Bloggerheads: the Back-Up Blog

Redwire Design

2010-03-16T14:58:00.002Z

[This post as been relocated to this back-up blog after a complaint was made to my provider on 16/03/2010. The original article was posted to Bloggerheads.com 27/01/2010. Details here.]

This post is about some (or ~~perhaps~~ hopefully just one) of the wonderful people at Redwire Design, but first we need some background for those who came in late (and to cover some recent parts that have only just come to light). Please bear with me:

Early in 2009, a conman by the name of Dominic Wightman (aka Dominic Whiteman, aka Richard Walker) saw in the Glen Jenvey story an opportunity to screw over some former associates while at the same time screwing me (for reasons that have yet to be fully established). This scheme of his resulted in a false claim of paedophilia spread by Jenvey, who (with nothing to gain by lying) later claimed that he was fed this lie and my ex-directory home address by Wightman, along with the assurance that I "needed sorting out".

Things didn't quite work out the way Wightman planned, and eventually circumstances led to the uncovering of a blatant smear campaign created and conducted by Wightman, resulting in multiple visits from the police that Wightman hilariously portrays as being appointments of his own design.

Fearing what I might report (there is a LOT that has so far gone unreported), Wightman decided to get his retaliation in early (!) with an extraordinarily rambling, malicious and misleading attack on my good name. It was at this time that some associates of Wightman began to publish my home address alongside false accusations that I was in league with extremists, and a stalker of women.

The bulk of these associates hide behind pseudonyms, go by the collective name of the 'Cheerleaders', and are also involved in a band by the name of The Fighting Cocks. There are also some mates and hangers-on whose real names are more accessible, and that group of people includes 'Jonny Yeah' (aka Jon Chappell). More on him in a moment.

This campaign of harassment has included the repeated broadcast of my home address to the types of people that Wightman himself has described as having "a history of late-night visits to enemies". Further, while the 'Cheerleaders' style themselves as anti-fascist activists, they had no qualms about repeatedly broadcasting my home address to members of the BNP while alerting them to my involvement in campaigns they would be none-too-pleased with. If the intention wasn't to do me harm, it was to make me fearful for my safety and cause me distress. It certainly did the latter, especially when the campaign escalated to direct threats of violence, causing me and my family great concern.

'Jonny Yeah' (aka Jon Chappell) was CCed on the emails threatening me with violence. Further threats involving the continued misuse of my data were then issued on his behalf (and on the behalf of other relevant parties) after I dared to list on my site the names and/or email addresses of all those who were associated with the earlier therat of violence. 'Jonny Yeah' also appears to have been closely associated with an anonymous SPA (single-purpose account) on YouTube that was used in this ongoing campaign of harassment.

I can prove that this account was used to repeatedly broadcast my home address to people the author regarded to be potentially hostile to me, and that this was visibly and quite obviously the only purpose of the account. Further, I can prove that an account in the name of 'JonnyYeah1' was associated with this anonymous account and that an account in the name of Kooba Radio ('KoobaTV') was used to link to and promote the anonymous account in a way that cannot have escaped the attention of the main 'KoobaTV' account holder, even if they were to later claim that they had been hacked or set up or some such nonsense.

Kooba Radio was founded by... 'Jonny Yeah' (aka Jon Chappell), along with a man by the name of Alex Malloy (The Boy Malloy) and a mysterious woman by the name of Angela Collins (She Who Must Not Be Named).

After changing his story a few times, Johnny Yeah eventually denied involvement and claimed that Angela Collins had left Kooba Radio. He also appears to have changed the Kooba Radio email settings so they now reject any email from me as spam, but I have yet to confirm this. More on that in a moment.

Public versions of the ongoing online attacks from 'Cheerleaders' then started afresh, this time quite specifically on behalf of 'Johnny Yeah' and his Kooba Radio colleagues:

Faced with the following error message, legally, I needed to be certain that I had been deliberately spam-blocked, not least because of the delightfully self-reinforcing accusation of stalking that is so easily exploited in situations where people start refusing contact by email:

Technical details of permanent failure:
Google tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 571 571 5.7.1 Message contains spam or virus : 16522:4131863472|125F (state 18).

The website and email accounts for Kooba Radio are hosted by a company by the name of RedWire Design.

The man who handles the bulk of enquiries for that company is.... Alex Malloy (Jon Chappell's partner in Kooba Radio).

So, wanting to give Alex a chance to tell his side of the story (Chapell's denials implied his involvement), and needing to go through Alex to find out if his 'client' had actively spamblocked me, I got in touch.

Having just been informed of pretty much everything I just explained to you, Alex was queried about the apparent spam block, but didn't act at all surprised about any of it and - speaking as an official representative of RedWire Design - had this to say...

... before promptly hanging up.

Alex is listed on the Redwire site as a Director of the company (citing Search Engine Optimisation as his lead skill, and you better believe there'll be more on that in moment).

The only person senior to Alex appears to be Managing Director, Nick Catt.

I should stress that there is no visible evidence of Nick Catt's involvement in this ongoing campaign of harassment at this stage, but his profile states that he "runs a live music and club night with Alex" (and another man), so he probably knows those 'Cheerleaders' who are in The Fighting Cocks at least, and doing the right thing is likely to complicate his life in those circles, so I am wary of any further approach through direct channels, especially with the ever-present risk that someone might hide behind a cry of "Stalker!" at any moment

Instead, I'm here in public (again) having to explain all this crap (again) and finding myself quite surprised that I have to drag some people kicking and screaming into the light just to get them to do the decent thing (again).

In about an hour, this post should be a high search result for queries relating to 'redwire design'. I am hoping that this will lead to a sudden upsurge of professionalism on their end, but I'm not holding my breath.

In fact, I'm half expecting some kind of misguided counter-attack by Alex Malloy or maybe even the company he does all them professional communications for.

Fine by me. I'd stake my SEO kung-fu against his any day... especially with the law, the truth and a shedload of evidence on my side.

-

UPDATE - 48 minutes, this took. Nowhere near the record, but still worthy of mention:

-

UPDATE (28 Jan) - Hey, guess what, everyone? They're going to be ratbags about it.

Alex Malloy cannot deny involvement in the KoobaTV account, and it is certainly reasonable in my view to ask who the primary account holder might be in the circumstances. He sees things differently.

Meanwhile the 'Cheerleaders' are hopping about angrily playing the side of law enforcement all of a sudden, outraged that I'd dare to ask anyone about their real names (when they claim it is not an issue); the abiding theme is that if I dare to object to being attacked, then they will continue to attack me... but it has already been established that they plan to continue to attack me anyway. It's just another piss-poor justification to add to the collection.

Kooba Radio

2010-03-16T14:54:00.006Z

[This post as been relocated to this back-up blog after a complaint was made to my provider on 16/03/2010. The original article was posted to Bloggerheads.com 22/01/2010. Details here.]

Kooba Radio bills itself as an "independent, non-profit, Internet-based radio station focused on alternative rock, playing unsigned bands from around the world" and was founded by Jon Chappell (Jonny Yeah), Alex Malloy (The Boy Malloy) and Angela Collins (She Who Must Not Be Named).

Kooba Radio is also a joke, and just a wee bit corrupt in places.

As most of you are aware, most of last year was marred by an ongoing campaign of harassment resulting from my encounter with the 'amateur terror expert' Dominic Wightman (a former associate of Glen Jenvey and Patrick Mercer). That campaign of harassment escalated to the repeated publication of my home address by a group calling themselves the 'Cheerleaders'. These people claim to be anti-fascist, but they had no qualms about broadcasting my address to BNP members alongside mentions of my involvement in anti-BNP campaigns such as Billy Brit. The 'Cheerleaders' have made a number of unsubstantiated claims in a belated attempt to justify their actions, but what's most likely is that they initially did this because Wightman told them to do it, and they painted themselves into a corner* from there.

Kooba Radio first came to my attention a couple of days before the email address of one of the founders (Jon Chappell, aka 'Jonny Yeah') turned up in the CC list of a group email from the 'Cheerleaders' threatening me with violence.

I wrote about that threat and included the relevant email addresses in the report. Months passed, then, over the New Year holiday period, when most people in the entertainment industry were busy with gigs (or at least sleeping it off), someone on that list wasted away their days and nights (again) making good on an earlier threat to share my personal data with Nigerian scammers if I refused to remove that list of names and email addresses.

When doing so, they posed as me, pretended that I was manager of a small local bank branch, and provided them with my main email address and (ex-directory) home address. Nice, huh?

I was recently assured in a further email from someone with a third-person fetish that "they're going to keep coming until you remove the email addresses from your blog".

This suggested to me that someone on that list didn't want to be visibly associated with what the 'Cheerleaders' had been up to, so I contacted everyone on that list, and offered them the chance to disassociate themselves from the online attacks and threats of violence. If they wanted to be removed from this post, all they had to do was account for their conduct to date (i.e. why not object before now?), and distance themselves from this ongoing campaign of harassment.

Only 'Jonny Yeah' took me up on the offer and asked for his name/address to be removed. Initially, he pretended not to know anything about the campaign of harassment. When this pretence was fatally undermined by the evidence, 'Jonny' suddenly lost interest in the attempt to have his name/address removed, but how he did it will be of most interest to any fans of Kooba Radio:

First, while claiming to know nothing about any of it, 'Jonny Yeah' implied that his inclusion on the list was the result of some random activity by fans who lifted his email address from his website. Because he's a superstar DJ, don't you know.

His claim was contradicted by the evidence, and I said so.

