Thursday, November 17, 2011
Brazil Reverses Itself, Finds Me Guilty
In what is clearly a brazen challenge to American law that protects U.S. citizens from foreign defamation judgments in foreign verdicts that are a clear affront to the First Amendment and U.S. free speech protections, a Brazilian court today found me guilty in a defamation case brought by a Brazilian woman I had never heard of, nor written a single word about.
Today's court decision overturned an earlier one that had dismissed the case against me.
The lawsuit makes preposterous allegations, including one that suggests I was on board the Legacy business jet, which collided at 37,000 feet over the Amazon with a Brazilian airliner, as a participant in a nebulous plot to claim the Amazon land for unspecified imperial interests.
In the collision, on Sept. 29, 2006, 154 people on the Brazilian 737 died in a horrifying plunge to the jungle, while seven men on the business jet that collided with it, including me, survived after a harrowing 25-minute flight in a severely damaged airplane that, at the last minute before crashing itself into the jungle, managed an emergency landing at a jungle airstrip.
The other allegations in the suit are also obvious fabrications, easily disproved, that were cooked up in an attempt to discredit me for accurate reporting and commentary on the aftermath of the crash. As I reported at the time, the Brazilian authorities had rushed recklessly to criminalize the accident and scapegoat the American pilots. An investigation by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board concluded that, as I also had been reporting, systemic and operational faults by Brazilian air traffic control were the primary cause of the disaster. (The N.T.S.B. was involved in the investigation in Brazil because one of the planes, the Boeing 737, was American made. The Legacy was made by the Brazilian manufacturer Embraer.)
The lawsuit -- which specifically accuses me of insulting the entire nation of Brazil -- was based on the remarkable legal assertion that the plaintiff, as a Brazilian citizen, suffered an insult to her honor because of my reporting -- even though she was never mentioned in any way. Among the odd things that I am falsely accused of writing -- as an insult to the honor of all Brazilians, according to the suit -- is that "Brazil is most idiot of idiots."
That and other fabricated comments attributed to me in the suit were mostly culled, in fact, from comments appended to, or linked from, various Web sites in Brazilian media in which anonymous Brazilians ranted about me and even, in some cases, about Brazilian authorities for the disgraceful way they handled the aftermath of the crash. Ultimately such online mayhem melds into a rat's-nest of bewildering hyperlinks, with lots of side trips down links that can lead to Crazy Lane.
But even if I forgotten elements of my native tongue and had written that Brazil is a "most idiot of all idiots," that would not be remotely actionable in any country with any respect for free speech -- and certainly not under U.S. law.
The lawsuit is now probably Exhibit A in the free-speech issue presented by attempts by people in foreign countries, or their governments, to punish free speech made in the United States.
If any foreign citizen, or government, can reach into the United States to criminalize free speech here that anyone in a foreign country might find objectionable, that is a grave affront to the U.S. First Amendment.
Incidentally, as I complete a book on this awful situation, I was thinking just yesterday: You know, never once in 2006, during the time we seven badly shaken and traumatized survivors were in custody in the Amazon and at a police headquarters in the days after the crash, did anyone in authority there express the slightest concern about our well-being.
Anyway, here's a news report on the court action in Brazil today that finds me guilty and seeks to impose both civil and criminal penalties against me. The court also demands that I "retract" statements that, uh, I demonstrably never made.
I am very sad to say that this story appears today in Jornal do Brasil, a major Brazilian newspaper that once bravely distinguished itself by standing up to the ruthless military dictatorship that oppressed that country from 1964 to 1985, while much of the rest of the media was on its knees to serve the generals. Today, alas, it just prints stories that insult free speech, without bothering with the basic facts. Sic transit gloria mundi.
(Translation thanks to Richard Pedicini in Sao Paulo:
Today's court decision overturned an earlier one that had dismissed the case against me.
The lawsuit makes preposterous allegations, including one that suggests I was on board the Legacy business jet, which collided at 37,000 feet over the Amazon with a Brazilian airliner, as a participant in a nebulous plot to claim the Amazon land for unspecified imperial interests.
In the collision, on Sept. 29, 2006, 154 people on the Brazilian 737 died in a horrifying plunge to the jungle, while seven men on the business jet that collided with it, including me, survived after a harrowing 25-minute flight in a severely damaged airplane that, at the last minute before crashing itself into the jungle, managed an emergency landing at a jungle airstrip.
The other allegations in the suit are also obvious fabrications, easily disproved, that were cooked up in an attempt to discredit me for accurate reporting and commentary on the aftermath of the crash. As I reported at the time, the Brazilian authorities had rushed recklessly to criminalize the accident and scapegoat the American pilots. An investigation by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board concluded that, as I also had been reporting, systemic and operational faults by Brazilian air traffic control were the primary cause of the disaster. (The N.T.S.B. was involved in the investigation in Brazil because one of the planes, the Boeing 737, was American made. The Legacy was made by the Brazilian manufacturer Embraer.)
The lawsuit -- which specifically accuses me of insulting the entire nation of Brazil -- was based on the remarkable legal assertion that the plaintiff, as a Brazilian citizen, suffered an insult to her honor because of my reporting -- even though she was never mentioned in any way. Among the odd things that I am falsely accused of writing -- as an insult to the honor of all Brazilians, according to the suit -- is that "Brazil is most idiot of idiots."
That and other fabricated comments attributed to me in the suit were mostly culled, in fact, from comments appended to, or linked from, various Web sites in Brazilian media in which anonymous Brazilians ranted about me and even, in some cases, about Brazilian authorities for the disgraceful way they handled the aftermath of the crash. Ultimately such online mayhem melds into a rat's-nest of bewildering hyperlinks, with lots of side trips down links that can lead to Crazy Lane.
But even if I forgotten elements of my native tongue and had written that Brazil is a "most idiot of all idiots," that would not be remotely actionable in any country with any respect for free speech -- and certainly not under U.S. law.
The lawsuit is now probably Exhibit A in the free-speech issue presented by attempts by people in foreign countries, or their governments, to punish free speech made in the United States.
If any foreign citizen, or government, can reach into the United States to criminalize free speech here that anyone in a foreign country might find objectionable, that is a grave affront to the U.S. First Amendment.
Incidentally, as I complete a book on this awful situation, I was thinking just yesterday: You know, never once in 2006, during the time we seven badly shaken and traumatized survivors were in custody in the Amazon and at a police headquarters in the days after the crash, did anyone in authority there express the slightest concern about our well-being.
Anyway, here's a news report on the court action in Brazil today that finds me guilty and seeks to impose both civil and criminal penalties against me. The court also demands that I "retract" statements that, uh, I demonstrably never made.
I am very sad to say that this story appears today in Jornal do Brasil, a major Brazilian newspaper that once bravely distinguished itself by standing up to the ruthless military dictatorship that oppressed that country from 1964 to 1985, while much of the rest of the media was on its knees to serve the generals. Today, alas, it just prints stories that insult free speech, without bothering with the basic facts. Sic transit gloria mundi.
(Translation thanks to Richard Pedicini in Sao Paulo: