Tim and Craig Murray (former Ambassador to Uzbekhistan) recently wrote something about the Russian/Uzbekh billionaire, Alisher Usmanov, who is trying to buy Arsenal FC. As I am writing this on my Blackberry I can't go into all the details but suffice to say not only his site, but those of Craig Murray, Bob Piper and Boris Johnson have all gone too, as they are run from Tim Ireland's webhost's server.
Why should I, or indeed you, care? Because if it happened to him it could happen to anyone. From what I understand he had broken no laws, merely linked to sites that disapprove of Alisher Usmanov and ventured an opinion that he's not someone Arsenal ought to be doing business with. As he now owns 21 per cent of the club they haven't much option now.
If a webhost pulls the plug on a blog or website merely because they receive a lawyer's letter from Schillings, a leading London law firm, then we all ought to be very worried indeed. So in this, at least, I find common cause with Tim Ireland. Despite the fact that a large part of his front page is taken up with wholly unjustified smears against me, I defend his right to say what he wants about me. It's called freedom of speech. And if he does it to me, why should a Russian Oligarch be any different?
And if I were an Arsenal fan, I'd be even more worried than I am as a blogger. This man spells trouble with a capital T.
UPDATE: Craig Murray has emailed me...
"Craigmurray.co.uk has vanished – as has bloggerheads and bobpiper – after the server has been “pulled” by services management company Fasthosts Internet Ltd of Gloucester. Fasthosts have done this in response to legal threats from libel lawyers Schillings, acting on behalf of Alisher Usmanov, the Uzbek oligarch and friend of Putin currently trying to buy Arsenal football club.
"As a former British Ambassador in Uzbekistan, I know a great deal more about Mr
Usmanov, and especially about his criminal record, than he finds comfortable. The principal point at issue is that he has been able to take down one of the UK’s leading political websites without anything being tested in court. Fasthosts have pathetically repeated Schillings bluster that my site is “Defamatory”, as though that were established.
"We all know that money talks. It seems it can stop other people talking, too. There appears a real danger that all the material on the site may be lost and not able to be
recovered"
UPDATE: A point of clarification: Of the blogs mentioned above, only Craig Murray and Tim Ireland made blog posts concerning Alisher Usmanov. It is these blog posts that were objected to by Usmanov’s lawyers. Boris Johnson, Bob Piper and Clive Summerfield (among others) have lost their sites for the simple reason that they were hosted on the the same server as Craig’s and Tim’s sites and went the same way when the plug was pulled. They are NOT associated with the dispute with Alisher Usmanov in any way.
Best watch your back on this one because the ivan's don't piss around when they take a dislike to someone!
ReplyDeleteA favourite trick is to invite an enemy for cabbage soup then they pop poison in it like P210 or similar! The bigtime boys in mother Russia did'nt survive the commy years by being softies!
The ruski mafia makes the Romanian mafia look like girl guides and the Romi's are hard nuts to be sure so BE CAREFUL!
PS, I am chuffed to bits that Bob Piper is getting his just desserts and if it were you in the firing line he would be jumping for joy at your misfortune!
Still....every cloud has a silver lining.....
ReplyDelete(or is that every silver lining has a cloud in this case?)
Certainly Usmanov is "Trouble" - as are his henchmen the cretinous Shillings.
ReplyDeleteThis man is clearly bent on smothering all comment or examination of his entirely questionable dealings.
No one in his right mind should have any truck with such people, they are extremely dangerous.
Actually, a certain amount of Tim Ireland's criticism is valid, although he fails to get the point that a partisan political blog will inevitably be written in a partisan political way. He does his cause no favours by the obsessive way he seems to prosecute it.
ReplyDeleteShillings or takers of 'pieces of silver'. The law is an ethical profession!
ReplyDeleteWhich speech were you listening to? All I saw was a desperate man trying too hard.
ReplyDeleteThin edge of the wedge.
ReplyDeleteGood to hear from you Iain, you have been sadly missed!