'Jonny Yeah' responded by attempting to explain away his demonstrable association with the Cheerleaders (and connections with leader Charlie Flowers) by saying that their 'very good' band (The Fighting Cocks) had featured on his show, and that was the limit of his involvement. Because he's a superstar DJ, don't you know.

His revised claim was contradicted by the evidence, and I said so.

'Jonny Yeah' then went on to claim that he hadn't been aware of any of this despite being CCed on the original threat and emailed specifically about it because Kooba Radio have strong spam filters to avoid all the 'crap' that results from his efforts to "enable young (and not so young) musicians to submit [material] to us". He then urged me to tune into his show that evening. Because he's a superstar DJ, don't you know.

This revised claim was contradicted by the evidence, and I said so.

I also made it absolutely clear to him at this stage that I could prove his association with a YouTube account created mainly to publish my home address and gave him one last opportunity to deny it... or perhaps explain himself.

'Jonny Yeah' responded by asking me what I thought of his show that evening.

(!)

At no stage did he express any interest in or disapproval of the repeated use of my personal data to intimidate me... most recently, on his behalf.

It wasn't until I made it clear that I intended to publish something about it that he made good with a vague denial of direct involvement, before quickly moving on to assure me that he wouldn't ever be mentioning me on his show, as if that's what I wanted.

Because he's a superstar DJ, don't you know.

Sadly for 'Jonny', this claim of star-status is also contradicted by the evidence:

1. The IP address used when sending almost all of his emails corresponds with IP data connected to many/most of the edits to this Wikipedia page about his radio 'station'. Said page is a shameless (and lengthy) construct of laughable self-promotion, the highlight of which is an account of 'Broadband Aid', a "new arrangement of Band Aid, the famous Christmas Single", in which the author goes on to specify (and link directly to) everybody who sang a line in this bold venture. There's no way it's going to survive in its current state once I've mentioned it here, so here's a screen capture for the ages.

2. Encouraged by 'Jonny Yeah', I did visit their site and explore their glorious world of online radio stardom. For starters, according to Alexa, my main website (bloggerheads.com) attracts a larger audience than theirs (koobaradio.co.uk)... by a factor of around 10-1 by the looks of things. Alexa is really only reliable as a thumbnail sketch, but the Twitter stats support this; I presently have 1,542 followers, while Kooba Radio have 175 (and 'Jonny Yeah' has 95). The YouTube stats also support this; with Bloggerheads currently standing at 10,210 channel views and KoobaTV at 1,702. Their most popular video got 402 views. My least popular video got 843. I say all of this while recognising the modesty of my own efforts... it just amused me to be dismissed as a delusional fanboy by a guppy who thinks he's a shark. The only thing that gives this tosser any power/edge over me is his willingness to participate in the kind of anonymous harassment that almost every web user recognises as being beyond the pale. It also needs to be noted that the audience of this radio 'station' listens via these channels; it is not a case of them having a smaller web audience than their actual audience, because the web audience is their audience. There's more in #4, but if 'Jonny Yeah' is worried about going mainstream, he shouldn't let those concerns keep him up nights; the nearest he's likely to get to compromising his anti-establishment principles is accepting the 'employee of the month' award at Burger King.

On the subject of YouTube, I wasn't able to mention this before now because Google only got around to suspending the relevant account yesterday, but someone at Kooba Radio used their YouTube channel to link to and promote another YouTube account created mainly (if not only) to publish and promote my ex-directory home address as part of an ongoing campaign of harassment. I'd make a bigger deal of my not knowing exactly who at Kooba Radio did this if it weren't for the fact that the account JonnyYeah1 was also visibly associated with that same online attack. At the very least, it can be said with some certainty that when 'Jonny Yeah' claimed to be completely unaware of the campaign of harassment yesterday, he was lying. This, sadly, undermines the vague denials he made about direct involvement before signing off.

3. It also needs to be noted that 'Jonny Yeah' is a lot closer to some of the bands he promotes than he lets on. This is what the professionals in the show business call a 'conflict if interest'... not that I would dare to imply that Jon Chappell (aka Jonny Yeah) is in any way professional.

4. Attention, unsigned bands (and bands signed with small labels): not only is Kooba Radio co-founder and 'headline' DJ Jon Chappell a pathetic lying scoundrel who knowingly participates in anonymous web bullying, but he's most likely going to end up being a complete waste of your time even if he decides to help you rather than, say, put the safety of your family at risk for shits and giggles. I could help you to reach a much bigger audience without even trying, and even if the deal goes hopelessly sour, there's no way I'm going to be as much of a twat about it as this guy.

(Not that I've any interest in being a superstar DJ at this stage of my life... or a twat. I'm just saying is all.)

-

[*At any stage, the 'Cheerleaders' can render themselves an irrelevance by rolling over on Dominic Wightman. I've said so privately will happily declare it publicly. I have no interest in vendettas, as my treatment of Jenvey after his confession should make clear; there are some who may beg to differ on that point, but like 'Jonny Yeah' they've been telling outright lies about the extent of their involvement in this affair. I'm not out to 'get at' any of the 'Cheerleaders', but if I have to, I will go through them in order to clearly establish the role played by Wightman. At least one of the 'Cheerleaders' should be warned that recent impersonations could lead to the closure of their email account regardless of what I have to say about it, and a window of opportunity is likely to close with it; they will not be able to present me with solid evidence of Wightman's role if the receiving account has been deactivated. The 'Cheerleaders' have made a number of vague claims about being deceived by Dominic Wightman, and if they want to prove it, then now is the time, and there is nothing holding them back if the evidence is there. After all, they can't possibly claim that they refuse to reveal relevant evidence on the grounds of a person's right to privacy.]

To: Nick Catt

2010-01-29T12:18:00.002Z

[This post as been relocated to this back-up blog after a complaint was made to my provider. Details here.]

Well, the unpleasantness continues, and Alex Malloy is hiding behind his company firewall. If you could take a moment to read the detail and send a quick email to Nick Catt (if you see fit), then I'd greatly appreciate the time and effort. Cheers.

To:
Nick Catt
Managing Director, Redwire Design

Dear Nick,

Apologies for the open letter, but an all-too-familiar game is unfolding and your company Director Alex Malloy appears to have blacklisted my email address(es) in response to my query about the apparent (but still-unconfirmed) spam-blocking of these same addresses by one of your clients.

I use the word 'client' loosely given that the relevant account involves Jon Chappell, Alex Malloy's mate and partner in Kooba Radio. I'm guessing the whole arrangement involving your hosting of their website, email and what have you is more congenial than it is formal, but there is no question of you hosting it and being ultimately responsible for how your servers are used and for the conduct of your Director in their management and for any relevant communication from your staff about that.

Moving in the local band/club circles as you do, you must be aware of a band by the name of The Fighting Cocks. If you don't know who these people are, your Director Alex Malloy certainly does; he's played host to them on his Kooba Radio 'station' many times, and they appear repeatedly on his website (that you host). Core members of The Fighting Cocks (alongside hangers-on like Jon Chappell) also go by the name of the 'Cheerleaders', and in a lonnng campaign of harassment from behind these names and a series of sock-puppets and pseudonyms they have repeatedly published my ex-directory home address in an effort to intimidate me into silence. This all has to do with a conman of their acquaintance by the name of Dominic Wightman (NOT a name I expect you to know; this is just for background).

I can show you evidence of the involvement of the relevant Kooba Radio YouTube account in the active promotion of an account used (only) to broadcast my home address if you have any doubts about this, or if Malloy is denying any of it in your communication(s) with him. When we last communicated, he denied knowing about any of it, but the evidence suggests otherwise (personally, I suspect he's lying and obfuscating to protect himself and his mates, if you'll allow me to be frank with you) and it's still no excuse for his conduct in response to fair and pertinent questions.

Malloy knows who the main account holder for 'KoobaTV' is, but refuses to discuss the matter in any way. You may choose to back away into a legally-secure (if morally dubious) position that this aspect of our (ahem) disagreement is none of your business, but he is also refusing to be clear about the nature of an apparent spam-block on an email account that you host, and the stench of bad faith is coming from Redwire's corner as a result.

Oh, and now I'm receiving further threats made on behalf of these friends of the Cheerleaders who claim not to know anything about those same Cheerleaders. Here's the latest, received just this morning:

from Princess Calamity [princesscalamity@googlemail.com]
to Tim Ireland
date Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 12:02 AM
subject Re: Publication of your email address

Matyi is about to put a Gypsy curse on you and your entire family, at dawn tomorrow- and it'll be a bad one :(
... you can avoid this curse, by never contacting or writing about us or anyone to do with us again. I'm sure your wife wouldn't be too happy about your obsessions leading to her and you and yours getting lumbered with something that will follow your bloodline down the generations, now would it?
So.. your choice Mr Stalker.
:D
x
Priya

[FYI:' Matyi' = 'Charlie Flowers']

Now, if it were taken in isolation some people might expect all those concerned to laugh this one off, but I'm detecting an implied threat against my family there, and I'd be interested to know what you think, especially as these and other threats are now being made on behalf of one of your 'clients', a Director of your company and now, apparently, the company itself:

from The Fighting Cocks UK [fightingcocks@live.co.uk]
to Tim Ireland
date Thu, Jan 28, 2010 at 12:45 AM
subject and you are now, officially, in the shit.

I TOLD you not to contact these people. But your mental condition meant you had to, didn't it? OK you are now officially in the crap, P-Group has found your web host, and they have been notified.
You have a choice:
1. Walk away and look away, and NEVER contact anyone involved with us again.
2. Keep it up, and reap the whirlwind.

