-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.narconews.com/agmotion1.html Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.narconews.com/agmotion1.html";>Narco News Publisher Moves to Dismiss Banamex L…</A> ----- April 24, 2001 IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK COUNTY OF NEW YORK BANCO NACIONAL de MÉXICO, S.A. Plaintiff, v. Index No. 00603429 MARIO RENATO MENÉNDEZ RODRIGUEZ, AL GIORDANO, and THE NARCO NEWS BULLETIN, Defendants. ____________________________________________ DEFENDANT AL GIORDANO'S MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF HIS MOTION TO DISMISS THE COMPLAINT I. INTRODUCTION My name is Al Giordano, and I am a defendant representing myself on three charges made by Banco Nacional de México, S.A. ("Banamex"): libel, slander and intentional interference with its prospective economic advantage. I did not do any of those three things. There is not a shred of "convincing clarity," when each statement is considered in its context and entirety, that any statement made by me constitutes defamation. Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242, 244 (1986). To the contrary, it is Banamex which is guilty of defamation in this case. Banamex has falsely accused me in its complaint of a criminal act, a "scheme to extort money." It is an outrageous allegation which has absolutely no basis in fact. It never should have been made. The fact that it was brought in a public lawsuit without a single fact or piece of evidence to support it is an example to me of the lengths to which Banamex appears willing to go in an attempt to silence and restrain my constitutional rights and those of other dedicated journalists. Backed by its enormous financial resources, Banamex has raised the specter to journalists, who might otherwise report negatively on its activities, of being falsely accused of criminal activity in a lawsuit that could easily bankrupt them. As Justice Colabella ruled in 1992, "Short of a gun to the head, a greater threat to First Amendment expression can scarcely be imagined [than a lawsuit brought to silence public speech]." Gordon v. Marrone, 590 N.Y.S. 2d 649, 656 (1992). Although it may be because I am not a lawyer, I simply cannot understand how the law could allow or why it would allow a Mexican bank to bring an action in New York state against defendants living in Mexico when: (a) all the witnesses with regard to the facts underlying the alleged libel live back in Mexico, (b) the evidence is back in Mexico, and (c) the supposed libel had been published well before I came to New York, to a far larger audience in Mexico (as well to a far larger audience in a Massachusetts newspaper). A trial in New York just doesn't make sense to me. Do I have the right to get Mexican witnesses to trial in New York? How and where will we be able to depose all the witnesses who live in Mexico? How will we agree on accurate translations of the Mexican judicial proceedings and other documentary evidence? How will I ever be able to afford the translations and depositions, let alone the trips to New York? The plaintiff, Banamex, has a documented history in its own country of attempting to silence journalists who express dissenting views and those that the plaintiff considers to be incorrect. But as the courts in Mexico have ruled in the case of my co-defendant, Mario Menendez, the facts about which it complains here do not libel or slander Banamex. They meet the standards of constitutional protection under the laws of Mexico. Why should Banamex, which met defeat in Mexico, now be allowed to use the courts of New York City, in the United States, to attempt once again to silence the same discord? It is my belief that the laws and constitution of New York state and the United States forbid Banamex being allowed to proceed. From the days of New York v. John Peter Zenger (1735) to New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), the island of Manhattan has played an historic role in setting standards to protect our most sacred freedoms: the freedom to speak, to write, to express opinions, to make arguments and to petition our government for a redress of grievances without fear of persecution or repression. And it is precisely because of this pioneering New York State of Mind that this city achieved greatness, through the free expression of its artists, its journalists, its activists, its politicians and all its citizens. From the theaters of Broadway and 125th Street to the soapboxes in Union Square, from the bootblack stand at City Hall to the colorful dialogue that can be heard on every corner, in every language of the world that has come here in search of this freedom, free speech has made this city strong and vibrant. And New York has, thus, made the entire nation stronger, by lighting the torch that illumined the path to this liberty. This is a big part of my truth: I was born and raised in New York. Its spirit runs in my blood and in my entire being. And so it is a disturbing paradox that it was, by speaking my opinions here, as a visitor invited to travel from Mexico to this city, on this island, on a downtown radio show from studios on Wall Street, and in an uptown academic university forum in the Henry and June Warren Hall, on this island where the free exchange of ideas has also made New York's universities the envy of the world, that for exercising my local custom, and exercising it responsibly, with dignity, I now have the gun to my