ReplyDeleteThis is disgusting and very, very worrying indeed. What if your West Ham blog ran a comment about the new owner of Man City ? He certainly has a 'past'.
ReplyDeleteThis is very scary stuff !!
That's astounding, and despicable.
ReplyDeleteAs I understood it, the offending content had already been taken down.
Matt
Great Britain is free. The unwritten constitution is secure. No one is throwing Tim Ireland into the Gulag. He is no John Peter Zenger. He is no Georgi Markov. He has commited no crime.The dispute between him and Mr. Usmanov is a matter for the civil courts to deal with.
ReplyDeleteTim Ireland jerked the wrong man around, a man of means who was not willing to accept nonsense from a character Iain Dale recognized as abusive, thus Ireland's webhost received a demend letter.
His webhost complied. They had a right to defend their interest, to reduce or to turn away Ireland's custom.
If Mr. Usmanov thinks he has been harmed unjustly by Ireland, he may exercise his rights. He has the right to complain & to seek redress within the courts & without. using all legal means. He has the right to complain, to gather sympathizers & to seek moral redress.
Too many people have the curious notion that freedom of speech means freedom from (societal)consequences (for misbehavior).
Shillings. Quite.
ReplyDeleteTim - if you're reading this, I hope you give Iain a thank you for his gracious defence of your rights.
ReplyDeleteIf you have any sense of honour you owe him nothing less.
Sorry - edited not totally taken down.
ReplyDeleteI think it less likely to happen to you, Iain, as you are protected by the United States' First Amendment.
ReplyDeleteYou can still be sued (I think), as a British blogger publishing an article, but your blog (again, I think) would be far less likely to be pulled than Tim Ireland's.
Bob Piper is everything I hate about Labour.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tip-off. The Lobster is happy to re-post Mr Murray's earlier comments. Why so coy? Are you all mouth and no trousers?
ReplyDeleteMost web server organisations run on too little margin to contest any legal disputes. If people want to establish a strong position in the UK that needs to be done differently.
ReplyDeleteAlternatively it should be hosted abroad in places such as Northern Cyprus.
The London Borough of Enfield attempted earlier this year to have me imprisoned on the basis of my blog.
Boris has gone !!!
ReplyDeleteAs is being posted all over the web, if anyone wants to read about Arseski's new part owners background, it's easy to find it - just use any search engine and wack in the lovely fat chaps name
ReplyDeleteI doubt many ladies will turn up at the Arse if he tkes over
Found this hard to believe then went to Bob Pipers site and it was down.
ReplyDeleteWhat a disgrace Fasthosts are. I have snet them the following message:
Dear Fasthosts,
I have read that you have taken down several political websites - Tim Irelands, Bob Pipers and Craig Murrays (a former British Ambassadors).
I do not know what they had written about Mr Usamanov nor whether what they had written is true.
I do know that Mr Murray has refuted the claims that he has defamed Mr Usumanov and that you have removed any ability of ours to judge.
I feel the quickness in which you have acted to simply give in on receipt of a solicitors letter is a very poor sign of your business resilience.
in the end there is little I can do. As a campaign manager for the Lib Dems (not a party connected to any of those individuals I have listed) I will advise people that if they want a web host who will not suddenly crash your whole site then they should not do business with you.
I hope that you may find the desire to defend freedom of speech soon and reverse what you have done.
I doubt the above will do much but I feel that freedom of speech must be defended.
Hi Iain,
ReplyDeleteThanks for bringing this up. As many people as possible need to know what type of man Usmanov is. He apparently still thinks he can rule the internet like a Soviet fiefdom.
If there's anything more you can do on this matter, all your efforts will be greatly appreciated by Arsenal fans.
I work for a rather large ISP and whenever we're sent legal letters (which equate to a paper version of an annoying yapping dog) we email the customer with a copy of the complaint and ask them to remove it first and foremost.
ReplyDeleteIf the so called 'offending' item isn't removed we'll get another yapping letter and we'll ask the customer one more time.
