I almost choked when I saw the headline. Oh no, not again. While the details of the this case are very different from Elian’s, the basic question is the same; should the U.S. send this child back to Cuba? No, no, no, no, no, they should not. “But she’s in a foster home they’ll argue, and her father wants her.”
Ask someone who was a Pedro Pan child if they would rather be living their life in communist Cuba.
Nothing is more important to individual health and happiness than freedom, glorious freedom. Cuba has one of the highest rates of suicide for women in the world, and for good reason. In Cuba, there is nothing for a young women to look forward to other than a life of heartbreak and struggle. How can a woman embrace life if her children have no hopes, no dreams, and no chance for a better life except to leave?
Except:
U.S.-Cuba custody fight brews over girl
An international custody battle over a Coral Gables girl is quietly playing out in Miami-Dade County’s juvenile courthouse.
By Carol Marbin Miller
cmarbin@MiamiHerald.comA 4-year-old girl living in Coral Gables is at the center of an international custody dispute between the United States and Cuba over who will raise her: her father who lives in Cuba and wants her back, or a family acquaintance who Florida child welfare administrators say is more fit.
Because of a secrecy order, the battle over the youngster has played out quietly in Miami-Dade County’s juvenile courthouse in Allapattah. But three sources with knowledge of the case say state child-welfare workers have asked Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen to grant long-term custody of the girl to an acquaintance of the girl’s family.
The girl, whose identity is being withheld by court and child-welfare administrators, was taken from her mother by the Florida Department of Children & Families about a year ago, sources said, after an investigation into charges that the mother’s severe mental illness made her an unfit parent.
DCF also took custody of the girl’s older, preteen brother. The children, who have different fathers living in Cuba, came to the United States legally two years ago. The boy’s father agreed to surrender his parental rights, sources said, so there is no dispute about his staying in the United States.
The girl’s father, though, is pressing to gain custody. His lawyer is Ira Kurzban, a prominent immigration attorney who has represented the Cuban government in the past.
Cohen, who presides over child-welfare, foster-care and adoption cases, has closed all proceedings in the case to the public and ordered all parties involved not to discuss it. It is not known when she will make a decision in the case.
With a presidential election on the horizon, this case provides an excellent opportunity for the party in power to remember some promises they made in South Florida.
Read the whole story at the Miami Herald.
This is another case of the Herald trying to attract readers by sensationalizing a story.
If you read the article carefully, there are few similarities between this case and Elian’s case. Totally different dynamics, totally different circumstances.
Well despite the differences, here we go again. Cuban officialdom can impose its will on anybody in Cuba and make most of those on the Island say anything that the Cuban officialdom wants.
The plight of this poor child may be a deliberate distraction to cover up the very recently released statistical analysis that shows it is very highly probable (statistical analyses can only show the level of probability) that as most here know Hugo Chavez diddled the 2004 election that should have recalled him.
Summary of the statistical analysis follows:
Febres, Maria M. Cordero, and Bernardo Marquez (2006)
A Statistical Approach to Assess Referendum Results: the Venezuelan Recall Referendum 2004
International Statistical Review 74 (3), 379-389.
Summary
This article presents a statistical approach to assess the coherence of official results of referendum processes. The statistical analysis described is divided in four phases, according to the methodology used and the corresponding results: (1) Initial Study, (2) Quantification of irregular certificates of election, (3) Identification of irregular voting centers and (4) Estimation of recall referendum results.
The technique of cluster analysis is applied to address the issue of heterogeneity of the parishes with respect to their political preferences.
The Venezuelan recall referendum 2004 is the case study we used to apply the proposed methodology, based on the data published by the “Consejo Nacional Electoral” (CNE-National Electoral Council). Finally, we present the conclusions of the study which we summarize as follows: The percentage of irregular certificates of election is between 22.2% and 26.5% of the total; 18% of the voting centers show an irregular voting pattern in their certificates of election, the votes corresponding to this irregularity are around 2,550,000; The result estimate, using the unbiased votes as representative of the population for the percentage of YES votes against President Chávez is 56.4% as opposed to the official result of 41%.
Not to plug my blog (hahaha), but I noted on there today that the Herald failed to connect some dots in this story.