head that Judge Colabella warned us all about. The plaintiff is asking the Court itself to fire that gun, not just against me and the other defendants, but against the very federal and state constitutions that this Court has long preserved. The plaintiff seeks only to chill speech. Mexico is undergoing rapid and positive changes. I have been an active witness to and chronicler of those changes in recent years. The circus of corruption and impunity that once ruled Mexico is not as able as it was in recent years to silence criticism: the legal proceedings regarding the same essential facts of this case in Mexico broke important ground toward democracy, human rights and press freedom. The legal proceedings in New York City should do no less. II. BACKGROUND A. My education in the United States. Those who won our independence believed . . . that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government. They recognized the risks to which all human institutions are subject. But they knew that order cannot be secured merely through fear of punishment for its infraction; that it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government; that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies; and that the fitting remedy for evil counsels is good ones. Believing in the power of reason as applied through public discussion, they eschewed silence coerced by law--the argument of force in its worst form." -- Justice Louis Brandeis, United States Supreme Court, Whitney v. California , 274 U.S. 357, 375-376 The road to this Court began years before I ever knew the name of Roberto Hernandez Ramirez or that of Banamex. I have participated in public affairs for almost my entire life: as a teenager I volunteered, with Sister Elizabeth Kelliher, at the Little Star of Broome day care center on the Lower East Side (and I still have childhood memories of having picketed her landlord on E. 5th Street when he turned off the heat in the middle of a winter rent-strike). I marched for Soviet Jewry down Central Park West, and I spoke to construction workers at Fightback of Harlem, on 125th Street to gain their support. I wrote letters to the editor for tenants' rights when I was 15. At the age of 16, I testified before a New York State Legislative Committee against the Indian Point nuclear power plant. I was later arrested at that nuclear plant in a nonviolent act of civil disobedience. I saw opposition to nuclear power evolve from being an unpopular opinion to representing majority opinion. These were formative influences on me. They taught me that it doesn't matter if one's ideas are unpopular: if the force of reason is with us, if we apply that reason through robust speech and struggle, we will eventually prevail. In late 1977, I dropped out of college-–after one semester at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.-–and moved to New England, where I dedicated myself to the anti-nuclear struggle. I resided in Massachusetts for the next two decades, with frequent travels to other New England and Eastern states (particularly New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and sometimes New York). I participated in political campaigns for candidates and referendum questions. I directed some of those campaigns, including a successful Massachusetts statewide referendum in 1982 to give voters control over future nuclear facilities in Massachusetts. In 1984, I was deputy political director for the first U.S. Senate campaign of John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts. Later that year I traveled to Nicaragua and stood in the rubble of an exploded oil tank in Corinto harbor that, we now know, was blown up by the US Central Intelligence Agency. The following year, Abbie Hoffman was arrested at the University of Massachusetts, together with Amy Carter, the former president's daughter, and other students, for a protest against the recruitment efforts by the same CIA on that campus. I collaborated on the defense. And I was there on that spring day in Northampton, Massachusetts, as the jury deliberated, and found the defendants "not guilty" under the Massachusetts competing harms statute, because the CIA had committed higher crimes. Unpopular ideas become accepted by the public, but only if citizens of conscience speak out and refuse to remain silent. This is a basic tenet of my view of life on this earth. In 1988, I began to write newspaper columns for a small daily, the Greenfield Recorder, in Massachusetts, for no pay. I wrote then, as now, not as a desire to "be" a writer or be paid for it, but because I felt, as I feel today, that I have something to contribute, something to say. In 1989 I was offered a job as a staff reporter for a weekly newspaper in that region, the Valley Advocate , and four years later moved to the state capital to work as the political reporter for the Boston Phoenix. I covered the halls where they make the laws and the lobbyists pick at the bones of democracy. I covered the campaigns, and saw the influence of money over politics rise to the level of what I considered legalized bribery (something I saw, later, to a more blatant degree in Mexico). I covered the courts, the jails, and the corrupt actions of some public officials, a number of them no longer in office. Unpopular ideas, if they enjoy the force of reason, I repeat, eventually become accepted. It was through my reporting on the courts and the legal system that I began to question the drug