Parents Commit 'Booknapping' To Banish Cuba Book

[Mika]

Parents Commit 'Booknapping' To Banish Cuba Book
http://cbs4.com/topstories/local_story_053095142.html

MIAMI They don't like the books so they're not giving them back.

A group of parents in Miami-Dade have come up with a unique way to get books they considered controversial off the shelves at their children's schools libraries. They check them out, but never return them.

Dalila Rodriguez admits she checked out 'Discovering Cultures, Cuba' from the library at her son's school Norma Butler Bossard Elementary at 15950 SW 144th St. earlier this month, and doesn't plan to return it. Rodriguez said this book, like another controversial book she's checked out 'Vamos a Cuba,' contains false information about Cuba.

Rodriguez said, 'If you take it out and don't return it, no kid can read it. It's not censoring; it's protecting our children from lies."

[Little Wing]

1. In doing so, effectively turning ~this~ country into Cuba

Can we have a basic aptitude test? Fail - and you're booted out

[wakeme2008]

2. Unless I am wrong SHE could not check the book out but her son

could and will have to pay for it.

[Mika]

9. Yes. the overdue or "lost" book fee will be on the son's school record.

All debts must be paid - or no graduation.

It is more than just this one parent. There's an intransigent group of radical Miamicubano exiles who are on a witch hunt for any books on Cuba, in school libraries, that they disagree with. On local Miami TV interviews the parents who have done this are swearing that they will NEVER pay for these books that, in one parent's words, 'Castro produces'.

[carla]

42. Mika,

Do you remember the story about the repression of "independent libraries" in Cuba? This sure makes a curious book end to that fable.:+ :+ :+...what a bunch of clowns.

[Mika]

44. Yes I remember it well

The so called "independent libraries" and the "booknapping" story illustrates the contradiction about "freedom" in the radical exile community. (Unless "freedom" means the freedom to commit a crime.)

So, to be clear, a major complaint from the gusanos is that "Castro" shuts down so called independent libraries and that prevents Cubans in Cuba from reading certain material not available in the Cuban library system.

Here we have a book that is made available by the school library system and the wingnuts have stolen all of the copies of it in order to prevent people from having access to read it. (Actually they have enlisted their children to check out all copies of this book from their school's library, en mass & in an organized manner, never intending to return them - which is a criminal act.. theft of school property.)

Here we have an actual, obvious organized criminal activity. No press. No school board action. No instigation of an investigation by any law enforcement agency. Why? In a word..
FEAR.

Fear of the reprisals by the radical elements of the Miamicuban exile community.

[Blue_Tires]

3. whoa...quote of the week!

'If you take it out and don't return it, no kid can read it. It's not censoring; it's protecting our children from lies."


the stupidity burns my brain like acid....how much lower will we get as a nation?

[KansDem]

11. A lot like the 2000 election

We're not stealing the election! We're just making sure our citizens are protected from making the wrong decision!

[Zenlitened]

12. Yeah, my eyes nearly popped out of my head at that line.

Throw that loon in the ocean, ASAP. We're not deporting her, we're just saying she doesn't deserve to be an American citizen.

:grr:

[MisterP]

32. isn't that what Batista said in his '52 coup against democracy?

course, that's why they're in love with him

[atreides1]

4. It's called theft

So while protecting their children, they teach them that stealing is okay, as long as it's for a good reason.

[mainegreen]

5. Fine then. Make book replacement cost double the replacement cost of the book

and then buy two copies of that book.

[Missy M]

6. It's amazing she doesn't see the irony in her actions.

[Caoimhe]

7. Someone needs to just buy a gross of them

and continually replace them while still charging the nazis for the cost of each book. Why are *some* people so militant about books?

[no_hypocrisy]

8. That tactic doesn't make sense.

First, if you make your intention clearly is not to return the book, it's either stealing or conversion of public property. You can be sued or arrested. Add in potentially destruction of public property.

Second and alternatively, from personal experience, when I have inadvertently lost a library book, I pay the full value of the book and the library has the discretion to replace the book I lost or buy another title altogether.

