(GREEK NEWS AGENDA) Papoulias Inaugurates OSCE Meeting

President of the Republic Karolos Papoulias inaugurated yesterday the 17th Ministerial Council of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), taking place in Athens (1-2/12).
Papoulias welcomed delegates from the OSCE’ s 56 member states and described the international meeting as “an important political event and an opportunity to strengthen peaceful cooperation and promote the common goals of the member states, in order to reach tangible and substantive conclusions.”

Papandreou’ s Address

The Corfu Process needs to be taken a step further in order to meet the challenges to European security in the 21st century, OSCE chairman-in-office, Greece’s Prime minister and Foreign minister George Papandreou stressed, addressing the first plenary session of the organisation’s 17th ministerial council.
“We have to agree on important decisions in the next two days to strengthen co-operative security across the OSCE area, to shape the work of our organization, and to create a strong foundation for Kazakhstan to build upon as it assumes the OSCE Chairmanship on January 1,” Papandreou said.
He also expressed his hope that a constructive spirit will prevail during the two-day deliberations of the meeting.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Speech of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Greece Papandreou, to the 1st Plenary session of the 17th OSCE Ministerial Council
See also Project Syndicate: Renewing Europe’s Security Dialogue by George Papandreou

Sideline Meetings

On the sidelines of the OSCE ministerial council, Papandreou met with the foreign ministers of Finland, Alexander Stubb and Kazakhstan, Kanat Saudabayev, who together form the current OSCE “troika.”
Alternate foreign minister Dimitris Droutsas had a meeting with FYROM’s FM Antonio Milososki while the premier is scheduled to meet today with the foreign ministers of Russia and Turkey, Sergei Lavrov and Ahmet Davutoglou respectively.
At the end of the first day of meetings, the Greek OSCE chairmanship hosted a formal reception for the visiting diplomatic delegations at the Acropolis Museum.

December 1, 2009

A recent Rasmussen poll reports that 71% of American voters are angry with the current policies of the federal government.

Anger is a warning sign that something is wrong and the United States of America is an angry nation.

The ire of the American voter should be sending a message to President Obama’s Administration and the members of the United States Congress.

Many people are uncomfortable-intimidated with the expression of anger or they just do not understand its relevance in life.

Anger is what occurs when we sense something has gone wrong and the greater the wrong-the greater the anger.

Anger can be unpleasant and uncomfortable and unsettling, that is of necessity even vital to alert us to wrong doing and danger.  It moves us to action against these wrongs and dangers in this case against the wrongs of an unrepresentative, unaccountable, and elitist federal government moving our nation toward the dangers of socialism.

The American Colonies were founded by angry men and women, who forsook all kindred, lands and nation to sail around the world seeking a new land to pursue social and religious freedom.

The United States of America was founded by angry men and women, who committed their fortunes and lives to wage war against tyranny and to establish a free nation and free society; free to worship God and free to pursue their own destiny.

The United States of America was torn asunder over slavery, where angry men and women north and south fought for the freedom of African-Americans.

The United States of America was forced to face its duplicity, when angry men and women united peacefully in protest until African-Americans were allowed to participate in all areas of society freely.

Many other times in our American history there have been angry men and women committing their fortunes and risking all even to the death to create an even more free nation.

These American men and women were moved to action from an outrage, from anger, from a righteous indignation at government’s lack of justice, morality, equality, and representation.

The majority of American voters are angry, nearly half of Americans are very angry with the policies of the federal government.

The American ire has championed so much for freedom for the United States, the land of the free and home of the brave.

The United States is yet a young nation and not so far removed from its Founding Fathers’ beliefs and self-evident truths.

An indifferent Obama Administration and United States Congress are headed into a ‘Perfect Storm’ of American aggression that will play out in the elections of 2010 and 2012.

The United States of America is an angry nation ready for real change instead of the wrongful radical liberal policies moving toward the dangers of socialism.

Randy Driver – Driver Post

The EU grants visa-free travel for citizens of three Balkan countries – Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia…. From BBC News. Full story

This site may contain information about: air travel. The blog is also related to: india travel.

Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky (on right)

Chelsea Clinton, daughter of former president Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, will be marrying her Jewish boyfriend Marc Mezvinsky. He officially proposed over the Thanksgiving holiday. Mezvinsky has some political leniage as well with both parents being former United States Representatives. Marc Mezvinsky currently works at Goldman-Sachs and has known Chelsea for about 16 years. Chelsea has no current plans to convert to Judaism from what we know of. But if Marc and Chelsea’s attendance at services on the High Holy Days at the JTS in New York(A Conservative affiliated seminary) tells about Marc’s observance level or if he wants a Conservative affiliated Rabbi to officiate, then plans for conversion may be on the list for Chelsea. This is because of USCJ’s long stance against officiating at intermarriage ceremonies. Chelsea Clinton is a Methodist.

David Davis

Like this.

BEIJING – China has executed two men for abducting and selling 15 children, many of whom were taken as babies or toddlers and have not yet been reunited with their parents, state media said Friday.

The official Xinhua News Agency said Hu Minghua, 55, and Su Binde, 27, were executed Thursday morning, according to a statement from the Supreme People’s Court.

Hu was convicted of kidnapping and selling nine children from April 1999 to Oct. 2005. He was detained in January 2006. Five of the children, all boys now aged from 3 to 6, have been returned to their families, while the parents of the remaining ones have not been found.

Su was convicted of abducting six children between Sept. 2005 to July 2006. Five of the children were rescued by police while a sixth remains missing.

Child trafficking is big problem in China, where traditional preference for male heirs and a restrictive one-child policy has driven a thriving market in baby boys, who fetch a considerably higher price than girls. Girls and women also are abducted and often used as laborers or as brides for unwed sons.

Thousands of children go missing every year though the exact numbers of victims are difficult to obtain. Earlier this year, Chinese police announced they had rescued about 2,000 abducted children as part of a nationwide crackdown on widespread trafficking of women and children.

In October, China’s Ministry of Public Security set up a Web site — “Babies Looking for Home” — to reunite rescued children with their families.

State media have reported hundreds of rescues and arrests since the campaign began in April, and the new site had photos of dozens of children rescued from kidnappers but who had not yet found their families. The ministry set up a national DNA database earlier this year.

Published by: ABP World Group International Child Recovery Service

Visit our web site at: www.abpworld.com

by Jeremy D. Morley

Here are some tips for attorneys and clients faced with instituting or defending child abduction proceedings under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, whether in the United States or internationally.

In a nutshell, a Hague Convention application may be made when a child is taken or retained across an international border, away from his or her habitual residence, without the consent of a parent who has rights of custody, if the two countries are parties to the Convention. The child must be promptly returned to the habitual residence unless the return will create a grave risk of harm to the child.

1. ACT FAST

An attorney must be ready to file a Hague Convention application and institute or defend a Hague Convention lawsuit on extremely short notice.

Prompt action may be critical. The Convention specifically requires that hearings be conducted expeditiously. A Hague case can theoretically be instituted more than a year after the abduction but a defense will then arise that the child has become settled in the new environment and, in practice, the longer a child is in a new place the more likely it is that a court will be reluctant to send the child away.

Fast action by the left-behind parent is also necessary to help prevent a claim that the parent has acquiesced in the child’s relocation.

Clients must move quickly to obtain the documents needed to file the initial application and then to collect the documents needed for the hearing. They should normally be asked to prepare a detailed family history and to assist the attorney to develop evidence as rapidly as possible.

In addition to the Hague application and lawsuit itself, counsel for the left-behind parent should take many other steps.

First, counsel should enlist the support of the U.S. State Department’s Office of Children’s Issues. Second, the left-behind parent should institute civil proceedings. If there is no custody order in place from a court in the jurisdiction of the habitual residence, an application should immediately be made for such an order.

Third, counsel should consider putting the abducting parent on immediate written and formal notice of the dire consequences, civil, criminal and financial, that the abduction will cause to that parent personally, and, possibly to others conspiring with the parent. It may be appropriate to provide an extremely short time for the abducting parent to cure the problem by returning the child.

