Posted on 09/10/2007 9:02:21 AM PDT by abb
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — The Supreme Court ordered Time magazine to pay $106 million in damages for defaming former Indonesian dictator Suharto by alleging his family amassed billions of dollars during his 32-year rule, officials said Monday.
The May 1999 cover story in the magazine's Asian edition said much of the money had been transferred from Switzerland to Austria before Suharto stepped down amid riots and pro-democracy protests in 1998.
Suharto, who said the article defamed him and the state, filed a lawsuit with the Central District Jakarta and later the Jakarta High Court, both of which ruled in Time's favor.
The Supreme Court overturned the decisions on Aug. 31.
"Time magazine has to pay $106 million for defaming Suharto," said Supreme Court spokesman Nurhadi, who like many Indonesians uses only one name. "The article and photographs hurt the image and pride of the plaintiff as a great retired army general and the former Indonesian president."
Suharto's lawyer, Muhamad Assegaf, welcomed the "surprise verdict."
The former dictator, now 86, seized power in a 1965 coup that left up to half a million people dead and ruled the country with an iron fist for the next three decades, killing or imprisoning hundreds of thousands of political opponents.
He has evaded prosecution on charges of embezzling state funds, with lawyers successfully arguing he is too ill to stand trial, and has never been tried for human rights abuses.
The Time article, titled "The Family Firm," alleged that Suharto and his children amassed $73 billion, the bulk from oil and mining, forestry, property, banking and petrochemicals, but lost much of it during the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
It alleged that the family still had $15 billion in 1999.
Time could not be immediately reached for comment about the court ruling, details of which were not made public. But earlier, the magazine, owned by Time Warner Inc., said its article was based on four months of reporting in 11 countries that uncovered a complex network of corporate investments, bank transfers and property holdings in Switzerland, Uzbekistan and Nigeria.
ping
Suharto was certainly a mixed bag. If not for him, Indonesia might have been taken over by the Communists, supported by Red China. It certainly looked inevitable at the time.
Many of those who were killed were killed in the uprising, when it was pretty much a matter of kill or be killed. Those who died would have almost certainly done a Mao or a Pol Pot on the Indonesian people, and the killings probably would have been far worse if the Communists had succeeded.
In any case, Time deserves whatever it gets, whether Suharto took the money or not. Tough luck.
Will they be able to collect any of that judgement?
I assume this was the Indonesian Supreme Court...
Did Time ever do any stories on the wealth amassed by Arafat & his family?
I assume they will come to the United States and try to get a U.S. federal court to recognize the award and get it paid. Time will, of course, refuse and there will be a trial on the merits. If Time’s reporting is accurate, it will be pretty hard for the offended party to make their case. (Guess which federal judicial district the case will be initiated in? It is so obvious.) The case will end up before the U.S. Supreme Court. In the end, despite Ginsberg and other liberal justices love for international law, the case will be decided in favor of press’ freedom to investigate and report.
If most of the trial lawyers weren’t big time donors to the Rat party, we would see civil suits here and around the world for the lies printed and aired by the MSM in the past decades.
Yes. So I think. At the least it should put them out of business in Indonesia, and Indonesia may have some pull among its allies if Time refuses to pony up.
Since Time is also Time Warner, I should think it will hurt them if they choose to pull out of such a populous country rather than pay up.
No Time fan I, however, it’d be hard to find a more corrupt place to do business than Indonesia (from my experience.)
Yes, Indonesia is a typical third-world kleptocracy, although I believe many countries are worse. If you want to do business with them, you have to play their game.
But since Time so regularly violates the principles of fundamental truth and fairness, I can’t get too worked up about their plight. I would imagine they went after Suharto not because he was corrupt—not uncommon in most parts of the world—but because he was strongly anti-Communist and did much to reverse the red tide in Asia. Somehow they only get indignant about “right-wing” dictators.
Pinochet bad, Castro good. Suharto bad, Chavez good.
I shipped a quantity of drilling workover fluid to Balikpapan via chartered tanker some years back. The Indonesians demanded a 100 percent bribe (tax) before they would allow it to be unloaded.
You have my sympathy.
This is fundamentally why so many third-world countries remain poor—because ordinary commerce is rendered impossible. Contracts are not honored, and honest success apart from the political establishment is punished.
In one degree or another, it has been the normal state of affairs in most countries over the course of human history, which is one reason why the U.S. and the Anglosphere nations generally stand out and have thrived so remarkably.
Excellent, now maybe Americans will sue the lying bastards at TIME.
The oil we shipped was a bit unstable (would turn dark) so we had a gas blanket on the cargo. The tanker was on the last little tank of makeup gas on the day they arrived. We had to pay or take a hit.
Does this mean my cable bill will be going up?
Mogul Dick Parsons Likes Cigars, Believes in Terroir But please donÂ’t complain to him about your cable service. By Geoffrey Gray
It should be good to be Dick Parsons, king of Time Warner. He’s famously easygoing for a corporate potentate, which is evident as he holds court at the members-only Grand Havana Room, on the 39th floor of 666 Fifth Avenue, taking puffs from a plump Cuban and sipping wine from Il Palazzone, the vineyard in Tuscany that’s part of his private domain. And yet he’s not so sure he’s got it made entirely. “You know, everybody thinks it’s cool; literally, they say, ‘It must be cool to be you,’ ” Parsons says, then takes a puff. “Hello!” First, there’s the issue that’s nagged him as Time Warner’s chairman and won’t go away—the company’s stock price—and the current financial landscape isn’t helping any. “These damn markets,” he says. “It’s like swimming in a sewer.”
