Expat Yank

The BBC reports:

Former Iraq hostage Norman Kember has said he helped fund Islamic preacher Abu Qatada’s bail.

Mr Kember, 77, a peace campaigner, said he did it in a spirit of “reciprocity and kindness” because Qatada had helped him when he was in captivity…

…Qatada, a Palestinian-Jordanian, last month won an appeal against deportation. The government is seeking to over-turn that…

Interestingly, Mr Kember above isn’t to the BBC a “so-called” peace campaigner, but let’s not digress. Regardless, it is a moving and powerful inter-faith statement by him, except perhaps in one tangible sense: he is hardly taking a great financial risk.

For Mr Kember seems highly unlikely to lose his contribution owing to the gentleman’s absconding. After all, the only reason Mr Qatada was behind bars is because he is one of those teflon few the British government can’t seem to get to leave the country. (Granted asylum by Britain only then to become a security worry here, yet now unwilling to return home because they greatly fear “torture” there, and because of that fear the British government can’t currently do more than politely ask them to depart.)

On the other hand, the British government thankfully has no legal trouble chasing a serving British soldier’s Canadian wife all the way to Spain. Eh, that is the latter’s tough luck of course, in having desperately to jump through consular hoops to remain. She should have been a Jordanian asylum-seeker, convicted of terror offenses by a court in her appallingly repressive, Hitlerian home country to which it is absolutely unthinkable even to consider that she be forced to return . . . but which is, strangely, otherwise good fun to deal with, what with its children’s museum-building, glamorous queen and all.

_____________________________

UPDATE: Aside from Canadian UK forces wives, another group that this Government thank goodness has little trouble evicting from the country: husbands of Filipino nurses who die unlawfully as a result of NHS screw ups.

I have to admit that in these tough economic times, alas no one sends me their old NYT Literary Supplement, or old NYT newspapers, to enable me somehow to get all the news from “back home”. Unfortunately, I’m forced to scrap around online, where, as we know, information is slender at best. Doing so, I see, for instance, that Frank Rich has seemingly given a great deal of thought to last Sunday’s column:

BORED by those endless replays of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright? If so, go directly to YouTube, search for “John Hagee Roman Church Hitler,” and be recharged by a fresh jolt of clerical jive…

Or perhaps not, since, actually, this subject is already long beyond “boring”. Yours truly as a Roman Catholic had weeks ago addressed it. And Mr Rich has nothing essentially new to say.

That being so, clearly there’s another reason he has trotted that out, in order to try to re-beat that tired horse:

…The Clintons and Mr. Obama are always held accountable for their racial stands, as they should be, but the elephant in the room of our politics is rarely acknowledged: In the 21st century, the so-called party of Lincoln does not have a single African-American among its collective 247 senators and representatives in Washington. Yes, there are appointees like Clarence Thomas and Condi Rice, but, as we learned during the Mark Foley scandal, even gay men may hold more G.O.P. positions of power than blacks.

A near half-century after the civil rights acts of the 1960s, this is quite an achievement. Yet the holier-than-thou politicians and pundits on the right passing shrill moral judgment over every Democratic racial skirmish are almost never asked to confront or even acknowledge the racial dysfunction in their own house. In our mainstream political culture, this de facto apartheid is simply accepted as an intractable given, unworthy of notice, and just too embarrassing to mention aloud in polite Beltway company. Those who dare are instantly accused of “political correctness” or “reverse racism.”…

Mr Rich’s actually stumbles on a point there. (The cliché here about stopped clocks suddenly comes to mind.) But that a good part of the reason has been decades of racial gerrymandering by both parties to try to protect their incumbency eventually manifesting itself in national representation having led to black Democratic House representatives being ensconced in Democratic districts that are often overwhelmingly (”de facto apartheid”?) black, doesn’t enter into Mr Rich’s calculations of course.

Neither has he noticed that the Democratic party is more black than is the U.S. population as a whole. (As the BBC tells us of the North Carolina vote, “According to data from exit polls, Mr Obama won the backing of 90% of North Carolina’s African-American voters, who make up more than a third of the state’s electorate.” More specifically, since so few are Republicans, that would be the Democratic electorate.) Clearly, that latter’s just fine by him. And, as we learn by the conclusion, there’s a big reason why:

…Anyone who does the math knows that America is on track to become a white-minority nation in three to four decades. Yet if there’s any coherent message to be gleaned from the hypocrisy whipped up by Hurricane Jeremiah, it’s that this nation’s perennially promised candid conversation on race has yet to begin.