3. This means and includes: anyone at Kooba or Redwire.

Matyi
TFC Cheerleaders

[I fail to see what possible case these people can hope to present to my web host, unless they're following up on Malloy's claims of 'threats and defamation' that he is curiously unable to identify when challenged.]

As you can see, by attempting to contact you I risk 'reaping the whirlwind', and I apologise in advance for my next act, which is designed to ensure that this attempt will not have been in vain:

Hi folks. Without being rude about it, please forward a copy of this message (and/or a link to this post) to Nick Catt at nick@redwiredesign.com

If you think I'm being too long-winded (as usual), then do feel free to aid comprehension with your own summary, but please try to remain professional about it, as Nick Catt is a Managing Director and therefore likely to be a Serious Person, unwilling to stand for any swears or abuse.

(I'll scrub this message when he responds. For as long as it remains live, the request stands. Cheers all.)

These people can only continue to attack me for as long as they remain anonymous, and these people will continue to attack me for as long as the man who is directing the attacks enjoys plausible deniability.

Your man Malloy appears determined to be a strong link in a long chain of ratbags. I'm hoping that you will recognise the value of being at least a little bit more professional about it, even if you're going to deny all knowledge yourself and pretend that you've merely been away from your desk for a 67-hour moment.

Cheers

Tim Ireland

OK, so now we see what kind of person Nick Catt is, I guess.

Schillings are making secret threats again

2008-07-14T07:17:00.003+01:00

Craig Murray - Iraq Mercenary Boss Hires Schillings To Block My New Book Schillings are a firm of libel lawyers dedicated to prevent the truth from being known about some deeply unlovely people. They managed temporarily to close down this blog (and several others) to keep information quiet about the criminal record of Alisher Usmanov. Now they are attempting to block the publication of my new book in the interests of mercenary commander Tim Spicer, one of those who has made a fortune from the Iraq War.

Unity - Murray faces more legal bullying: To appreciate the full scope of what Schillings are trying to do here, you need to read the letter that was sent to Craig and his publishers, which was marked 'Not For Publication' - Craig has it on his blog in PDF format, but to make life easier for everyone, here's the full text of the letter...

PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL
Mainstream Publishing Company (Edinburgh) Limited
7 Albany Street
Edinburgh
Scotland
EH13UG

BY POST AND FAX: XXXX XXX XXXX
OurRef: SMS/JXR/ww/A131/3
ON THE RECORD
NOT FOR PUBLICATION
08 July 2008

Dear Sirs

The Road to Samarkand - Craig Murray

We represent Lieutenant-Colonel Tim Spicer OBE, C.E.O. of Aegis Defence Services Limited ("Aegis").

We are instructed to write to you with regard to 'THE ROAD TO SAMARKAND- INTRIGUE, CORRUPTION AND DIRTY DIPLOMACY' ("the Book") written by Craig Murray and due to be published in September 2008 by you (http://www.rbooks.co.uk/search results.aspx) to be sold in England and Wales by Random House Sales Department.

We have reason to believe that the Book may contain serious, untrue and damaging defamatory allegations about our client.

Please confirm by return whether the Book is due to be published in England and Wales in September 2008 and if so, the exact date. Please also confirm whether the Book is due to be published in any other jurisdiction, setting out each jurisdiction, together with the publication date and publisher concerned in each case.

Importantly, we require you to confirm by return whether or not the Book contains any reference to our client, and if so, we require you to set out in full each and every reference to our client in its entirety to give our client the opportunity to take legal advice and to respond to any allegations in good time prior to publication.

Any widespread publication of the Book containing defamatory allegations concerning our client would be deeply damaging to our client's personal and professional reputations and would cause him profound distress and anxiety. We remind you that you would be responsible for that damage and any subsequent republication of the allegations. We also put you on notice that you will be liable for any special damage or loss suffered by our client as a result of the Book and we reserve all our client's rights in this regard.

We note from your website http://www.mainstreampublishing.com/news_current.html that Mr Murray is due to speak about the Book at a 'Mainstream author event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival' entitled 'Lived Lives' on 12th August 2008 at 4.30pm in the RBS Main Theatre, Edinburgh. We hereby put both you and Mr Murray on notice that all our client's rights are reserved in relation to any defamatory comments or publications made by you or Mr Murray in relation to that event.

Please immediately take into your possession all drafts of the Book pre-publication, all notes, emails, correspondence, memos, images and other documents relevant to the publication of this Book, and preserve them safely pending the outcome of this dispute. They will need to be disclosed in due course if litigation has to be commenced. Also, you will need to disclose the financial arrangements for the sale and licence of the Book to other publications.

In the circumstances, we require that you confirm immediately that you agree to undertake on behalf of Mainstream Publishing Company (Edinburgh) Limited not to publish any libels regarding our client in any editions of the Book or at all.

We require the above undertaking by 4pm on Friday 11h July 2008, failing which we will have no option but to advise our client with regard to making applications to the High Court for an injunction to restrain publication and/or for pre-action disclosure. You are on notice that we will seek to recover the costs of any necessary applications from you.

We await your response by return. In the meantime all our client's rights are reserved, including the right to issue proceedings against you without further notice.
Yours faithfully

SCHILLINGS
cc. Craig Murray Esq.

(Please note that simply reproducing this letter on your own blog could cause one of our bravest cash-only fighting heroes "profound distress and anxiety"...)

A piss-poor DoS attack

2007-12-06T11:40:00.001Z

Yesterday, Blogger.com got in touch following a false report that this website was a 'spam blog'. For roughly 24 hours, the site was suspended.

The case was quickly reviewed by a human being working for Blogger.com who determined quite rightly that it wasn't a spam blog at all.

This was the only Blogger.com-based weblog of mine that was targeted in this way, so I think it's fair to say that this was probably the work of someone acting in the interests of Alisher Usmanov, Schillings, and/or Fasthosts.

Whoever was behind the false complaint, I have a short message for you:

1. It was dishonest.

2. It was pathetic.

3. It didn't do you any favours.

4. And now you've got my attention all over again.

Well done!

Schillings in shameless hypocrisy shock

2007-11-16T16:50:00.000Z

Matt has it. I'm still getting over it.

Usmanov: burying the evidence

2007-10-31T09:38:00.000Z

A little something for the (very few) supporters of Usmanov challenging Craig Murray to produce evidence:

Guardian - Government denies access to Usmanov reports: The Government has refused a parliamentary request for it to publish two official Foreign & Commonwealth Office reports about the activities of Alisher Usmanov, the Uzbek-born Russian billionaire who is now the second largest shareholder in Arsenal.... Murray said that he sent the two reports from the Uzbeki capital, Tashkent, to the foreign office by confidential telegram, the standard format for communications from overseas-based embassies. They were "quite highly classified" because of the risk of identifying the people Murray claims passed him the information. "It is true that there is no documentary evidence - how could there be on such a matter?" he said. "I think it is right that the reports be published, although in a form which would protect the identities of the sources."

Meanwhile...

Bartholomew - Journalist-Critic of Uzbek Regime Murdered: Twenty-six-year-old Uzbek journalist Alisher Saipov has been shot dead in the city of Osh, Kyrgyzstan, apparently by Uzbek security agents.

Craig Murray has more on both developments.

Schillings and some action-packed Nazi excitement

2007-10-23T11:26:00.000+01:00

REVEL in the sheer hypocrisy of the Mail bringing up a past connection to the Nazis!

SHIVER in anticipation as Schillings advises their client to press any and all legal advantage in a way that's sure to bring more negative publicity!

SIGH in relief when that client reveals that - unlike certain ancestors - he can be quite sensible when the pressure is on.

Anorak - Schillings Update: On Alisher Usmanov, Peter Serafinowizc And Online PR

Schillings really have to learn that that they're no good at this PR lark.

No Parliamentary Privilege for you!

2007-10-22T15:09:00.000+01:00

SpyBlog - Alisher Usmanov Parliamentary Question rebuffed by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office: The Labour government appears to be trying to protect Alisher Usmanov from public scrutiny... (Their) "personal data" excuse is also what the FCO appear to be relying on in their refusal to name the former Russian Federation and British and diplomats who were expelled over the Andrei Litvinenko Polonium-210 radioactive poisoning murder and contamination affair.

UPDATE - A 'see also' via Atlantic Free Press:

Brian Barder - The Telegraph on the gagging of ex-diplomats by the Foreign Office: Is the Foreign Office simply protecting its official secrets, or seeking to save ministers from embarrassment? Official secrets are protected by the Official Secrets Act, which rightly binds officials for life, both as government employees and after retirement. The new rules go much further, banning any unauthorised expression of opinion not just by serving officers but by also by retired diplomats for the rest of their lives, if it "draws on, or appears to draw on, official information or experience gained in the course of official duties", even if no breach of secrets is involved.

Alisher Usmanov: diamonds in the rough

2007-10-22T14:35:00.000+01:00

Independent - Arsenal move to block Usmanov: Arsenal's directors have extended the 'lockdown' to ward off a potential takeover – and are set to invite American sports tycoon Stan Kroenke to sign up to the agreement. The move is a clear snub to Alisher Usmanov, the Russian billionaire who controls Red & White Holdings which has a 23 per cent stake in the club, and cements Kroenke's favoured status with Arsenal. He was consulted on the lockdown while Usmanov wasn't.

Meanwhile, there's another lockdown of an entirely different nature going on...