Third time we take action to remove it ourselves, informing the customer every step of the way.
Presumably this Tim/Clive have a shared dedicated windows box which Fasthosts have just turned off at the first sight of a litter from the legal bullies.
This might be their procedure but it seems sad that they were willing to role over so easily when asked to at the detriment of their paying customers.
Jeepers! If this can happen here and Yahoo (and Google?) can be intimidated by the Chinese government what could happen next?
ReplyDeleteThin end of some very big wedges (of money) controlling us all I suspect. Time to go underground?
Absolutely outrageous... I wonder if Shillings knew they were taking out Bozza as well (one of the UK's highest profile MPs - although I'm not sure the undead have the vote so the vampires of Shillings might not have known that)... I'm sure the mighty Johnson won't take this lying down...
ReplyDeleteI've got no money, someone tell me all the juicy gossip about the fat Russian knob and I'll set up a website about him.
ReplyDeleteIain your support for Tim Ireland is clearly a double bluff.
ReplyDeleteSo this is where you've been the past weeks - Russia organising a wealthy backer for West Ham AND taking down Tim Ireland's site.
Don't suppose you could get your new Russian friend to take down Robert Peston at the BBC?
Peston is doing all Brown's dirty work by trying to blame Mervyn King for The Run. The fact that the BBC is allowing him to do this is a disgrace and they should all be boiled.
When are people going to learn that if you want to blog in peace make sure your blog is hosted in the USA and not the UK...
ReplyDeleteAnonymous said (1:34 AM)
ReplyDelete"When are people going to learn that if you want to blog in peace make sure your blog is hosted in the USA and not the UK"
Bloody good point! Another reason to get out of the EU?
Iain,
ReplyDeletemany thanks for your support.
I wanted to take issue with the inane comments by bf bache. If my observations on Mr Usmanov were defamatory, certainly action would be in order.
But I have stoutly maintained that my comments are true and that I stand ready, willing and indeed keen to prove them in a British court of law.
The sad truth is that a well-heeled crook can repress the truth by intimidation. That, just by dint of being very rich with expensive lawyers, someone can bring down everything on my site, and several other sites too, is plainly wrong when nothing has been resolved by law.
When are people going to learn that if you want to blog in peace make sure your blog is hosted in the USA and not the UK...
ReplyDeleteWhen are people going to learn that if you want to blog in peace make sure your blog is hosted in the USA and not the UK...
ReplyDeleteSad comment about the country that gave the world the Magna Carta.
as the kinks said there's no England anymore.
I've been working in the ISP industry for almost a decade now. Whilst many of the larger companies with significant legal muscle of their own would not roll over quickly, the smaller one will.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't surprise me that Fasthosts have just taken it down at all. The lawyers will presumably have reminded them that the precedent was set in 1999 in the Godfrey vs Demon case that the ISP can be held liable for defamatory content on its server.
This is not to say the content was or was not defamatory. But Fasthosts will have just, to coin a term, "crapped their pants" and decided not to take the risk instead.
Thanks for posting this.
ReplyDeleteI was looking for Craig Murray's website and didn't know what had happened to it - though it was eary to guess.
If Craig is reading this, I hope he finds another hot for his website soon.
Nony 8:50 PM, Iain's West Ham blog is essentially unviewable in Turkey and Albania, along with all other Wordpress.com blogs, because of a defamation lawsuit by an anti-evolutionist in Turkey against a half-dozen Wordpress.com blogs. This blog is basically unviewable in Pakistan, because the Pakistani government has blocked all Blogger/Blogspot blogs. But at least these blogs can be read by people in free countries.
ReplyDeleteJesus christ, that is terrifying. The thought that anyone can be shut down in an instant if a rich person doesn't like what you say is an appalling attack of freedom of speech, like you said.
ReplyDeleteI seriously hope this news makes it into the mainstream media, as someone at the top of the political tree needs to intervene now.
