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To: Nichols who wrote (16270)	4/25/2000 1:54:00 PM
From: Jeffry K. Smith	Respond to of 35685

LOL. Whatever you say, N. Spell my name right, please.>eom<

To: Nichols who wrote (16270)	4/25/2000 2:16:00 PM
From: angel	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 35685

OTOTOT Yes, The better solution is to elect honorable officials who dont circunvent the existing laws to push their own agendas. Our government will only work if people get involved and passionate about what it stands for. The media circus in Miami will pale in comparison to the abuse this kid is about to undergo. It is the Cuban constitution that all children belong to the government. Why do you insist in using the naive argument then, that we are giving this kid back to his father? His father is a slave of Castro, and we have allowed our government to use abusive force and the break law to further traumatize this kid and send him back to be a slave again after his mother died to give him freedom. Did you know that the FBI inspected Lazaro's house and found no weapons the day before the raid? And since when do we allow officials from a communist foreign government in Andrews Air Force Base and deny access to a U.S. Senator? It is people like you, who believe all the crap you are fed from CNN/Time/Newsweek that make people like Clinton who he is -- a shameless amoral human being. The problem is not the form of government, it is the apathy of the people being governed. Most people in the U.S. will sit and watch their constitution be used for toiled paper and do nothing about it as long as their bank accounts are still in good shape. Angel.

To: Nichols who wrote (16270)	4/25/2000 2:24:00 PM
From: freeus	Respond to of 35685

Obviously the alternative is libertarianism. And a return to a Republic, where the limits on the Federal Government, and the rights apportioned to the States and to the People, really mean something. Freeus

To: Nichols who wrote (16270)	4/25/2000 2:41:00 PM
From: Jeffry K. Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 35685

The Picture By Charles Krauthammer - The Washington Post Tuesday, April 25, 2000; Page A23 The picture will take a long time to forget: the commando pointing an MP-5 submachine gun at a 6-year-old boy and the fisherman who had plucked him from the sea. (An Italian American, by the way, hardly the anti-Castro Cuban so caricatured by the press.) For its drama, immediacy and truth, that picture has undoubtedly already won next year's Pulitzer Prize. But it could not earn a place on the front page of the New York Times. Then again, the New York Times has a long history with Castro going back to the 1950s, when its Cuba correspondent, Herbert Matthews, assured the world that Castro was not a communist (occasioning the famous 1959 National Review cartoon of Castro saying, "I got my job through the New York Times"). The Times chose to highlight instead the later, carefully composed photo of Elian with Dad and stepfamily. The picture credit reads "Juan Miguel Gonzalez," the father. What kind of journalistic judgment accords precedence to such a picture provided without context and in isolation by a fiercely partisan protagonist in this custody battle--over the obviously unrehearsed seizure picture taken by Alan Diaz of the Associated Press? In the coming days, we are sure to see more and more of this kind of picture, the contented Elian back with father-- the man who took more than four months to come to see his shipwrecked son. (How long would it have taken you to retrieve your shipwrecked son?) We know that a screaming, terrified and distraught Elian was seized at gunpoint from those who had saved his life and cared for him for five months. A few hours later, isolated and out of view, he is nicely subdued. I'm a psychiatrist. Give me a 6-year-old and a few hours alone, and I'll have him smiling for the cameras too, with or without pharmacology. Why did Reno do it? Her argument is always shifting. First, it is "the law." Now, the INS certainly is duly constituted authority. But it is no more "the law" than is the street crimes unit of the New York City police. In a democracy, the law is determined by the courts. And the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals had just days before the raid found that the INS had acted with no basis in "statutory, regulatory or guideline provisions" in refusing to consider the claim for asylum made for Elian by his great-uncle Lazaro. Reno's fall-back, and indeed her mantra throughout the five months, is that she is just acting in "the best interest of the child." But those who had actually seen the child, from Sister Jeanne O'Laughlin (president of Barry University and friend of Janet Reno) to Dr. Gunther Perdigao (a board certified adult and child psychiatrist) had, after initially thinking otherwise, concluded that it would be best for Elian to remain with his family in Miami. Just days before the raid, the Justice Department released a letter from a pediatrician. This doctor, who is not a psychiatrist and had never examined Elian, diagnosed him at a distance of 1,100 miles as the equivalent of a "hostage" and "in a state of imminent danger" in "psychologically abusive" and "destructive ambience" who "should be rescued." Yet Justice never spoke to the one psychiatrist who had spent time with Elian. Dr. Perdigao, Brazilian-born and Spanish-speaking, spent hours with Elian over two days. After which he concluded that "Elian had bonded so strongly to Marisleysis that to pluck him out would be a terrible trauma." His reaction to the Saturday morning raid? "My association was to pictures of German soldiers plucking Jews out of their houses." And where was Juan Miguel during the months that his cousin Marisleysis was caring for--and bonding with--Elian? In Cuba, dining with Fidel, parroting the government line and refusing to come see his son. When he finally received Elian at Andrews Air Force Base, Cuban officials were there. Elian's reeducation has undoubtedly begun. And if it is not completed by the time he leaves the United States, it will be when he returns to Cuba. Who will really have custody of Elian when he returns? Castro has already made him a "hero of the revolution." Heroes of the revolution don't get raised by their fathers. They get raised by the state--and by the state-controlled psychiatrists, all of whom are waiting for Elian upon his return to the special apartment, the special education, the special life that awaits him. That the government of the United States should have collaborated in such an outcome--that it should have so brutally engineered it and so deeply traumatized a child to achieve it--is a disgrace.