Why not donate books that offer an alternative viewpoint?

[jollyreaper2112]

10. free the book!

They should stage a counter-raid and free the book from the ebil booknappers, just like Elian Gonzales.

[murielm99]

13. There is nothing "unique" about this.

Would-be censors have been doing this to libraries for years.

If they challenge a book, and do not like the outcome of the challenge, they steal the book, or check it out, never to return it.

Public libraries handle this in various ways. But school libraries have to be a bit more careful. Generally, they can't charge high replacement fees or fines. And someone sued a few years ago over not issuing report cards due to late fees. Many schools have little recourse.

I have seen libraries ridiculed publicly for using the few laws available to them. There was a segment on TV making fun of librarians who sent the cops to collect overdue videos and books from a patron. I don't think it is unreasonable to expect things to be returned, or to find a way to get them back if they are not returned. Costs add up quickly. Tax money pays for those materials.

I don't know what the schools in Miami can do about these people.

[Tesha]

18. Send Horatio Cain.

> I don't know what the schools in Miami can do about these people.

Send Horatio Cain.

Tesha

[roody]

25. At my school, the child cannot take out any

more books until the due one is paid for.

[ensho]

14. the law means nothing to those kinds of Cubans in Miami

thankfully not all Cubans in the US are like these brain warped ones. but there is enough of them to constantly cause trouble and they are funded by smirk and the neo cons.

(ensho formally donsu)

[Judi Lynn]

17. Remember you as "donsu." Thanks for indicating the link to your former name.

The right-wing faction is very, very dominant and extremely close to former CIA head, _{George H. W. Bush} and his motley family. What a shame.

Very bad company.

[sakabatou]

15. Thieft

[Judi Lynn]

16. Censorship in Miami has gone far beyond a few stolen books, for many years.

Miami Herald publisher, David Lawrence learned certain elements of the reactionary right-wing "exile" community didn't want him printing articles which didn't flatter them and their perspective at all times:

The Miami Herald usually takes and assumes the same positions as the Cuban government. But we must confess that they were once more discreet about it. Lately the distance between The Miami Herald and Fidel Castro has narrowed considerably. . . . Why must we consent to The Miami Herald and ElNuevo Herald continuing a destructive campaign full of hatred for the Cuban xile, when ultimately they live and eat, economically speaking, on our support?

Jorge Mas Canosa, chairman of the Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation, in a local radio broadcast, aired on January 21 and printed in full in El Diario las Americas.

The revelation that The Miami Herald and its Spanish-language counterpart, El Nuevo Herald, were in bed with Cuban leader Fidel Castro must have confounded the editors of the Cuban Communist party organ, Granma, since the Havana daily has repeatedly portrayed them as right-wing tools of the eternal CIA campaign against the thirty-three-year-old revolution.

Anywhere else, Mas Canosa's remarks might have been ignored. In the darker recesses of Miami's exile community, however, his words were clearly a call to arms. Within days Herald publisher David Lawrence, Jr., and two top editors received death threats. Anonymous callers phoned in bomb threats and Herald vending machines were jammed with gum and smeared with feces. Mas Canosa's Cuban American National Foundation quickly denied responsibility and condemned the hijinks, but Mas's words were highly inflammatory in a city where public red-baiting has served as a prelude to bombings and, in past years, murder.

That was in January, but editors at the Herald still feel besieged. Foundations ads saying "I don't believe The Herald" in Spanish are appearing on Dade County buses. Lawrence has heard that foundation people are sounding out advertisers over whether they would support a boycott -- a troubling prospect in a recession.

Coverage of the foundation and Cuba is now carefully scrutinized, Herald reports say. "There has been a watershed in how we operate with Cuban questions," says one staffer, who requested anonymity. "Before the campaign, Cuba issues were dealt with in a routine way."
(snip/...)

http://archives.cjr.org/year/92/3/miami.asp

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Private art gallery owners discovered they could get their stores bombed by showing paintings by Cuban artists.

Auditoriums, and smaller buildings have cancelled scheduled performances by Cuban singers after receiving bomb threats, etc.

