------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~--> Get your FREE credit report with a FREE CreditCheck Monitoring Service trial http://us.click.yahoo.com/M8mxkD/bQ8CAA/ySSFAA/KlSolB/TM ---------------------------------------------------------------------~-> August 23, 2001 Dear Colleagues, A stroll down memory lane from the Greenfield Recorder in scenic (and nuke-free) Franklin County, Massachusetts... ...from somewhere in a country called Am�rica, Al Giordano Publisher The Narco News Bulletin http://www.narconews.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, free, for alerts of new reports: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/narconews Nukes to narcs: Activist shifts focus Former Greenfield man a muckraker to be reckoned with Alberto Giordano, who left Franklin County after leading a successful 1982 statewide referendum campaign on siting radioactive waste plants or dumps in Massachusetts, started The Narco News Bulletin in April 2000 to present what the Mexican and Latin American press is saying about the drug war. By Richie Davis Recorder Staff August 22, 2001 It�s been 20 years since Alberto M. �Al� Giordano, then living in Greenfield, told The Recorder about his upcoming campaign for a statewide nuclear waste siting referendum, �We�re still swimming upstream, but the motor�s more sophisticated.� Then only 21 years old and five years beyond beginning his career by testifying before the New York Legislature on a proposed nuclear power plant moratorium, Giordano had already been arrested 19 times on trespass charges in anti-nuclear demonstrations. But Giordano, a Bronx-born activist who moved to Rowe in 1979 and soon became a thorn in the side of Yankee Atomic officials by suing to shut the plant, is using even grander motors today. He�s taking on the international drug trade, a campaign that�s landed him in a high-profile libel case involving one of the world�s richest men. The case, in which Giordano is being defended by Conway attorney Thomas Lesser stems from 1997 reporting about billionaire Roberto Hernandez Ramirez. The article ties the president and primary shareholder of Banco Nacional de Mexico, who hosted an anti-drug summit attended by President Clinton, to drug trafficking and money laundering. Banamex, as it is known, was acquired by Citigroup this summer for $12.5 billion. Rolling Stone magazine, which recently named Giordano its choice for �Hot Muckraker,� wrote, �It�s probably safe to say that in filing this suit, Banamex didn�t know with whom it was picking a fight.� Giordano, who left Franklin County after leading a successful 1982 statewide referendum campaign on siting radioactive waste plants or dumps in Massachusetts and then wrote for the Boston Phoenix, placed the translated article, by Mexican reporter Mario Menendez, on his internet site, www.narconews.com Now living in Mexico � and reportedly up to 27 arrests � Giordano started the Narco News Bulletin in April 2000 to present what the Mexican and Latin American press is saying about the drug war. �The Narco News does not claim objectivity,� Giordano wrote in his opening statement, with a �Don�t Tread on Me� colonial banner flag. �We are out to break the manufactured consensus north of the border� In the South, as the stories we translate and summarize demonstrate, a new consensus, based on the reality of drug prohibition between nations and peoples is already under construction.� Giordano, preparing to launch a �Narco News Fall Offensive, � has been the subject of recent articles in Rolling Stone, Wired, The Village Voice, Online Journalism Review, In These Times, the London Guardian and other media. �Internet and legal scholars say it is a potentially precedent-setting case that raises fundamental questions about free speech and the globalized world of cyberspace, as well as the role of the independent journalists in a media world increasingly controlled by corporate giants,� The Christian Science Monitor wrote last month. �It�s definitely precedent-setting,� said Lesser, who argued that New York State Supreme Court is not the proper jurisdiction to the case, since there was no relationship to New York. �A web site based in Mexico and reporting about Mexican affairs being sued in New York State means that� a person can essentially be sued anywhere in the world. It has no relationship to New York. They could have easily sued in Iowa.� The bank�s attorney�s counter that Giordano made statements about the Narco News in various New York forums. The second �extraordinary� aspect of the case, from Lesser�s standpoint, is that Banamex was never implicated in the article, yet it was the bank rather than Hernandez that brought the suit �to chill First Amendment rights.� Giordano, never one to pull punches, told the Village Voice recently that Hernandez is �hiding behind his bank. Just showing my face will speak volumes about which side of the debate is telling the truth.� The Voice called this �the summer�s more entertaining media trial.� It�s no surprise to find Giordano, who not only masterminded the Massachusetts referendum campaign but then became the only western Massachusetts representative on the state�s Low-Level Radioactive Waste Siting Board, continues to make waves on an international level. �Make no mistake,� wrote the Annenberg School of Journalism�s Online Journalism Review, �Narco News posts a style of writing you won�t find landing in your typical American driveway or on the major wire services. The slant is opinionated, left wing and activist. But that doesn�t undermine its legitimacy, especially on the Web.� Back when he was in Franklin County Superior Court arguing his own case against a Boston corporate law firm to have the Rowe plant shut down, Giordano acknowledged, �It was 1 percent intimidation, 99 percent adventure but 100 percent necessity. Law, like nuclear power, is something laymen should attempt to understand.� Today, awaiting a decision he expects to be at least a few months away, Giordano reflects, �In the end, these two battles, 20 years and 3,000 miles apart, are the same battle. They are battles waged, necessarily, by populations threatened by huge and powerful interests that are used to getting their own way� There is a word for this: Democracy.� For Giordano, who cut his political teeth on populist issues in Franklin County, it�s all the same fight. �It�s like being in the Franklin County Courthouse all over again,� according to Giordano, �except that the stage is New York City, and through the Internet, it�s global� There�s no gimmick. It�s just, hey, bringing back the practice of authentic law while we do the same with journalism.� On the Internet: www.narconews.com You can reach Richie Davis at: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
