Hi. I suspect lots of people not travelling will watch tonight's
show on Elian Gonzales. Tomorrow morning, turn your radio
dials to your local station carrying Amy Goodman, for her
interview with Pete Seeger, on Democracy Now! I had the
pleasure of filming him a few weeks ago. His mind remains
brilliant, his wisdom expanded and I swear his singing was
fine, better than in my last concert with him, 10 years ago.
In LA, DN is on kpfk, 90.7 fm @ 6 and 9 AM. Nowadays, many
NPR, indie, college, even cable-tv stations carry the show.
Have a great holiday.
Ed
>From the Los Angeles Times
Q&A: The Ruling and Its Effects By Michael
Muskal Times Staff Writer
2:32 PM PDT, June 29, 2006
The U.S. Supreme Court today handed up what is likely to become a
major decision dealing with the powers of the different parts of
government in times of war. Here are some of the basic questions
involved in the ruling.
How did the case begin?
On Sept. 11, 2001, Al Qaeda launched coordinated attacks on the World
Trade Center in New York and on the Pentagon in Washington. The
United States and its allies responded with an attack on the Taliban
government in Afghanistan, a country Al Qaeda was using as a haven.
On Nov. 13, 2001, the Taliban was driven out of the capital, Kabul,
by U.S.-backed Afghan militias. Some terrorist suspects were seized
in Afghanistan for alleged war crimes. President Bush issued an order
that those who were seized be tried by military commissions.
Why a military commission?
The administration said it was waging a war on terrorism and offered
a three-pronged rationale. It argued that Bush had the constitutional
power to set up the commissions because he was commander in chief. It
also claimed that Congress gave Bush a blanket authorization in its
Sept. 14, 2001 resolution of support and that existing laws allowed
the commissions.
Who is Salim Ahmed Hamdan?
Hamdan is a Yemni national who was captured in November 2001 in
Afghanistan. He has admitted being a driver for Al Qaeda leader Osama
bin Laden, but has denied being a terrorist. He was turned over to
U.S. forces and was sent to a naval detention facility on Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba in 2002.
Why there?
The U.S. sent captured prisoners there to be interrogated and more
than 450 are still being held. Human rights groups have complained
that the inmates have been badly treated in the search for
information. The administration has defended the treatment and has
said cultural considerations are being given.
What happened to Hamdan?
In July of 2004 he was among the first to be charged and to face
trial before a military commission. He was charged with conspiracy to
commit terrorism and war crimes and could face a maximum of life in
prison if convicted.
Why didn't the trial take place?
Hamdan, represented by military and civilian lawyers, sued to be
released, saying he was being improperly held. That case worked its
way through the courts, culminating in today's decision.
What did the U.S. Supreme Court decide?
In a 5-3 decision, the court issued a sweeping decision that held
that the trials were not authorized by any act of Congress and were
contrary to the four Geneva Conventions that govern how to deal with
prisoners of war. Further, the majority of the court decided that the
procedures of the military commissions violated existing U.S.
military law.
What was the split?
The three conservatives - Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel
A. Alito Jr. - backed the Bush administration. John Paul Stevens,
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Anthony M. Kennedy and David
H. Souter were the majority.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. did not participate because he had
ruled in the Bush administration's favor in the case when he sat on a
lower court.
Why is this a rebuff of the Bush administration?
On one level the administration lost the case, but the possible
fallout goes further.
This administration has argued for broad powers in dealing with
national security issues, but opponents contend that the
administration has gone too far without seeking congressional
approval. This decision, in effect, questions the basic principle
that the war on terror justifies Bush administration action in other
areas such as intelligence gathering.
What happens next?
The ruling is being studied by all, but at first blush, it seems to
allow Congress to act to set up tribunals. Several Republican
senators have already announced they are prepared to introduce
enabling legislation.
Will Hamdan be released?
No.
Under the ruling he can be tried in a civilian court or under
existing military procedures in a court-martial. In either case, he
will have greater legal protections, such as a right to cross-examine
accusers.
***
Elian Gonzalez - CBS 60 Minutes, Sunday, July 2, 2006
Posted by: "Walter Lippmann" [EMAIL PROTECTED] walterlx
Date: Fri Jun 30, 2006 3:33 am (PDT)
CBS's weekly news magazine 60 MINUTES will have a segment on Elian
Gonzalez this Sunday, and you'll want to be sure not to miss this.