Is it me or is Britain slowly sinking into some police state?
ReplyDelete- You can't protest outside parliament.
- the Labour Party has said it will "allow party members to disagree with the leadership" (phew!).
- crooked people can get internet servers shut down.
What's happening to free speech? It's a sad day that just to have a blog, you need to follow Guido's example and get it hosted overseas.
This is backfiring. Schillings look dodgy, an outfit billing the dodgiest, perhaps they are the preferred legal advisers of Bob Mugabe? And we all know that this oligarch has a criminal record and is very intolerant of criticism.
One tip: defamation is not allowed, but satire is...
yes, one must have USA hosting. What a hard lesson for tim, craig and bob to learn.
ReplyDeleteI've had trouble fom hackers. Also after attacking Rupert Murdoch and referring to his role in running Blair's policy on the EU, my blogspot blog 'the tap' was blocked for months (google).
ReplyDeleteI started up using another address in typepad - tapestrytalks - and ran in both addresses when the tap unfroze.
just start again in another address is my advice. if you're running close to the wind with the powerful, spread out over more addresses. it doesn't cost much, is not very time consuming - though is obviously a little inconvenient tracking comments etc.
every blogger should be ready to upsticks and move address in an hour. I think that we will all have to be ready for more similar trouble.
Shock, horror - middle-aged Tory blogger discovers that wealth brings power, influence and easy access to the threat of litigation...
ReplyDeleteA thought for Craig Murray
ReplyDeleteWhy not host your web-site yourself? All it needs is a server in a home or office. The Schillings will have to come to you to get it taken down, and sue if they dare.
Well it is one way of trying to nobble Boris's Mayoral Campaign!!
ReplyDeleteThe original disputed postings from the Craig Murray site on Usmanov are still available. Several sites have them, such as
ReplyDeletehttp://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/09/380565.html?c=on#c180580
and
http://www.alisherusmanov.blogspot.com/
The Communist world was one where connections were paramount and where certain people were more equal than others e.g. senior party members and their children. This inequality gave some of them effective immunity from prosecution. The connections often came in very useful when the spoils of privatisation were divided in the 1990s. It is ironic that Washington Neo-Conservatives paid such a large part in this process (a much earlier and lesser known fiasco then Iraq). It is our fault if our system substitutes money for connections and allows dissent to be stifled by the chequebook. It is definitely not the fault of the solicitors who act for a particular individual.
ReplyDeleteOnly our politicians can do anything about this. What are you going to do about it, Iain?
Craig Murray said,
ReplyDelete"The sad truth is that a well-heeled crook can repress the truth by intimidation.".
Yes, Robert Maxwell and Jeffrey Archer did it for years and it's not the new, shocking phenomena people think.
History dictates that they all, always, get found out in the end, even if, like Liberace, it is on a death bed.
The difference is that, however rich you are, an individual cannot control the internet agenda. If one pusilanimous ISP rolls over everytime a legal letter gets sent, there are plenty more in Tokelau or some other shitehole that are harder to crack.
Does not have Fasthosts have an actual or implicit contractual relationship with Boris Johnson and the other bloggers who have not posted anything that could be the subject of legal action? Should there not be letters from the solicitors of Boris et al. winging their way to Fasthosts?
ReplyDeleteAnd is there not a wealthy backer or two willing to idemnify Fasthosts if they continue to host the blogs of Ireland and Murray?
How much longer will Britain act as butler to these people? Abolish non-domicile tax status.
ReplyDeleteThanks for helping bring this to a wider audience Iain. As an Arsenal fan, I am deeply concerned that this man could soon be running our club. If he thinks he can shut down the whole internet though, he's very much mistaken.
ReplyDeleteMr Bache,
ReplyDeleteIf this has been said before then I apologise, but your post deserves a response, I feel.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that bloggers regard freedom of speech as some sort of licence to say whatever they want. Indeed I think most of us accept we can be held to account just like any other writer.
