NC Asks:  Under Canadian libel laws, “truth is not an absolute defense.”  If truth is not an absolute defense,  then what is an absolute defense?

Repeat this five times:  ”Truth is not an absolute defense”!

Do you hear how insane that sounds?  Law has to be based on something,  so if Truth is not an absolute defense it leaves opinion.  So is opinion an absolute defense? What is an absolute defense in Canada?

Remember that our Founding Fathers lived under this kind of tyrannical jurisprudence which is why they coined the phrase, “You are innocent UNTIL you are proven guilty,”  laid out the arguments in the debates to create our Constitution and then provided absolute Constitutional protection of that Right in that cherished document.

Now say this five times,  ”I am innocent until the accuser proves me guilty!”

Which one of these statements sounds insane?

Think about what it would be like to have to spend 100s of 1000s of dollars to prove your innocence.  And on top of that, it’s about something you said in the course of trying to save innocent lives!  Canada is in a sorry state of affairs if this is how they protect the principle of  free speech.

Op-Ed

by Dr. Paul Williams, No Compromise Media contributor

I am a United States citizen on trial in Canada for exposing a situation at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario that threatened the lives and welfare of Canadians and Americans alike. My book The Dunces of Doomsday, published in the U.S. by Cumberland House, revealed potential terrorist threats from al-Qaeda affiliates at McMaster. The university is suing me for libel, demanding $4 million in punitive and aggregated damages.

Unlike American libel laws where the plaintiff must prove that what was said about him is not true,  and it was said in malice, Canadian libel laws, like the British, put the burden of proof on the defendant, not on the plaintiff.

What I wrote and said about McMaster from my home in Pennsylvania falls well within the standards of responsible journalism. Nevertheless, I have been dragged into court in Toronto, Canada, to be tried under Canadian law that lacks the U.S. Constitutional protection of free speech.

This ordeal has damaged my professional career, depleted my life savings, and placed me in financial jeopardy.

I am not alone.

Other writers have suffered a similar fate, including Joe Sharkey, a New Jersey-based freelance business journalist is being sued for reporting about a plane crash he survived over the Amazon. A woman who claims Sharkey offended the “dignity” of Brazil by criticizing its air-traffic control is suing him for libel in Brazil. This despite the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board’s conclusion that the Brazilian air traffic control was responsible to the crash.  She demands $500,000 and apologies in national and international media outlets.

Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, whose criticism of a Khalid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi billionaire who funded al Qaeda, has resulted in a judgment by default in British court against her for allegedly defaming the Saudi. She was ordered to pay $250,000, apologize in international media outlets and destroy her book: Funding Evil; How Terrorism Is Financed – and How to Stop It.

The same ordeal can befall all investigative reporters in the U.S. unless federal legislators pass The Free Speech Protection Act 2009, which is now before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Last week my pretrial took place in Toronto. It was not a pleasant experience. My Canadian lawyers and the appointed mediator spent seven hours attempting to coerce me into signing an apology to McMaster University for stating the truth. They maintained that none of my statements were factual according to Canadian libel laws.

I pointed to the fact that McMaster was home to several al-Qaeda members who plotted to blow up Canada’s Parliament and behead its prime minister. In fact, a week before my pretrial took place, the guilty plea of a McMaster student, Saad Gaya, to charges of terrorism captured the headlines of Canadian newspapers. Gaya was one of eighteen al-Qaeda affiliates also charged with planning to blow up trucks loaded with bombs at the Toronto Stock Exchange, the Toronto office of the Canadian Security intelligence Service and a military base on Ontario. He was the eleventh to be convicted. The remaining seven members of the group, known as the “Toronto 18,” remain in prison awaiting trial. Such statements of fact have done little to persuade McMaster to drop the lawsuit, and my trial is set for April 2010.

In Canada, as in England and Brazil, truth is not an absolute defense.

No American citizen should be stripped of his/her Constitutional rights by foreign countries or foreign entities.

Congress should act immediately to pass the Free Speech Protection Act 2009.

Paul L. Williams, Ph.D.

Clarks Green, PA

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

By Tracy Hood, No Compromise Media

American investigative journalist, and author, Dr. Paul L. Williams, will begin his crusade, October 8, in a Toronto courtroom to answer charges of defamation regarding his explosive investigations into missing radio active material at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

Williams become entangled in a legal jam with the Canadian university while discussing his book The Dunces of Doomsday on the nationally syndicated “Coast-to-Coast AM” radio program with George Noory.

According to Williams, “What is unique about my case is that my alleged violation of Canadian law took place in the U.S.A. I wrote my book in America, where it was published, and I spoke to American reporters who called me at my home in Pennsylvania. By all standards, what I said and wrote aboutMcMaster University remains well within the libel and defamation laws of our land. Still and all, I am being sued by a foreign entity and have lost not only my freedom but my life savings.”

The case is significant since it represents the first time in American History an American journalist has been forced to submit to a foreign jurisdiction. Williams speculates that the reason Canada is able to sue him over the border is because of NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement.

NAFTA was signed into law in 1994 eliminating most trade barriers. However, an unintended consequence of NAFTA was the ability for foreign individuals and entities to sue American journalists and authors on libel and defamation suits much harder to adjudicate in America.

Under Canadian law, once an accusation of libel is made, the respondent must prove they are innocent rather than the plaintiff proving guilt.

“I was asked to sign an apology for remarks I made that came straight from the Congressional Record and testimony by a 9/11 Council, Janice Kephart” Williams stated, “These remarks were verified by several federal investigations and researchers; a host of highly reputable journalists, including Bill Gertz and Scott Wheeler of The Washington Times.”