Fourth, the parent should consider requesting the federal and state prosecutors to institute both federal and state criminal proceedings. The federal crime of international parental kidnapping is a felony with a penalty of up to three years in prison. In addition, many states including New York have provisions that also provide criminal penalties for parental child abduction. It will occasionally be possible to seek extradition based on a federal warrant.

2. PREPARE THE FACTUAL PRESENTATION INTENSELY

Hague Convention cases are often extremely fact-intensive. They frequently hinge on the ability of one party to convince the court of matters such as the habitual residence of a child, the extent to which a parent actually exercised custody rights and whether or not a parent consented to or acquiesced in a new residency. For a court to resolve these matters it must analyze the relevant facts.

A successful Hague proceeding requires the attorney, working closely with the client, to marshal as much evidence as possible, in as many forms as possible, to support the client’s position.

Clients are frequently shocked that matters that to them are obvious and indisputable turn out to be disputed and to require them to produce clear and convincing proof. They may well be insulted that their word alone is insufficient to convince the court that they are truthful and that the other parent is lying.

In one case, the parents had moved permanently with their young child from the mother’s native country to the U.S. Two years later, the mother took the child back to her country for a vacation and then refused to return to the States. In supporting her claim that the child was never habitually resident in the States she claimed that the original move to America had been only temporary and that she and the father had agreed that they would return to the mother’s native country after a year or two. The mother had planned the move well in advance and had amassed — and even created — evidence that tended to support her claims. Additionally, she had removed evidence from the parties’ home that would have disproved her claims.

To win the case, we interviewed neighbors, friends, family members, schoolteachers, real estate salespeople, fellow office workers and an array of other people who had had some connection with the family. We checked into any and all areas of the mother’s life for anything that might indicate her intention to stay in the States. We obtained emails, notes, invoices, and other documents. We searched old household bills for evidence of the purchase of items that inferred a degree of permanency. At the hearing, the mother was shocked that her husband had collected so much written evidence to disprove her claims and undercut her credibility. The courts ultimately — and with great reluctance, since they were going against a local national — found in favor of our client.

Since Hague cases are tried quickly, there is usually only one chance to present the case and it needs to be done well at the very outset. An attorney must embark on a quick campaign of collecting mounds of relevant evidence to support the client’s positions, and must expect the other parent to lie, cheat, and distort the facts in a desperate attempt to avoid losing the case.

Just as a current military strategy is to employ overwhelming force to create shock and awe, so too in a Hague Convention case it is often advisable to use overwhelming amounts of evidence to win the case. Such a campaign in a Hague proceeding may yield a capitulation by the other parent even before the hearing actually commences.

Hague Convention hearings sometimes take the form of “he said, she said” disputes in which each side makes verbal accusations against the other. Documentary evidence is usually far better than the mere word of one parent. Thus, if you want to claim that a parent applied for an immigration visa, you must be prepared to do more than simply have the parent tell the court that this was done. You should do whatever you can to get hold of the actual application papers that the parent signed in applying for the visa, which may mean contacting the lawyer who handled the immigration matter originally.

While it is helpful if documents are supported by sworn statements, it is not essential. Both the Convention and the International Child Abduction Remedies Act (“ICARA”) provide that authentication of documents is not required in a Convention proceeding.

3. PREPARE THE LEGAL ARGUMENT INTENSELY

Hague Convention cases raise unusual international law, foreign law and treaty law questions. They involve the courts in matters of a kind that they are usually not used to handling. In many jurisdictions the court may be entirely unfamiliar with Hague cases. Accordingly it is usually essential for the lawyers to help the court to an unusual extent. Certainly a well-reasoned memorandum of law is essential.

The matters in dispute in most Hague cases raise difficult legal issues that must be thoroughly briefed. Thus, the Convention requires the left-behind parent to establish that the child was taken from the “habitual residence” and that the parent had “rights of custody” under the law of that jurisdiction. However, neither of those fundamental terms is defined in the Convention and substantial jurisprudence has grown domestically and internationally setting forth often-contradictory determinations concerning their scope and meaning. Moreover, courts have held that, while they must determine under international law whether the left-behind parent possesses Hague Convention “custody rights,” they must first examine the law of the child’s habitual residence in order to ascertain the extent of the rights that such parent possesses under that law. In this regard, it is often essential to use foreign law experts to establish the existence and scope of such rights.

