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Elian Gonzalez: Get well, Fidel 23/10/2004 22:06 - (SA) Havana - Shipwrecked Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez, who reached US shores and triggered an international custody battle, on Saturday wished President Fidel Castro a speedy recovery from a broken knee. "Dear Commander," as Castro is known, "I want you to get well and to take care of your sick knee," wrote Elian, now 10. "I liked your message to the people and my family... and I were happy to know that you are better," said the boy's letter, which appeared in the official Cuban Communist Party newspaper Granma. "Get better soon....

SEN. KERRY: Now, you know, here in Washington, if Jay Leno isn't working for you, you can switch quickly over to -- I think it's Channel 5 -- and pick up cops running around with people at night, you know, intruding into homes, arresting, people crying, all these kinds of things that seem to titillate. Why are our cops being allowed to do that? I mean, there is an amazing amount of cooperation in the making of that. Why, if it is not good, are they permitted to allow these people to follow them into the homes and everywhere else?...

Reprinted from NewsMax.com Saturday, Sept. 25, 2004 2:07 p.m. EDTKerry Taps Controversial Elian Attorney The Elian Gonzalez controversy was the single most critical factor giving George Bush the presidency in 2000. It may prove to be a critical factor this year as well – thanks to John Kerry who just tapped a key figure in the Elian controversy for his campaign. Kerry must have forgotten that after the Elian brouhaha record numbers of Cuban Americans in Florida voted against Al Gore – ceding the closely contested Florida race – and the presidency to George Bush. The Miami Herald reported Saturday...

Calling the federal agents who seized Elián González ''armed thugs,'' the campaign of Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mel Martinez chided Democratic opponent Betty Castor on Friday for campaigning with the U.S. attorney general who sent the shipwrecked boy back to Cuba four years ago. The language provoked outrage from Castor's campaign and from the national union that represented the immigration officers who took Elián from his Miami relatives and returned him to his father at the behest of then-Attorney General Janet Reno. ''Those were law enforcement officers doing their jobs, risking their lives,'' Castor spokesman Dan McLaughlin said of the...

When John Kerry prepares for his first presidential debate at the University of Miami, he'll have a sparring partner with at least a passing familiarity with Miami politics: Gregory Craig, the influential Democratic lawyer who represented Elián González's father during the custody battle over the Cuban boy. Craig, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney who earned the ire of much of Miami's Cuban-American exile community for his representation of Juan Miguel González, will play President Bush as Kerry preps for the debate scheduled for Thursday. Craig served as a top foreign policy advisor to Sen. Edward Kennedy and a senior aide to...

18:43 PDT MIAMI (AP) -- A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit claiming federal agents used excessive force in an armed raid to seize Elian Gonzalez at the home of his Miami relatives four years ago. An order issued Monday by U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke concluded the six agents who conducted the raid were legally immune to the lawsuit, and she found no constitutional violations. "We're pleased with the judge's decision," said Charles Miller, a Washington spokesman with the Department of Justice. [...] "We are shocked and disappointed by the court's decision," Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch,...

[I]n Dallas, plans are afoot to screen a documentary next month about a much-neglected backstory: the media portrayal of Cuban-Americans during the Elian affair. The film is Agustín Blazquez's "Covering Cuba 3: Elian." Though it has been out since last year, this summer Mr. Blázquez created a minor stir when he accused the federally subsidized American Film Institute of "political bias" for turning down his film for its AFI Silver Theater in Maryland.... Plainly "Covering Cuba 3" has all the hallmarks of its low-budget genre: simple graphics, one-on-one interviews, a cast of demons (especially then-Attorney General Janet Reno, depicted as...

• Excerpts from an open letter Moore sent to Elián González on March 31, 2000, available at www.michaelmoore.com: ``You are being told that your mother died trying to bring you to freedom. I am so sorry to have to tell you, that's not true. The Cuban court granted your father custody of you, and your mother decided to kidnap you. She placed your life in horrible jeopardy by putting you in a leaky, overcrowded raft that eventually sank, killing everyone except you and two others. . . . The worst that could be said is that, in Cuba, you were...

4 years after return to Cuba, Elian a normal schoolboy BY MAKI BECKER New York Daily News Posted on Sat, Jul. 31, 2004 NEW YORK - (KRT) - Elian Gonzalez, now 10, hits the books in Cardenas, Cuba, where he lives with his father. Four years after little Elian Gonzalez was plucked from the seas off Florida's coast and sparked an international custody battle, the young boy is leading a sheltered and almost normal life back in Cuba. Elian lives with his father in their hometown of Cardenas and he still sports the same impish grin that captivated the world...

SECOND LETTER TO Michael Jeck Mjeck@afi.com *** Please write to this individual *** Mr. Jeck decided to show "Fahrenheit 9/11" but rejected ABIP "COVERING CUBA 3: Elian calling it "controversial". July 25, 2004 American Film Institute Dear Mr. Jeck: According to most critics, Moore's film is not only controversial, but it is filled with lies; makes a mockery of our capitalist and democratic system and most controversial of it all, it appeals to our worst enemies. So much for this American laughing on his way to the Bank while soldiers are dying to protect his rights! Still, Mr. Moore has...