Anyone who also does the math and knows anything about U.S. history also knows it is now a far more Roman Catholic country than it was at its founding. (For instance, those who lived in Massachusetts in 1776 would likely be disgusted at what the commonwealth is now religio-demographically; and yet, Massachusetts somehow has survived even decades of Edward Kennedy being in the U.S. Senate.) But given his warm concern for Roman Catholic sensibilities he presumes to be mortally offended by Sen McCain, apparently Mr Rich already does. And this Catholic genuinely appreciates Mr Rich using his Sunday platform to warn us desperately about the Arizona senator’s egregious bigotries.

And anyone who does the math and knows anything about U.S. history also knows that by the standards of its racial demographics at its founding, the U.S. has already pretty much been a “white-minority” country for decades. That thanks mostly to 19th century southern and eastern European mass immigration, and their children and grandchildren. However, given his assertion that the U.S. actually isn’t there quite yet, on that Mr Rich apparently can’t add and doesn’t.

Yet by the country as a whole becoming “white-minority” Mr Rich is evidently not referring to the coming African-American majority. Blacks — including slaves — made up a quarter of the U.S. population of 1790, and a majority in one state: South Carolina. However, that has since dropped to 12 percent overall today, and to a majority in none.

So Mr Rich must mean Hispanics (most of whom are also Catholics, just to make matter cloudier, although Mr Rich doesn’t pointedly venture there) and blacks combined, given that he tells us just before that above of how:

…The Census Bureau announced last week that half the country’s population growth since 2000 is due to Hispanics, another group understandably alienated from the G.O.P.

Interesting. For given his own newspaper’s reporting in March of Sen Obama’s lack of appeal to many Hispanics, and Hispanic voting patterns developing a fluidity often at odds with those of blacks’, one doesn’t quite envisage Mr Rich’s soon to come white-sidelining political alliance developing lockstep. Still, he seems to feel there is ample reason to believe that some 40 years on a diverse Hispanic population of today which may include many who consider themselves “non-white”, will not have produced millions of native-born U.S. grandchildren who might be as “white” as the likes of today’s “white ethnic”, say, “Italians” and “Jews”.

Mr Rich’s decidedly un-elastic and illiberal notions of ethnicity (afflictions which seem to include most other “liberals”) is hardly new, and is certainly not restricted to liberal U.S. news providers. Assuming he missed it, Mr Rich would likely have recently enjoyed a piece by BBC writer Emilio San Pedro. The latter’s insightful article posits that there is only one pathway to be a Latino interested in U.S. politics: one must be a raza-supremacist, recent (perhaps illegal) immigrant and ardent Democrat.

That might well be news to you; it would be to certain Puerto Rican relations of yours truly, who are several generations from immigrant, who don’t identify themselves as “black” or “brown”, and include some diehard Republicans — as well as some three to four other Latino/Hispanics out of ten who may feel much the same way, and vote much the same way.

Although, maybe Mr Rich has already time-travelled to the top of the mountain and gazed down from on high upon South Africa America 2050, and knows better. Assuming that’s the case, there’s no time like the present to prepare for the inevitable future. After all, one minute it’s 1960 and “Ja” for Verwoerd and the next thing you know it’s 1990 and future president Mandela.

Mr Rich’s New York Times itself inexplicably doesn’t seem much perturbed to be based in a city which is at best half “white”. In fact, despite that reality Mr Rich hasn’t yet been eased out to make the paper better “reflective” of the local community. For only two black regular columnists and no “obvious” Hispanics, out of 11? That is clearly unsustainable given where the country is headed, and as this 2007 piece in South Africa’s Independent Online informs us:

…For someone to be able to build a bridge or a stadium, they need a good maths and science-based matric, a degree, a postgraduate qualification and X number of years’ experience.

It follows that if our schools are not producing enough black maths and science graduates then no amount of legislation or wishful thinking will ensure the profession will become representative…

…Take the media as another example. A far softer and easier-to-acquire set of skills is needed here, and the industry’s transformation therefore does not face the same constraints. Thus, in the short term, it should have a more stringent set of requirements and, hopefully, should meet the aim of full representativity far more quickly…

So coming from those who truly know, columnists appear a very easy place to get a head start on Mr Rich’s grasp of what will be undoubtedly be the America of three or four decades hence. But, on second thought, perhaps there’s no hurry; and undoubtedly Mr Rich would concur. For we all know also that Armageddon in all its forms is always oddly cited as being close at hand, and yet, strangely, is also always conveniently just far enough career-distant not for us to need to rush into things, right?