First they say the mother is mentally ill. Then, later in the story, they say with a straight face that the mother would rather have the girl be with her father in Cuba than to live here in the U.S. with foster parents.
Um, excuse me, but, hello? Isn’t THAT proof that the mother is mentally ill, that she’d rather have her daughter go back to Castro than live in freedom? Why should mommy’s “wishes” even be considered if she’s mentally ill?
Please read this petition. If you agree with what is stated, please sign it.
http://www.petitiononline.com/05201902/petition.html
Regarding the recall election statistical quotes above: Where was that published? is there a posting somewhere we can access? Every effort should be made to make it widely available. On the girl’s issue, it would an idiotic move by the fascists in Cuba to attempt an Elian re-make now (we hope they attempt it), totally different White House and Department of Justice now, GWB was elected in 2000 because of the pro-castro-lefty-commie-ADM-lobby in the White House that shipped Elian back screwing the Florida results against www creator, self appointed planet saviour, son-of-a-senator Nam HQs poges (personnel other/than ground and equipment support, or army jargon for a rich boy’s assigment)army paperacchi VP Al Gore. Thanks God for their stupid move or we would have now that moron sending embassies to the Taliban to apologize for thinking that their protege Bin Laden had anything to do with the nuclear attacks on America, so in a way Elian may have saved America.
LMAO Doorgunner! You should’ve just called him a REMF (Rear Echelon Mother Fu–er for you civilians).
The same despicable agents of Castroism that tossed Elián back in the well after his rescue are now no less anxious to prove that even experience is no teacher to them.
Since his kipnapping at gunpoint, ordered by a misled municipal night judge at Janet Reno’s insistence and in defiance of an appellate court order that had granted him a hearing on his status, Elián become the poster boy of the Castro regime, until recently a fixture on Fidel’s lap at every rally. As he grew older (yeah, 11), the boy even became the opening act for Castro, addressing the faithful and unfaithful at those obligatory mass gatherings.
Elián’s fate was never in question and subsequent events quickly proved that even our worst assumptions fell short of reality. Reno had no sooner delivered the boy to the Castroites than Castro sent two doctors from Cuba with a suitcase full of mind-altering drugs to treat the boy. These were discovered and seized by customs at the airport.
When Elián was returned to Cuba, he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for 3 months (the period when he was incommunicado and the regime asked the media to respect “the family’s privacy,” and the media, of course, complied). While interred there, Elián’s mind was wiped like a tabula rasa and he was turned into the automaton that he is today, which his unfocused and distant look reveals in every photograph.
His father, if we may call a man a “father” who served as the instrument of his own son’s perdition, reaped the rewards of his villainy, declared a “Hero of the Republic” (an “honor” usually reserved for generals) and given a seat as a deputy in Cuba’s “Popular Assembly.”
Still heady with their “victory,” the usual suspects are again at work, under less favorable circumstances, to deprive an innocent Cuban child of her future so that Castro can have a matched set of poster children. In a country where adults enjoy no rights, what future awaits a defenseless child? That question has already been answered. Those who support this little girl’s return to Cuba as a get-well gift for Castro can no longer plead ignorance, though, of course, they are shameless enough to deny the truth if it serves their purposes.
Doorgunner:
I don’t give a damn if Elián “saved America” from Al Gore. What matters to me is that the U.S. did not save Elián.
Al Gore, btw, was the only member of the Clinton administration who openly opposed Elián’s repatriation.
P.S.: You are a very enjoyable writer.
Ira Kurzban should be known as “Fidel’s Lawyer.” Here’s a sample of his distinguished legal career courtesy of professor de la Cova:
“In February 1982, Mr. Kurzban was the corporate lawyer for American Airways Charters (AAC), a front company for the Castro regime, headed by Fernando Fuentes Cobas, that ferried passengers and contraband between Miami and Havana. The AAC was shut down by the Federal government and Fuentes Cobas was convicted in Federal court in Miami of trading with the enemy. He fled to Cuba before serving his one-year sentence and died there shortly thereafter. Fuentes Cobas was interred in the Pantheon of Revolutionary Immigrants in Colon Cemetery in Havana.
In February 1982, Mr. Kurzban also represented the Cuban National Bank in another trial in Federal court in Miami. He was helping Cuban officials recover $8.7 million that their government had lost to a coffee swindle in 1978 by German citizen Karl F. Fessler.