Here's a look at what happened when someone scheduled an appearance by a well known Cuban group, Los Van Van in Miami, which did appear, in spite of the problems:

Last October, Miami’s exile community did their best to stop a concert by the Cuban group Los Van Van that Bill helped organize.

It was like a scene from an abortion clinic. The militants showed up half a day early and waited for the glorious moment when they could throw bottles, cans, rocks and baggies full of excrement at the crowd attending the concert.
If Miami’s Cubans wanted attention, they got it. Though they didn’t shut down the show, they managed to create a mini-riot scene and, most importantly, get tons of press. Police in riot gear escorted concert-goers past a screaming crowd, and there were a few arrests. One reporter was injured when a rock hit him in the head.
(snip/…)

http://www.elandar.com/back/summer00/stories/story_miamimusic.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

They passed a law making it illegal to allow Cubans to appear professionally in Miami, and to sell any products they created, etc., etc. and that law remained in place until it was challenged legally, and overturned as being completely illegal. One of the City Commissioners had said, "It's not a First Amendment thing, it's a Cuban thing."

More:

~snip~
Many of these news outlets are part of tight-knit immigrant enclaves where deviation from certain political or religious orthodoxies can make journalists pariahs, or subject them to physical attack. "I can tell you that the United States Constitution does not exist in Miami," says Francisco Aruca, a left-leaning radio personality in Miami. "There is an unwritten law in Miami: If you are expressing views against the anti-Castro industry, you are going to pay a price."

http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=766

[WindRavenX]

19. idiot

I may think Prof.Behe's "book" on Intelligent Design is a crock of shit, but I'm sure as hell am not going to hide it/steal it/censor it.

Idiots.

[Wiley50]

20. This Should Be Proscecuted! But In Miami?

Those RW Cubanos in Miami have a lock on everything I hear

[Judi Lynn]

22. You said it! You may not appreciate this remark, made by the late Miami tyrant,

the little poltical emperor, Jorge Mas Canosa, who believed that the U.S. could be made to attack Cuba one day, where he would become the next President:

7/1/94 7/31/94 The Miami Herald reprints an interview with Jorge Mas Canosa from the Spanish newspaper El Pais. Mas Canosa was asked by El Pais whether he believed Americans would take over Cuba if Fidel Castro fell. The Herald quoted Mas Canosa as saying, in part, "They haven't even been able to take over Miami! If we have kicked them out of here, how could they possibly take over our own country?" (MH, 7/28/94; WP, 7/28/94)
(snip)

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:xQqmOHDYWkoJ:cuban-exile.com/doc_126-150/doc0146b.html+Jorge+Mas+Canosa+%22El+Pais%22+%22They+haven%27t+even+been+able+to+take+over+Miami%22&hl=en







Jorge Mas Canosa, and his Presidential pals.

[phylny]

21. It's not censoring. Except it is. And it's stealing. n/t

[Peace Patriot]

23. The truth will out. It always does.

Because the human mind gets restless with propaganda. Propaganda always gets dull and boring after a while. That's how we are made. Innovation is our chief survival characteristic. We question. We rebel against accepted "truths." We seek out the other side. The censors, the puritans, the mind-controllers, the bullies, the dogmatists are up against 20,000 years of evolution of the human brain for figuring out what's over the next hill. The propagandists always lose, because their motives are selfish--to consolidate THEIR power, here and now, and impose it by force. But the good of the many may lay over the hill. So the adventurer, the innovator, the best and the brightest, go exploring. And, lo and behold, they find fruit trees and abundant game.

And, lo and behold, they will find that Cuba isn't so bad after all. Nobody hungry there. Everybody has food, shelter, medical care, free higher education. It may not be one's government system of choice, but its "authoritarian" aspects are understandable, considering the Corporate Reich's hostility to everyone having food, shelter, medical care, free higher education and other benefits of a decent society, and considering their ceaseless plots to destroy this example of successful non-capitalist rule. Cuba had reason to keep these plotters out, and to be afraid of them.

