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Elian and the Establishment
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| Elian and the Establishment | | |||||||||||||
By: | | Edward Zehr | | ||||||||||||
Date: | | 05/15/2000 | | ||||||||||||
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ELIAN AND THE ESTABLISHMENT How The Power Elite Crush A Cuban Kid Lawyers representing the parties in the Elian Gonzalez affair presented arguments to three federal judges of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta last Thursday. The point in contention is Elians's right to request asylum in this country despite his father's apparent determination to return him to communist Cuba. Greg Craig, who is said to represent Juan Gonzalez, the boy's father, insisted that Juan has been free to "openly express his feelings and opinions," although skeptics point out that communist dictator Fidel Castro holds his family as virtual hostages in Cuba and keeps the father and son under close watch at the secluded Wye Plantation in Maryland, with the cooperation of U.S. authorities. Kendall Coffey, an attorney representing the Miami relatives, maintained that, "There is no parent in Cuba who controls what happens to his or her child, and there is no power in this country that can protect this child if he is removed to Cuba." Coffey contended that Elian would be subject to political persecution if he returned to that captive country because his mother and stepfather, both of whom drowned during the escape attempt, are considered to be traitors there. Judge J.L. Edmondson expressed concern about a possible conflict of interest since the child is within the jurisdiction of the U.S. while the father resides "in what I understand our State Department calls a communist, totalitarian state." Attorneys for Elian's Miami family have been denied access to the boy by the Clinton administration which illegally seized him at gun point, without obtaining the necessary court order, and is holding him incommunicado. The government has allowed Cuban officials to see Elian, however, and many suspect that they are attempting to browbeat the boy into withdrawing his request for asylum. Some began to suspect that he has been drugged with tranquilizers after such drugs were found in the possession of his pediatrician. Judge Edmondson made the point that the father's parental rights are not paramount in this case; they may be considered secondary to the best interest of the child. A decision is expected from the court in a matter of weeks as to whether Elian is entitled to an asylum hearing. Greg Craig, the attorney retained ostensibly to represent the father in an elaborate deception set up by the Archer Daniels Midland company, involving the pro-Castro National Council of Churches, was shouted down by the crowd in front of the court house in Atlanta as he attempted to spin his side of the case for the evening news. The only word clearly intelligible to viewers was the crowd's repeated chant, "com-mu-nist." Everybody seems to be thoroughly tired of the Elian story by now, so why doesn't it just go away? Pack the kid off to Castro's captive island and forget about him. Get on with the good life which we more fortunate types so thoughtlessly take as our due. The opinion polls all indicate that the public approve of Clinton, "The Ice Man's," disdain for the rule of law and his cold, unfeeling lack of human decency, even if Janet Reno's Gestapo tactics leave them just a bit uneasy. I suppose that at some future date, when the terrible truth about this shameful episode is finally made known, the public will be able to plead ignorance, much as the Germans did regarding Nazi atrocities. And not without some justification -- the public have been fed a pack of lies regarding the Elian affair by our elite, puppet press. So why do the public continue to follow this story? Most people have long since made up their minds about it, based on the inadequate and often erroneous information provided them by the mainstream press. Others find the matter "too complex" to fathom, despite the fact that the essential issues involved are few and well defined. What is the shouting about? Either the parental rights of the father are paramount or the boy's best interests must take precedence. A FAMILY AFFAIR Given the fact that the child was born out of wedlock, was never supported by the father, and was in the custody of the mother -- with the father's consent -- at the time he was plucked from the sea and brought to these shores, there can be little doubt as to how a domestic family court would rule if they were allowed to decide the case, as Clinton and Reno had originally intended. (Al Gore still supports this approach -- theoretically -- although he does not have the guts to assert his opinion at this stage of the game). Andrew P. Napolitano, a former Superior Court judge who now teaches constitutional law at Seton Hall Law School, recently made the point that "in