A few days ago former Clinton Secretary of State Madelein Albright condemned the American Libraries Association (ALA) for its tepid response to the Cuban state’s repression of intellectual freedoms by its policies of banning certain books and imprisoning independent librarians who do not follow the party line.
However all I ever need to know about the ALA is revealed in this article with the line “But she won her loudest applause for oblique slaps at President Bush”. Hostility to Bush roused the emotions of more ALA librarians than defending oppressed librarians in Cuba. Of course that Americans are more concerned with American affairs is hardly surprising but when an organisation decries its government’s leadership at home on civil rights grounds and yet balks at heaping any significant opprobrium on an old style communist tyranny off the American coast, I think this is an organisation that can be safely consigned to the useful idiots category.
No doubt many in the ALA are impressed by the more than ten fold increase in the number of public libraries under Castro, ignoring the fact that these libraries can only stock books which are not deemed ideologically unacceptable by the regime. Somehow I rather doubt books by the oafish Michael Moore or Marx are in any shortage in the American libraries presided over by the ALA (and rightly so).
You will, and certainly should correct me in my thinking, should I be misinformed, that, throughout the US, most libraries exercise their right to choose what is available on their shelves; a situation which reflects local morals & mores, religious beliefs and myriad other considerations. This may be thought to be a locally reasonable & PC approach. However, censorship in any form, excepting times of national emergency is plainly wrong.
Catch 22 is that we do live in ‘interesting times’.
permanent expat,
Isn’t that the same kinda censorship that you or I exercise when entering a bookstore? Censorship of that form is inevitable because your local library can’t carry everything. There’s always gonna be more “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” than “120 Days of Sodom”.
I think you will find it hard to find a US public library without at least some Marxist works (unless it is a specialised library) as you really cannot have a meaningful politics section unless you do. Likewise, no Cuban library can be regarded as providing meaningful information on politics if they do not have books with views critical of the Marxist world view.
Nick M: Even in my embarrassing naïveté I realize that any library has limitations of space. The drift of my comment….sorry it was obtuse….was that it would come as no surprize, depending on the factors I mentioned, that ‘Sodom’ was not on the shelves but that Potter was. The answer to my request to the librarian that s/he obtain ‘Sodom’ for my reading pleasure would be the crux. “We don’t do Sodoms here” is not my own censorship but that of disapproving others.
It used to be the rule with British libraries
that if you ordered any book that was currently in print they would obtain it for you.
So when I lived on the planet Zog, back in the late 60’s, a friend of mine put in a request for Jerry Rubins (or was it Abbie Hoffmans?) Do It!!!
The book duely turned up and was issued to him.
When he looked inside the fly leaf, along with the date stamp of the return date, and the opening times and phone number of the branch, where these heavily emphasised words in marker pen-
On no account is this book to be displayed on the shelves.
THEY have been getting away with this nonsense for quite a while now!
The sorry fact is that the so-called self-appointed guardians of our morals……..are not.
We have appointed them, either through officialdom or by sheer & utter neglect, mostly the latter. It is only another facet of our decline that we cannot take responsibility for our own behaviour. In other words, self-censorship is abnegated in the extremely misplaced belief that ‘Nanny’ knows better. Nanny is a twat.
I have read several critiques of various academic organizations over the years, the ALA being one mentioned as especially motivated by ideology, which described their takeover by leftist elements, and the resultant damage done to their credibility.
As is the case with other regimes who seem to be given a pass by the same societal watchdogs who cannot stop howling about the US, or Israel, or the West in general, when Castro finally dies, and his house of cards collapses, these same groups will blithely ignore all the information that comes out confirming that his rule was even worse than his critics claimed IF WE LET THEM.
As an article in the Washington Post discusses, the dissident group mentioned in Perry’s post is gearing up to re-activate its advocacy, in spite of the dangers.
How much less is asked of us, that we never let a chance go by to remind people who might not realize the situation that these groups defended blatant dictatorship, or throw it in the face of any apologist we happen to come across, even if it causes a stir at the party, or makes some people uncomfortable.
Courage on a level unknown to, and beyond, most people is when you put your name and address on a letter to a ruthless dictator saying “I oppose you.”
I don’t think causing a few awkward silences or suffering some hostile looks from across the room is quite in the same league.
The ALA has manage to gain fame in excess of its stature with this kind of idiocy. The refusal to provide the FBI with public information in absence of a warrant is lauded as a “courageous stand against fascism”. On the other hand, they support leftist whackos all over the world. When confronted by true fascists (in the form of Islamists making physical threats over cartoons) they knuckle under like little girls.
Unfortunately, many professional organizations in the US have, in recent years, become overtly political. Check out the American Psychological Association if you want a great example of a technically apolitical group that functions as an arm of the Democratic party.
“Somehow I rather doubt books by the oafish Michael Moore or Marx are in any shortage in the American libraries presided over by the ALA (and rightly so)”
You like Marx and Michael Fucking Moore???
You must be joking. Michael Moore and Marx (and Hitler, Mao, Hayek, Friedman, Rand, Nietzsche, Aquinas, Socrates, Plato etc. etc.) all belong in libraries because only then can people make their own minds up what is good and what is rubbish. Castro does not want people to make their own minds up in case they decide differently to the way he thinks they should.
That fact I even need to explain that is a bit surprising.
I have never understood USA Govt tactics in relation to Cuba.
Stop the sanctions, open the flights, bump up the trade,
Castro and his regime would be gone in a week surely??
The place is held together with string. So, if need be import more string, just as temporary measure of course!
Americans may not know this- The rest of us can visit Cuba. Oh yes! It is often billed as the “go to a poor country and marvel at their ability to remain poor for no apparent reason but the stupidity of their Leader” Tour.
They could be Ibiza for chrissakes!!!
Sandals are for the feet; not for stuffing between the ears. Idiot.
All US libraries have the same ability to get you almost any book you desire. In most states they have computer systems that will search any library in the state to get your book, including the major state university libraries. When I lived in New Hampshire, my town of 700 people had a library that was online with Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, MIT and Tufts as well as all the local libraries in New England. If those libraries did not have the book, then the library would put out the request on the national search queue to get me the book.
About the only books that are hard to get are in some of the areas with the big LLL population they refuse to carry Little BlackSambo and Huckleberry Finn because of the use of the term nigger and in some areas with big extreme fundamentalist population there are some liberal books that are not carried. The library will still search out the books foryou if you ask. That is a far cry from the situation in Cuba.
A few months ago one of the students at Harvard claimed that he was being tracked because he took out a book by Karl Marx and the Little Red Book of Mao. It was found that he lied about it and of course the newspapers stopped carrying the story. It was on a deep inside page where they mentioned that he lied after putting the story that the government was tracking him because of his reading on the front page of the newspaper. Typical Boston Globe actions.
Thank you for providing the link to the article about Albright’s speech. Your readers will then be able to see that the original article says she “mildly chided” the ALA — a far cry from condemned. I was there and her comments were more of an oblique criticism, not outright condemnation. As a member of ALA I don’t understand the organization’s inability to speak out about freedoms around the world, including Cuba, but I wonder if partially the ALA is just reluctant to get involved with another country’s affairs. I can’t recall a similar resolution passed about a different country.