So just how is Labour recovering from their recent electoral trouncings across the country? How are they taking on board the argument that they are out of touch, and aren’t “listening” to people’s real concerns? What changes are being made?

A few small examples from just the last couple of days. First, the BBC reports:

The Post Office has announced the closure of 65 branches across Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire with the first branches going next month…

…During that time, a number of local campaigns to save branches were started…

So they still aren’t really listening in this case especially to older constituents, for whom a local post office is often vital.

Next, The Mail:

…Learner drivers will only be able to pass their test with the aid of professional paid-for tuition - costing families up to £1,400 a year in lesson fees, the Government is due to announce…

…The survey of more than 17,000 AA members, in conjunction with research company Populus, showed 73% supported a compulsory 40 hours of tuition, but only 27% of 18-24 year-olds backed this…

And AOL UK explains the motivation:

…Ms Kelly said: “Every year more than 750,000 people pass their driving test. New drivers are keen to gain the freedom driving offers them to access further education, jobs or keep in touch with family and friends.

“But too many new drivers are involved in road accidents and are not properly prepared for driving alone.”…

Here, they aren’t listening to young voters. Naturally, instead of emphasizing better pre-test training, Labour moves to make the test harder. And that also making earning a license more bureaucratic and expensive (Labour specialities, as we know) might well in total lead larger numbers of failed applicants to drive around unlicensed? A non-issue, of course.

Next, back to the BBC:

Cannabis is to be reclassified as a class B drug, Jacqui Smith has said…

…The move from class C means the maximum prison sentence for possessing cannabis rises from two years to five years…

…In its report, Cannabis: Classification And Public Health, the advisory council described cannabis as a “significant public health issue”.

But it said it should still remain a class C drug, as the risks were not as serious as those of class B substances, such as amphetamines and barbiturates…

Above, they aren’t listening to expert advice that they themselves had sought out. Prisons are bursting to the point where armed robbers are sent to open prisons from which they simply decide to leave, and now Labour wants to put more people behind bars for cannabis. But, then again, quite a few Labour politicians do know something about the drug, including, we seem to recall, the home secretary herself.

Lastly:

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn has rejected claims by a committee of MPs that Britain’s flood preparations are in a “chaotic state”…

And they aren’t apparently much listening even to other MPs. Indeed, this issue then goes down an even more predictable route:

…Mr Benn said he “welcomed” the committee’s report but said action was already being taken to improve readiness for another major incident.

Changes to the planning laws would make it more difficult for homeowners to “concrete over” their front gardens- which he said was one of the causes of surface water flooding.

The truth is that if we concrete over, pave over, tarmac over ground in our towns and cities and it rains like that then the drains get overwhelmed and the select committee recognises that,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme…

Good, we’ve gotten there: it is the fault of — you guessed it — homeowners. That “the truth is” that it might well first be best to clean out the drains regularly is obviously not thinking expansively enough. After all, as everybody knows, councils these days far more urgently require “climate change officers“, than drain clearers.

Also “true” to form, you know where this is heading ultimately: they are looking for an excuse to prevent people from reasonably doing what they want with their own property. Pretty impressive the overall tone change since last week, isn’t it? Thus the renewed, listening Labour government in action, in its post-local election-drubbing, we’ve heard the message, humble best.

The Independent home page this morning has his photo and next to it the well-positioned links to stories that will obviously help us better understand a rather unfamiliar, new world leader:

One thing I noticed: good grief but that Mr Medvedev closely resembles Sen Obama? Doesn’t he?