Florida, as in all states," child custody cases come under the jurisdiction of state family courts, not federal courts. The family courts only concern is ". . . the best interests of the child not the interests of a parent, not the interests of a president, not the interests of a foreign government." As to the question of whether Elian would have a better future as Castro's slave, or as a free citizen of a country where the civil liberties of the individual are guaranteed (for the more privileged, until recently at least), those who have to ask will not understand the issue involved. But supposing that we consider the parental rights of the father to be overriding, as do many Americans in their profound ignorance of the laws of their own country. Will the father, Juan Gonzalez, actually have custody of Elian if and when they return to Cuba? There is no reason to suppose that he will. Under Cuban "law" a child belongs to the state, not to his parents. As Casey Fahy wrote in the New Australian last week: "Elian is now headed for psychological deprogramming in a halfway house in Havana 60 miles from his father's home where, according to Castro's government, he will spend three months or however long it takes. And no one, including his father, will have the right to say anything about it. No one but Fidel Castro." And even if the boy were returned to his father after being thoroughly deprogrammed, he would be taken away again when he is a bit older and returned to the custody of the state, as are all Cuban children. How is it possible to decide the issue on the basis of Juan Gonzalez's "parental rights" when, under Cuban law, he clearly has no such rights? Once again, the decision is a no- brainer. At this point one must conclude that all those Americans who approve of the government's actions in this case are either woefully misinformed, or have made their decision on the basis of considerations other than the merit of the government's case -- presumably personal or partisan considerations. This is the way a great many people deal with political issues -- they speak in political terms, but their motives are mostly personal and selfish. For example, they are concerned about their own parental rights and act out their anxiety using Elian as a surrogate. Typically, they come up with arguments that begin, "How would you feel if your child . . ." Or perhaps they are concerned about the international ramifications of the case. These arguments often begin with, "How would you feel if some foreign government . . ." And then there are those who rigidly maintain that the Clinton administration is always right in everything it does, whether this involves gassing and burning to death dozens of little children at Waco (religious fundies -- won't be missed), or blowing them to bits by the hundreds with cluster bombs in Serbia. (Serbian devils -- serves 'em right). And if the Clinton/Reno regime arranged a scaled-down rerun of the Holocaust, no doubt they would find a way to rationalize that as well. Thus do political considerations twist the minds of nominally "decent" people. This whole affair seemed innocuous enough at its inception. How did we get here from there? At the beginning of the Elian affair, Clinton and Reno gave assurances that custody would be determined "in the usual way," i.e. by a Florida family court. What made them change their minds? Around the end of the year, Fidel Castro, alerted by all the publicity lavished upon young Elian by the American mainstream media, became interested in the matter. At the time he was engaged in cutting a deal with the Archer Daniels Midland company for trade concessions in Cuba worth a half-billion dollars or more. Of course, the Cuban tyrant is not in the habit of bestowing freebies upon bloated plutocrats, so he demanded concessions in return. One of them was Elian Gonzalez, to be returned to Cuba where he could be properly brainwashed and prominently displayed as a propaganda trophy. In Castro's demented way this would be seen as a triumph over the Miami Cuban-Americans who have given him so much grief in the past. But there is another aspect to the story which has been ignored by the mainstream press. Castro is not going to live forever -- he is getting a bit long in the tooth. The Miami expatriates are successful and influential. When Castro departs they are certain to make a bid to reclaim their country. But Castro's lieutenants have their own plans to retain control of Cuba. By using the Elian affair to discredit and demonize the Cuban-American community in Southern Florida, the American mainstream press, which is crawling with closet-Marxists, have thrown in their lot with the totalitarian clique which hopes to retain power in Cuba well into the post-Castro era. The pretense by our quisling newsies that they promote a "relaxation" of conditions in Cuba by propping up Castro's destitute regime with "normalized" relations is just a smokescreen. What they are really attempting to do