A Hague Convention attorney may ” and should ” cite cases not only from the domestic jurisdiction but also from other jurisdictions if they support the client’s position. It has become more usual to cite cases from other jurisdictions in this area of the law than perhaps in any other. Courts around the world recognize that it is best to coordinate their decisions with those of other courts internationally and, for that very reason, the Hague Conference on Private International Law has established a database of significant Hague cases from courts around the world.

4. AVOID BEST INTERESTS ANALYSIS

In representing the left-behind parent in a Hague proceeding, it is necessary to keep the court focused on the narrow issues that the Convention requires an applicant to establish and the narrow defenses that a respondent can assert. Whenever the hearing strays into any areas that might be considered as constituting an analysis of the child’s best interests, the applicant should vehemently object.

However, a party opposing a return should do his or her utmost to assert any and all relevant issues under the rubric of one of the defenses specified in the Convention and should be armed with case law to establish that similar claims were permitted in other cases.

5. BE FLEXIBLE CONCERNING EVIDENCE

In Hague cases evidence rules are usually relaxed, so evidence should be submitted in any possible format. Live testimony is invariably the best and normally everything should be done to get the left-behind parent into the courtroom. (An exception is if that parent would be a poor witness and his or her presence would create an opportunity for embarrassing cross-examination). If a witness cannot be brought to the courthouse, consider testimony by video conferencing or otherwise by telephone conference. As a last resort, submit affidavits.

6. USE AN EXPERIENCED ATTORNEY: IF THAT’S NOT YOU, FIND SOMEONE WHO IS

Hague Convention cases happen too fast, and too much is at stake for the client, for an attorney to learn about this area of law at the last minute. It is extremely important to locate counsel with knowledge and experience in Hague proceedings.

Published by: ABP World Group International Child Recovery Service

Visit our web site at: www.abpworld.com

Many left-behind parents are told that the Hague Convention will bring about the return of their abducted children. Some authorities say that if your child is abducted, you should follow procedures outlined by the Hague, but we don’t agree.

Until 1980, there was no international system in place to help parents recover abducted children who had been taken to other nations. The Hague Convention attempted to create one, but it doesn’t work. If you take the time to read the well-intentioned text of the Hague, you’ll see its many flaws.

In our opinion, it’s not worth the large amounts of money, time and trouble to hire an attorney to try using the Hague Convention to get your child back. You aren’t likely to get him or her back — and even worse, the abducting parent could be “legitimized” by the courts in another nation.

Under the Hague Convention, a case must be filed in the country where the abductor has taken the child. The courts of that country tend to render their decisions in favor of their countrymen, as the Hague Convention focuses on residency, not citizenship. There is little concern for the fact that the child is a citizen of the country from which he or she was abducted, or for the possible detrimental effect on the child.

Even if the child was born in your country, if that child is found to be a “habitual resident” by the courts in another country, the child may be ordered to be returned to that country.

This underscores the need to act quickly.

Few, if any, of the Hague signatory countries are going to send anyone out to physically recover your child for you. Embassy officials will check on the child’s welfare, if it is known where the child is and if the abducting parent lets them.

As soon as abducting parents are aware that that they’ve been located, they’ll usually disappear with the children again.

And about hiring lawyers

You need to be aware that a great amount of money has been spent on lawyers in foreign abduction cases. The unfortunate fact is that they, most often, can’t practice in the foreign courts and are required to hire associate lawyers in the foreign country.

Note: they often have no qualifications or experience working with child abduction cases.

More money…

Educate yourself

Many resources are available to help you learn about parental child abduction. If you’re dealing with an abduction, the better informed you are, the better equipped you’ll be to cope.

Recover your child

Time is of the essence. Parentally abducted children are helpless on their own and confused by the irrational and sometimes abusive acts of non-custodial parents who are supposed to have their best interests in mind. ABP World Group Ltd. has the manpower and the know-how to rigorously cover all avenues, and bring your child home.

Published by: ABP World Group International Child Recovery Service

Visit our web site at: www.abpworld.com