Posted by panch from pool0385.cvx25-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.217.130) on Saturday, June 29, 2002 at 3:45PM :
I have to say it again...Shawn is using you both as he is entitled to do. He understands Jackie's psychology...knows damn well she is acting every bit the part of a Woman Scorned. He sees the jewelry, the watch, the cars...sees those checks being written left and right...understands that she's on a fishing expedition trying to do as much damage as she can with no thought to the consequences to herself, or anyone else.
At your best you know it too...you also know there isn't a thing you can do about it. The last time I tried to contact you I got a manuscript back from Shawn in which he assured me he loved you both...always worked to settle things...did I want to settle maybe? What gives him the idea I want to settle...or called you in hopes of settling, I can't imagine...just goes to show he isn't up to snuff.
He of course wants to settle...but AFTER he's gotten as much out of you as he can...and hoped to scare me enough in the process so I would be eager to settle...several thousands of dollars down the road. That's why they added Jeff to the list...to pressure me, they know he didn't do anything. These guys always work like that. He has no desire to go to court on this silly thing...I mean the truth is one's best and most valid defense. I told the truth...Shawn has to prove I didn't. How do you do that?
Ever wonder why people don't sue someone for calling them names? Let's say I call a woman a bitch and she ddeicdes to sue me. The word "bitch" is not an outlawed term for the use of which you are automatically fined and jailed or executed...this is NOT Turkey!
"Bitch" has a meaning and if I am being challenged for calling a woman a bitch...I get to go to court and try to prove that she IS a bitch. Being a bitch has certain characteristics...the word is defined most simply as a vulgar or lewd woman...lewd is defined as unchaste, wicked, worthless....and vulgar can mean boorish, offensive to good taste, low, coarse etc. And that only has to be MY honest opinion...not an established fact...it becomes a fact when the court refuses to find me guilty of lying when I said I think she is a bitch.
NOW do you see why courts can't possibly bother themselves with this stuff? If I say an executive is a fraud...I have to be careful because I'm saying something about his or her honesty where business, their livelihood and that of others, is concerned... where I might do serous damage to things the courts do care about and are set up in part to protect us all from.
But if I call my neighbor a fraud...no one bothers...it's a figure of speech meaning he or she isn't what he or she seems to be...is a phoney. That isn't actionable.
I didn't do any material damage to Jackie calling her all those names. She may say she was so distraught she couldn't function at her job...but that's a stretch...certainly people in the business world hear this kind of language all the time...especially in today's world...to say you fell apart because someone called you names and exposed your anatomy, and you therefore lost sleep and couldn't go to work the next day, may just be a comment on how poorly contsructed you are...or together with other facts about you make it known that you are lying...trying to gain sympathy or justify your outlandish demands for compensation.
Shawn knows all this. Do you realy believe that if i did the same things to his wife...under the same kinds of provocation, or even without it...he would drag her into court along with me and demand that I PROVE his wife is all the things I called her?
What if I manage to convince the jury that a woman who does the things she did to me...and this is where it was a fatal mistake to sue Jeff, qualifies for what any sane person would call a bitch? Do you really want to try a case like that and lose...have a jury of a Superior Court affirm that as far as the legal system is concerned, when someone calls your own wife, the mother of your children a bitch...he is telling the truth?
That's why people don't take these kinds of things to a Superior Court and get this stuff placed on the public record. How would you like this to become a test case...cited under her name from now on. Since there aren't many people who would do such a stupid thing...she could make history for us all...while setting legal precedent .
I don't want to settle at all. I am eager to get before a jury because I believe in what I did, am doing and will do...and I think having you all testify under oath will only make my point.
I am sorry, however, that it had to come to this. All I ever wanted to do was make sculpture and get Assyrian monuments placed in public as a way of giving our children a reason to feel a little pride in their heritage and themselves. I had no idea I was going to walk into a viper's nest of competing small time egos who will stoop to anything to maintain themselves in whatever positions of power and prestige they feel they have among us.
I told Atour Golani I would never start a fight...but I'd never walk away from one either. These people had grown accustomed to dealing with others of their kind...have gotten used to empty poses and windy declamations, and shallow threats and meaningless accomplishments...so locked into this dismal hothouse that they believe anyone who comes there among them must be made of the same weak material.
For long enough they have made us ashamed of being Assyrian and actually getting to somewhere meaningful..not another dance or picnic or rally from hell. They pulled out all stops to stop me, and in the process broke several laws, as they routinely do, convinced that no one would dare (!) or bother to, or find it important enough to challenge them.
Believing, especially in this case, that an abundance of money and nothing better to do with it, or your time...and a willingness to use it to harrass people, would win the day. It will be a Civics lesson no one will forget...and someday soon Rabel and many more Assyrian artists and writers and musicians and choreographers and dancers will feel free from the kinds of moronic interference we've had to deal with from people who don't know their backsides from a tree...and will gladly destroy what they can't steal or ruin, or take over and use for their own glory...at the expense of all the rest of us.
That was a mistake.
note: Shawn....DON'T ask me to settle again.
-- panch
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