Remember Elian Gonzales? His deportation to Cuba was probably the "tipping point" that gave Republicans control of the White House in the 2000 elections, as Cuban-Americans who had previously voted for Clinton switched sides or stayed home. Result: Florida was lost to the Democrats, and George Bush entered the White House. The issue was so emotional, that memories might affect the outcome of this year's Presidential contest. Now Agustin Blazquez says the American Film Institute is blacklisting his new documentary film Covering Cuba 3: Elian , after a successful showing at the Miami Film Festival. Blazquez produced and directed o...

LITTLE ROCK (AP) -- A film that claims to expose "the 10-year campaign to destroy Bill Clinton" is scheduled for its first public screening June 15 in Little Rock. "The Hunting of the President," a 90-minute documentary that re-creates interviews for the New York Times best-selling book by the same name, has already played at four film festivals and will premiere by invitation only in New York on June 9. The movie has a June 11 release date. But the first public showing, at $50 a ticket, will be at a 1,500-seat ballroom at the Statehouse Convention Center in Little...

There can be no doubt that we live in one of the most tumultuous political climates of the nation's history, a climate where politicians can be toppled on a whim, election results disputed in the country's highest courts, and governors unceremoniously recalled. It's enough to leave even the most cynical voter asking, how did this happen? Harry Thomason and Nickolas Perry's incendiary documentary, based on the best-selling book by Gene Lyons and Joe Conason, offers a glimpse at the genesis of these partisan vendettas and explores the myths and truths behind the nearly 10-year campaign to systematically destroy the political...

John Kerry doesn't just flip-flop in his desperate attempt to be all things to all voters; he even makes things up. In an article Sunday in the Miami Herald that an alert reader just sent us, the soft-on-communism Washington waffler, pandering for the prized Cuban-American vote in crucial Florida, claimed: "I'm pretty tough on Castro, because I think he's running one of the last vestiges of a Stalinist secret police government in the world." The Herald reported: "Then, reaching back eight years to one of the more significant efforts to toughen sanctions on the communist island, Kerry volunteered: 'And I...

MIAMI - The estranged relatives of Elián González claimed in a federal lawsuit Tuesday that six federal agents used excessive force in an armed raid on their home to seize the boy and return him to Cuba. Elián's cousin, great-uncle and his wife claim the armed officers broke down the front door unannounced, sprayed irritating gas, held people at gunpoint and shouted obscenities at sleepy, unarmed relatives, supporters and news media in the pre-dawn raid in April 2000. "There was no sort of resistance," said Ed Farres, an attorney for Judicial Watch, a Washington-based legal watchdog group representing the family....

MIAMI -- The estranged relatives of Elian Gonzalez claimed in a federal lawsuit Tuesday that six federal agents used excessive force in an armed raid on their home to seize the boy and return him to Cuba. Elian's cousin, great-uncle and his wife claim the armed officers broke down the front door unannounced, sprayed irritating gas, held people at gunpoint and shouted obscenities at sleepy, unarmed relatives, supporters and news media in the pre-dawn raid in April 2000. ``There was no sort of resistance,'' family attorney Ed Farres said. The agents ``were told, 'Put your guns down. You can take...

Elian Gonzalez, who floated in Florida's waters four years ago on Thanksgiving, was 10 years old yesterday. The media spectacle that surrounded his arrival and departure has given way to obscurity; the world has forgotten Elian. Those who ignore Elian's legacy may be driven by guilt: Most Americans opposed granting him asylum in America and their complete repudiation of the Statue of Liberty's Emma Lazarus poem was accompanied by unrelenting assurances that he would live like he owned a sugar plantation (if ownership were allowed in communist Cuba) or that he would become a media celebrity (if media were allowed)....

President Fidel Castro insisted Friday that his socialist system will survive him, as he celebrated the 10th birthday of Elian Gonzalez - the shipwrecked boy who was the center of a fierce international custody battle. Castro characterized as "idiots" those who believe that socialist rule on the island will end with his death. "This revolution does not depend on one individual, or two, or three," Castro declared in a speech of more than two hours at a birthday celebration in the courtyard of Elian's school in the child's hometown of Cardenas, about 85 miles east of Havana. Speaking about a...

OK...so Jacko, the King of Strange is on the hot seat again. There are lots of "I heard that..." comments flying around concerning what happened in the 1993 Jordan Chandler case, this old GQ article covers some ground that most never were aware of.

Former Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, Cuban boy Elian Gonzales and Reverend Lucius Walker of the U.S. sit together during a political rally at the former Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba, July 26, 2003. Today is the 50th anniversary of the assault on the military compound led by Fidel Castro that launched the revolution. REUTERS/Claudia Daut