It’s different for, say, Rupert Murdoch. Even as Parsons is pressured to get rid of the influential, but financially undynamic, Time Inc. magazines, the News Corp. chairman got to pursue his $5 billion personal quest to own The Wall Street Journal. “Rupert has an advantage in that he has a large, publicly traded company but he’s in a controlling position,” Parsons says. “He can indulge thinking long term. If almost anybody else did it, they’d get killed. Everybody’d be saying, ‘Why are you buying a newspaper? Where’s the growth?’ ”
Parsons’s contract expires next year. He’s only 59. What of reports that he’s angling to replace Mike Bloomberg as mayor? He’s not so interested. “Tough job,” he says, and shakes his head, thinking about taking 4 a.m. calls from Con Ed or Ray Kelly. “Tough job. There was a movie called Throw Mama Under the Bus? This is called Throw Dick Parsons Under the Bus!” Would he be interested in something bigger, as we’ve heard, like running the Treasury or Education Department under the next president? He won’t say. But running things is what he does. “Nobody would admit to being a suit,” he says, “but that’s what I am.”
Back to the wine. For a long time, he kept quiet about his vineyard. He didn’t want people to know he was taking the company jet to Tuscany for tastings (he was, but only because CEO insurance usually prevents an exec from flying anything else). Now, Parsons doesn’t mind talking about his Brunello.“It’s elegant, it’s got character, it’s got complexity, and it’s got terroir. I know some people now say terroir is bullshit, it doesn’t exist. That’s not true in my judgment.” Or his new Super Tuscan. Lorenzo & Isabelle, he calls it, after his parents. “The blend is Cab-Franc, Sangiovese, and a little touch of Petit Verdot—for the nose,” he says with a sniff.
Parsons likes the vineyard because it’s the opposite of his day job. “What I have to wrestle with all the time is digital technology,” he says. “How is it changing my world? What does it mean to music? What does it mean to film and television? How is it going to change the advertising paradigm for the magazines?” He holds up his glass. “You can’t digitize this!”
Presumably Murdoch doesn’t allow himself such soul-searching. But that’s part of Parsons’s affable appeal. Still, being a likable titan can be a burden. Parsons won’t walk down the street anymore. He can’t. “People come up to you just ragging you out,” he says. “My cable thing went out, I didn’t get my magazine, I moved my AOL forwarding thing, whatever they say!” And as he’s saying all this, Alec Baldwin, another member of his stogie club, comes up and gives him a bear hug. “You know how much I love this man?” Baldwin says. “I love this man so much I won’t complain about my AOL account!”
It should be good to be Dick Parsons, king of Time Warner. He’s famously easygoing for a corporate potentate, which is evident as he holds court at the members-only Grand Havana Room, on the 39th floor of 666 Fifth Avenue, taking puffs from a plump Cuban and sipping wine from Il Palazzone, the vineyard in Tuscany that’s part of his private domain. And yet he’s not so sure he’s got it made entirely. “You know, everybody thinks it’s cool; literally, they say, ‘It must be cool to be you,’” Parsons says, then takes a puff. “Hello!” First, there’s the issue that’s nagged him as Time Warner’s chairman and won’t go away—the company’s stock price—and the current financial landscape isn’t helping any. “These damn markets,” he says. “It’s like swimming in a sewer.”
It’s different for, say, Rupert Murdoch. Even as Parsons is pressured to get rid of the influential, but financially undynamic, Time Inc. magazines, the News Corp. chairman got to pursue his $5 billion personal quest to own The Wall Street Journal. “Rupert has an advantage in that he has a large, publicly traded company but he’s in a controlling position,” Parsons says. “He can indulge thinking long term. If almost anybody else did it, they’d get killed. Everybody’d be saying, ‘Why are you buying a newspaper? Where’s the growth?’”
Parsons’s contract expires next year. He’s only 59. What of reports that he’s angling to replace Mike Bloomberg as mayor? He’s not so interested. “Tough job,” he says, and shakes his head, thinking about taking 4 a.m. calls from Con Ed or Ray Kelly. “Tough job. There was a movie called Throw Mama Under the Bus? This is called Throw Dick Parsons Under the Bus!” Would he be interested in something bigger, as we’ve heard, like running the Treasury or Education Department under the next president? He won’t say. But running things is what he does. “Nobody would admit to being a suit,” he says, “but that’s what I am.”
Back to the wine. For a long time, he kept quiet about his vineyard. He didn’t want people to know he was taking the company jet to Tuscany for tastings (he was, but only because CEO insurance usually prevents an exec from flying anything else). Now, Parsons doesn’t mind talking about his Brunello.“It’s elegant, it’s got character, it’s got complexity, and it’s got terroir. I know some people now say terroir is bullshit, it doesn’t exist. That’s not true in my judgment.” Or his new Super Tuscan. Lorenzo & Isabelle, he calls it, after his parents. “The blend is Cab-Franc, Sangiovese, and a little touch of Petit Verdot—for the nose,” he says with a sniff.
Parsons likes the vineyard because it’s the opposite of his day job. “What I have to wrestle with all the time is digital technology,” he says. “How is it changing my world? What does it mean to music? What does it mean to film and television? How is it going to change the advertising paradigm for the magazines?” He holds up his glass. “You can’t digitize this!”
Presumably Murdoch doesn’t allow himself such soul-searching. But that’s part of Parsons’s affable appeal. Still, being a likable titan can be a burden. Parsons won’t walk down the street anymore. He can’t. “People come up to you just ragging you out,” he says. “My cable thing went out, I didn’t get my magazine, I moved my AOL forwarding thing, whatever they say!” And as he’s saying all this, Alec Baldwin, another member of his stogie club, comes up and gives him a bear hug. “You know how much I love this man?” Baldwin says. “I love this man so much I won’t complain about my AOL account!”
arafat hell.....!!
What about Bubba clinton and Al gore and Marc Rich?.
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