John Helmer - Court documents reveal De Beers charges against Usmanov over Grib diamond pipe: A public relations blitz under way this month in London and the UK media has produced charges and counter-charges involving Alisher Usmanov, an iron-ore and steel magnate. He is accused of conspiring with other Russians to defraud a De Beers-affiliated company of its 40% stake in, and several hundred millions of dollars in future profits from, the only major diamond deposit newly discovered in northwestern Russia... This time Usmanov has been after possible control of the Arsenal Football Club. As the Corus board had done before them, the Arsenal shareholding defenders have attempted to persuade the London newspapers to publish items from Usmanov’s past career, thereby deterring shareholders from selling out, and creating an atmosphere hostile to Usmanov’s involvement in the affairs of the football club. As Usmanov had done before, he found his champion in a Moscow-based correspondent for the Sunday Times. What the latter omitted to report was a detailed dossier of court files from Sweden to the United States, the existence and meaning of which Usmanov has gone to great public care and private expense to deny. The wording of Usmanov’s denials is subtle; the only way to understand that is to read the court documents themselves. De Beers isn’t providing them. The diamond group is carefully avoiding being drawn publicly on the conflict, although it is indirectly connected to Arsenal through Sir Chips Keswick. A former Hambros banker, Keswick sits on both the De Beers and Arsenal boards. Keswick was last reported as owning 20 shares of Arsenal, amounting to 0.032% of the issued stock.

Sheffield Wednesday

2007-10-22T14:20:00.000+01:00

The Register - Judge orders football website to name 'libellous' posters

Guardian - Warning to abusive bloggers as judge tells site to reveal names

OUT-law News - Sheffield Wednesday can't unmask 'saloon-bar moaners', says libel judge

Bartholemew - Identities of Internet "Saloon-Bar Moaners" Protected

Please note that the following thoughts are based primarily on hypothectical circumstances more likely to relate to poorly-regulated weblogs than forums:

- What if the "seven of eleven individuals" who are protected are all the same individual and/or a small group deliberately using "trivial attack(s)" to bolster, boost or 'boot' the primary attack?

- Those running anonymous weblogs and/or poorly-regulated weblogs that allow for repeated anonymous ~~smears~~ 'jokes' will want to take a long, hard look at the costs accrued in revealing the identities of those involved. There are ways of retrieving historical comment-related IP data from months back that you may not even be aware of, and most of them are extremely expensive.

- Expenses that seem prohibitive (to you) could conceivably prevent a libel action, but they could just as easily be dumped right in your lap.

Society of Homeopaths 'pulls an Usmanov'

2007-10-22T10:06:00.000+01:00

Via Toby Bryans and Peter Risdon and James Graham and Tom Watson and Justin McKeating and... well, almost *everyone*, really:

DC’s Improbable Science - Society of Homeopaths: cowards and bullies: Many people now have written about the disgraceful and dangerous claims by homeopaths to be able to prevent and cure malaria... One of the best contributions was on the Quackometer blog, The Gentle Art of Homeopathic Killing. But the post vanished at midday on Thursday 11 October. Quackometer’s ISP has received threatening letters sent by lawyers on behalf of the Society of Homeopaths, who claim that the truth is defamatory, while being unwilling to say which statements are wrong.

Bad Science - A corporate conspiracy to silence alternative medicine?: Did the SoH engage with these criticisms? Reflect on them? Challenge and rebutt them? No. They sent a threatening legal letter. Did this threatening legal letter say what was wrong with Dr Lewis’s post? No. It wasn’t even sent to him, it was sent to his hosting company Netcetera, demanding they take his page down. He contacted the SoH, very politely (I mean incredibly politely, read it here), to ask them what the problems were with his comments. No response. Instead their lawyers sent another angry letter to his hosting company, who of course cannot investigate this in full, are strictly speaking liable, and so – good call - the page was taken down. Corporate conspiracy silences the little man: except of course his piece has now been replicated a hundred times across the internet by an army of smirking bloggers.

You can read that awfully polite but sadly ignored letter in full here:

Quackometer - Unanswered Questions

You can read the offending post at any one of these fabulous new locations, but the best version is hosted by none other than James Randi, who helpfully points out where in the article the Society of Homeopaths might seek to gain legal advantage through the equally-misunderstood art of Semantic Origami:

James Randi - Criticize Carefully

Yes, with the exception of possible differences in body count, it's the Alisher Usmanov affair all over again.

The body of what Andy Lewis had to say was not challenged in any genuine legal sense by Homiety of Sociopaths; in fact, there appears to have been a determined effort to prevent Andy Lewis from seeing the body of the challenge in order to deny him the possibility of challenging it. Bodily. (Nurse! The sugar pills!)

Fasthosts does it again AGAIN!!!

2007-10-18T16:59:00.000+01:00

First this happens:
The Register - Fasthosts admits email destruction fiasco

Then this:
The Register - Fasthosts customer? Change your password now

Davblog - Password Basics

Bloggerheads - Yet another reason to avoid Fasthosts like the plague

I'm not entirely sure, but I think I may have found a contributing factor to this and other problems...

Fasthosts does it AGAIN!

2007-10-17T11:42:00.000+01:00

The Register - Fasthosts falls for phisherman's ruse: Anti-fraud site turfed offline after Joe Job attack

Bloggerheads - Fasthosts and UKreg: why you should look elsewhere

Chicken Yoghurt - Fasthosts: At it again

PigDogFucker - Possibly fast, definitely shit

Alisher Usmanov: Daddy Cool

2007-10-15T14:21:00.000+01:00

Hang on... what's going on here, then?

The Times - (August 30, 2007): Mr Usmanov, who is married and has two children...

The Times - (October 14, 2007): (Usmanov says); “I have everything, except children. That’s the only thing missing in my life."

For clarity on this point, we turn to the Telegraph....

The Telegraph - (31 August, 2007): He is married to Irina Viner, one of the leading trainers of Russian rhythmic gymnastics, who has two children from a previous marriage...

... who therefore do not count.

He's got a heart as big as all outdoors, this one.

Arsenal Muse

2007-10-15T13:01:00.000+01:00

Via Arseblog and Arsenal Times comes news of a lone blogger taking the 'middle' ground and saying;

"It's a bit sad that Craig Murray says Franchetti was bought off with a good meal. A bit of a low blow personally because Franchetti has given a balanced account..."

Speaks for itself, doesn't it?

Arsenal Muse has had a lot to say about Craig Murray in recent weeks, and here's a highlight that shows the balance and clarity of thought that he brings to the table;

"I know Craig Murray. He was removed from his job after profiting from the instability in the middle east to lead a party lifestyle in Uzbekistan. This led to instability in the foreign office in Uzbekistan and numerous operation problems occurred when the British and I would say that includes you and I and the rest of the world during the Middle East conflict, needed as much stability in the region."

'Arsenal Muse' does not allow comments on his weblog, and has a charmingly desperate 'shotgun' approach to keyword placement in headlines. There is also a shocking allegation on the loose that he is a bit of a muppet... but don't let that put you off giving him a fair hearing.

Pardon my ghoulish laughter

2007-10-15T12:31:00.000+01:00

Over time, Shaun Custis appears to have allowed Usmanov's largesse to slip his mind...

The Sun - Alisher is dead set on Arsenal: Alisher Usmanov, the Russian billionaire trying to get hold of Arsenal, has adopted a macabre tactic - plundering the dead. Usmanov, who has a 23 per cent stake in the Gunners, is attempting to buy all the shares owned by folk who have died. It is believed nearly one per cent of shares are owned by those who have passed away. And, while that may not sound a lot, it is a significant amount in the current power battle. Usmanov is just two per cent away from a 25 per cent shareholding which, he believes, would give him a say in the club.

Fisking Finsbury's finest efforts

2007-10-15T11:36:00.000+01:00

An extraordinary article has appeared in the Sunday Times, which appears to be the first shot fired with the aid of PR firm Finsbury Limited. Please note that differs from an earlier PR push in that the journalist involved actually makes a note of the opulent circumstances surrounding the interview. In fact, he seems positively hypnotised by them at times...

The Times - Arsenal billionaire, Alisher Usmanov, recalls six years in penal colony

Mark Franchetti, Moscow

When Alisher Usmanov was sent to an Uzbek penal colony stuffed with 3,500 inmates, including murderers and rapists, he came face to face with two dozen hardened criminals who had been prosecuted by his father. Few thought he would get out alive. “When they realised that my dad was Uzbekistan’s deputy prosecutor-general they wanted to rip me to shreds,” Usmanov recalled last week in his first full interview since he bought a £120m stake in Arsenal football club. “My life was in serious danger and I was shocked at what had happened to me. After a privileged upbringing I suddenly found myself in a tuberculosis-infested maximum security penal colony. Conditions were appalling and I had to survive day by day. But in time the inmates learnt to respect me and I managed to stay true to myself. I stayed alive and remained an honest person.”

Pollyanna plays the victim. Next!

Usmanov was 33 when he was released, six years into an eight-year sentence for fraud and embezzlement, in 1986. The convictions were later overturned by Uzbekistan’s Supreme Court, which ordered his police record to be expunged.

This would appear to run contrary to Usmanov's earlier statements that he was "a political prisoner who was then freed and granted a full pardon once Mikhail Gorbachev came to power as president." In fact, in the article by Craig Murray that kicked this whole thing off (now republished in full here), Murray says quite clearly; "The lawyers cunningly evoke Gorbachev, a name respected in the West, to make us think that justice prevailed. That is completely untrue. Usmanov's pardon was nothing to do with Gorbachev. It was achieved through the growing autonomy of another thug, President Karimov, at first President of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic and from 1991 President of Uzbekistan. Karimov ordered the 'Pardon' because of his alliance with Usmanov's mentor, Uzbek mafia boss and major international heroin overlord Gafur Rakimov."

