Robert Emmet, who founded the organization Friends of Cuban Libraries in 1999 to support the so-called “independent” libraries on the island created under the auspices of the U.S. Interest Section in Havana.

In a text published recently by the respected U.S. website Counterpunch.com under the title “The Scheme to Infiltrate Cuban Libraries,” U.S. journalist and researcher Diana Barahona of South Beach, California relates in detail how, on a trip to Cuba in May of 1999, he undertook a mission whose profile identifies him beyond any doubt as being with the U.S. intelligence services:

“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 ex-CIA agent Frank Calzón, executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba.

"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 short-wave 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 Godínez 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.”

CALZON, KENT-EMMET, COLAS AND MENARD INC.

It should be added that Frank Calzón, whom Kent-Emmet said he represented, is an individual of Cuban origin known for years for his CIA links, and who belonged to the Abdala terrorist organization. He subsequently took the post of executive director of the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), whose paramilitary committee funded the activities of international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles.

Ramón Humberto Colás, another CANF affiliate, self-appointed as “founder” of a phantom “independent” libraries network in Cuba, is likewise linked to U.S. campaigns around libraries.

Colás, a resident of Miami, who left in his native city of Las Tunas the recollection of a playboy more attracted to nightclubs than reading, discovered however the key to a fortune by convincing his USAID and NED godfathers to grant him fat subsidies. Another kingpin within the White House propaganda strategy on Cuba, Robert Ménard, the permanent secretary of Reporters sans frontières, is penetrating the world of libraries with an aggressiveness matched by his concealed millionaire income.

Ménard vigorously denied knowing Calzón until he appeared at a Euro-deputies meeting in Brussels with that individual in March 2004. On March 27 this year, French researcher Thierry Meyssan published an article revealing that Ménard negotiated a juicy contract with Otto Reich and Calzon’s Center for a Free Cuba in 2001.

While Kent-Emmet, Colás and Ménard, directed by the CIA and its branches, continue with their anti-Cuban campaigns, the books destined for the University of Havana library remain in Hidalgo. More prone to incarcerating suspects in its Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo prisons, in Texas the Bush administration has revealed another aberration of its dirty war on Cuba.

The major library organizations in the world, including the ALA, IFLA and CLA, have adopted agreements that clearly refute the disinformation campaigns orchestrated by Kent and Colas on behalf of the U.S. government. The IFLA has its annual congress in Oslo this August 14, where doubtless the agents of imperialism whose budgets, spectacularly increased by the Bush administration, are largely devoted to costly international tours.