Last year's program, the transcript of which is reproduced below,
was one of the best U.S. television reports we'd seen on Cuba in a
very long time. I'm confident Bob Simon will give us another good
update on the story. The struggle to win Elian's rescue and return
to his home, his family and his country was one and remains one of
the great human interest tales of recent years, as well as being a
success for Cuba and for the rights of parents and children to be
united. The tragic split in the Cuban family, for which Washington
bears principal responsibility, is one which most people in the
U.S., certainly outside the Cuban-American community, know little
or nothing about. Here's some background on the Elian struggle:
http://www.walterlippmann.com/elian.html
====================================================================
Sunday, July 2, 2006 ELIAN - Elian Gonzalez has never spoken before
about the battle between the U.S. and Cuba that he was in the middle
of five years ago when he was just 6. He does now in an interview
with Bob Simon. Draggan Mihailovich is the producer.
Elian
Oct. 2, 2005(CBS)
In the annals of conflict between Cubans and Americans, there was the
Bay of Pigs, there was the Cuban Missile Crisis and, in 1999, there
was Elian Gonzalez.
The last time we saw Elian, he was a 6-year-old in the eye of a storm
in Miami, and possibly the youngest person ever to become the focus
of an international crisis. Now, five years after he returned to Cuba
with his father, you will hear Elian's story from his point of view.
60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon reports.
At the age of 5, he survived an incredible sea journey after the boat
he was on capsized during a storm. He was then caught up in another
storm of sorts when his relatives in Miami tried to keep him with
them, while his father wanted him back home in Cuba. During the
entire five-month ordeal, everyone had something to say about Elian
Gonzalez except Elian himself. He was the silent one, until now.
When we met Elian, now 11, what he seemed to like most about being
interviewed was getting a bottle of really cold water and a gizmo in
his ear for simultaneous translation.
The soft-spoken kid with the soft brown eyes and carefully gelled
hair is in the seventh grade now. He likes math, and says he wants to
be a computer scientist. Like the other kids, he rides his bike to
school. Unlike them, he is always followed by security.
And there's another difference. Elian knows Fidel Castro. And Castro
knows propaganda. He came to Elian's graduation from elementary
school in July, and said he was proud to have Elian as his friend.
Elian knows that's something extraordinary for a kid. He says he
thinks of Castro "not only as a friend, but also as a father."
If he had a problem, would Elian call Castro up and tell him about
it? "I could," Elian says.
Elian is back in Cardenas, the coastal town where he was born. He
lives in a modest new house with his father, his stepmother and his
two young half-brothers.
He likes being with other people, he told us. It's important to him.
"I don't like being alone. I always like being around others so I can
be calm and not remember what happened," he says.
The bad memories begin with the night his mother and her boyfriend
took him down a path and past mangrove trees to a desolate little
beach just outside Cardenas. There, a few hours before dawn on Nov.
22, 1999, they were to board a boat and set off for America.
They were among 14 people packed into a 17-foot homemade boat. The
only child on board, Elian thought he was going on an adventure.
"They told me we were going fishing and we were going to see my
uncles," Elian says, "and since I was little I didn't understand very
well what that was - to see my uncles."
His uncles lived in Miami, about a 30-hour trip in good weather. But
after the sun set on their first day at sea, the boat drifted into a
storm. Elian says he remembers the moment that the boat turned over.
The child was put on top of an inner tube. A few others were clinging
to the tube, including his mother, who couldn't swim.
"I remember it was daytime, and I saw my mother and a friend," he
says. "Then I saw them fighting. No, no I couldn't do anything. Then
I fell asleep and when I opened my eyes, I didn't see anyone."
On Thanksgiving morning, three days after Elian left Cuba, Sam
Ciancio, a local fisherman, took his cousin on a fishing trip off the
coast of Fort Lauderdale. Two miles off shore, they saw an inner tube
floating in the water with something on top of it. When they drew
closer, they thought it was a hoax. "We seen it looked like a doll
was tied to an inner tube. It looked like a doll. It really did,"
Ciancio says. "We thought it was a joke."
Ciancio and his cousin sailed on. But on their return voyage, 30
minutes later, they had another look. "As we approached the inner
tube, we seen his hand move," Ciancio says. "Next thing you know, I'm
in the water. He grabbed a hold around my neck like that. And I
started screaming - this kid's alive, he's alive, he's alive!"
