CONSERVATIVES CLAIM FREE SPEECH IS UNDER ATTACK BY RICH SAUDIS AND BRITISH COURTS
December 31st 2007 03:24
The mainstream media in the US has largely ignored the issue, but conservative media outlets have been going gaga over the trend by Saudi billionaires to sue US authors for libel and defamation mostly in Britain rather than the US.
The pro-Saudis say they use British courts because they still offer protection against harmful and poor journalism; the opposing camp say British courts are misappropriated by ‘libel tourists’ intent on circumventing the American notion of free speech as invoked in the sacred US constitution.
Typical of the latter stream of thinking is Jed Babbin, online editor of Human Events who on Friday wrote, “Under assault by Muslims and multiculturalists, free speech and freedom of the press are dead in Britain. The same sorts of people who killed them in Britain are killing them in Canada. They and their allies are using the British and Canadian courts and tribunals to bury our First Amendment rights in America.”
“ Muslims – individually and in pressure groups – are using British libel laws and Canadian ‘human rights’ laws to limit what is said about Islam, terrorists and the people in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere who are funding groups such as al-Queda. The cases of Rachel Ehrenfeld and Mark Steyn prove the point.”
Dr Rachel Ehrenfeld is a cause celebre of the movement at the moment. She wrote the book, Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed, and How to Stop It, and in that book she claims that Sheikh Khalid Salim bin Mahfouz, a Saudi who is former head of the Saudi National Commercial Bank, and some of his family had funded terrorism directly and indirectly.
Her appeal in a New York court against the British ruling was knocked back in December and that is why the issue is now doing the rounds again.
Jed Babbin writes, “Ehrenfeld is American, her book was written and published in America and she has no business or other ties to Britain. Under American law, the Brit courts would have no jurisdiction over her. But about two dozen copies of her book were sold there through the internet. Bin Mahfouz sued her for libel in the Brit courts where the burden of proof is the opposite of what it is in US courts: the author has to prove that what is written is true, rather than the supposedly defamed person proving it is false.
“Ehrenfeld refused to fight the case, saying the Brit courts have no jurisdiction over her. Mahfouz got a default judgment against her. The judgment also requires that there be no further ‘defamatory’ statements published in England and Wales.”
In November 21, 2007 Sheikh Khalid Bin Mahfouz’s solicitors, Laurence Harris and Kendall Freeman, published a letter in the Spectator which first of all criticised the Observer’s journalist Melanie Phillips for her report the day before.
The letter opened with the statement, “Sir: If Melanie Phillips had checked her facts – or checked with the subject of her article – she would have avoided making assertions about Mr. Khalid Bin Mahfouz which are wrong ('The Lights go out in Britain', 20 November).
Mr. Bin Mahfouz - who has publicly condemned terrorism -- has not used English libel laws ‘to suppress evidence about the alleged links between Saudi financing and terrorism,’ but to shed much-needed light on this topic. “By openly confronting stories that had linked him to funding of terrorism through his role as head of the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia, Mr. Bin Mahfouz has demonstrated convincingly that there is no factual basis for these claims. He has not sued 30 publications, as Ms Phillips suggests, but four.
“In dozens of other instances, publications that have repeated these allegations have promptly and publicly apologised, usually without any threat of litigation, because it was evident from material publicly available that there was no evidence to support these sensational and extremely defamatory claims.
”Much of this material is summarised by Mr. Justice Eady in his Judgment against Rachel Ehrenfeld (posted at Really Long Link
“As the Court made clear, Ms. Ehrenfeld is indeed ‘fighting a lonely battle,’ not against ‘libel tourism,’ as Phillips suggests, but against the truth. Rather than check her facts, defend her statements in open court, or acknowledge her mistakes, Ehrenfeld hides behind a claim to free speech. Thank goodness, the legal lights remain on in Britain to expose such harmful journalism.”
In Human Events, Jed Babbin said that with this letter “bin Mahfouz’s lawyers gloated over their victory against Ehrenfeld… ‘harmful journalism’ is what tyrants and despots call free speech, especially political speech that condemns their affronts to freedom. The ‘legal lights’ Mahfouz’s lawyers see is the bonfire they made of the Magna Carta. Thanks to Mahfouz and his ilk, the light of free speech is extinguished in Britain.”
Part of what Justice Eady said in his November 3, 2005 ruling was:
“Cherif Sedky also drew my attention to an article in the Jerusalem Post of 19 January of this year written by Caroline Glick. It refers to the first defendant as ‘Mahfouz's most recent victim’ and again takes the point that she is lacking in financial clout so as to be able to defend herself in Britain and says that she would be hard pressed to ‘emerge victorious given Britain's pro plaintiff libel laws’. It is said that ‘Mahfouz uses his vast wealth to intimidate his critics into silence with a threat of financial and professional ruin.’
“The purpose of this exercise is fairly obvious, namely to give the impression that any judgment of the English court is of little significance and does nothing to establish that the allegations are false. That is why it is so important, as the claimants appreciate, to go through such allegations as have been made against them in the past on behalf of these defendants in order to demonstrate their lack of merit. That is why this judgment has gone to such length. It is not a purely formal process and the declaration of falsity which I propose to grant shortly is not an empty gesture
“The claimants are anxious for it to be made absolutely clear that the defendants have had every opportunity to defend these proceedings by means of a plea of justification if they thought it appropriate. All they have been able to advance, it is said, is material of a flimsy and unreliable nature, and the claimants have taken the trouble to demonstrate its lack of merit.”
Human Events is a conservative weekly magazine that was founded in the US in 1944, and takes its name from the first sentence of the US Declaration of Independence, which reads "When in the course of human events..."
