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.