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Boston
Globe Tricks Us About Elian
Elian's plight is part of propaganda for Archer Daniels Midland Corporation
Massachusetts News
| The Boston Globe has conducted a massive propaganda campaign
about Elian Gonzalez.
The boy was barely ashore before the Globe began printing large "editorials"
on its front page. Only two weeks after his rescue, the paper printed a
saccharine four-column piece on page one by a reporter it had dispatched
to Cuba. It began this way:
"The first-grade classroom at Marcelo Salado Primary School contains
a single green desk, on top of which rests a folded Cuban flag, six neatly
stacked books, and a pencil holder. A message is taped to the back of the
tiny chair: ‘Elian, your seat is untouchable.’"
This was the beginning of an onslaught which would tug at the emotions
of Massachusetts. And tug it has. |
It’s painfully obvious that Janet Reno did not send a swat team to seize
Elian because she was concerned about the boy’s mental health.
She sent them because many people wish to end the trade embargo with
Cuba, 1) for legitimate reasons or 2) because there is a lot of money to
be made by those who are the first companies to do business in Cuba.
The foremost company in category #2 is Archer Daniels Midland. It is
a huge company, a commodity broker and food processor, which has advertised
heavily on programs like the Jim Lehrer News Hour on Channel 2. It pretends
to speak for all the wonderful farmers of America even though it is merely
a broker which buys corn and other commodities for its own gain. ADM calls
itself "the supermarket to the world." It was convicted in 1998 of criminal
antitrust violations and fined $100 million for attempting to monopolize
the international market in lysine, an additive used in livestock feed.
It is one of the American farmer’s worst enemies.
ADM gives tremendous amounts of money to many politicians, both Republicans
and Democrats. It plays no favorites, but gives generously to anyone in
power. Bob Dole was one of its largest recipients and still receives their
help.
In the fall of 1995, its chairman, Dwayne Andreas, met with Castro in
New York. In July 1996, Andreas announced he was going to Cuba to see Castro.
He said he contemplated building a food refinery in Cuba but would do it
through a Spanish subsidiary because of the trade embargo by the U.S. In
1997, his Spanish company invested $65 million in Cuba for a refinery for
the production of alcohol from molasses.
In October 1999, Martin Andreas, senior vice president, said ADM would
consider constructing a vegetable-oil plant in Cuba if the embargo were
lifted. In January the Cuban government announced that it is moving toward
a joint-venture type of relationship with ADM.
What’s This Have To Do With Elian?
The law firm of attorney Gregory Craig, which represents both Bill
Clinton and ADM, also (coincidentally, of course) represents Elian’s father.
Andrew Young, former Ambassador to the UN, mayor of Atlanta and important
Democrat, is president of the National Council of Churches which has taken
the lead in demanding that Elian be returned to his father. Young is an
ADM board member.
The woman, Joan Campbell, who traveled for the church group in a private
jet to Cuba to bring back Elian’s father, was in Havana last year apologizing
before Castro and a crowd of 100,000 saying, "We ask you to forgive the
suffering that has come to you by the actions of the United States. It’s
on behalf of Jesus the liberator that we work against this [trade] embargo."
There’s more. Dwayne Andreas is a large contributor to Barry University
in Miami and his wife is a graduate of and past chairman of its board of
trustees. Its president is the nun who met with the grandmothers and changed
her mind after doing so.
Why does Fidel Castro want Elian back? It’s because his country is doing
so poorly and the people are very unhappy. Castro must work at staying
in power. If he can find a bogeyman in the United States and make it look
like he is standing up to the world’s largest power, it will give his people
a feeling of accomplishment and make him look like a great leader. And
ADM is going to help him accomplish that, no matter who it has to pay or
what it does to Elian.
And the New York Times and its subsidiary, the Boston Globe, are determined
for some unknown reason to help them.
Is this the same Castro that caused JFK to almost put us at nuclear
war in order get the Russian missiles removed from there? What is it that
drives the Globe (and its owner, the New York Times) to work so hard on
this propaganda drive?
Before the official spin was started through the efforts of ADM, the
spokesman for the State Department, James P. Rubin, said on November 29,
"Let’s bear in mind that these people left Cuba because of the terrible
economic, social, political, legal and security conditions that have led
hundreds of thousands of Cuban citizens to seek to flee their homeland."