Mr. Kurzban is better known in the Cuban exile community as the husband of Fidel Castro admirer Magda Montiel. In April 1994, Montiel was part of a group of Cuban immigrants who met with Castro. She appeared in a news film kissing his cheek and saying to him: “Thank you for all you have done for my people; you have been a great teacher to me.” http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/dialogue/magda-montiel.jpg Six Cubans American employees who worked for her law firm immediately resigned to protest her affection for the Cuban dictator. After she returned to Florida, more than 1,500 Cuban exiles held a peaceful protest in front of the Kurzban residence in Key Biscayne denouncing her actions. Mr. Kurzban referred to them as “right wing lunatic elements.” (See: “Cuba consternada por ataques a Montiel,” El Nuevo Herald, April 30, 1994, page 2-B).”
Ira Kurzban should be known as “Fidel’s Lawyer.” Here’s a sample of his distinguished legal career courtesy of professor de la Cova:
“In February 1982, Mr. Kurzban was the corporate lawyer for American Airways Charters (AAC), a front company for the Castro regime, headed by Fernando Fuentes Cobas, that ferried passengers and contraband between Miami and Havana. The AAC was shut down by the Federal government and Fuentes Cobas was convicted in Federal court in Miami of trading with the enemy. He fled to Cuba before serving his one-year sentence and died there shortly thereafter. Fuentes Cobas was interred in the Pantheon of Revolutionary Immigrants in Colon Cemetery in Havana.
In February 1982, Mr. Kurzban also represented the Cuban National Bank in another trial in Federal court in Miami. He was helping Cuban officials recover $8.7 million that their government had lost to a coffee swindle in 1978 by German citizen Karl F. Fessler.
Mr. Kurzban is better known in the Cuban exile community as the husband of Fidel Castro admirer Magda Montiel. In April 1994, Montiel was part of a group of Cuban immigrants who met with Castro. She appeared in a news film kissing his cheek and saying to him: “Thank you for all you have done for my people; you have been a great teacher to me.” http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/dialogue/magda-montiel.jpg Six Cubans American employees who worked for her law firm immediately resigned to protest her affection for the Cuban dictator. After she returned to Florida, more than 1,500 Cuban exiles held a peaceful protest in front of the Kurzban residence in Key Biscayne denouncing her actions. Mr. Kurzban referred to them as “right wing lunatic elements.” (See: “Cuba consternada por ataques a Montiel,” El Nuevo Herald, April 30, 1994, page 2-B).”
Why mention Cuba’s suicide rate for females? And what does it mean that its high rate is “for good reason”?
Is this about the living standards? Japan has amazing living standards and they have higher rates of suicide for both males and females, and the rates are higher than Cuba’s.
So what’s your point?
Henry, I should have included a note about Kurzban in my post. For some reason, I assumed everyone knew of his castro connection. During the Elian affair, he was all over the MSM pimping for the regime. As far as I’m concerned one sentence in the Herald story says all that needs to be said:
“His lawyer is Ira Kurzban, a prominent immigration attorney who has represented the Cuban government in the past.”
Ira Kurzban also represents the “Bolivarian” cowards.
US/Cuba_Negotiations:
Cuba’s suicide rate is the world’s highest for both males and females. This was indeed an acknowledged fact in the 1990s, but when I and others began to use that fact against the Castro regime, it stopped releasing the statistical data used to calculate the suicide rate while at the same time the rate itself was reported to have declined.
Of course, nothing has changed. The situation is probably worse now; otherwise there would be nothing to hide.
As for Japanese society, it has a millennial tradition of hara-kiri, which Cubans do not. This, however, did not stop the Village Voice from claiming some years ago that female suicide is also a Cuban tradition because, according to them, Cuban women traditionally would set themselves on fire upon the death of their husbands, just as formerly in India. I kid you not.
The Herald, for a change, mentioned Ira Kurzban’s Castro connection. Yet, they did not report who is paying his fees. Is it the child’s father or the Cuban regime? Is Kurzban working pro bono? I doubt it.
US Cuba negotiations – Ever hear of the castro slogan “Socialismo o muerte?” Socialism or death, that’s the choice in Cuba. The number of Cubans in exile, the number of Cubans in prison, and the number of Cuban corpses in the Straits of Florida attests to that reality.