is keep alive their shabby pipe-dream of world revolution "by other means." If this entails crawling into bed with decadent capitalist exploiters of the working class such as Archer Daniels Midland in order to promote the New World Order, they are quite prepared to do this. THE CORPORATE WELFARE QUEEN I have already outlined the involvement of ADM with the Elian affair in previous columns. It is they who have facilitated the laundering of the money, said to amount to about $150,000, used to pay the fee of fat cat Washington attorney Greg Craig for representing Juan Gonzalez (who is under the control of the Clinton/Castro coalition). Since the agricultural behemoth was a little shy about going public with their support for Castro, understandable in view of their lucrative business arrangement with the Cuban tyrant, they used the left-wing National Council of Churches and the affiliated United Methodist Church as "cut- outs." In other words, these organizations acted as fronts for ADM, collecting funds from "anonymous donors" and passing the money along to Craig, whose law firm, Williams and Connolly has long represented (the envelope please) Archer Daniels Midland. The coziness of this relationship is emphasized by the fact that the recently installed president of the NCC is none other than Andrew Young, a member of the board of ADM and of its public policy committee. But that's not all. ADM's chairman of the board at the time this deal was set up is a 77-year-old millionaire named Dwayne Andreas (who is handing over power to his son). He has long been a big contributor to Barry University located in Miami. His wife was once chairman of that institution. By merest "coincidence," when Elian's grandmothers came to this country (at Castro's behest) it was decided that they should meet at -- Barry University. This turned out not to be a very good idea, although it must have seemed so at the time. Attorney General Janet Reno appointed Sister Jeanne, the president of the university and a longtime friend, to be a mediator in discussions with the grandmothers. At first Sister Jeanne had supported the return of Elian to the custody of his father. But, according to Gerard Jackson, writing in the May 8-14 New Australian, after speaking with the grandmothers, Sister Jeanne "noted their 'intangible fear' and how they were controlled by their Cuban escorts." The sister, a Dominican nun, became convinced that "the grandmothers were acting as Castro mouthpieces" leading her to conclude, "I do not think that child will be able to live without fear if he goes back." It has not been revealed exactly what the grandmothers said to Sister Jeanne, but the Miami Herald reported that one of them told the sister that she wanted to defect. It goes without saying that all of this has been treated as a state secret by the national press. (The Miami Herald is acting as a local newspaper in reporting on this story. The perceptive Net surfer will have noticed by now that one must always go to the local press in order to get the details of stories such as this one. The national press invariably weigh in with politically correct propaganda). What makes the main thrust of this story so obscene is the manner in which the way has been greased with corporate pork. One can but marvel at the cheesy, amateurish attempt by Archer Daniels Midland to conceal the role they played in this scam, while tracking their big, muddy footprints all over the scene. Whoever planned this caper should be walking the plank about now. Of course, our incomparable "free" press, ever eager to play the part of quisling to the power elite, have done their best to conceal the role of corporate greed in this affair. We should remember this the next time they pontificate on the need for campaign finance reform. The only "reform" that interests the mainstream media is that which would place absolute control over the flow of information into their own greedy hands. ADM has long been in contention for the title of the nation's number-one corporate welfare queen. Thus, it is none too surprising that they have contributed more than $3 million to the two major political parties since 1988. According to an article that appeared in the Baltimore Sun on July 19, 1998, the contributions represent insurance "to protect the huge government subsidy for a corn-based fuel additive called ethanol," no matter who wins the elections. "ADM is the nation's largest producer of ethanol." The payoff was described by the Cato Institute which depicted ADM as "the most prominent recipient of corporate welfare in recent U.S. history. At least 43 percent of ADM's annual profits are from products heavily subsidized or protected by the American government." The company's subsidized ethanol profits just go on and on, despite their 1996 guilty plea for price fixing that resulted in ADM paying the largest fine ever imposed in a federal anti-trust case. And this even though numerous studies show that ethanol does little or