Transfattyacid later noted that; "it could not possibly have been Mikhail Gorbachev who annulled his convictions, as he was overthrown by Boris Yeltsin in 1991: 9 years before (the Soviet conviction was annulled by the Uzbekistan supreme court in 2000)."

So there are two clear reasons to distrust this new line;

a) It has clearly changed after an early attempt at spin

b) It's remarkably coy about details such as the past and present level of corruption in Uzbekistan that is so deep-rooted that some fear any comprehensive effort to correct it could topple the economy.

[Those with an eye for detail may want to search for 'uzbekitsan' on this website.]

Little more than 20 years after he was freed, he has amassed an estimated £5 billion fortune and is ranked 18th in the list of Russia’s richest. He runs a metals to media business empire that spans three continents. There are properties in Moscow, Surrey and Sardinia and a “mega-yacht” with its own helipad. As a senior adviser to Gazprom, the world’s biggest extractor of natural gas, and the president of one of its subsidiaries, Usmanov also maintains regular contact with influential figures in the Russian government. He is on good personal terms with President Vladimir Putin and is often summoned to the Kremlin by officials seeking his opinion. Unlike some Russian tycoons who dabbled in politics, angered Putin and ended up in exile or in jail, Usmanov has stuck to business. He describes Putin as a “blessing for Russia” and spends £20m a year supporting Russian sport and culture, including the Bolshoi ballet. Last month he bought the entire art collection of the late cellist Mstislav Rostropovich for a reported £30m to stop it being broken up and sold abroad. The 450 works were donated to the Russian state.

He is rich. He is generous. If you're having difficulty containing your awe, then consider that some might think that because he is so obscenely rich he can afford to throw obscene amounts of money around in an effort to be seen as generous.

Now 53, Usmanov appears to have led a charmed existence since he was released from detention. But he remains haunted by his years of incarceration on the outskirts of Tashkent, the Uzbek capital. Although he was fully absolved in 2000 and no longer has a criminal record, rumours about his past persist. Usmanov believes they are promulgated by business rivals and feels wronged by his portrayal in Britain since he bought 23% of Arsenal during the summer.

Diddums. First he's imprisoned because everybody had it in for him and now his past is being thrown in his face because everybody has it in for him. Is there no justice?

Craig Murray, the outspoken former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, has accused Usmanov of links with organised crime but has offered no proof. Usmanov rejected the charges and threatened to sue Murray “if he can first prove that he is completely sane”.

An extraordinary ad hominem attack, which Mark Franchetti (an alleged journalist) passes on without comment or qualification. In fact, Franchetti even seeks to kick it along with his use of the ever-reliable codeword 'outspoken'.

And it comes complete with an empty threat; a spokesperson for his law firm Schillings made it clear recently that; "they did not intend to sue Murray directly."

[Personal Note - Many of you will be familiar with this particular brand of ad hominem attack, used repeatedly by many sock-puppeting losers during the recent Bit Of Necessary. Usmanov will no doubt be calling Murray an 'obsessive stalker' next.]

It was partly in an attempt to curb claims of a shady past that he invited me to his Moscow mansion and agreed to talk for the first time about the circumstances that led to his being imprisoned in 1980.

Our first hint that Mark Franchetti's helmet has handlebars.

“I was jailed on trumped-up charges and lost six years of my life as a result of infighting within the KGB,” he said. “It took another 14 years to clear my name and prove that I was framed. All my career I’ve been confronted with prejudiced people who are determined to turn me into a stereotype, a central Asian thief.

Apparently, one who acknowledges institutionalised corruption is prejudiced. Perhaps even a borderline racist.

“I’m fed up with having to answer these slurs. Not only did I never do anything criminal but I managed to stay honest and become one of the world’s most successful businessmen, despite being locked up with criminals for six years. It’s high time that those who continue to insinuate things about me recognised that.”

I would like to state for the record that I fully recognise that Alisher Usmanov has become one of the world’s most successful businessmen, despite being locked up with criminals for six years. As for his being honest before going into prison, remaining honest throughout, and emerging possibly even more honest than ever... well, we'll get to that right after the money shot.

Usmanov runs his empire from the headquarters of Metal-loinvest, his main company, in a lavish building in central Moscow fitted with Italian marble and heavy chandeliers. From there I was driven 30 miles along Rublovka, a road that cuts through a forest of firs to a “billionaires’ row” where Usmanov has a 30-acre estate beside the Moscow river. A 16ft-high metal fence encircles the property. Usmanov, who never leaves home without a retinue of bodyguards armed with machine-guns, was working in a large, single-storey wooden villa which he has built as a private office next to his palatial house. Casually dressed in a Lacoste polo shirt, tracksuit bottoms and leather slippers, he was sitting in an armchair, advising a friend on the telephone on how best to clinch a £1m deal. In front of him was a small table and a bell with which to summon staff. In the next room, his personal adviser on equities was checking the latest share prices on a 30in computer screen. Sipping tea after his phone call, Usmanov studied the screen with the analyst as they discussed whether to sell a large holding in a Russian bank. A butler delivered frequent messages or passed on one of several mobile phones on which the tycoon fielded further calls.

Translation: Alisher Usmanov does not own a cat.

“I’m less excited now by day-to-day business,” he explained as he kept an eye on a news bulletin on a gigantic flat-screen television. “One thing I’ll always have a drive for, though, is the equity market. Intellectually I find the markets deeply stimulating. And then there are things like Arsenal. That’s a passion. It’s a fantastic team and a wonderful game I want to be a part of.” Usmanov said that when the chance of buying into the club arose, he consulted Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea, who told him: “It’s a great club, go for it.”

Translation: Alisher Usmanov wishes you to know that he is a philanthropist at heart.

“I’m very surprised by all the press hostility,” Usmanov added. “The more I say that I’ve no intention of launching a hostile bid, the more people claim that it’s precisely what I want to do. I just don’t get it.”

Hmmm. Perhaps they've somehow arrived at the conclusion that he's a ruthless businessman and congenital liar. That might make it a little easier to understand.

It is all a far cry from the teenaged Usmanov’s dream of becoming a diplomat. His father held a powerful post in the Uzbek judicial system, his mother was a Russian language teacher and as a child of the elite, he was sent away at the age of 18 to study at the State Institute for International Relations in Moscow. There, he read international law, Arabic and French and planned to join the Soviet diplomatic service in the Middle East. He also became close friends with fellow students Sergei Yastrzhembsky and Sergei Prikhodko, both now aides to Putin, and was later a pupil of Yevgeny Primakov, who went on to head Russia’s foreign intelligence service and was subsequently appointed foreign minister and prime minister.

Craig Murray points out here that; "(This) is the first published admission I have seen of the key Usmanov/Jastrzebski relationship. Franchetti shows that I was right about this, and about the origin of that relationship as students."

“People say now that I’m well connected in the Kremlin,” he said over a lunch of lamb stew and red wine served by the butler in one of his private dining rooms, a hall lined with gilded central Asian vases.

Our second hint that Mark Franchetti's helmet has handlebars.

“Some of the people I know in the Kremlin have been close friends for decades. I’m not an oligarch because I’ve never received any favours from the state. I’m a businessman and don’t do politics.” After graduating in 1976 Usmanov returned to Uzbekistan where he worked for the Komsomol, the Communist party youth organisation. But his ambitions of travelling the world as a diplomat came to an abrupt end when he was 27.

Tragic, really. The world needs more honest men in diplomatic service.

A power struggle broke out between the KGB in Moscow and its Uzbek arm over the appointment of a new chairman of the Uzbek KGB. The local secret police backed a general who was the father of Bakhodir Nasimov, one of Usmanov’s closest childhood friends. But Moscow favoured another candidate, who saw Nasimov’s father as a potential threat. According to Usmanov, the Moscow nominee sought to destroy his rival’s career by framing his son, the young Nasimov, who was a junior KGB officer. “Nasimov was sent on a covert operation,” recalled Usmanov as we strolled under the watchful eye of a guard from the wooden villa into his mansion, a two-storey stone and marble building with seven bedrooms, several large halls decorated with mosaics, a lift, an indoor swimming pool and a small cinema where the tycoon watches Arsenal’s matches. “His bosses told him he was to accept a bribe from a guy involved in contraband so as to catch him red-handed. The point was to prosecute him for bribery. Nasimov told me that since the guy knew we were friends he might try to pass me the money. ‘If he does – take it,’ he told me, ‘and bring it to me’.”

Usmanov takes the only bribe he has ever taken in his life in order to save his friend. Brings a lump to the throat, doesn't it?

Craig Murray points out here that; "Usmanov was never a political prisoner opposed to communism. He was indeed convicted for corrupt dealings. He claims he was the accidental victim of a friend being set up - even if that were true, it does not make him an anti-communist political prisoner, which is how Schillings attempted to portray him."

Note also how Mark Franchetti peppers this passage with further observations regarding his opulent surroundings. Almost as if he's under some kind of spell.

What a pity that his eye for detail remains firmly focused on the decor...

As Usmanov was able to prove two decades later when he was finally cleared...

Craig again; "being absolved by Uzbekistan's Supreme Court means nothing whatsoever. Uzbekistan is a totalitarian state and has absolutely nil judicial independence."