A Diane Johnson, on her trials and tribulations coping in France (of which she writes, evidently in all seriousness and while also somehow keeping a straight face), in the Washington Post (via Joe — “…These people, this morally repugnant elite, more than anything are responsible for the United States’ image in the world…” — at ¡No Pasarán!):

PARIS For Americans living in Europe, like my husband and me, watching the U.S. dollar slide into the vale of no value has been a bit like gaining weight: At first, when you notice those additional pounds, you tell yourself it’s only temporary…

…Small luxuries are the first thing to go. In our family, with a great feeling of sacrifice, we first stopped ordering mineral water in restaurants, saving as much as 4 euros an outing! This turns out to be everyone’s first stratagem, and it doesn’t make a dent. Then we calculated that cutting out one restaurant meal would save around $200 a week, or $800 a month!…

…Gone is the impulse purchase of cepes or expensive terrines of foie gras. Someone advises us with perfect seriousness that drinking wine is cheaper than drinking Coke, but that doesn’t help us since we do that anyway. Another friend recommends buying a phalaenopsis orchid plant that lasts months instead of spending 20 euros a week on cut flowers…

…I think of stopping our subscription to Le Figaro, but not to the International Herald Tribune, without which we’d be lost. Cooperatives for exchanging the New Yorker have sprung up. I pass on my Times Literary Supplements and New York Reviews of Books to my friend Eric in Germany…

Almost all we Americans living over here are struck by the lack of sympathy we get from people back home, beginning with Congress, which builds in subtle forms of punishment for the fun of living the European life, such as making expatriates pay taxes in both countries and refusing us Medicare. Paradoxically, we expats never feel more American than when we’re over here in Europe, where we’re suffused with patriotism and passionate concern for our country. But here is where we live, and no one likes to be uprooted — or, more especially, to uproot their kids. And many who work in specialized fields here would have trouble finding jobs back home, where things have moved on without them. My husband, a professor of medicine, is retired from the University of California and works on world health issues for organizations based in Paris. I’m the trailing wife — no hardship, since a novelist can work anywhere. And one of our kids is married to a Frenchman here and has produced three little Français, so we have lots of reasons to stay, even apart from the safer streets and wonderful trains…

One can only commiserate. Here in England, for example, we (my English wife and I) similarly know the beset feeling.

Absolutely, it’s scandalous: Why shouldn’t Medicare NOT cover her health care in France, considering all of the billions saved annually by there being no government cover for domestic non-impoverished non-retirees? And sadly, people like myself (in 2007) were soaked through having to pay U.S. federal taxes on what they earned above the equivalent of U.S. $85,700 — meaning that if you inexplicably earned as little as $90,700, for the privilege of still voting in U.S. elections, carrying a U.S. passport, and never having to do jury duty, one was appallingly liable for taxes on an astronomical $5,000 of it. In 2008, it will be even worse, when the first $87,600 may be excludable. (Shortly, I expect to hear from my accountant as to how much it may still be possible to hide in Liechtenstein.)

A distasteful struggle to makes ends meet, the likes of that causes. Matters are especially tough now, considering our little get about car, a new Aston-Martin 6 year old Volvo, is up for its MOT again next month. In fact, we are extra fortunate to be dealing in U.K. sterling due to the fact we don’t imagine we are doing a Hemingway impersonation we are actually resident here permanently, and aren’t paid in tacky American dollars by oh, cringe foreign employers.  So we are perhaps far more able to fit in locally in this elevated society in which some Americans often feel a bit apart — where it can cost you only 80p to park for a hour on a side street, merely £5.70 for a gallon of petrol, and teenage thugs model youth add so much to the ever-relaxed, sophisticated quality of life enjoyed by all.

Indeed, despite the rapacious Americanization strangling the globe, thankfully remnants of the days of yore can still be found, if one knows where to look. Where in the U.S., for instance, is it possible to see impromptu jousting exhibitions . . .

. . . undertaken by vigorous young men out to prove themselves in the manner of their ancestors . . . and sometimes in the most unlikely of places?:

And the daily pulse of life is without a doubt far more intellectually exhilarating and uplifting than anywhere in the States. Why just yesterday, for Bank Holiday Monday, since our personal staff begged for one day off a couple of days earlier the wife took a few moments between her daily horseback ride and the regular visit to our estate of her favorite haute couture designer to organize an Ocado supermarket home delivery. We knew we’d need it because we had decided to pass on our weekly get together with the Stuart heir to the English throne and his adorable children partake of chicken fajitas for dinner, last night. Afterwards, I took a rejuvenating turn about the neighbourhood (sorry, one falls so easily into at times confusing English and Amurican) with the hound.

Which reminds me of a funny one. First, you don’t mind if I have another gin and tonic? Okay, a couple of nights ago, the hound and I encountered a nodding aristocrat local, lately emerged from a cafe public house, who while doing his evening walkabout admiring the area’s flora leaned against a tree and relieved himself. Then, when I got back to the house, I applied his monthly anti-tick coverage. (The hound’s, I mean.) So different from America.