What is causing the rumpus in this instance is the way Usmanov's lawyers have gone about seeking redress. Instead of slapping Craig and Tim with writs for libel they went to the web hosting company and threatened them with action unless they pulled the plug on the two offending blogs (and a few others who got caught in the crossfire).
I suspect the reason they did this is twofold: Firstly because a disinterested business might be more pliable than a committed writer. And secondly because they (or their client) wanted to do this quietly, without the publicity of a court case at which all sorts of embarrasing information could enter the public realm.
Sadly for the lawyers while they succeeded in their first objective, their rather hamfisted tactic has generated a veritable sh**storm of negative comment as far as their client is concerned.
I wonder if the lead brief in this case is currently packing his bags before leaving for an undisclosed location.
With London rapidly becoming the Russian exiles' pitstop of choice, this sort of thing is going to increase exponentially - free speech goes out of the window with the judicious application of money, lawyers and big hobnailed boots, as Robert Maxwell knew only too well.
ReplyDeleteThe comments made by Murray were clearly capable of being defamatory if they were not true and he offered no basis for making them other than his own knowledge. If anyone reading a blog found themselves being falsely accused of being a criminal they would want to have that blog taken down and who would blame them for taking the most effective route - i.e. going to the publisher - the ISP. If a newspaper publishes a libel, the victim rarely only goes after the journalist to seek redress, he goes for the newspaper itself. There is little difference.
ReplyDeleteIf you write a blog and make statements which could be defamatory then you are putting your ISP at risk of being sued, in the same way as a newspaper editor would be doing to his publisher. Given most ISPs charge nothing or very little to host a blog, why should they care about your cause or whether you are justified in saying what you do when they have an instant defence available if they remove your blog from the internet.
Most defamatory material on the internet gets ignored as complaining draws more attention to it (as in this case) but that doesn't mean it is immune from someone who is willing to instruct m'learned friends.
And if Boris Johnson's website is down for too long, what will happen to his Mayor campaign>
ReplyDeleteI have posted in support of this as well.
ReplyDeleteHow does danvers know whether or not Craig Murray's comments were defamatory? Murray seems quite willing to defend himself in court.
ReplyDeleteThe reason why small publishers roll over on such occasions is that the process of defending an action in court is so prohibitively expensive.
Why not set up a fighting fund and find a new web server?
ReplyDeleteThe victims here are lucky that the attack was so clumsy and took out some of the fabs by way of collateral damage. The unknown individuals among us are more vulnerable, I would suggest. A well-resourced and determined actor, for example a state, might well buy their way through the security, identify troublesome individuals, locate them and arrange an accident.
ReplyDeleteOutrageous. Absolutely infuriating. It seems Moscow, Riyadh, and Washington DC have more sway in Britain than the public.
ReplyDeleteIt could never work, this whole freedom of speech on the internet thing. The establishments are too afraid of it. Time to host the site on the Isle of Man or something.
Danvers comments shows one of the problems with ensuring online free speech: a lot of people still do not understand the nature of the internet.
ReplyDeleteISPs are not publishers. Bloggers and people who run websites are publishers. ISPs do not either write the articles, or decide which are published.
Suing an ISP is similar to suing a telecoms company because a slanderous telephone conversation used their lines. If he insists on a newspaper analogy, it is like suing a transport company that carried newspapers for a libellous article in a newspaper.
Ok, - anonymous at 5.15 - I said that the comments were clearly defamatory IF UNTRUE - I have read them on another blog where they were cached before Murray's blog got pulled down. Murray makes various offensive accusations, which in my opinion would be defamatory, but it seems a lot of people, including Schillings, agree. Murray may have a defence but he would have to prove it.
ReplyDeleteAnd Graeme... ISP are publishers - and whether you like it or not the law in England treats them as such. However, the law is not a complete ass as it recognises the difference between an ISP and a newspaper, in that an ISP can avail itself of a defence if it takes down defamatory material promptly when notified, whereas a newspaper cannot claim to have published something in error (although an apology can often help).
Your comment is equivalent to suggesting that you would not have any consumer rights if you bought something off Amazon instead of a bookshop. It is naive to think that the internet is some sort of legal wild west when all the same laws and regulations apply equally.
FYI: Boris' mayoral campaign website is still up, as it's hosted on a different server. www.backboris.com and www.Boriswatch.com is still up as well. But yes, by taking their sites down as well, the host is now liable for losses from those blogs.
ReplyDeleteIf someone is found in court to be defamatory, let those remarks be removed. If someone is just called defamatory, that's hearsay, and no reason to lose a blog.
Buying a British football club is chicken-feed if you have billions to squander.
ReplyDeleteBut why do it?
Well, perhaps you really are a football fan.
Perhaps.
But, if so, why not buy a club in your own country and buy the best footballers on earth to play for it?
After all, although every man doesn't have his price, most men, alas, will sooner or later take the shilling.
But if you need a guaranteed reason to enter Britain easily and whenever you like, owning one of its major football clubs would be a good way to do it.
And that would mean you could come and go across Britain's borders and thus be at liberty to organise within the EU and also in the US your normal business - crime in general and fraud, money-laundering and murder in particular.
And that is how post-Soviet Russian gangsterism (which makes Al Capone, Legs Diamond and Bugs Malone look as though they really were the children who played them in the film) has entered the UK.
And if one of your specialities at home is murdering journalists who try to expose you, you won't think twice about using the heaviest and most dishonourable hammers of the English legal system to silence critics in Britain, nor to gratuitously dismiss some of the most talented people on earth who have had the misfortune to find themselves in your employ, nor to resort to your Russian habits for the disposal of those who won't desist from annoying you.
After all, your objective isn't to run your football club successfully, nor to be persona grata with the media, is it?
It's to give you the access to run your real business.
If the police and the intelligence services are serious about stopping Russian murders in Britain, they could start by withdrawing a few peoples' visas and placing in judicially-supervised trust the UK property of such people.
This has gone too far and, if not stopped, will go a lot further.
Isn't this just the sort of story that would interest the Private Eye (who whatever you think about them have had a track record of defending large liable cases).
ReplyDelete"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteThis is disgusting and very, very worrying indeed. What if your West Ham blog ran a comment about the new owner of Man City ? He certainly has a 'past'. "
Into military dictatorships are you? Trust what they say? Frank was extremely popular in Thailand, by the way.
Anonymous COWARD
All of this points to the need for the Football Association to look again at its fit and proper rules as to who can own a football club. Football clubs should belong to the community (on whom they depend for their support) rather than foreign businessmen.
ReplyDeleteIf you look at the current owners/investors in Arsenal, Chelsea, Man City, Portsmouth and West Ham (now where the Iclandic backer get his millions from?) some very serious questions need to be asked about where our national game is going.
Totally gobsmacked to read this - very worrying indeed, and it's great that you, Ian, have pointed out this situation.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about others, but I have faithfully kept 3 years worth of blog posts backed up, not only on disc but printed on paper, without really knowing why...
I know now.
Ah, threats of legal action for doing nothing wrong but writing stuff a 'big' man doesn't like. Tim and Craig have my sympathy.
ReplyDeleteHope this is resolved soon; Bozza's site is much missed.
As an Arsenal fan and as a citizen, I hope Craig Murray gets his day in court, and the whole issue is thoroughly aired.
ReplyDeletePerhaps he could host his site on a US server?
From what I've read on Craig's blog, he would like nothing better than his day in court. There is much he would like to say, and expose!
ReplyDeleteCould someone clarify one point for me? Is there any reason why Craig can't go straight back online with a Blogger blog? Aren't they hosted in California?
Ok, call me naive ... I don't know all the legal angles.
Dancer: Great Britain is free. The unwritten constitution is secure. No one is throwing Craig Murray into the Gulag. He is no John Peter Zenger. He is no Georgi Markov. He is no Anna Politkovskaya. He has committed no crime. The dispute between him and Mr. Usmanov is wholly within the competence of the civil courts of which either man may avail himself, should he choose to do so.