Mark Franchetti makes no mention of this factor at all. Perhaps for reasons of space?

... the man with the money was a KGB agent posing as a criminal who had been instructed to frame Nasimov. He approached Usmanov and offered him cash for Nasimov. Usmanov duly took it. Nasimov, Usmanov and another third friend who was the son of a high-ranking party official were arrested. “I was hauled in and told to sign a confession,” the billionaire recalled. “‘Confess that you took a bribe to pass on to Nasimov for his father.’ I refused and went on an eight-day hunger strike, fearing that they would try to poison me. “Then they told me that they’d just get rid of me. I thought they’d kill me so I signed.”

Remarkable. Usmanov appears to be describing institutionalised corruption here. Of course, in this scenario, he is an innocent victim, as a corrupt government is sure to reward those who are inherently corrupt themselves, right?

The three young men were sentenced by a military court to eight years for fraud and embezzlement of state property.

Right?

That they were jailed despite being the children of high-ranking officials demonstrated that the charges were politically motivated, Usmanov said. “If I’d really committed a crime, my father, as deputy prosecutor, was sufficiently influential to have spared me an eight-year sentence. He couldn’t come to my rescue because the charges were trumped up for political reasons.”

I'll hand you over to SpyBlog for this whopper; "The idea of a deputy prosecutor having any influence whatsoever in a case involving his own son, is an utter anathema to us here in the United Kingdom, and just shows the depth of corruption which Usmanov obviously still considers to be normal behaviour."

Instead of being sent to a relatively safe penal colony for state officials, he was locked up in an ordinary one. He survived after a prison strongman took a liking to him and warned others not to harm him.

Bait. We're supposed to make jokes about dropping soap in the showers here, while Usmanov plays the victim. Don't fall for it.

Nasimov was less fortunate. He lost his mind and according to Usmanov is still in a mental institution.

And Usmanov still bears the scars of this injustice. So much so that he'll seek to gain advantage in a debate by suggesting that his opponent might be insane.

“Prison is a world apart. It has its own rules and its own reality,” Usmanov said. “I was strong, believed in myself and didn’t get corrupted. I was helped by people inside and the fact that they were criminals is no reason to forget that they saved my life. To this day I’m angry that all those years were taken away from me and wasted.”

Translation: Alisher Usmanov is a forgiving soul... but there are limits.

Released as a result of reforms introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, Usmanov married his teenage sweetheart, Irina Viner, who later became an Olympic gymnast. He had proposed to Viner from prison. “He sent me a handkerchief which, according to Uzbek tradition, is a proposal of marriage,” she said recently. “I still keep it.”

A touching love story that carries a belated qualification to earlier spin. I'd like to see some specifics about these reforms... unless of course Usmanov is referring to Perestroika in general, in which case he can stick his renewed spin where the sun don't shine.

Having lost any chance of a diplomatic career, Usmanov quickly took advantage of the business opportunities that opened up in the early days of perestroika. His first venture was making plastic shopping bags. “It was a lucrative business which taught me a lot,” he said. When Russian banks began to offer loans in the early 1990s, he borrowed several million dollars and displayed a talent for share-dealing. “I quickly realised that the equity market offered a sea of opportunities. We sold and bought whatever we could. We had a few failures and many successes. To me it was like an education and few things are as intellectually stimulating as getting a deal right.” Usmanov bought up former Soviet assets. He engineered leveraged buy-outs of the Oskolsky Electric Metallurgical Combine, the Lebedinsky Mining Combine and the Olenegorsk Combine. The deals made him a leading force in the iron and steel industry. "Those were tough and dangerous times,” he recalled. “Getting the right security and protection was paramount. Everything is much easier now. The legal framework is there and thanks to Putin, the country is back on track.” Usmanov snapped up another lucrative 15% stake in the UK-based steel maker Corus in 2002. He bought Gazprom shares, at a time when others had little faith in the gas giant’s future and went on to become president of GazpromInvest-Holding and owner of the Gaz-Metall/Metalloinvest Group, which controls 40% of iron ore production in Russia and two of the country’s largest steelworks.

Self-made man. Inspiring struggle. Yadda yadda yadda. You can't trust anything from Russia's past, but everything that happens in the present is strictly above board.

He has since expanded his empire by buying a stake in Russia’s third-largest mobile phone network and recently purchased Kommersant, an influential daily newspaper, for £100m. The paper used to be owned by Boris Berezovsky, the London-based tycoon and fierce critic of Putin.

Used to be. This is Usmanov dressing himself in the reputation of others (again), and playing games with his magic time machine (again).

It has since been reported that; "The chief editor of Kommersant, one of Russia’s leading dailies, quit over differences with new owner Alisher Usmanov. Former editor Vladislav Borodulin broke with the paper one month after tycoon Usmanov took the reins... The loss of Borodulin could mean a more restricted paper as the Kommersant aligns with other Kremlin-friendly Russian media."

Well, that's one way of putting it. One might suspect that this was going to happen anyway, and was the main reason why Borodulin left.

“I’ve been very blessed in life,” said Usmanov as he showed me a collection of Soviet art, a cellar stacked with rare wines, and a large mural depicting figures from Uzbek folklore.

Again, Mark Franchetti, keeps his eye for detail firmly on the decor, but this time manages to miss something that's right in front of his face; that large mural doesn't do a lot to support Usmanov's recent attempts to visibly distance himself from Uzbekistan.

“I have everything, except children. That’s the only thing missing in my life."

More bait. We're meant to say something horrible that will allow Usmanov to play the victim. Either that, or it's an intriguing invitation to single women who would like box seats for Arsenal games.

"Those who know me and have done business with me know that I’m an honest person. I’ve proven that what happened to me as a young man was the result of political infighting. I was a victim and when I came out I realised I had one last chance to make a success of my life."

Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me!

As for his contention that he's an honest person, he himself provides evidence that is far from honest. Here comes the money shot...

"I won’t fall so low as to fight those who want to blacken my name."

This is a direct and double-bladed contradiction; earlier Usmanov threatens to sue Murray “if he can first prove that he is completely sane."

In one statement he says he will fight, and stoops to blackening the name of his opponent in the same breath.

In the other he says he won't fight, purely on the basis that he refuses to engage in name-blackening games.

"Let their slurs weigh on their conscience. Mine is clean.”

Their slurs?

He's not only a liar, he's a bloody shameless one.

UPDATE: Usmanov's narrative only covers the (*ahem*) trumped-up charge relating to bribery... Where's the heart-warming background story to the trumped-up charges of extortion and rape? Is he saving those for later? Perhaps with brandy and cigars?

UPDATE: A quick link for those who are confused about Usmanov's "I have everything, except children" statement.

Schillings want to have you for breakfast

2007-10-11T11:59:00.000+01:00

Source (PDF):

LexisNexis in association with Schillings present:

Reputation Management
A roundtable breakfast briefing on how to avert a public crisis and protect your company’s brand, reputation and share price
Wednesday 24 October 2007
Halsbury House, 35 Chancery Lane, London

This highly practical roundtable breakfast will give you an opportunity to:
- Understand how to utilise the laws of defamation, privacy and intellectual property to safeguard your company’s reputation
- Gain tactical advice on how to strategically deploy injunctions
- Learn how you can exploit the Reynolds defence
- Discover how to “out” anonymous attackers
- Appreciate on-line threats and how to protect against internet attacks

This LexisNexis roundtable breakfast briefing in association with Schillings will provide you with the knowledge you need to either avert a crisis before it arises or mitigate its effect. The roundtable is by invitation only and will give you the opportunity to obtain expert practical advice on handling such a crisis and compare notes with your fellow in-house counsel under Chatham House rules on how such disasters can be averted.

It seems to me that we should have a representative at that meeting... are there any volunteers?

:o)

Slate: "In cyberspace, everyone can hear you sue."

2007-10-11T11:39:00.000+01:00

Slate - Michael Weiss: Civil Disobedience on the WebBritish bloggers stand up to threats of libel lawsuits: British libel law is notorious for its ability to silence critics of wealthy - and often shady - public figures. One would think, then, that bloggers with neither the deep pockets nor the lawyers of their mainstream media compatriots would be even less willing to fight accusations of libel. But, as two recent cases point out, they might be ideally suited to undermining the institution that precipitated the downfall of Oscar Wilde.

Let's hope so.

(See also: Roy Greenslade)

Alisher Usmanov and Finsbury PR

2007-10-11T11:34:00.000+01:00

The recent report on the diamond-fraud row revealed that Alisher Usamov is now using the services of the financial public-relations firm Finsbury Limited.

Perhaps this will work out better than, say, having the law firm Schillings double as his PR team.

(Matt Wardman has a report on their effectiveness in this role here and a recent follow-up here.)

Are Finsbury up to it? Well, that question is only part of the equation, as you'll soon see...

Via the comments over at Craig's site and Sourcewatch comes the following:

2001 - The government is accused of making taxpayers pay twice for spin, when it emerges that Finsbury have been hired to effectively take on the work of special adviser Jo Moore in promoting ministers' rescue plan for Railtrack. Later, questions are asked in the House of Lords relating to the appropriateness of hiring Finsbury to represent Railtrack.

2002 - British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) hire Finsbury for corporate and financial PR support. This appointment coincided with the fallout (sorry) from the return a load of defective nuclear fuel. Finsbury also appears to have been part of the later effort to sell the idea of 'new and safe' nuclear power to the public.

2004 - Roland Rudd's financial PR firm Finsbury is receiving taxpayers' money as part of a lucrative contract with university vice-chancellors to sell the Tony Blair's plans for university top-up fees.