Still, living in a quiet, coastal English community does have some downsides. Rural people are often more stand-offish than those in London, and harder to get to know. For example, no one has even apparently attempted as of yet to look to use our car. That in comparison to when one night, on our London driveway a few years back, someone had (between about midnight and 5 AM) thoughtfully tried to remove the driver side door lock and take the vehicle for a spin. After all, it being England, once he’d used it for his errand, he would have returned the car, full tank, forthwith — so considerate are people here overall compared to the mostly uncouth Americans at home, you know.

Morals are also more modern and flexible here compared to the Christian fundamentalist-dominated, stifling U.S., if you know what I mean [ ]. Just the other day, the wife crossed paths briefly with the stunning Euro-babe 70ish, Swiss retired schoolteacher who lives alone a couple of doors down. Referring to me, the woman playfully said to the wife, “I would like to chat him up” . . . which I know only because the wife later related the conversation to me while laughing so hard she practically had tears streaming down her face. Not everything’s different, though, for the wife forewarned me she plans to keep a closer eye on me from now on.

That’s all just for starters. However, after our move down south in 2007 both the wife and I are thrilled to be gone from do find we miss all the life and culture of violent, dangerous, congested London. Especially longed for are our trudges commutes around underneath that vibrant city. (Finsbury Park is a hidden gem well-to-do American visitors doing the Grand Tour shouldn’t overlook.) The overcrowded, often filthy and expensive, strike at the drop of a hat comfortable, friendly and value for money London Underground, with its jihadists who blow themselves up (or try to) wonderful variety of people one interacts with daily, is particularly missed. Also wistfully recalled are the evenings in the West End, and the puking people and drunks posh gents you encounter, especially at weekends . . .

. . . Oh, excuse me, the house servants are nowhere to be found (it’s hard to get good help these days) and the phone’s ringing. [How do you use this machine again? That's right, press "green".]

“Hello…uh, huh, just a second…yes, a second. Yes, that’s right I’m not British, so even though it’s become wonderfully transatlantic, my accent might still be a bit hard to understand, I know.”

And I know you reading this are likely intensely keen to hear oh so much more, but I do have to head off now. Yes, I’m aware also that there’s some voting going on in a couple of places in the U.S. few people ever would much think about if there weren’t, and that I usually have something to say on the electoral subject. However, it’s Bianca, my new tax haven accountant in Vaduz, calling on the secure line a lady I think might be in India, who wants to know if I would be interested in changing my long distance provider. Ssssh. Don’t tell any of the little people back home what they’re missing of “the European life“.

Agence France-Presse:

Never mind the radiation: British contingency planners worried there would be a dramatic shortage of tea in the aftermath of a nuclear attack, recently declassified documents showed Monday.

The shortfall of the staple British beverage would be “very serious” if the country were to come under attack with atomic and hydrogen bombs, said according to a memo drafted between 1954 and 1956.

“The tea position would be very serious with a loss of 75 percent of stocks and substantial delays in imports and with no system of rationing it would be wrong to consider that even one ounce (28 grams) per head per week could be ensured,” it said…

Which proves, as the wife (who loves her tea) points out, that the current one certainly isn’t the first Government to have its priorities all screwed up.

Andrew Sullivan in the Sunday Times, obviously having a moment:

…I’m talking about the possibility — and the powerful logic — of a unity Obama-Clinton ticket for the Democrats…

…The conservative white voters that Clinton has amazingly managed to attract could be combined with the massive infusion of new young votes, internet money, and African-American enthusiasm to create a potential tsunami in the election. Instead of having to pick between the first black president and the first woman president, the Democrats could offer voters both: the first black president and first female vice-president. Worries about Obama’s relative youth and lack of Washington experience would be allayed by the presence of the Clintons. The toxicity of the Clinton baggage could be balanced by the hope Obama has inspired.

The Clintons could be deployed to shore up support in some of the Reagan Democrat states, while Obama wins over enough independents to carry the Mountain West and the upper Midwest. California, Ohio, New York, Florida and Pennsylvania could be secured…

Dreams, dreams, dreams. Mr Sullivan proclaims himself a political scientist. But he writes like a starry-eyed kid, and in doing so is misleading British readers about the American electoral process. (Although, judging by the comments in his net column, the overwhelming majority of people who care to comment are Americans. Brits must not be too fussed.)