ReplyDeleteCraig Murray jerked the wrong man around, a man of means who was not willing to accept nonsense from an 'activist', a neurotic insubordinate character whose principal success with his sole opportunity as ambassador was to disgrace himself, to destroy his career at the FO and to be threatened by the Treasury Solicitor; thus Murray's webhost received a demand letter.
His webhost complied. It had a right to request its legal counsel to examine Murray's weblog. It had a right not to enable Murray. It had a right to defend its interest by turning away entirely the custom of a loose cannon with a martyr complex.
If Mr. Usmanov thinks he has been harmed unjustly by Murray, he may exercise his rights, the same rights Murray possesses, as he sees fit. He has the right to complain & to seek redress within the courts & without, using all legal means and venues, including those legal means and venues Murray wishes he would not use. He has the right to complain, to inform, to give guidance to those who do business with Murray, to gather sympathizers & to seek moral redress.
Too many people have the curious notion that freedom of speech means freedom from (societal)consequences (for misbehavior).
Postscript: There have been many powerful and true blogger-driven stories, blogstorms: Harriet Miers, Kathy Sierra, Mike Nifong, illegal migration into the United States, etc. None were driven by 'activists', 'net kooks, obscure blogs looking for extra traffic, and the smattering of one-off blog entries by mistaken well-known respectables as this nonsense in aid of a crackpot is.
What substantive story with legs needs this puffery: "There are now at least 200 blogs covering this story. Chicken Yoghurt has the details, and the history. It is also being covered by fully one-third of the Top 100 Bloggers in the Country - based on the list published at this time last year by Iain Dale." (Matthew Wardman), or "According to Chris Paul, 224 bloggers have protested about this, the list is still growing, it’s been phenomenal." (Ellee Seymour)
This story is so important and compelling that the majority of those blogs have moved on, back to Brown and the conference, back to Cameron thrashing about, back to Ming and how long he can hang on, back to the Northern Rock, back to Madeleine McCann, back to nudie pics, the Britney Spears trainwreck, the rum-soaked antics of Amy Winehouse and the latest viral video. And of course fully two thirds of the top 100 bloggers in the country, based on the list published at this time last year by Iain Dale have to date shown no interest in this story whatsoever.
No. No blogstorm with this lot, just a clutch of enablers in Craig Murray's decade long campaign of self-destruction.
bf bache:
ReplyDeleteYou addressed those remarks to me? I didn't ask for your opinion of Craig Murray, thank you. I have my own. And it is clearly diametrically opposed to yours.
I asked a question about the hosting of blogs. If you can't answer it, please don't use me as an excuse for a rant of your own.
Human rights in Usbekistan, and the use of of (highly questionable) "intelligence" obtained through torture is obviously not one of your major concerns. It seems that Murray-bashing is.
If the mainstream media paid more attention to Craig Murray's experiences and less to party conferences, Madeleine McCann, nudie pics, and Britney Spears, et al, the world just might be a better place for all of us.
What Dancer says sounds about right to me, even if I were to miss the resultant traffic.
ReplyDelete:)
Remodelled as the art lover Alisher Creosotemanov.
ReplyDeleteMatt,
ReplyDeleteThanks for that link. Very illuminating.
This demonstrates that Stalinism is not so much dead but undead.
ReplyDeleteDoes this mean that any negative mention of Stalin and its hilarious creed will lead to KGB knocking on your door and whisking you off to an unforgettable in Siberia.
..
ReplyDeleteSeeing all the froth Usmanov has managed to generate made me chuckle.
I mean shutting down a Blog is exactly what makes it's readers think there is some truth in what the writer has to say. The shear idiocy of Usmanov and Schillings... They couldn't have done a better job of publicising Usmanov's murky past if they hired Max Clifford.
Always glad to see a mug taken to the cleaners....