2004 - Shell, already using Finsbury for PR, for some reason take on an additional PR firm to help them deal with the crisis that emerged following their massive overstatement of the amount of natural resources in their reserves.

2006 - Tony Blair's eldest son Euan spent a fortnight at Rudd's company Finsbury on a work experience placement.

(Psst! I threw that last one in for David Icke and his followers. But it's true.)

It would appear to me that Finsbury have a long track record of defending the indefensible, with most notable clients taking them on when they are in the deepest shit imaginable.

The following question was asked under comments over at Craig's weblog:

Is it significant that Finsbury have +accepted+ Usmanov as a client? They have their own reputation to protect too no?

My view is that it is significant, but the primary impact is on Usmanov's reputation; this appointment sends a message to a savvy audience that he is:

a) seeking to defend the indefensible

b) in the deepest shit imaginable

Oops.

Fasthosts take their ball and go home

2007-10-11T10:13:00.000+01:00

I realise that British-based ISPs are behind the eight-ball with UK libel law as it stands, which is why I want to work with the local industry to effect change.

However, there are a few actions by Fasthosts that I personally find hard to forgive:

1) Their sudden and OTT closure of an entire account involving sites and servers unconnected to the complaints made by Schillings.

2) Their refusal to engage in dialogue (when this was offered, they simply closed the account and walked away).

3) The misleading statements issued to the press suggesting that we had been less than co-operative when we were in no position to call them on their bullshit.

4) Their subsequent refusal to say anything at all when we could (and did) call them on their bullshit.

I'm sure you can spot the common thread here, and Fasthosts have recently withdrawn even further.

As most of you should be aware, a weblog is more than a content management system; it is (or at the very least should be) a contract with the public that offers open dialogue.

But after pissing off most of the blogosphere and making it clear that they had no intention of defending their actions or the initial statements attempting same, Fasthosts have done something that I think is fair to describe as typical of their attitude:

Instead of facing or embracing dialogue on their weblog (which has been in operation since late 2006), Fasthosts have simply deactivated it.

The weblog used to be here. It is now gone. Kaput. No more.

Of course, it's possible that this is only a temporary technical hitch... but it's far more likely that this is a clear signal from Fasthosts that they would rather avoid contact with bloggers in future.

If you own a weblog that is currently hosted by Fasthosts, take note.

Poll results and the way forward

2007-10-11T09:29:00.000+01:00

A recent poll on this website put the following to readers:

ANSWER ONLY IF YOU SUPPORT CHANGES TO EXISTING UK LIBEL LAW:- If a snap election is called, how do you plan on voting?

The Alliance Party - 1 (0%)
Conservatives - 52 (19%)
Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) - 0 (0%)
Greens - 23 (8%)
Labour - 61 (22%)
Liberal Democrats - 72 (26%)
Plaid Cymru - 8 (2%)
Sinn Féin (SF) - 3 (1%)
Social Democratic & Labour Party (SDLP) - 3 (1%)
SNP - 28 (10%)
Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) - 0 (0%)
Other - 20 (7%)

Total Votes: 271

This confirms what most of us already knew; that there's considerable support across the political spectrum for changes to UK libel law .

We are also in a situation where we have the support of some individual journalists (with some notable exceptions), but very few editors.

(I don't think it's at all paranoid to acknowledge that old media have a vested interest in keeping new media on a tight leash.)

These are the two reasons why I think that this could be a watershed moments for bloggers; we're largely on our own, but we're willing to stand together.

A group of us are right now working on a proposal that will involve manageable and carefully prioritised changes.

We'll be putting something to the public soon. Watch this space.

One for the scrapbook

2007-10-10T15:21:00.000+01:00

I'm in the Eye, me... and in a good way:

For the record, the good people at Arsenal News Review deserve credit for the initial list that led to this post.

Next cab off the rank: Usmanov

2007-10-08T09:49:00.000+01:00

International Herald Tribune - Bloggers beware when you criticize the rich and powerful: The daily Web log, or blog, of the former U.K. ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, vanished after Murray's British Internet provider received a flurry of ominous legal letters demanding the removal of "potentially defamatory" information about Alisher Usmanov, a mining mogul with a rising stake in the English soccer club Arsenal. Two weeks later, Murray is not blogging, but his blistering opinions are about to surface again through a Dutch Internet provider that offers refuge to controversial bloggers in the United States and in England, where libel laws are more lax. And with that journey, Murray has stirred support and a common outrage among bloggers and Internet service providers who complain that chilling demands from companies are becoming more frequent in a number of countries.

In other news, Craig Murray's site is now back online, and we can probably expect to hear something from him later today.

It looks like this is going to be an unhappy week for Mr Usmanov.

Usmanov gags Indymedia

2007-10-08T09:42:00.001+01:00

While Usmanov butters up journalists and maintains his 'water of a duck's back' charade, the willing flunkies at Schillings have resumed their attacks on websites vulnerable to their quasi-legal challenges:

Indymedia UK Facing Legal Censorship… again!

Justin and Septicisle have more.

Hooray for mainstream media

2007-10-04T16:19:00.000+01:00

Via Arsenal News Review (with one extra added by moi) a list of 9* 8 of the 10 journalists reported to have been flown to and from Moscow by Alisher Usmanov on a Gulfstream 550 private jet and put up at the five-star Kempinski Hotel:

Roger Blitz (Financial Times): Blitz wrote two articles, here and here, but did not mention the rather notable travel and accommodation arrangements in either. [MINI-UPDATE: See response from FT below.]

David Bond (The Daily Telegraph): The resulting article makes much of Usmanov's 'knowledge' of Arsenal, describes Murray's allegations as "an extraordinary attack" and our only hint about travel and accommodation is given in the following passage; "...in an effort to dispel the mystery and set the record straight, Usmanov invited British journalists to Moscow, to explain his side of the story."

Jason Burt (The Independent): Two articles here and here, but no mention of travel or accommodation.

Shaun Custis (The Sun): The resulting article is very light on detail when discussing Usmanov's past, which this 'journalist' describes as 'smears'. There is no mention of travel or accommodation.

Matt Dickinson (The Times): The resulting article mentions travel, but not accommodation. [MINI-UPDATE: Another article gives readers some clue as to what's going on by using the words "charm offensive".... but makes no mention of some rather important specifics that show how offensive it is.]

Richard Galpin (BBC) The resulting article says that "in the cramped conference room were British newspaper journalists intrigued to discover more about Russia's 18th richest man," but fails to mention that they were not intrigued enough to make the journey under their own steam. [snip] [*MINI-UPDATE: Richard Galpin himself is based on Moscow. See comments.]

Martin Lipton (The Mirror): Articles headed 'Martin Lipton in Moscow' here and here, but no mention of how he got there, and no mention of any fuss over Usmanov's past. All the folks at home get is "Alisher loves Arsenal." Way to go, Martin Lipton.

Charlie Sale (The Daily Mail): Sale is quite specific about travel and accommodation here and here, but he dutifully states in his main article that; "Usmanov was pardoned by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev" (all that jetting about can't have left much time for research).

Matt Scott (The Guardian): The resulting article airs more detail than most, but does not mention travel or accommodation.

So that's 9* 8 out of a reported 10 journalists, flown to and from Moscow by Alisher Usmanov on a Gulfstream 550 private jet and put up at the five-star Kempinski Hotel. Only one of them is completely honest with their readers about the extraordinary and luxurious circumstances surrounding the interview.

One can only assume that their editors approve.

Are you impressed? I'm impressed.

UPDATE - Gulfstream 550s look nice. So do Kempinski Hotels. Go on... have a little imaginary wallow and see what it feels like. Incidentally, a single room at the Hotel Baltschug Kempinski Moscow will set you back about 25,000 Russian Rubles excluding tax per night (or about £500 if you ever have cause to pay for one yourself).

UPDATE (05 Oct) - Last night, I wrote letters to most of the newspapers involved. Today, I received a reply from the Financial Times. It appears in full below:

Dear Mr Ireland

Thank you for your letter. You raise an extremely important point and one we take very seriously. The answer to your question is that Roger Blitz did indeed travel on the jet and stay at the Kempinski. This was because of the access to a number of executives and others that travelling on the plane offered. However, in accordance with our strict policy on hospitality, the FT refunded the cost of an air fare and insisted on paying the hotel bill ourselves. Mr Usmanov also made Mr Blitz - and I assume others - a gift of a book on Russian art. Again, in accordance with our policy on gifts above a nominal value, the book will be put into the FT's christmas raffle, the proceeds of which go to charity. In the name of full disclosure, I should say that he did accept a meal from Mr Usmanov but otherwise we paid our own way. I hope you feel that this answers your important question and answers it to your satisfaction. I trust you will amend your blog to take account of this answer.

Yours sincerely

Robert Shrimsley
News Editor
Financial Times

I asked for clarification on "the cost of an air fare" and was told; "Our policy is to pay a full commercial rate on a scheduled airline since we do not regard the mode of travel as a perk in itself, merely a means of access."

UPDATE (08 Oct) - I do the work and Dale gets the credit, which is par for the course. Still, we at least we now have a complete rundown of the perks some journalists would rather not mention:

In the interests of transparency here is a full breakdown of Usmanov's largess: Luton to Moscow on private Gulfstream 550 jet with lunch and drinks, transfer to five-star Kempinski hotel, dinner plus drinks, transfer to bar for drinks. Then one night in Kempinski, lunch in a Russian restaurant, transfer to Usmanov office, Metro trip, coffee and teas in Usmanov office, gift of art book, Gulfstream return to Stansted with cold supper.