A real political scientist deals in evidence. For example, what new polling has Mr Sullivan seen that gives Ohio to Sen Obama?:

Obviously, he’s counting on Sen Clinton to pull Sen Obama’s campaign out of the fire. She may, of course. Or she may not. Only she really knows.

What we do know, now, is that in a state by state head to head between the two, currently Sen McCain appears to have the Electoral College advantage. Indeed, it is quite possible that if it weren’t for Sen McCain, the Republicans would be dead in this presidential election. As the Washington Times notes:

…the Republicans have stumbled into nominating the only man who could win in November, and all the Republicans have to do to preserve an authentic shot at keeping the White House is to save the unpredictable John McCain from John McCain; there’s always the chance that he’ll morph into Mr. Nice Guy in a fit of civility and an effusion of good manners in the middle of the high road…

Still, what about the Obama-Clinton “dream ticket”? The most current polling on that yours truly has seen is referenced by Bill Kristol in today’s NYT, who also reminds us that Sen McCain will eventually have a running mate too:

…in the latest Fox News poll: McCain led Obama in the straight match-up, 46 to 43. Voters were then asked to choose between two tickets, McCain-Romney vs. Obama-Clinton. Obama-Clinton won 47 to 41…

Sorry to be so picky, but even interpreted at its most optimistic, a “tsumani” that ticket pollingly currently seems not. However, if Mr Sullivan has other data pointing to Sen Obama’s sweeping through the Electoral College thanks to Sen Clinton being his running mate, it would have been nice had he at least alluded to it. In the meantime, he can spare us the teenage fawning: we’ve all endured way too much of that already . . . and it’s only May, for heaven’s sake.

The rounds have, of course, begun in earnest today. The Sunday Times:

Gordon Brown today admitted personal responsibility for Labour’s disastrous election results in a round of candid interviews, and confessed he felt chastened by the losses.

In BBC and Sky television interviews, Mr Brown tried to put across two competing messages - one that he understood the pain of the electorate and took responsibility for it, but two that he is in no mood to quit and is relishing the fight ahead.

The Prime Minister took the blame for Thursday’s results in a way that he has often failed to do in the past. He had no excuses, he said. He had got it wrong over the 10p tax, he allowed speculation over an election last autumn to go on too long, he sometimes spent too much time on the detail and he had not paid enough attention to selling his policies.

Mr Brown said it was vital for the Government to show voters it understood their anxieties about rising prices and to convince them it had “an unequivocal and strong sense of direction” about how to get Britain through a tough economic period. He acknowledged that voters were feeling worried about their standard of living and said: “I feel the hurt they feel.”…

Actually, if this is the “party line” (and it seems to be), it’s over. They’re done. They will get voted out at the next general election.

They simply cannot imagine that their meltdown is not necessarily primarily about “rising prices”, as if those occurred in some economic vacuum, absent of his Government’s interference. They can’t even get their rationale straight. For how can there be “rising prices” anyway, when, as he also says, “Inflation is relatively low compared to other countries”? (Yet petrol prices, for example, have been for years rising far faster at the pumps than inflation precisely because of his Government’s taxation policies.)

Oh, never mind. Obviously, the idea that voters might well be rejecting so many of Labour’s policies — that he somehow thinks he hasn’t sold? — is beyond Labour’s essential comprehension. Or they just don’t want to think it is possible.

Rather, it must be the bad, bad voters. Along with the daily barrage they endure of seemingly uncountable other Labour-contrived hassles, voters are supposed spinelessly to be ever-eager to support the need for the likes of being bashed over the head by this Labour central government’s mandating ever-rising local council taxes. And why? Because those taxes often “buy” them desirable local services that include the leaving of a garbage wheelie bin lid open by four inches becoming a criminal offense.

If you think this BBC report of May 2 is a piece dominated by misleading obfuscation . . . you simply fail to see the bigger picture:

He’s fought on-screen Nazis and done the Kessel run in 12 parsecs, but for legal action, Harrison Ford is letting a Belfast lawyer wield the bullwhip.

The Indiana Jones star has hired solicitor Paul Tweed over claims in United States newspapers about filming on his new movie, out later this month…

…With the laws governing freedom of speech in the US making it difficult for stars to sue for libel there, Mr Tweed stressed he can take immediate action on their behalf in Belfast, Dublin and London.