So, why be hostile to Cuba? Yeah, the communists came to power through violent revolution. But so did we.

The propagandists now have billionaire rightwing "think" tanks behind them, and the war profiteering corporate news monopolies. So truth has a much harder time, in this country, anyway. Not so in other places. A tragedy, really--since the First Amendment was our invention. But look what people did, when their access to real information was cut off--they invented blogging and alternative internet news sites. And who knows? The Cuban model may be the hill we need to go climb, to see what might be useful to us all.

The kids whose parents deny them books on the real Cuba will not thank their parents, in the end. They will think their parents weird. Because their brains are more pristine. They are natural adventurers. It's already happening--despite every effort of the Corporate Reich to stop the human brain from thinking independently. The propagandists lose. The innovators win.

[Judi Lynn]

24. Reading your 2nd paragraph, I remembered what Robert Torricelli said, after a trip to Cuba

around 1990. This was still during the harsh, harsh time Cuba suffered after Reagan pressed Russia to pull out of Cuba altogether, which precipitated a HORRENDOUS crash there (from which they have been recovering very much more quickly in the recent past).

For his part, Torricelli told reporters after returning from Cuba that "living standards are not high, but the homelessness, hunger and disease that is witnessed in much of Latin America does not appear evident." Yet, by 1991, Torricelli was working with Mas to overthrow the Cuban Government.
(snip)

http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~hbf/canf.htm

Torricelli was bought off by the Cuban American National Foundation, given TONS of campaign contributions, sponsored radical, destructive legislation against Cuba, and, then, as you know, flushed himself down the dumper through corruption. Quite the illustrious career.

It IS significant, that before he was compromised by the "exiles" his fresh observations about Cuba, even during its most trying dark years was that they were certainly doing better than a lot of the other places in Latin America.

I surely hope Cuba is strong enough to withstand the raw aggression _Bush has planned for it as soon as he can devise a way to unleash it all on them. At least now Cuba knows it has strong supporters all over Latin America, and probably Europe, as well, and certainly in Africa.

[Sequoia]

26. She must mean the fact about how the USA used Cuba

to ship drugs and Castro closed the doors to the pork barrel wheeling and dealing. Idiots.

[ngant17]

27. Ideas are hard to 'disappear'

There is also a law of supply and demand. If someone or a group of people succeed in reducing the supply of unbaised information on Cuba, by doing something so childish as vandalizing or stealing books in the library, eventually the demand will only increase and an alternative supply will be found elsewhere. Libraries are only one source of information.

Do these foreigner-exiles really think they can stop US parents from teaching their children about the truth and reality of Cuba anyway?

Besides, even if they were able to turn all the libraries into right-wing store-houses of propaganda, they can't exactly pull the plug on the internet. Heck, it was orginally designed as a communication system that would withstand multiple nuclear attacks.

[mitchum]

28. The mormons have been doing this for decades with Fawn Brodie's...

biography of Joseph Smith "No Man Knows My Name"

Geez, who do I have less regard for? Crazyass cultists or crazyass Miami crybabies? I guess I'll just have to flip a coin on that one :)

[politicat]

31. Isn't that No Man Knows My History?

Great book, and Brodie had the courage of dozens for being as objective as she was.

[mitchum]

36. Ooops!

It is indeed "No Man Knows My History"
That's what happens when I post while trying to get a teething puppy away from my ankleeeeeee....Stop that! :)

[politicat]

40. Aww... they're so cute when they want to gnaw everything!!

I just wondered if maybe she'd written something else that I'd missed.

[TechBear_Seattle]

29. At what point can they be charged with theft of public property?

They admit they took the books and deliberately refuse to return them. The books belong to the public library system, which makes them public property. When does it become theft (and possibly vandalism of public property)? When can we expect prosecutions, fines and even jail time for these deliberate criminal acts?

I suppose even the rank-and-file conservatives are liars when they talk about law and order, not just the Congresscritters.