nothing to diminish pollution or reduce our reliance on foreign oil imports. The company's 54-cent-per- gallon ethanol tax credit is scheduled to run through 2007. ADM produces 60 percent of all the ethanol sold in the country. The General Accounting Office estimates that the ethanol subsidy has already cost taxpayers more than $7 billion since 1979. Not a bad return on a $3 million "investment." Dan Carney, a freelance writer based in Washington, DC, observed that, "No other subsidy in the federal government's box of goodies is so concentrated in the hands of a single company." The Stop Corporate Welfare Coalition headed by three congressmen, House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich, Republican Ed Royce and Democrat Rob Andrews has called for the elimination of 12 corporate welfare programs, designated "The Dirty Dozen," but ADM's ethanol subsidy is not on their list, even though the company is the country's number one recipient of corporate welfare. As Arianna Huffington explained, "ADM's chairman, Dwayne Andreas, is the third rail of corporate welfare reform: Touch him and you die." Archer Daniels Midland is the largest producer of food and agricultural products in the country. It's products include grain, margarine, and alcohol, none of which are sold under the company's logo. They were big contributors to the 1992 campaign of George Bush. In June of 1994, Bill Clinton received a campaign contribution of $100,000 from ADM and a few days later came up with a policy which "mandated that 30 percent of the gasoline sold in the nation's most polluted cities contain ethanol products by 1996," according to Carney. The timing was just another "coincidence" Andreas explained. (The mandate was later overturned by a federal court). Dwayne Andreas' main political champion was Bob Dole, an ardent booster of ethanol. Andreas often vacationed with his buddy Bob, and even helped him acquire a condo at the Sea-View Hotel which he owned in Bal Harbour, Florida. Carney quotes Andreas' in an article titled "Dwayne's World," on the subject of capitalism, which Andreas considers to be an illusion: "There isn't one grain of anything in the world that is sold in a free market. Not one! The only place you see a free market is in the speeches of politicians. People who are not in the Midwest do not understand that this is a socialist country." Carney believes that Andreas is correct. "Agriculture is the last industry where the U.S. government so routinely sets prices and determines production levels, a complex arena in which doing business often has more to do with influencing legislation than with responding to supply and demand. Prospering in this environment is ADM's forte," he writes. Andreas describes ADM as the largest agricultural company in the world, producing 35 percent of the bread in this country, as well as much of the margarine, cooking oil sold under brand names such as Crisco and Mazola. ADM also produces ingredients used in products such as Nabisco Cheese Nips, Life cereal, and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. It makes the corn sweetener used in Coca Cola. And yet the company is still run as a family business, with four family members serving as senior executives in the company. The vice president of the company, Howard Buffett, is the son of the investment wizard Warren Buffett. Warren was made chairman of the finance committee at the Washington Post in 1974 and is credited with turning that newspaper into an extremely profitable business enterprise. His influence on publisher Kay Graham was noted by Carol Felsenthal in her book "Power and Privilege At the Post." Felsenthal quotes Graham as saying, "I've had two great professors, one is Warren Buffett and the other is experience." In case you are still wondering why the nation's number one corporate welfare queen gets a pass from a news media that rails against corporate welfare and promotes campaign finance reform, ADM is family. Dwayne Andreas has been extremely generous to politicians of both parties. According to Richard Nixon's former secretary, Rose Mary Woods, he handed Nixon an unmarked envelope containing $100,000 in $100 bills during a visit to the White House in 1972. Could this sort of even-handed generosity have influenced GOP senators to "postpone" their investigation of Janet Reno's raid on the home of Elian's Miami relatives? The trail leading from Greg Craig back to ADM would be difficult for them to ignore. Carney writes that ADM is presently seeking "greener pastures" abroad. As Al Gore recently told a group of "Future Farmers of America," there is no future for farmers in America. In time all of our food will be imported from foreign countries. ADM is not about to be left behind as the New World Order takes off. The company now has operations in every one of the former Warsaw Pact countries of Eastern Europe and is selling increasing quantities of food to China. ADM's trade agreement with Castro is part of this