Foreign citizens or entities suing American journalists in foreign courts for libel and defamation is a growing trend, and as a result Congress is stepping into this issue to fortify free speech protection.

US Citizen, Rachel Ehrenfeld, author, and lecturer was also sued for libel in a British court over her controversial book, Funding Evil. She counter sued stating that under American defamation laws her book was not libelous, but her case was dismissed in a New York court. As a result of her case, theNew York legislature passed a law called Rachel’s Law, protecting New York citizens against libel judgements not recognized under American libel jurisprudence.

Senator Arlen Spector (D-PA), alarmed at the increase of libel suits against the American press, has sponsored The Free Speech Protection Act. Spector stated on the Senate floor: “[T]he Free Speech Protection Act of 2009 address[es] a serious challenge to one of the most basic protections in our Constitution. American journalists and academics must have the freedom to investigate, write, speak, and publish about matters of public importance, limited only by the legal standards laid out in our First Amendment jurisprudence.”

Ehrenfeld says, “We need a federal law which allows respondents to counter sue for damages. This law will protect free speech, and be used as a deterrent against foreign lawsuits.”

The House has a similar bill, HR 1304, which would create a “cause of action to determine whether defamation exists under United States law in cases in which defamation actions have been brought in foreign courts against United States persons.”

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If you would like more information about this topic, or to schedule an interview with Dr. Paul Williams, please email Tracy at nocompromisemedia@gmail.com

Please use trackback url: http://nocompromisemedia.com/2009/10/07/american-journalists-silenced/

Dr. Paul Williams and Hamid Mir

AMERICAN JOURNALIST STRIPPED OF CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS

by  No Compromise Media

Next week, investigative journalist and author Dr. Paul L. Williams will be tried in a foreign court for his investigative work on reports of al Qaeda terrorists at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.

But he broke no American statute and his alleged violation of Canadian law took place not in Canada, but at his home in Pennsylvania.

Williams got into a legal jam with the Canadians while discussing his book The Dunces of Doomsday on the nationally syndicated “Coast-to-Coast AM” radio program with George Noory.

To make matters more bizarre, Williams had been advised by the Ontario Provincial Police to issue warnings to his fellow Americans about terrorist activity at the Canadian university that placed the lives of countless millions of Americans in jeopardy.

The case is significant since it represents the first time an American journalist is being forced to submit to Canadian law.

Williams has been stripped of his Constitutional rights and forced to deplete his financial savings to pay for his Canadian lawyers.

“The matter would have gone away if I simply signed an apology,” Williams said, “but what kind of journalist would I be if I apologized for telling the truth?”

He estimates that the cost of the lawsuit already has topped $500,000.

Williams visited McMaster University in May, 2006 to verify accounts by Janice Kephardt of the 9/11 Commission, journalists Bill Gertz and Scott Wheeler of “The Washington Times,” former federal prosecutor John Loftus,  and others, that the liberal Canadian university had harbored leading al Qaeda operatives, including Adnan el-Shukrijumah, Jaber A. Elbaneh, Abderraouf Jdey, and Amer el-Maati.

The same sources testified that when the al Qaeda operatives left McMaster, “over 80 kilograms” (180 pounds) of nuclear material was reported missing.

During his visit to McMaster, Williams says that he discovered an over-abundance of professors from terror-sponsoring countries within the university’s department of engineering.

In the Division of Earthquake Engineering, he says, 9 out of 10 faculty members were from the Universities of Cairo and Alexandria. Similarly, Williams maintains the three McMaster officials, who head the College of Engineering and supervise the work at the reactor, all hailed from the University of Cairo.

Jane Corbin of the BBC has reported that the engineering department at the University of Cairo remains under the control of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Williams says that he and several of his associates, including a licensed private investigator, met with officials from the Ontario Provincial Police, who confirmed that McMaster has been under scrutiny for a long time; that many of the students have ties to radical Islam and terrorist organizations; and that Islamic members of the faculty have conducted clandestine meetings at an off-campus address in Hamilton.

The officials in question – - Detective Constables Dennis Bryson and Tim Trombley – - were not available for comment.

Williams insists that the problem at McMaster was evidenced by the fact that several of the terrorists who were taken into custody in the plot to kill the Canadian Prime Minister and to blow up Parliament were students at the school.

Supporting Williams’s contentions, Hamid Mir, the only journalist to interview Osama bin Laden in the wake of 9/11, has testified on tape that Anas el-Liby, a founder of al Qaeda, attended McMaster and managed, along with other al Qaeda operatives, to steal 80 kilos of nuclear material from the poorly guarded facilities at the school.

Unguarded Reactor at McMaster University

Jayne Johnson, a spokesperson for McMaster, declined to comment on whether el Shukrijumah and other al Qaeda operatives were ever students at the school. She maintained that such information was confidential.

Peter Downward, the attorney representing the University says, “We regard Mr. Williams’ allegations about McMaster as being on a par with UFO reports and JFK conspiracy theories. The notion that because there are people on faculty from Egypt that McMaster is then a haven for terrorism is not only logically offensive, it smacks of racism.”

McMaster may get away with dismissing findings of lawyers, investigators from the 9-11 Commission, and international journalists as racist, logically offensive, and looney.

However, the predominance of Muslims from terror sponsoring countries at McMaster and the lack of security at the reactor has been verified by independent sources, including Sean Michaels of GlobalTV-CA.

Moreover, Ontario police officials have labeled the campus “a hive of jihadi activity.”

In Canada, any person offended by a statement can file a lawsuit, and it remains up to the respondent to prove his innocence.