His mother was not. Her body was never found. But thanks to an inner
tube, Elian had survived, drifting 250 miles. Remarkably, he wasn't
in bad shape. After only a day in a hospital, the child was handed
over to relatives in Miami.
His great-uncles and a cousin wanted to keep him in Miami. His father
wanted him returned to Cuba. So did Fidel Castro.
At the regime's call, hundreds of thousands demonstrated in Havana,
chanting Elian Gonzalez' name. In Miami, anti-Castro protestors
countered by surrounding the house where he and his Miami family
lived.
"I thought there was something bad going on, but I couldn't figure
out what was going on," he says now. "They were not telling me what
was happening, why they were shouting."
Elian told us he hated being cooped up in that small house. He missed
his school, his friends and his father.
He says that his Miami relatives were telling him "bad things" about
his father, and also "telling me to tell him that I did not want to
go back to Cuba." He said he always told them that he wanted to go
back.
Delfin Gonzalez, a great-uncle who cared for Elian in Miami, says he
won't believe anything Elian says in Cuba because he is a prisoner
there. Delfin also denies that Elian was unhappy in Miami.
But when we asked Elian about the best part of his stay there, he
said there was no best part.
So, we asked him what the worst thing was about the time he spent in
Miami. "The nights," he replied.
He says he was having nightmares then, and his uncles "would talk to
me about my mother, and it was better not to remind me of that
because that tormented me, to be remembering all that. I was very
little, and it wasn't good to be talking about that."
The ordeal dragged on for five months.
Then it ended in a flash in the early morning hours of April 22,
2000, as armed federal agents stormed the house to take the boy away.
His relatives had hidden him in a closet. A camera clicked, and a
haunting image was beamed around the world, of a terrified child
screaming.
"At that moment I felt afraid because I thought they were going to
scold me or do something to me," he says.
Elian was carried out of the house, and whisked away by a special
agent. And his world changed again.
"When they said I was going to see my father, at that moment, then I
felt joy that I could get out of that house," he says.
His father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, was waiting for him in Washington.
"We embraced each other. It was a very emotional moment," the father
says. "They had to help me carry the boy off the plane. I couldn't
even hold him in my arms. It was very overwhelming."
Elian's arrival in Cuba seemed to have been designed for a conquering
hero, albeit one who was missing his two front teeth. Little Elian
embarked on a two-month tour of Cuba, all recorded by Castro's
personal cameraman Roberto Chile, who helped us on our story too.
Then, aside from a festive seventh birthday party at his school,
Elian was kept out of the public eye in Cuba until this past April.
On the fifth anniversary of the raid in Miami, Elian gave a patriotic
speech in front of the cameras and in the presence of Castro.
Che Guevara was yesterday, Elian Gonzalez is today. And that's
precisely how Cuba is playing him. In what's called the Museum of
Ideas in Cardenas, he has already been cast in bronze as the
revolutionary hero preparing to throw Superman - in Cuba a symbol of
imperialism - onto the rubbish pile of history.
Ramon Sanchez, a leader of the demonstrations in Miami five years
ago, today says, in effect, "I told you so."
"He is being brainwashed by the Cuban regime. When you see a child
talking in the same exact way that the dictator has talked for 46
years, you know he has been indoctrinated," Sanchez says.
In Miami, the house where he lived with his relatives has been turned
into another kind of museum. Here, Elian is portrayed not as a
revolutionary but as a religious icon.
His clothes are in the closet. His stuffed animals are on the bed.
The spot where he was taken by marshals is marked with a cross.
There's been no attempt to disguise who he is meant to resemble.
Delfin Gonzalez looks after the museum. He still insists Elian did
not want to go back to Cuba.
We asked Elian if he ever wants to see his relatives in Miami again.
He says he does. "Despite everything they did - the way they did it
was wrong - they are my family; they are my uncles."
People say, half jokingly, that Elian may have a future in Cuban
politics. His father is now a member of Cuba's National Assembly.
Elian was elected president of his student body last year. Not a bad
start. He admits he would like to be a member of the National
Assembly, like his dad.
Elian knows that his destiny has been a strange one, and that he will
spend the rest of his life trying to figure it out.
With all this, it's easy to forget that the boy who was the
centerpiece in a historic tug of war is at heart an 11-year-old kid.
So, of course, we had to ask him if he has a girlfriend. He says he
does, but he won't tell us her name. It's a secret.
CMMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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