developing relationship with the NWO. THE CHURCH LADY Of all the establishment figures involved in the Elian affair, none have been more active than Joan Brown Campbell, the retiring secretary general of the National Council of Churches. The Elian affair is Campbell's last hurrah. Her successor appointed her to act as point person in the organization's frenetic campaign to return Elian to the outstretched arms of Fidel. (Campbell has strong ties with the Cuban tyrant). Campbell made a trip to Cuba to meet with Juan Gonzalez under the watchful eyes of his keepers, then returned to this country to hold a series of press conferences, following which she returned to Cuba to collect Elian's grandmothers and fly them here in a chartered jet. There followed another spate of media events, a meeting with Janet Reno, and another meeting with members of Congress who are sympatico with Castro and want little Elian returned to him rapidamente. All of this is just routine for the church lady who has devoted her life to spreading the Gospel according to Marx, but her activities have had a noticeable effect on public opinion. For example, Campbell is the one who started the spin critical of Elian's mother for risking his life in a hazardous attempt to flee (communist tyranny in) Cuba. This line was picked up and amplified by our quisling press, ever eager to strike a sneaky blow for Fidel. It goes without saying that the newsies never mention the possibility that Elian's relatives might be the least bit circumspect about expressing their true feelings to a left- wing Castro collaborator, or to left-leaning journalists who could be expected to tattle on them at the first opportunity. Writing in the newsletter "Heterodoxy," Marc Tooley notes that: "For the last nine years Campbell has been defending Castro and the world's dwindling number of other communist despots, creating dangerous myths about racial violence, lobbying for socialized medicine, fighting for gun control, touting gay and abortion rights, supporting campaign-finance 'reform,' opposing the U.S. war and subsequent sanctions against Iraq's Saddam Hussein, condemning organized school prayer, defending President Clinton in the wake of sexual scandal, and ignoring the plight of persecuted Christians around the world." How's that for advancing a "Christian" agenda? Is it surprising that the NCC has become such an embarrassment to its member denominations that even the liberals among them have begun to suggest that the organization has outlived its usefulness? The National Council of Churches was founded in 1950 for the purpose of promoting Christian unity. Thanks to Campbell's incompetence as a leader the organization is now in disarray and deeply in debt. The NCC raised $9.1 million for its "Burned Church Fund" during Bill Clinton's campaign of "church burning" demagoguery, contrived to get out the African-American vote in 1996. (The NCC staunchly supports separation of church and state so they don't have to worry about the IRS pulling their tax exemption as they have for more conservative religious organizations). But now the money has all been used up and it turns out that only $6.4 million was spent on church construction -- the rest went into "overhead" and attacking the "root causes" of the problem, or whatever. Campbell commented on the NCC's financial problems, saying that when the mainline churches catch cold, the NCC gets pneumonia. In other words, she can't be blamed. It's all the fault of those hate-crazed Christians who are so beastly to Bill Clinton. When Campbell, a former 1960's activist, took over the NCC, she seemed eager to avoid the organization's past mistakes of cozying up to communist governments and their collaborators in this country. As late as 1993 she said: "We did not understand the depth of the suffering of Christians under Communism. And we failed to really cry out against the communist oppression. I do give credit to people who called for that and did not get a response, at least from us." She got that right, at least. So why is Campbell now doing her level best to send a six-year-old kid back to communist tyranny? Could it be that she did not mean a single word she said in her 1993 apologia? If you will recall, the Soviet Union had only just collapsed at the time. It probably seemed appropriate to make some sort of conciliatory statement seeing that her side had lost. But now, with Castro's time growing short and the future of his captive nation up for grabs, Campbell seems determined to do her bit to ensure continued communist control of Cuba, ignoring once again those who "cry out against the communist oppression." Campbell attempts to justify her campaign to send Elian back to Castro by saying that it's all about "family values," a somewhat paradoxical position considering that her marriage failed because of her commitment to trendy social causes. (Campbell is the mother of three children). The problem is, her idea of "family values" entails placing