At 07:47 AM 5/29/98 -0700, you wrote:
>Dale,
>
>and if it's true? The point in fact is that no accusations were
>made. Simply a statement of what took place upon my arrival to
>Moscow and the subsequent information those events brought
>forward. All my request involved was to check out the
>information, the case histories are substantiated with mounds of
>documentation on file at the court house and several other
>locations. So I guess the real question is do you ask questions
>and find out the truth or do you wait for someone outside to
>come in and do it?
>
>Seems to me I am allowing you the opportunity to either act on
>your own or wait for the federal courts or an outside
>investigator to come in and do it.
>
>the choice is yours as always. Libel and slander is only if it
>is untrue....those facts I was unsure of I was clear were
>alleged. The facts that were substantiated with documentation
>should have been clear, if you were willing to really read what
>was there and not hide your head from the possibility that there
>are some very deep and severe problems in the legal community perhaps it
>make more sense to you. You know it's a fact of life that sometimes the
>truth hurts.
>
>Joan
>
>Date:
> Thu, 28 May 1998 16:29:34 -0700 (PDT) From: Dale
>Goble <gobled@uidaho.edu> To: Jack Porter
><jporter@moscow.com> Cc: vision2020@moscow.com Subject:
> Re: Alleged civil rights violations
>
>
>
>A week or so ago I asked the people who have been making unsubstantiated
>accusations about the police, the judiciary, and others to state the
>facts
>on which they base their conclusions. Jack Porter made a similar (and
>more eloquent) request recently.
>
>The response was more of the same: unsubstantiated accusations -- the
>everybody-knows-that-x-does-cocaine type of statements. If there have
>been any factual statements that support the accusations, I have missed
>them. We who fail simply to accede to the truth of the statements are
>in
>denial.
>
>On the one hand, it is tempting simply to note that at least two of the
>people who have made the accusations were apparently convicted of some
>crime; they believe that their convictions or subsequent problems were
>unjust. Every attorney has stories of clients who believe that they are
>the object of a conspiracy, that "the system" has treated them unjustly.
>They are people who will let no opportunity pass to tell you of their
>wrongs. Such stories soon assume an air sheer implausibility. We are
>being asked to believe that everyone from the local police through the
>federal government has conspired to deprive these people of what they
>believe they are due.
>
>On the other hand, however, the accusations that have been made are
>extremely serious: named individuals in this community have been accused
>of illegal drug use and other crimes. Such statements damage
>individuals
>and their standing in the community. It is unconscionable for a list
>that
>is committed to building community to tolerate such statements
>particularly when the accusers have repeatedly failed to provide any
>factual support for their statements.
>
>How can we build community when we tolerate such nonsense?
>
>Such statements are defamatory. The individuals who have made them have
>failed to provide appear to have no reasonable basis for making them.
>As
>such they are subject of liability for the damage that they cause.
>
>The internet is widely hailed as inherently democratic and empowering:
>it
>allows individuals to broadcast their beliefs widely. This list seems
>dedicated to the proposition that free exchange of ideas is good. But
>democracy requires that speakers accept responsibility for their
>statements. There is no place in the free exchange of ideas willful or
>reckless defamation of individuals.
>
>Dale Goble
>Moscow
>
>
>