Ironically, while the magazine casts itself as a defender of free speech and campions Ehrenfeld’s book, the magazine is notorious for publishing a list of the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries.
The list is comprised of:
1. The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
2. Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler
3. Quotations by Chairman Mao Zedung, by Mao Zedung
4. Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male, by Alfred Kinsey (aka The Kinsey Report.)
5. Democracy and Education, by John Dewey
6. Das Kapital, by Karl Marx
7. The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan
8. The Course of Positive Philosophy, by August Comte
9. Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche
10. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, by John Maynard Keynes
The pro-Saudis say they use British courts because they still offer protection against harmful and poor journalism; the opposing camp say British courts are misappropriated by ‘libel tourists’ intent on circumventing the American notion of free speech as invoked in the sacred US constitution.
Typical of the latter stream of thinking is Jed Babbin, online editor of Human Events who on Friday wrote, “Under assault by Muslims and multiculturalists, free speech and freedom of the press are dead in Britain. The same sorts of people who killed them in Britain are killing them in Canada. They and their allies are using the British and Canadian courts and tribunals to bury our First Amendment rights in America.”
Dr Rachel Ehrenfeld is a cause celebre of the movement at the moment. She wrote the book, Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed, and How to Stop It, and in that book she claims that Sheikh Khalid Salim bin Mahfouz, a Saudi who is former head of the Saudi National Commercial Bank, and some of his family had funded terrorism directly and indirectly.
Her appeal in a New York court against the British ruling was knocked back in December and that is why the issue is now doing the rounds again.
“Ehrenfeld refused to fight the case, saying the Brit courts have no jurisdiction over her. Mahfouz got a default judgment against her. The judgment also requires that there be no further ‘defamatory’ statements published in England and Wales.”
In November 21, 2007 Sheikh Khalid Bin Mahfouz’s solicitors, Laurence Harris and Kendall Freeman, published a letter in the Spectator which first of all criticised the Observer’s journalist Melanie Phillips for her report the day before.
The letter opened with the statement, “Sir: If Melanie Phillips had checked her facts – or checked with the subject of her article – she would have avoided making assertions about Mr. Khalid Bin Mahfouz which are wrong ('The Lights go out in Britain', 20 November).
Mr. Bin Mahfouz - who has publicly condemned terrorism -- has not used English libel laws ‘to suppress evidence about the alleged links between Saudi financing and terrorism,’ but to shed much-needed light on this topic. “By openly confronting stories that had linked him to funding of terrorism through his role as head of the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia, Mr. Bin Mahfouz has demonstrated convincingly that there is no factual basis for these claims. He has not sued 30 publications, as Ms Phillips suggests, but four.
“In dozens of other instances, publications that have repeated these allegations have promptly and publicly apologised, usually without any threat of litigation, because it was evident from material publicly available that there was no evidence to support these sensational and extremely defamatory claims.
”Much of this material is summarised by Mr. Justice Eady in his Judgment against Rachel Ehrenfeld (posted at Really Long Link
“As the Court made clear, Ms. Ehrenfeld is indeed ‘fighting a lonely battle,’ not against ‘libel tourism,’ as Phillips suggests, but against the truth. Rather than check her facts, defend her statements in open court, or acknowledge her mistakes, Ehrenfeld hides behind a claim to free speech. Thank goodness, the legal lights remain on in Britain to expose such harmful journalism.”
In Human Events, Jed Babbin said that with this letter “bin Mahfouz’s lawyers gloated over their victory against Ehrenfeld… ‘harmful journalism’ is what tyrants and despots call free speech, especially political speech that condemns their affronts to freedom. The ‘legal lights’ Mahfouz’s lawyers see is the bonfire they made of the Magna Carta. Thanks to Mahfouz and his ilk, the light of free speech is extinguished in Britain.”
Part of what Justice Eady said in his November 3, 2005 ruling was:
“Cherif Sedky also drew my attention to an article in the Jerusalem Post of 19 January of this year written by Caroline Glick. It refers to the first defendant as ‘Mahfouz's most recent victim’ and again takes the point that she is lacking in financial clout so as to be able to defend herself in Britain and says that she would be hard pressed to ‘emerge victorious given Britain's pro plaintiff libel laws’. It is said that ‘Mahfouz uses his vast wealth to intimidate his critics into silence with a threat of financial and professional ruin.’
“The purpose of this exercise is fairly obvious, namely to give the impression that any judgment of the English court is of little significance and does nothing to establish that the allegations are false. That is why it is so important, as the claimants appreciate, to go through such allegations as have been made against them in the past on behalf of these defendants in order to demonstrate their lack of merit. That is why this judgment has gone to such length. It is not a purely formal process and the declaration of falsity which I propose to grant shortly is not an empty gesture
“The claimants are anxious for it to be made absolutely clear that the defendants have had every opportunity to defend these proceedings by means of a plea of justification if they thought it appropriate. All they have been able to advance, it is said, is material of a flimsy and unreliable nature, and the claimants have taken the trouble to demonstrate its lack of merit.”
Human Events is a conservative weekly magazine that was founded in the US in 1944, and takes its name from the first sentence of the US Declaration of Independence, which reads "When in the course of human events..."
Ironically, while the magazine casts itself as a defender of free speech and campions Ehrenfeld’s book, the magazine is notorious for publishing a list of the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries.
The list is comprised of:
1. The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
2. Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler
3. Quotations by Chairman Mao Zedung, by Mao Zedung
4. Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male, by Alfred Kinsey (aka The Kinsey Report.)
5. Democracy and Education, by John Dewey
6. Das Kapital, by Karl Marx
7. The Feminine Mystique, by Betty Friedan
8. The Course of Positive Philosophy, by August Comte
9. Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche
10. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, by John Maynard Keynes
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