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Posted on 02/11/2002 11:49:23 AM PST by Luis Gonzalez
HAVANA (AP) - The U.S. group Freedom Forum presented shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez with its Free Spirit Award Friday in a ceremony attended by the boy's family and a few Cuban officials.
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Elian, 8, looked a bit awed as he receive the metal sculpture — a stylized globe with what appears to be a flame rising out of the top, representing a free spirit.
"Besides being able to survive at sea, our Free Spirit Award committee said that through his ordeal Elian was able to come back and laugh no matter how many grown-ups were tugging at him," said Neuharth.
"This is from the United States to you and to the people of Cuba," Neuharth told the boy. "Everybody in the United States loves you."
Elian was just 5 when he was found lashed to an inner tube as he floated at sea off the Florida coast around Thanksgiving 1999. He was one of three people who survived when their boat capsized as it traveled from Cuba to the United States. Elian's mother and 10 others perished in the waves.
The child was temporarily placed with his relatives in Miami, setting off a seven-month international child custody battle between family members on both sides of the Florida Straits. After a battle that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) and an armed raid to seize the child from his Florida family, Elian and his father returned to Cuba in late June 2000.
"His dad told me he is doing extremely well and that Elian sometimes talks about being a doctor, sometimes talks about being a teacher, but mostly talks about being an astronaut," Neuharth said. "Among his interests have been baseball and now, karate. He has a purple belt."
The Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan foundation dedicated to free press and free speech, presents the award annually along with $1 million. In Elian's case, the money could not be awarded because of the 40-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba. Instead, it will go to help help needy refugee children living in the United States, Neuharth said.
Elian's award, announced in 2000, could not be presented until now because of delays by the U.S. government in granting a license to Neuharth and other Freedom Forum for the trip to Cuba. "The Cuban government immediately said we could come, but our own government fooled around for another year and a half," Neuharth said.
Previous Free Spirit Award recipients include Terry Anderson, the former chief Middle East correspondent for The Associated Press who was held hostage in Lebanon for nearly seven years, and former Supreme Court Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall.
"Everybody in the United States loves you."
Liar
Is it just me? Or is this just wrong?
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| Cuban shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez receives the Free Spirit Award from Al Neuharth, founder of USA Today and the Freedom Forum, left, Friday Feb. 8, 2002 in Havana, Cuba. The private ceremony was attended by Elian's family and a few Cuban officials. At right is Charles Overby, chairman and executive officer of Freedom Forum.(AP Photo/Jose Goitia) |
Diversity Institute
01.01.01
When it is operational in 2002, this institute adjacent to the First Amendment Center on the Vanderbilt University campus in Nashville, Tenn., will develop a new pool of journalists of color.
Many of the attendees will be nominated and later hired by their local newspapers. They will undergo 12 weeks of intensive training in journalism that will prepare them to fill newsroom positions immediately.
This state-of-the-art facility is expected to graduate 75-80 new newspaper journalists of color each year.
I guess white people need not apply.
Those two adult bastards in the picture are celebrating Elian's return to slavery. Had Elian not been dragged back to Cuba, they never would have given him that award.
Why can't Elian come over here and pick up his $1 million?
On second thought, Elian isn't FREE to do that, is he?
czar janthrax drano
and stalin adolf clamptons---
the oval office hill-billies---
537 vote!!
Thank God--Elian---thank freedom!
Clintom shook hands with the mother of all tyrants--infidel castro and slept/had orgies with the devil reno666!
Built a bridge for the devils to stroll into America!
"The Freedom Forum is a nonpartisan foundation dedicated to free press, free speech and free spirit for all people.
The foundation focuses on three main priorities: the Newseum, First Amendment freedoms and newsroom diversity."
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Always the "nonpartisan!" Just like the "nonpartisan" Cuba Policy Foundation headed by Sally Grooms Cowal aka Elian's D.C. keeper "Until I went to Cuba this last time, I was always ambivalent about whether the Cubans really welcomed any change" in American policy, said Sally Grooms Cowal, head of the reform-minded Cuba Policy Foundation, which led a U.S. congressional delegation to the island earlier this month.--- [Plus good LINKS]
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Media Research Center's in depth study using the media's own words: Back to the "Peaceable" Paradise: Media Soldiers for the Seizure of Elian
Exactly! What a joke.
I'll stand like Horatius.
They'll never cross.
Strange, I must have missed something. Does anyone here remember Elian laughing when Reno's thugs dragged him off screaming into the night? I sure don't.
It's telling that this organization of scumbags doesn't recognize that moment of "freedom" for this child that they pretend to honor, yet in fact are legitimizing those who needlessly tramatized him in that despicable incident, and who enslave him to this day.
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