- In retaliation for the investigative story about the
finances of the George W. Bush campaign, Barrick Gold Mining of Canada
has sued my paper, the Observer of London, for libel. The company, which
hired the elder Bush after his leaving the White House, is charging the
newspaper with libel for quoting an Amnesty International report which
alleged that 50 miners may have been buried alive in Tanzania by a company
now owned by Barrick.
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- The company has also demanded the Observer and its parent,
Guardian Newspapers, force me to remove the article from my US website,
an frightening extension of Britain's punitive libel laws into the World
Wide Web. The company has also issued legal threats against Tanzanian human
rights lawyer, Tundu Lissu, one of the Observer's independent sources and
an investigator of the mine-site allegations.
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- The attack by Barrick and its controversial Chairman,
Peter Munk, one of the wealthiest men in Canada, who boasts of his propensity
to sue, also aims to gag my reporting on his company's purchase of rights
to a gold mine in Nevada - containing $10 billion in gold - for a payment
of under $10,000 to the US Treasury.
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- My Observer story, Best Democracy Money Can Buy, looked
into the activities of several corporations linked to the Bushes. It was
in that article I first disclosed that over 50,000 Florida voters, most
of them Black, were wrongly tagged as ,Ä?felons,' and targeted for
removal from the voter rolls. My follow-up reports in Salon.com, Nation
and the Washington Post and on BBC-TV's Newsnight provided the basis for
the US Civil Rights Commission finding of massive, wrongful voter disenfranchisement
in Florida.
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- My entire continuing investigation is in jeopardy. It
is difficult to imagine how my paper, owned by the non-profit Scott Trust,
myself and human rights lawyer Lissu can withstand the financial punishment
of litigation by the centi-millionaire Munk and his corporation.
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- In its latest Annual report, Amnesty says it cannot verify
the allegations of the mine killings because the government continues to
resist an independent investigation. Yet, Barrick wants our paper to state
what we know to be untrue, that independent investigation found the charges
completely baseless. Yet our quoting Amnesty is no defense. Americans
cannot conceive of the medieval operation of British libel law. It does
not permit the defense of "repetition" - straightforward reporting
on the statements of human rights groups is banned, a gag nearly as effective
as Burmese law.
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- Independently of Amnesty, attorney Lissu went to the
mine site and provided our paper with witness statements. Tanzanians have
offered their services to help defend against censorship in Britain, a
poignant reversal for our paper which, with imperial pomp, has launched
a 'Press Freedom Campaign' to excoriate developing nations over gagging
journalists.
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- '10 Little Piggies,' Adnan Khashoggi, and The Greatest
Gold Heist Since Butch Cassidy
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- Peter Munk's reputation proceeds him. Last year, Mother
Jones named him one of America's ,Ä?Ten Little Piggies' for his US
gold mine's literally 'poisoning the water' through what environmentalists
consider polluting extraction practices.
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- How Barrick got the gold mine is something they would
rather we not report.
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- First, Munk was set up in the gold business by funds
from Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. We are being sued for discussing
this connection although the information comes from Peter Munk himself
, quoted in his biography.
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- Second, Barrick struck it rich when the company used
(or misused, say many) an old Gold Rush law to claim rights on a Nevada
mine containing $10 billion in gold by paying the US Treasury less than
$10,000. They are suing my paper for publicizing this extraordinary transaction
which US Interior Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt called, "the
biggest gold heist since the days of Butch Cassidy," and "a form
of legalized extortion."
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- Barrick's suit claims the Observer libeled them by failing
to state that Barrick had to spend money to buy other rights and equipment
to dig the gold out of the ground. What an odd misreading of our words.
We never said the US government mailed the gold bars to Barrick in Canada.
We only said that Barrick got the gold mine and the public got the shaft.
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- The company's CEO has also demanded his lawyers slice
a pound of our journalistic flesh for mentioning that he, "made his
name in Canada in the 1960s as the figure in an infamous insider stock-trading
scandal." Yet, we read this in the Canadian magazine Macleans: "The
failure of [Clairetone Corporation] cost Munk his business and his reputation.
Most damning were allegations of insider trading that were made after it
was discovered that he and [his partner] had sold shares in 1967 just before
some of Clairetone's most serious problems became known."
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- Lynching by Libel Law
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- The clear purpose of the suit is, as Barrick says, to
force the Observer to say, the investigation "should never have been
published" an inquiry into those who purchase the favor and influence
of the Bush family, not just Barrick. The article was about the blizzard
of money whirling around a family of Presidents and their associations.
Among other paid favors for Barrick, the former President wrote the dictator
Suharto to convince him, successfully, to grant another gold concession
to Barrick.
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- And more than Barrick came into our investigative cross-hairs.
There was Chevron Corporation, and ChoicePoint, the firm at the center
of the racially-charged voter purge in Florida. This suit with malicious
tone attempts to besmirch our entire investigation and to undermine ours
and others further investigations into Bush and Barrick.
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- The Observer's official history quotes a media critic's
statement that the paper's new editor, "... is expected to continue
the paper's tradition of crusading reporting as in the Lobbygate investigate
investigation."
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- In that 'Lobbygate' story, well-known in the UK, I went
undercover with my partner Antony Barnett to expose corruption at the heart
of the Blair cabinet.
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- But the wrath of a Prime Minister is easy to dismiss
- and our awards were a pleasant salve. The withering, costly pounding
of an enraged corporate power with too much money to spend has chilled
reporters' and British newspapers' will to take on the tougher investigative
matters. Amnesty is, "silent on the advice of lawyers." And so,
the witness statements of those who watched the bodies exhumed, and one
who dug his way from the mass grave, will now also remain entombed in legal
silence.
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- How much longer I can hold the line if abandoned by the
Guardian's Scott Trust - which is cracking under the weight of legal bills
- I cannot say. And the consequences of capitulation to our source and
defender, Tundu Lissu and his Tanzanian human rights organization, we cannot
imagine.
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- Gregory Palast http://www.GregPalast.com
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