a child with an abusive father who abandoned him and sending him to an oppressive environment where he will be denied the basic liberties that people such as Campbell take for granted. Would she advocate doing that to a child residing in this country? I would hope not. So why is it all right to do it to Elian? Does this progressive advocate of the social gospel perhaps see him as a second-class human being? Could this possibly have something to do with his ethnic background? Pardon my skepticism, but I can't help notice that people who protest too much about "bigotry" are often the most intolerant of all. Of course they are a lot more sneaky about it than the average bigot. The National Council of Churches is a thoroughly discredited organization whose ties to Marxist revolutionary groups were exposed back in the 1980s. Campbell's predecessor felt impelled to resign when the Greek Orthodox Church finally had enough and threatened to leave the NCC. No doubt this accounts in part for Campbell's conciliatory statements at the time she assumed leadership of the organization. The NCC has avoided taking an official position on issues such as abortion and homosexuality in order to avoid alienating the Eastern Orthodox denominations, but Campbell, in keeping with her devotion to "family values," is a strong advocate of both. After Clinton was elected president in 1992, NCC delegations were frequently seen visiting the White House. Campbell was feted at state dinners for foreign heads of state and taken on flights aboard Air Force One. When the GOP regained control of Congress in 1994, Campbell led a delegation to the White House to urge Clinton to stand firm against the rascally Republicans. She requested that church members wear purple ribbons during Holy Week (for the benefit of heathens who may read this, that's the week before Easter Sunday) "to symbolize opposition to the Contract with America." Of course Campbell was outraged when George W. Bush named Jesus Christ as the philosopher who has most influenced him. Why, hasn't he ever heard of separation of church and state? Note to conservative religious organizations: do not try any of the tricks in Campbell's repertoire, else your tax exemption will be toast. Asked to explain the double standard as it applies to her organization and the conservative Christian Coalition, Campbell replied, "We're a religious organization, and it is not. They are blatantly political [and] partisan." (Presumably she was able to say this with a straight face). See, the religious right is attempting to "manipulate religious leaders and people of faith and good will." Of course the NCC would never do anything like that. The spinning of the Elian story by the mainstream media has been extremely cynical and deliberately misleading. In truth, Elian is being used as a burnt offering to appease the communist tyrant Castro and thereby facilitate a sleazy trade agreement that will further enrich the enterprise of a manipulative tycoon of dubious ethics who makes a practice of buying politicians by the dozen. Consider the elements of the story as it actually unfolded. First Elian is rescued from an inner tube in the Florida Straits and brought to these shores. The INS place him in the home of his Florida relatives, where he is well cared for. At about that time Dwayne Andrews of Archer Daniels Midland is attempting to close a trade agreement with the Cuban tyrant Fidel Castro. The story of little Elian, which is getting considerable play by the American media, attracts Castro's attention. The tyrant decides that Elian would make a nice propaganda trophy so he has the father, who had previously abandoned the child, demand custody. President Clinton tells the press that the matter should be settled by a family court in Florida. But then Dwayne, presumably under pressure from Castro, arranges for the NCC, a left-wing "religious" group friendly to Fidel to set up a slush fund using the United Methodist Church (whose leaders also tilt left) as a front. The identity of the "donors" is kept secret and the slush fund is used to hire Washington lawyer Greg Craig to represent the father (who is controlled by Castro). Craig just happens to be a friend of Bill Clinton, and is one of the lawyers who represented him during his impeachment trial in the Senate. Not only does he represent the father, he appears to have Clinton's authorization to call the shots for the entire operation. Clinton reverses his earlier opinion and says that Elian should be placed in the custody of his father. The real reason for the president's reversal of his views in the matter remains the subject of speculation. The link between ADM and the NCC is Andrew Young who is an ADM board member as well as the recently appointed president of the NCC. When the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals denies the federal government authorization to place Elian in the father's custody, Clinton ignores the court and orders the attorney