He said the rise of internet publications and US supermarket magazines now distributing UK and Irish editions had led to the rise in work…

…Mr Tweed, senior partner with Johnsons Solicitors, revealed he has put the New York Daily News on notice over a defamatory allegation linked to the forthcoming Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull movie…

However, worryingly according to the BBC, one “potential threat” to such “redress” tactics has “emerged”:

…One potential threat has emerged in the form of New York author Rachel Ehrenfeld who has spoken out against the so-called “libel tourism” of US publishers being sued in the UK and Ireland.

Who is this Rachel Ehrenfeld, and why would she aim to derail Harrison Ford’s right to sue the NY Daily News via courts in the British Isles? In the piece, the BBC inexplicably doesn’t explain to its readers what Ms Ehrenfeld has faced, but that’s probably because they felt they didn’t have to. But, for the simpletons, Floyd Abrams does in the WSJ April 30:

…There is no need for democratic nations to agree upon such matters. The values of free speech and individual reputation are both significant, and it is not surprising that different nations would place different emphasis on each.

But a serious problem has surfaced. In recent years, English libel law has come to have a disturbing impact on the right of Americans to speak out.

England has become a choice venue for libel plaintiffs from around the world, including those who seek to intimidate critics whose works would be protected in the U.S. but might not in that country. That English libel law has increasingly been used to stifle speech about the subject of international terrorism raises the stakes still more.

The case against Rachel Ehrenfeld in England by Saudi banker Khalid Bin Mahfouz is illustrative. Her 2003 book “Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Funded and How to Stop It” dealt at length with one of the most significant (and difficult and dangerous to research) topics – the funding of terrorism. The conduct of Mr. Bin Mahfouz as a possible funder of terrorism was one of the subjects discussed in the book, which was published in New York.

Twenty-three copies of the book were sold in England. On that slim basis, Mr. Bin Mahfouz sued there, claiming that his reputation had been gravely harmed.

Ms. Ehrenfeld (on the advice of English counsel) refused to appear before the English courts, and a judgment against her was entered in the amount of $225,000. At any time, Mr. Bin Mahfouz could seek to enforce that judgment. Whether or not he does, the harm to Ms. Enhrenfeld’s reputation remains real…

So one might well ask the BBC who’s under the “threat” here? Harrison Ford? Apparently so. For as of today, May 4, there is no story whatsoever on the BBC about how Ms Ehrenfeld was ordered in absentia by an English court to pay that obviously sensible judgment of $9,783 per copy sold in Britain.

However, it seems now that some backwater anti-intellectuals in New York are getting all uppity about the more sophisticated Old World legal outlook. The New York Sun, May 2:

Governor Paterson signed legislation yesterday that will allow New York writers to go to local courts to seek legal protection if they are sued for libel in foreign countries.

The law was proposed in response to a defamation judgment that a Saudi financier secured in Britain against a journalist in New York, Rachel Ehrenfeld. The new law bars New York courts from enforcing the libel judgments of foreign countries that have fewer free speech protections than America…

Presumably, the BBC now would like to see an international arrest warrant issued for the governor and all members of the state legislature who backed this appalling law. For as anyone can plainly see, its obvious motivation is to abuse state power in order to defend rogue American tabloids’ determination to undercut Harrison Ford’s already badly endangered human rights. And, now, Jennifer Lopez’s also:

Mr Tweed said … he has also issued proceedings against the National Enquirer on behalf of Jennifer Lopez and her husband Marc Anthony.

Who’s next? It is by now well past time such a means of adequate response were discovered. Many of the same celebrities who helpfully always remind us of how we must wear a flag pin when walking around Manhattan, Wilkes-Barre and Topeka or face summary arrest, fortunately have now uncovered at least one pathway for fightback, even if it is perhaps for now used mostly against those who’ve produced Pulitzer prize winning treatises on their lack of acting ability or the size of their rear ends.

However, as Ms Ehrenfeld has deservedly learned, things are a-changing: courtesy of the same foreign legal sources, there are actually means already in existence to “backdoor” correct the intellectual vacuousness of too many of their fellow American citizens at home. Because, in the end, somebody clearly has to. After all, as many of those same celebrities rarely fail to also, the BBC never ceases to emphasize the important reality that it is the Bush administration’s — in Beeb terminology, “so-called” — “war on terror” that is the real threat to global freedom.

CNN headline:

Obama defeats Clinton in Guam caucuses by 7 votes

Well, he’s clearly unstoppable now.