What a change in policy since that statement was made.
Globe Reassures Mothers
The Globe reassured all soccer moms that everything was okay on May
4 when it published a long article in the "At Home" section about how Elian
was doing psychologically.
It started with a reassuring picture showing him walking hand-in-hand
with his father on a joyous spring day. It told the soccer moms that, "The
best, most healing circumstance following such trauma is a quick return
to familiar routines under the loving care of the other parent."
It quoted all of its usual psychologists who said exactly what it wanted
to hear; and, of course, it did not quote the female psychiatrist who had
gotten to know Elian very well over many months in Miami.
The Globe even told Massachusetts moms what to tell their own children
about the picture of the federal agents who had seized him. They are supposed
to say, "That picture looks scary, but the federal agent was taking that
boy back to his daddy. Elian is scared because he didn’t know that. Once
he was with his daddy, he was happy." It instructed the moms, "Be sure
to show him a photo of Elian with his dad."
Bingo!!
On May 7, the Globe disclosed the real reason for its trickery with
the following headline, "Cuba embargo may expire of weakness." Its story
said, "As the dust from the Elian Gonzalez saga settles, one unintended
but welcome consequence is emerging: the likelihood that the United States
will reconsider its policy toward Cuba — especially the embargo that has
been in place since shortly after Fidel Castro took power in 1959."
Bingo!! ADM has won!
It’s probably true that we should be taking a new look at the embargo
of Cuba. But should it be done with storm troopers threatening the lives
of many people, including an innocent little boy?
If Father Were Free
If the father were free, everyone agrees he should have the custody
of his child. But it is so obvious he is not free that it is difficult
to know where to start.
o The Catholic nun, Jeanne O’Laughlin, who opened her home in Miami
to the grandmothers when they came to visit Elian in January, now says
in a sworn affidavit in federal court that she is convinced that the grandmothers
"were not free to respond or act as they would towards their family."
She says that the situation was "controlled by the Cuban officials" who
accompanied them. Until the visit, this nun, who is a friend of Janet Reno
and the president of an 8,000-student college, had believed the boy should
be with the father. But she now says, "Our administration is seeking normal
relations with Cuba and this little boy interfered with that." She said
that she sees the same kind of "artificial" organization around the father.
"It breaks my heart," she said.
She continued, "My ancestors who came over during the potato famine
walked ashore with one shoe on and one shoe off and had to work in the
quarries and live through ‘No Irish need apply.’" She says that outsiders
look at the "privileged status" of the Cuban-American community and forget
that it, too, carried a price tag. "So I get e-mail that reads, ‘Send him
back and 100,000 Cubans with him.’ If a mother 15-years-ago came over the
Berlin Wall with a child and she was shot en route, they would not send
the child back."
| o Elian has obviously not been "alone" with his father and stepmother.
Who else is there? They say he was checked by a doctor after he was seized
and before he boarded the plane. Why? What doctor? In this day and age,
it is certain he was given a medication to "calm him down" after the seizure.
What kind of medication? Is he still receiving it? Is that why he appears
to be happy in the pictures? A pediatrician entering the U.S. from Cuba
to visit Elian during the last week of April was found by Customs officials
to have two powerful tranquilizers. The Boston Globe didn’t report the
story at all.
The official spin is that the family just wants to have some privacy.
But this is absurd. They are not alone. Why is Reno keeping all of this
under such total wraps?
o The sole person anyone hears from is Bill Clinton’s expensive lawyer,
Gregory Craig, who has mysteriously become the lawyer for the father. Atty.
Craig, or someone approved by him, is the only source of any information
from the compound. Even Janet Reno said she didn’t know what was happening
there.
o The Wall Street Journal has reported that last November the father
called the Miami relatives to tell them that Elian and his mother were
on the way. A collect telephone bill proves the call was made. Three days
later the boy was taken out of the sea and the uncle called the father
to give him the news.
o Why were Elian’s grandparents moved from their hometown in Cardenas
and put in a government compound when the father traveled to the U.S.?
Why didn’t Elian’s stepmother bring her child from a different marriage
to the U.S.? Doesn’t it seem that Castro took pains to ensure that some
hostages were left behind?
o The boy is a ‘possession’ of the state of Cuba (and obviously not
his father), said Luis Fernandez, a spokesman for Cuba’s unofficial embassy
in Washington on April 4. |
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