Narco News to Banamex Web Site Provider:

"Please DON'T Censor Our Adversary's Web Site"

Note: This communiqué is posted online at
http://www.narconews.com/drugwarontrial4.html

To: Jared Stauffer, CEO, Brinkster.com
feeback@..., info@..., partners@...,
pressinfo@...
Internet Service Provider for Banamex/Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer &
Feld, LLP
217 First St
Jersey City, NJ 07302
US
201-309-9994

From: Al Giordano
Publisher
The Narco News Bulletin
http://www.narconews.com/
narconews@...

Date: January 13, 2001

Re: Please DON'T censor our adversary's web site

Dear Jared,

As part of an effort of censorship and harassment by the banker
Roberto Hernández Ramírez, his bank, Banamex, and the lawyer-lobbyist
firm that he hired to sue and harass online and newspaper
journalists, you have been contracted by Banamex and/or Akin, Gump,
Strauss, Hauer & Feld to publish a web site at this address:

http://www15.brinkster.com/files1200/index.asp

The web site, on your server, contains this message:

"Banco Nacional de Mexico, S.A. ('Banamex') has filed suit against 1)
Mario Renato Mendendez Rodriguez, 2) Al Giordano and 3) The Narco
News Bulletin. That case is currently pending in the United States
District Court for the Southern District of New York. Banamex has set
up this web page as a means to deliver important documents relating
to the the lawsuit to the defendants in the case. Clicking on the
links below will display the documents and permit the user to save
them, if desired."

I am writing to kindly ask that you NOT censor this web site that has
been placed by our litigious adversaries.

At Narco News, we believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Since April 18, 2000, we have published hundreds of news stories that
reveal the facts about the present-day atrocity that is the US-
imposed War on Drugs in Latin America. These journalistic reports can
be found at http://www.narconews.com

The web site that you have been contracted to provide includes the
text of a lawsuit filed against Mexican and US journalists.

They are suing us because we reported the facts and told the truth
about government-protected drug trafficking throughout América,
including some stories about those in government and media who
protected that activity on the coastal Caribbean properties of Mr.
Hernández, owner of Banamex.

Today, we have placed a link from our web site to the site on your
server so that all our readers across the world may read the false
and unsubstantiated charges filed against us by Banamex through its
lawyer-lobbyist firm Akin Gump.

The lawsuit speaks for itself. One need only read its hostile tone
and its lack of facts to back its most serious allegations to see,
clearly, that they have no real case. This lawsuit is a classic SLAPP
suit (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation), and its
perpetrators are already beginning to feel the consequences of their
own censorious and immoral actions against us.

The lawsuit makes some allegations that would be actionable as libel
if the Plaintiffs or their lawyers stated them anywhere outside of
the protected realm of a court proceeding (thus, they have not
repeated these knowingly false and malicious allegations in their
statements to the press). But we believe, as First Amendment
advocates before us have said, that THE ONLY SOLUTION TO HARMFUL
SPEECH IS MORE SPEECH.

Your new clients do not share our commitment to free speech. Here is
a case in point that, as an Internet Service Provider, ought to
concern you deeply:

Last month, Mr. Tom McLish of Akin Gump sent a threatening letter to
our Internet Service Provider, Voxel.net in Troy, New York, seeking
to intimidate them into censoring our web publication. The good
people at www.voxel.net , instead of running scared and taking our
site down, told the Metroland newspaper of Albany that Narco News is
providing "a public service," and that Voxel.net will not censor us.

You may read that report at:

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1915/a05.html?3366

You may also read a Village Voice story that reports on Akin Gump's
harassment activities against online freedom of speech at:

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0051/cotts.shtml

And you may read a free speech scholar's analysis of our case at:

http://www.narconews.com/drugwarontrial3.html

We don't seek to win our battle for free speech through censorship.
To the contrary, we write today to ask you NOT to censor the Banamex-
Akin Gump web site - even if and when they ask you to take it down.

All the documents on that web site are public documents, property of
the US courts, and thus, the American people. There is no copyright
upon them. They are now part of the public record. Having filed them
in a court of law, Banamex and Akin Gump have lost all claim of
ownership on those words (indeed, the most truthful words in that
complaint were taken from Narco News, and we thank them for providing
more readers for the facts and truth we publish, and for making these
texts available at yet another Internet site).

Thus, if Akin Gump or Banamex comes to you - now that we have, once
again, turned their bitter litigious lemons into the sweet and
refreshing lemonade of Free Expression - and if they ask you to take
the site down, we call upon you to maintain the site as a historical
archive of how huge companies in the private sector try to use their
money and power to censor the Internet, the Press and Freedom of
Expression.

Finally, we hope that your wealthy clients paid you in advance for
the web site, and that perhaps you can find a worthy free speech
organization like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American
Civil Liberties Union, or another charity of your choice, to support
with the funds of those who, in bad faith and hostility to freedom,
seek to censor the Internet.

Thank you, Jared, for your time and consideration. We wish you
continued success.

For an Internet that stays proud and free,

From somewhere in a country called América,

Al Giordano
Publisher
The Narco News Bulletin
http://www.narconews.com/
narconews@...