policies of this country. I found overcrowded prisons, backlogged courts, a justice system under siege, and I developed, story by story, the view that the prohibition on drugs is a root cause of so many of these ills. I began to investigate how the media covered this issue. In 1990, I published the cover story for Washington Journalism Review: "The War on Drugs: Who Drafted the Press?" I found myself as an "old-school" journalist in a newly automated and over-processed industry of the news media. One day I came to a realization, huddling in the cold wind of the New Hampshire primary of 1996, literally the only cigarette-smoking reporter left to share a drag with the old salt Jack Germond outside of the newly smoke-free pressrooms, that I was metaphorically out in the cold as well; an anachronism at the age of 36, a kind of journalist that writes from his passion and not as a career move. As I looked around me, I felt very out of place. The human touch was gone from the profession. I felt I had lived its last days. In July 1997, I bought a plane ticket to Mexico. There was a movement down there, in the state of Chiapas, an indigenous rights movement, persecuted by the Mexican government at the time. I spent much of the next year in that state, living in impoverished indigenous communities where they spoke languages like Tzotzil, Tzeltal and Tojolabal. From there, I wrote an Open Letter to U.S. Senator John Kerry and his wife, the environmental leader Teresa Heinz, which was published in the Boston Phoenix. I invited them to come to Chiapas, and spoke about what our government, the U.S. government, was doing to make a bad situation worse in Mexico. Here were people so poor that they didn't have food, they died of curable diseases for lack of basic medicines, they didn't have schools, they were repressed, imprisoned, tortured, jailed on false charges, for simply speaking out in favor of their rights. I interviewed six of them, framed drug war prisoners in prison, and tried to find a periodical in the U.S. that would publish their words. Nobody did. Nobody listened. And yet they kept on struggling. Last month, representatives of those indigenous rebels were received by the Federal Congress of Mexico and spoke their word from the nation's highest podium. Theirs was another unpopular idea that, through struggle and robust speech, won the hearts and minds of a nation. What the indigenous of Chiapas told me, when I was their guest, is that they didn't want me to become an indigenous person, to live like they live. They said that all of us serve humanity best by being what we are, by being human beings first. I thought about that for a long time. I thought: Who am I? What am I doing on this earth? And the answer came: I am a human being first. But, as much as I had tried to separate myself from a media industry that has forgotten its noble and original intentions, I am a journalist, too. I am not the same kind of journalist as most of those who use that title. I come from a different tradition, of the late journalists that did not hide their opinions and ideas, but that investigated and spoke their truths and involved themselves in the world, on the streets, in the jungles, where the people live. Journalists who did not dedicate themselves to the study of power, as Orianna Falacci wrote, but "to the study of anti-power." I learned that the President of the United States, Bill Clinton, would be coming to the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico in early 1999 to hold an "anti-drug" summit with Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo. I contacted my former editors at the Boston Phoenix and said I would like to cover it. They gave me the assignment. That was the first time I had ever heard the name of Roberto Hernandez Ramirez, and the first time that I had ever heard the name of Mario Renato Menendez Rodriguez. And there was a story that was so important that it had to be reported. That is how I found my way to this courtroom. III. FACTS The plaintiff's recitation of the facts in its complaint is inaccurate in many respects, as well as incomplete in many other respects. Most importantly, it has misused ellipses and plucked my words out of context, distorting my statements in such a manner as to hide what I actually said or wrote. Therefore, in this section of the brief, I correct some of these inaccuracies, and also give the Court a full picture of what I said and wrote--in New York during the first week of March 2000, and in Mexico after April 7, 2000, when I began publishing the work titled The Narco News Bulletin or Narco News. In this section, I also discuss, after showing what I actually said, in its entirety, the fact that no reasonable person would find that what I said was defamatory. There are four forums in New York in which the plaintiff alleges defamation: A. The Village Voice article. Since the plaintiff has not alleged any defamatory statement by me in the Village Voice article, there is no need to address those statements here. B. The WBAI radio broadcast. In its complaint, Banamex cites thr <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER =========CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. =======================================================================Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A> =======================================================================To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
