Well actually I am pro-Castro, whatever disagreement I might have on particular questions, which I believe can be discussed in Cuba, if done with the correct intent and not with the intent of subverting Cuban law or Cuban sovereignity. I think that in principle your position might be correct, but a so-called "library" may operate in ways which are a conduit for foreign government spies and foreign political subversion. The question is, whether or not it is simply a battle of ideas, which any Cuban citizen is well equipped to handle and not afraid of, or whether we are dealing with murky stuff here where what appears to be an innocent "library" in reality is something else which violates Cuban legality and sovereignity.
Given the ridiculous, infantile ways in which attempts have been made to subvert Cuba's sovereignity and assassinate Castro in the past, I don't regard the suspicions of the Cuban government as entirely unreasonable, but personally I still do not know the precise evidence. If Cubans themselves decide that they don't support home lending libraries, but only public libraries as a socialist principle, that's up to them, and what foreigners who don't even live there have to say about that, can hardly be relevant. As if Castro tries to tell Americans how to run their American library system ! They would say, what are you talking about, that is not our prerogative, we are jolly well talking about our OWN library system and how we want to run it !
I think this hysteria about lack of democracy in Cuba is largely unhelpful and in addition hypocritical, since the very people who make these type of arguments refuse to get into dialogue with Cuba. It is true that in international communications all parties normally need to be prepared to adjust their mode of communication, such that dialogue can indeed occur, but this cannot be seen in separation from the economic bribery, double dealing and blackmail that goes on. Certainly, Cuba would benefit from more democracy, because participatory democracy is essential to the extension of efficient economic planning or any sort. But yelling and screaming that "Cuba should do this" and ""Cuba should do that" while obstructing Cuban foreign trade and making threats of intervention will solve absolutely nothing. And so, as far as I am concerned, the very people who are doing this, are preventing appropriate democratisation processes and a more relaxed political culture in Cuba, they're just being pharisees, and they ought to look in their own backyard, at the quality of their own democracy, before they start yelling about Cuba.
I bet if I were to have an honest interview with an intelligent, experienced CIA operative, he would indeed say that the US administrations foreign policy towards Cuba is just whacko and will never work, and that they ought to change that, if they are genuinely interested in democratic progress and economic development in Cuba, rather than venting complaints about how Cuba doesn't conform to their picture of what the world ought to look like. If what they are trying to do in Iraq is a taste of what they would like to do to Cuba, then God help us, because we will need it, in the face of total havoc. Which is where fundamentalist economics and politics ends up anyway.
Sincerely
Jurriaan