general to illegally seize the boy by force. Elian is taken first to a military base, then to the secluded Wye Plantation where he is held incommunicado and visited by a number of Cuban specialists, psychiatrists and doctors who allegedly dose him with tranquilizers to control the boy and make him appear content. Elian's father is kept under close supervision by his Cuban communist keepers and allowed to see only visitors friendly to the Castro regime. Why was the NCC picked to play a key role in this police state power play? Tooley opines that "Campbell earned the role Castro allowed her to play in the Elian Gonzalez affair by her long praise of Cuba for having made a 'priority of caring for the poor.'" Campbell publicly apologized to a crowd of 100,000 Cubans last year for the dastardly way this country has treated poor, blameless Fidel and his captives: "We ask you to forgive the suffering that has come to you by the actions of the United States. It is on behalf of Jesus the liberator that we work against this embargo." So there you have it, folks, Cuba's economic problems are all our fault. The sadistic, torturing, murdering tyrant Castro, whose despotism and crackpot Soviet-style economic policies transformed Cuba from the most prosperous country in Latin America into one of the poorest economic basket cases in the region, is portrayed as the victim by this useful idiot who has made a career of perverting religion to promote the interests of atheist despots. As for our glorious, heroic "free" press, one gets the impression that they have never even heard of Archer Daniels Midland and consider the National Council of Churches to be an authentic religious organization rather than the pro-Castro, left-wing extremist front group it so obviously is. Of course ADM has a way of getting around the working stiffs of the mainstream press to the boys in the back office. Did you ever wonder why a company that sells nothing under its own name finds it useful to sponsor the PBS News Hour? No doubt ADM's family tie with the Washington Post has been useful as well. The Clinton administration has long since expressed its appreciation to that bastion of intellectual integrity by slipping into the GATT enabling legislation a regulatory concession said to be worth a nine-figure sum to the Post's parent corporation. And Ricky Kaplan, the president of CNN News, thinks the world of Clinton, who puts him up in the Lincoln Bedroom during his frequent visits to the White House. One of Kaplan's first acts when he took over at CNN was to admonish the staff to stop beating up on Bill. But then, Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, has his favorites as well -- he and Fidel are golf buddies. It's the old-boy network, folks. It just isn't socially acceptable to bad-mouth one's bosom-buddies. Not that the "working" press are all that inclined to find fault with Fidel, or expose the interlocking directorate of his pals within the American establishment. Their motivation (apart from the incentive of staying employed) appears to be ideological. Having been inculcated at J-school with the tenets of the One True Faith (doctrinaire knee-jerk liberalism), continually reinforced by the vacuous PC-prattle of their pretentious peers, these worthies are disinclined to challenge the conventional wisdom. THE REIGN OF DECEIT Jean-Francois Revel, the former editor of the French news magazine "L'Express," writes in his book "The Flight From Truth," that "the noncommunist Left has in no wise corrected its partiality in favor of totalitarian Marxist regimes. Its unilateral silence can doubtless be explained as being due more to a kind of intellectual paralysis than to a deliberate choice. . . For such leftists, if only through mental inertia, Castro remains on the good side of the dividing line, while Valladares had placed himself on the bad side, even if his only crime was to have been thrown into prison by the Cuban dictator." Armando Valladares is a Cuban poet who was imprisoned for twenty-two years by the savage Castro regime under conditions that recall the horrors of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. In April 1986 a conference organized by Valladares on behalf of Resistance International was held at the Hotel Lutetia in Paris. According to Revel, "a number of former political prisoners from Cuba testified about the tortures and the brutal hardships they had been made to endure." Among the two hundred or so spectators were about a dozen journalists. Revel notes that they "were in no hurry to use the 'sacred right of information' that they brandish with such insistence when other matters are being discussed." Matters such as human rights violations that could be used to advance the agenda of the left, that is. The most notable reaction to this conference was "a campaign of defamation and calumnies launched against Valladares." The Greek newspaper Pontiki referred to him as a "fascist, an assassin, a torturer, a humanoid, a phony