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$5 million lawsuit targets Jimmy Carter for ‘attacking Israel’
Thu, 2011-02-03 11:57
#1
Boom Boom
$5 million lawsuit targets Jimmy Carter for ‘attacking Israel’
Thu, 2011-02-03 12:05
#2
Boom Boom
$5 million lawsuit targets Jimmy Carter for 'attacking Israel'
excerpt:
Former President Jimmy Carter has become the target of a class action lawsuit over ostensibly mean things he said about Israel in his best-selling 2006 book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid
excerpt:
Publishing company Simon & Schuster, which is also targeted in the lawsuit, dismissed it as a frivolous act and a "chilling attack on free speech that we intend to defend vigorously."
This lawsuit sounds pretty outrageous to me, may be an attempt to shut Carter up from speaking out more. On the other hand, it may spurn even more sales of his book.
Thu, 2011-02-03 12:19
#3
Snert
Five million? [wait for it...]
That's a lot of peanuts!
Anyway, is there any jurisdiction in which entire countries and their governments enjoy libel or slander protection? I hope not.
Thu, 2011-02-03 12:26
#4
Boom Boom
The lawsuit might be an attempt to scare away other authors from publishing new books on a similar topic. I think there's a name for this, 'legislative chill' or something.
Thu, 2011-02-03 12:29
#5
Maybe Canada needs to launch a class action lawsuit against American conservatives who slander Canada to make a political point. We could start with Rush Limbaugh's lies about our health care system.
My friends, look at Canada - just look at it. Do you think socialized medicine works there? It doesn't. The lines are long and the care is poor. They say it's "free," but they have a sales tax as high as 18% and their dollar buys a fraction of what ours does. In every nation with socialized medicine, health care is on par with your average Department of Motor Vehicles here in the United States.
I counted seven lies in that one paragraph.
Thu, 2011-02-03 12:32
#6
Snert
I think there's a name for this, 'legislative chill' or something.
Yes, "Libel chill".
Thu, 2011-02-03 12:44
#7
It's also a very "chilling" act, as Simon and Schuster said. One of the very few advantages of writing in the U.S. (as opposed to,say, Canada) is that their Constitution gives them much more freedom from litigation. In the land of the litigious, that is very meaningful.
I in turn "hope" that freedom wins out over the right-wing assault. The snippets I've seen from that work ring true for me in a country where M'Lord Black was able to suppress just about everything written about him with high-priced legal help...including Farley Mowat's attempt to define the bastard for the public.In Canada he could rob widows and workers. Ironic that he had to move to the land of the free to be nailed. No, Snert, it just shows that you can't generalize in that fashion about "entire countries and their governments."
But I hope you do feel safer in the land of Peace, Order and Good Government ...and bloodsucking lawyers.
Thu, 2011-02-03 12:53
#8
Boom Boom
Yes, "Libel chill".
That's it. I'm sorry to say I haven'tread the Carter book. I just checked at the Amazon site, and saw this:
Amazon.com's interview with US President Jimmy Carter (from 2007)
excerpt:
Q: Your use of the term "apartheid" has been a lightning rod in the response to your book. Could you explain your choice? Were you surprised by the reaction?
A: The book is about Palestine, the occupied territories, and not about Israel. Forced segregation in the West Bank and terrible oppression of the Palestinians create a situation accurately described by the word. I made it plain in the text that this abuse is not based on racism, but on the desire of a minority of Israelis to confiscate and colonize Palestinian land. This violates the basic humanitarian premises on which the nation of Israel was founded. My surprise is that most critics of the book have ignored the facts about Palestinian persecution and its proposals for future peace and resorted to personal attacks on the author. No one could visit the occupied territories and deny that the book is accurate.
ps: the book is available in both paperback and an audio CD
Thu, 2011-02-03 13:54
#9
ATTN: East Timor
Thu, 2011-02-03 15:22
#10
ATTN: East Timor
Is there a libel case pending?
Fri, 2011-02-04 00:00
#11
ATTN: East Timor
Is there a libel case pending?
None that I know of. Just sayin' if anybody should be taking Carter to court it's the East Timorese.
"Ford was only there for a very short time so he didn't have time for a lot of crimes, but he managed one major one. He supported the Indonesian invasion of East Timor, which was near genocidal. I mean, it makes Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait look like a tea party. That was supported decisively by the United States, both the diplmatic and the necessary military support came primarily from the United States. This was picked up under Carter.
Carter was the least violent of American presidents but he did things which I think would certainly fall under Nuremberg provisions. As the Indonesian atrocities increased to a level of really near-genocide, the U.S. aid under Carter increased. It reached a peak in 1978 as the atrocities peaked."
- Noam Chomsky, If the Nuremberg Laws were Applied...
Fri, 2011-02-04 01:25
#12
It's also a very "chilling" act, as Simon and Schuster said. One of the very few advantages of writing in the U.S. (as opposed to,say, Canada) is that their Constitution gives them much more freedom from litigation. In the land of the litigious, that is very meaningful.
I in turn "hope" that freedom wins out over the right-wing assault. The snippets I've seen from that work ring true for me in a country where M'Lord Black was able to suppress just about everything written about him with high-priced legal help...including Farley Mowat's attempt to define the bastard for the public.In Canada he could rob widows and workers. Ironic that he had to move to the land of the free to be nailed. No, Snert, it just shows that you can't generalize in that fashion about "entire countries and their governments."
But I hope you do feel safer in the land of Peace, Order and Good Government ...and bloodsucking lawyers.
From what I can tell, this isn't a libel suit per se. It seems to be a class-action suit on behalf of people who read the book, and somehow suffered harm from being exposed to Carter's alleged falsehoods.
And apparently, there is some precedent for this in the USA. It seems that the guy who wrote that hoax memoir A Million Little Pieces(about his non-existent drug problems) got successfully sued by some of his readers after his lies were exposed. I don't know how the reasoning worked there, I guess it was something along the lines of "Well, I paid for this book thinking it was true, but gee whiz, it was false, so I want my money back". Or maybe "I was so emotionally moved by what I read, but then I found it was all made up, and I went into a deep depression and couldn't go to work for a year".
Either way, I would think the bar is set a little higher for suing a political writer, who has to deal with not only a multitude of facts and opinions, but interpretations of said facts and opinions, than for a guy who just sits down and fabricates one single narrative that he knows for a provable fact did not happen, and then sells it as true.
But anyway, if you've actually paid for Carter's book, and you wanna make some extra cash, maybe give some thought to signing up for the class-action here. If the plaintiffs win, you could get five bucks in the mail.
[url=http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=206458]link[/url]
Fri, 2011-02-04 01:33
#13
According to the JP article, the lawsuit is alleging that Carter's book violated a New York law which makes it illegal to "engage in deceptive acts when conducting business". So apparently, this is something along the lines of saying "Chepest waterbeds in town", when you know for a fact that Discount Dave is selling them for twenty bucks cheaper.
Fri, 2011-02-04 09:02
#14
Der hadda be a buck involved or the action is down da terlet, eh? Figures.
Much more in keeping with the world's most litigious society. Marvelous.