[politicat]

30. Circumventing these censors:

Here's the book details:

Cuba (Discovering Cultures)
http://www.amazon.com/Cuba-Discovering-Cultures-Sharon-Gordon/dp/0761415173/sr=8-1/qid=1172273052/ref=sr_1_1/105-6441245-1140450?ie=UTF8&s=books

And Vamos a Cuba
http://www.amazon.com/Vamos-Cuba-Visit-Spanish/dp/1575723840


Here's the school address:
Norma Butler Bossard Elementary
15950 SW 144TH STREET
MIAMI, FL 33196

The books aren't terribly expensive - 27 and 17 respectively. Anyone want to go in with me and replace Bossard Elementary's copies?

[nick303]

33. The best part..

Watching the people who, in a recent thread, applauded or tap danced around government censorship of the Internet in Cuba who now come out to condemn this incident (although there are one or two who are so far conspicuous in their absence).

For the record, I disagree with both acts of censorship.

[Mika]

35. Applauded? Tap danced?

Not at all. What a load of crap.

On the subject you mention, some persons were pointing out that it is Cuba's limited access to the internet that is the primary reason that Cubans have such limited access (because of the US's extra territorial sanctions on companies that do biz w/Cuba, and that includes Cisco - owner of the primary Caribbean fiber optic trunk). All Cubans have free access to the internet and e-mail at local libraries. One can connect to the internet at home with several providers in Cuba - but it is very expensive and intermittent due to the old & low tech phone system in Cuba. Cuba does have an expanding infra-net and the little high-bandwidth internet access that Cuba has is dedicated to the health care and education infrastructure. In this regard, the Cuban government puts the needs of the social infrastructure ahead of commerce.

[nick303]

37. Source info

You imply that most citizens are priced out of the system (very expensive), but that's not what the article says.

Original article:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070213/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cuba_internet

A senior Cuban official has defended the country's Internet restrictions as a response to U.S. aggression and called for controlling "the wild colt of new technologies."

He defended Cuba's "rational and efficient" use of the Internet, which puts computers in schools and government computer clubs while prohibiting home connections for most citizens and blocking many sites with anti-government material.

DU Thread:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2729086#2729091

So no, I'm not referring to people who pointed out that Cuba's physical access to the Internet is limited, just to make that clear. A choice quote from that thread:

"Blocking US misinformation is what they are doing. They would rather not deal with it, so they're blocking it. It's the choice that they've made, and there is nothing wrong with it."

Most pro-Castro posters conveniently avoided discussing, head-on, the portion from the article that I quoted above.

But anyway, I can hear the responses now: "The AP is propaganda", "The official was mistranslated", or perhaps just a complete dodge of what I'm saying ("You really ought to read more") with a link to something irrelevant.

[daleo]

34. It's theft, not booknapping

And it's censorship.

[deadparrot]

38. By doing this, they're acheiving the opposite effect.

They're giving the book more media coverage. More people are going to hear about it, and will be more likely to try and find a copy to see what all the fuss is about. Like they say, there's no such thing as bad press. If they'd just let the damn book languish on the shelf, I doubt many kids would even pick it up. A book about a tiny island nation probably wouldn't hold much interest for a young child when compared to ghosts and goblins and princes and princesses and whatever else kids like to read about these days. :shrug:

[fidgeting wildly]

39. Reminds me of something that happened in my hometown in the '90s.

Wichita Falls, Texas. Pastor of the First Baptist Church checked out two books, Daddy's Roommate and Heather Has Two Mommies, from the public library and refused to return them. He made all kinds of horrible claims, said AIDS was a gay disease, and generally made an ass out of himself. A firestorm ensued. He tried to influence the city council elections and was threatened with losing his church's tax exempt status. He eventually paid the library for the books and fees, and ironically, made the books more popular than they had been before. A whole bunch of people purchased copies and donated them to the library, and the books were very popular for a while. Basically, he tried to censor the books and instead, gave them media coverage in a city where they would have been largely ignored otherwise. Such utter stupidity just boggles the brain...

[HuffleClaw]

41. they need to be arrested

and charged with theft. what a bunch of assholes.

[Doondoo]

43. bizarre