poet fabricated out of nothing by the CIA." The Cuban and Soviet intelligence agencies phonied up some documents which supposedly demonstrate that the Cuban poet had once worked as an agent for the secret police under the former dictator Batista. The forgeries were not very convincing, the picture on the fake ID card was far too recent -- Valladares was much younger in the Batista days than the photograph of him indicates. The forgers also made the mistake of giving his height in metric units -- Cubans still used feet and inches in Batista's time. Does any of this sound familiar? Recall Joan Brown Campbell's assertion that it was Elian's mother who placed him in danger by seeking freedom, not Castro for trying to keep him enslaved. Consider the New York Times' trashing of "El Pescador," the fisherman Donato Dalrymple, who rescued Elian from the sea and was holding him when Reno's masked thugs abducted the child at gunpoint from the Gonzalez residence. Ponder the spiteful, thinly-veiled ethnic bigotry with which the mainstream media have attempted to discredit the Cuban-American community. (This is a major agenda of the power-elite -- Cuban-American opposition to normalization of trade relations interferes with their plans to profit from commerce with Cuba. Small wonder that their mainstream media puppets labor so diligently to advance this agenda). Smearing their opponents has long been a fundamental tactic of the political left. The corrupt Clinton regime has raised it to an art form. Now consider the harsh reality our quisling press is too cowardly and deceitful to confront. Valladares writes in his book "Against All Hope": "On the Island they began to build three huge concentration camps. One of them was on a farm called La Reforma, another on a farm called Mella, and the third, in the south part of the Island, in the Valley of the Indians (Valle de los Indios)." The Cuban Communist Party was very practical in their handling of political prisoners. Their approach recalls the slogan emblazoned over the main gate at Auschwitz: "Arbeit macht frei." (Work makes [you] free). Valladares explains the scheme: "The concentration camps were located in very strategic places from the point of view of forced labor, in areas where the most work was needed. That way prisoners didn't have to be transported across the Island. But in their plans the Party didn't take into consideration the fierce resistance of the prisoners, who were determined not to enter the Rehabilitation Program. The prisoners had decided that the government would not have prisoners who worked like slaves." The communists reacted with characteristic brutality. The heads of the work gangs "were given free rein to kill prisoners in each gang." Valladares describes the consequences: "They were always trying to make us rebel so they'd have an excuse to kill us. If prisoners protested about some act of aggression, the escorts in the cordon might simply open fire. Eddy Alvarez and Danny Crespo, in block 31, were killed just that way." And what was the response of the "international community" to these horrors? "Every effort to get the Commission on Human Rights of the United Nations even to consider our denunciation was fruitless. We sent that organization detailed information about the tortures, murders. . . but it did nothing." The prisoners had no better luck with the International Red Cross. "Talking to it about violations of human rights in Cuba was like talking to a post; it refused to listen. Cuban political prisoners simply did not exist. Why get upset about them?" It was only years later, Valladares tells us, that the Red Cross finally began to believe the stories told them by Cuban prisoners. Now the United Nations and its member nations know all about "the horrors of the Cuban jails, but they don't dare condemn Cuba in their annual assemblies." The brutality continues even to this day. Castro's apologists continue to ignore it. Many of them are the very same people who used to pontificate so sanctimoniously about the horrors of the Nazi regime under Adolf Hitler. The Germans, they told us, were guilty of the "Crime of Silence." I once heard the German take on this at an office party in the Munich firm where I worked at the time. A drunken Brit, referring to the horrors of the Nazi regime, asked my German boss, "How could you allow such things to happen? Why didn't you do something about it?" Patiently, as though explaining the facts of life to a 10-year- old, the boss replied, "We didn't do anything about it because we didn't wish to be tortured and shot. Why didn't YOU do something about it?" So there you are. Did the Brit, who had never had the privilege of living in a police state, get the point? I don't think so. And neither do most of us. Edward Zehr can be reached at ezehr@capaccess.org Published in the May. 15, 2000 issue of The Washington Weekly Copyright 2000 The Washington Weekly. | | | ||||||||||||
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