If this situation escalates to anything similar to the Elian fiasco, it will be interesting to see how lil’ bro handles the situation. Mini-me (raul, not hugo) does not enjoy — at least he hasn’t up until now — the drooling affection of the liberal world press his brother enjoys. Will the media fall all over themselves to report and broadcast lil’ bro’s exhortations to “free” the little girl the way they did with fidel? Even raul must be aware that a quotation from fidel, printed in a propaganda laden article in granma, is not going to cut it, and even he’s smart enough not to try and make a corpse talk.
This may be our first look at how the media will portray “el segundo plato” (o el primer pato, whichever you prefer)and more importantly, the whole world will get to see a person devoid of any personality whatsoever. What good will it do? Probably not much; hard facts have not done much to tarnish the dictator’s image among the left-leaning press. At least, however, it makes their job (aiding and abetting a brutal dictatorship), all the more difficult.
Good point delacova. I too doubt Mr. Kurzban is doing it pro bono.
The big difference between this little girl’s case and Elian’s is that castro has nothing with which to blackmail President Bush for this little girl’s return. On the other hand, castro had enough with which to BLACKMAIL former first lady Hilary Clinton to ruin her chances to run for Congress.
Unlike the Clintons, President Bush has NO NEED to seek the help Dwayne Andreas of ADM, Gregory Craig, the MSM nor the American Left to HELP return this little girl to Cuba.
Among the thousands of classified KGB files provided by former KGB activist Vasili Mitrokhin (defected to Britain in 1992) to Christopher Andrew, a Cambridge history professor and co-author of the book, “The World Was Going Our Way,” were documents related to Americans who traveled to Cuba beginning in 1969 as part of the pro-Castro Venceremos Brigade. One of these Americans was … you guessed it… Hilary Clinton.
castro had MANY compromising photographs and videos of our former first lady.
The former “fist lady of the left’s” 1969 (92 page) senior thesis was made UNAVAILABLE in 1993 by the Clinton White House, spurring speculation among some conservatives that Sen. Clinton’s writings revealed radical or communist sympathies.
http://cassandra2004.blogspot.com/2005/06/hillary-clintons-wellesley-college.html
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=18
Mr. Conductor: That linked photo of Madga Montiel convinced me that she looks more like Mr. Ed than Ana Menendez. Could they be twins separated at birth?
Why The Seizure of Elian Was Illegal
By Reed Irvine and Cliff Kincaid
May 5, 2000
One element of the Justice Department’s seizure of Elian Gonzalez that has received scant attention is the search warrant that Janet Reno has cited as giving her authority to raid the home. Charges were aired on television that the government had no authority to enter the home, since it had not obtained a court order authorizing it. Then it turned out that the Justice Department had obtained a search warrant from a federal magistrate judge in Florida authorizing a search of the house.
That was disclosed by INS Commissioner Doris Meissner when she appeared on CBS’sFace the Nation the next day. Asked what they were searching for, she replied, “The boy.” Miami attorney Jack Thompson had a column in NewsMax.com in which he said, “The government, knowing they couldn’t get an order authorizing the forced taking of the boy, went to a lowly magistrate and got a useless search warrant, useless legally, but useful on Sunday talk shows so that they could falsely but plausibly say that they had a ‘court-ordered search warrant’ authorizing the raid.”
Thompson noted that Bob Schieffer, the host of the show, understood that what the INS did was not conduct a search. They went into the home to seize the boy to deliver him to the custody of his father. Thompson described this as “the first change of custody in American history without a court order and at the point of a gun.”
Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe is as liberal as Thompson is conservative, but he agrees on this point. In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, he wrote, “The Justice Department points out that agents who stormed the Miami home were armed not only with guns, but with a search warrant. But it was not a warrant to seize the child. Elian was not lost, and it is a semantic sleight of hand to compare his forcible removal to the seizure of evidence, which is what a search warrant is for.”
To obtain the warrant the Justice Department had to tell the magistrate that Elian was “a concealed person,” meaning that he was being hidden and that they did not know where he was. Thompson asks, “Did not everyone on the planet know where the boy was?” He said, “Elian’s whereabouts were not concealed. They were known to an absolute certainty. Which is why the search warrant was illegally obtained and void, thereby rendering the taking of the boy illegal.”
What makes this even worse was the revelation by Senator Bob Smith, the Republican from New Hampshire who has been Elian’s greatest champion, that the Justice Department had also obtained a warrant for the arrest of Elian. The senator disclosed this on the Fox News program, Hannity and Colmes on April 24, reading from the warrant. Apparently, the Justice Department obtained this as a fall-back in case a lawyer in the house barred their entry on the grounds that the search warrant was invalid. Lawrence Tribe concluded his article in The New York Times with this comment: “Ms. Reno’s decision to take the law as well as the child into her own hands seems worse than political blunder….Her decision strikes at the heart of constitutional government and shakes the safeguards of liberty.”
http://www.aim.org/media_monitor/A3043_0_2_0_c/
Dershowitz: Clinton-Reno Acted ‘Lawlessly’
by Carl Limbacher & NewsMax.com staff
April 25, 2000
[I]n a Monday night interview with Fox News Channel’s Paula Zahn, renowned Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz said the Clinton administration acted “lawlessly” when they seized six-year-old Elian Gonzalez from the home of his Miami relatives, calling it “a dangerous day for all Americans.”
Just hours after Dershowitz made his remarks, constitutional law professor Lawrence Tribe echoed his Harvard colleague, writing in Tuesday’s New York Times that Attorney General Janet Reno did not have the legal authority to conduct Saturday’s predawn assault on the Gonzalez home.
But it was Dershowitz’s comments that should be causing the White House the most agitation, coming as they do from a reliable Clinton ally.
Appearing on Zahn’s Fox show, “The Edge,” the …
the onetime Clinton defender minced no words:
DERSHOWITZ: They should have gotten a court order. They should have sought to hold the family in contempt. And if the family refused to comply with the court order, then they could have issued contempt citations and arrested the family. But I have a reason why they didn`t go for a court order. They didn`t go for a court order because they knew they couldn`t get one.
ZAHN: Why?
DERSHOWITZ: And they acted lawlessly — they couldn`t get one because the 11th circuit had already turned down their request for a court order, and the family would have argued that giving the child over to the father, at this point, would moot the case in the 11th circuit because, predictably, within a few days, Greg Craig will come out with a hand-scrawled little note from Elian saying he now withdraws his application for asylum.
This is established to really confirm the terrible precedent that the administration can act without court approval and break into the home of an American citizen…
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a390625511dd6.htm
I usually do not quote the published opinions of others at length, but these are essential texts in the forthcoming battle to save this little girl from Elián’s fate. The illegality of Elián’s removal — the fact that Clinton-Reno violated the Constitution and their oaths of office to effect it — should always be highlighted in any reference to his case. Castro’s apologists continue to lie about this fact. They speak of “court orders” and “due process” and “upholding the Constitution” when even the most prominent liberal constitutional lawyers have branded Clinton-Reno’s decision to raid the González home as “lawless” and “strik[ing] at the heart of constitutional government and shak[ing] the safeguards of liberty.”
The judge hearing this case Jeri B. Cohen has never attempted to conceal her disdain for Cuban-Americans. Back in 2002, she stated in her courtroom that “If we deport people back to Cuba, we could empty our jails.” The Cuban American Bar Association (CABA) took her to task for her remarks and threatened to file a complaint with the State Judicial Qualifications Commission. Judge Cohen requested a meeting with CABA and subsequently sent them a letter apologizing for her remarks. She met again with the Board of Directors of CABA who accepted her apology.
I was surprised that CABA even complained given any bar association’s aversion to challenging judges that its members might some day appear before. I was not surprised, however, by how quickly CABA accepted her apologies and swept the whole thing under the carpet.
Now it is time to analyze more carefully Judge Cohen’s remarks and apology. It seems to me that she should have recused herself in this case or any case involving Cuban-Americans. But then again, since Judge Cohen believes that Cuban-Americans are responsible for all crime in this country and deporting them would empty our jails, she must also believe that she would be out of a job if she were barred from hearing their cases. She should be out of a job and certainly would be if she had directed her remarks at African-Americans.
Manuel: Kudos on your research and opinion.