The successful criminal brain is always superior.

2007-10-04T08:46:00.000+01:00

Matt Wardman on Lynne Featherstone

Unity in a second post on UK libel law as it stands

Septicisle on Alisher Usmanov's pathetic PR push

On the latter matter, I think Usmanov missed a trick by jetting journalists over to his lair for a moving monologue.

Instead, he should have kidnapped some bloggers and subjected them to a heavy beating followed by a light supper, before outlining every detail of his evil plan and then slowly lowering us into a pool of hungry sturgeon. Perhaps while stroking a cat.

[Tip - What Usmanov really needs to do is tackle the charges head-on in a tough, no-holds-barred interview. If he wishes to take this path, he should contact Cactus TV Studios and ask to be booked on the next edition of Richard and Judy.]

Alisher Usmanov begins a new PR push

2007-10-03T11:26:00.000+01:00

Times - Enthusiastic magnate buys into Wenger’s collection of fine art: There has been a lot of rummaging around his past and various dark murmurings about his businesses, some of it from the Arsenal board, and his response this week was to fly a group of journalists from England to his metals company in Moscow by private jet to explain that, while he may be an imposing bear of a man, he is not threatening or ill-intentioned. He did so sitting in his vast office at his metals company... Usmanov’s past includes six years in prison in his native Uzbekistan in the 1980s, but he said that he had been locked up on politically motivated and unfounded charges cooked up by his enemies in the KGB. That was life, he said, for many under the old Communist regime. “I spent 20 years fighting for my name,” Usmanov said. “Money is nothing compared to my name.” He also dismissed allegations by Thomas Wise, an English MEP, that his money was tainted. “People talk about me as Uzbekistan businessman involved with shady dealings, with narcotics,” Usmanov said. “It is beneath my dignity to respond to all the allegations. People like my parents could not bring up a gangster and racketeer.”

That, and his Mum thinks he's cute.

[rolls eyes]

1. This article shows how serious a blow this speech was to Usmanov. Relish at your leisure.

2. What are the chances, do you think, of getting a list of the journalists who went jetting? Anybody?

3. Craig will be back soon and I *know* he's got a thing or two to say that will put Usmanov's claims about his past into perspective. Stay tuned.

UPDATE - Don't put those tissues away, folks... there's more ~~tears~~ wank on the way:

Telegraph - Alisher Usmanov: I'm no Roman Abramovich: Speaking from his office, on the top floor of Metalloinvest, his mining company, which has a staggering turnover of $4bn a year, he said: "You cannot respond in kind to everything everyone directs at you. My conviction was false and it was proved to be a provocation by the Uzbeki KGB. I don't live in Uzbekistan. I am not even a citizen of Uzbekistan. I only visit the graves of my parents once a year. People talking about me as an Uzbeki businessman with shady dealings in narcotics? It's beyond my dignity to respond to all these allegations. One of the papers quoted Craig Murray, the ex UK ambassador, I don't even want to qualify what Mr Murray says about me. I respect the chairman. He said something about me that made me very uncomfortable. But afterwards he spoke to us and we understand why he said it."

Guardian - Names escape him as Usmanov launches Arsenal charm offensive: With the investment came exposure. Craig Murray, the former ambassador to Usmanov's native Uzbekistan has raised questions about his probity. Even Arsenal's chairman made outspoken comments. "He is certainly not an open book," said Peter Hill-Wood last week. Business is murky in Uzbekistan. I would not want him to be the owner of the club." The allegations were principally motivated by the fact that Usmanov served six years of an eight-year sentence imposed in Tashkent. "My conviction was false and illegal," he said. "It is a fact that I was in prison but it was proved to be a provocation by possibly the Uzbek KGB because the friends of my parents were high-ranking KGB and my father was a high-ranking judicial official in Uzbekistan. Life is a sequence of events we cannot always control. Sometimes we are helpless against the circumstances life presents. Most obviously it manifested in the system we all lived under when the country was ruled by the Communist party." Usmanov has instructed lawyers to deal with allegations he considers "libellous". But yesterday's interview in his cavernous office was the product of a charm offensive. "I am not a vengeful man but I am not a whipping boy either," said Usmanov, who recently spent over £25m at Sotheby's in returning the Mstislav Rostropovich art collection to Russia. "Every time someone spits at you, you can't respond in kind. People are talking about me as having shady dealings with narcotics. Do I have to respond to everything? It's beyond my dignity to respond to this kind of allegation. I am dealing with the British ambassador to Moscow to run some huge cultural events. We are bringing great artists to exhibit in Russian museums. Why not ask him about the secret intelligence he has received on me?"

Financial Times - Usmanov goes gunning for Arsenal fight: Decrying the “prejudice material” written about him, Mr Usmanov says he is tiring of firing off various law suits. Asked whether the continuation of such allegations would make him think about walking away from Arsenal, he says: “I’ll think about it.” But enemies were left in no doubt he would not shirk a fight. “If it is initiated to drive me out, I stay.”

Ah... so, as well as playing the 'polticial motivation' card (again), Usmanov is assuring us that if we don't press the matter, he's more likely to leave of his own accord.

I'm also enjoying the notion that we should - at this suggestion - take the word of a current ambassador to Moscow over the word of a former ambassador to Uzbekistan... not least because Usmanov has little to do with Uzbekistan and (*sniff*) (*sob*) only goes there to visit the graves of his parents once a year.

UPDATE (04 Oct) - Arsenal News Review: On Tuesday, Alisher Usmanov flew the British press to Moscow in a private jet and put them up at the five-star Kempinski Hotel. An amazing stunt which many have dubbed a "charm offensive." The party of about 10 reporters included The Guardian (Matt Scott), The Daily Mail ( Charlie Sale),The Times (Matt Dickinson), The Sun (Shaun Custis), The Mirror (Martin Lipton), The Daily Telegraph (David Bond), the BBC (Richard Galpin) and The Independent (Jason Burt). The press conference at his Moscow HQ was widely reported on Wednesday morning but only Charlie Sale admitted they were all flown there in Usmanov's Gulfstream 550. This long-range business jet carries 10-12 passengers.

Actually, the jetted-out bit was mentioned by more than one reporter, but Sale does spell out the specifics admirably here and here.

IMPORTANT UPDATE - You will definitely want to read and share this. Having checked each article in detail, I can assure you that you will be less than impressed with this MSM performance.

Where's Craig?

2007-10-02T15:37:00.000+01:00

I think I'll let Chris Floyd field that one:

Chris Floyd - Back From the Hack, and Once More Into the Breach: In brief, Usmanov made with the legal hit-men, and strong-armed Murray's website host into pulling the plug. But Murray found a new home for his website, when our main man Rich stepped into the breach, offering to host the site on his server, in defiance of oligarchical bluster. This new Murray site was due to launch on Monday, October 1; but lo and behold, Rich's server was hit by the hacker firebomb on Sunday, September 30 – just hours before the Murray site was to go live. Certainly an interesting juxtaposition of events, to say the least.

To say the very least.

We also have some blah-blah to deal with on one of the domains, but this should be sorted shortly. Then we can all have some fun with that lovely Usmanov fellow.

Read words

2007-10-02T15:25:00.000+01:00

Justin has a lovely piece about the Usmanov affair to date published over at the IOC website...

Index on Censorship - Britain: Bloggers unite against intimidation: It must be emphasised that this is not about bloggers claiming the right to say whatever they like with impunity and without fear of sanction. Bloggers are, rightly so, as accountable for what they write as journalists. Craig Murray is on record as saying he wants Usmanov to sue him for libel so the allegations can be put on the record. In a statement to the Guardian newspaper, a spokesman for Schillings said that they were not about to sue Murray because ‘they did not want to give him a platform to express his views’. Instead of fighting the case in the courts, Schillings tried to make the story go away completely. The allegations may be true, they may be false, but in the absence of a libel trial testing their veracity, thousands of people have formed their own conclusions.

Video (I)

2007-10-02T10:29:00.000+01:00

Mike Power has used animoto to good effect to create a video for anyone who wants to wallow in the joy of the recent link storm.

Also (steel yourselves) I'm about to bring to your attention a discussion on this topic from 18DoughtyStreet.

My video is on the way; it needs to gestate just a *little* longer.

UPDATE - Having watched the relevant exchange, I think I should point out (again) that the account in question was held and managed by Clive Summerfield (who is now back online).

Craig Murray will be back online shortly...

2007-10-01T16:14:00.000+01:00

... I hope to be able to tell you more, but - for now - let's just say that we hoped for fewer complications than there actually were.

Some interesting parallels came to mind this morning, and this was one of them. It relates to determined efforts to silence Murray and not-quite-as-determined efforts to silence those who support him:

Bloggerheads: During the 2005 General Election... Craig Murray, standing as an independent candidate in (Jack) Straw's constituency of Blackburn, was excluded from a public debate. It wasn't until Murray was forcibly removed from the building that Jack Straw felt confident enough to deliver the following answer to this question:

Constituent: "This question is for Mr Straw; Have you ever read any documents where the intelligence has been procured through torturous means?"

Jack Straw: "Not to the best of my knowledge... let me make this clear... that the British government does not support torture in any circumstances. Full stop. We do not support the obtaining of intelligence by torture, or its use."

Jack Straw didn't dare face Craig Murray on the subject of torture in Uzbekistan; there was fear in that man's eyes until the moment Murray was locked out of the room.

At this point you're probably expecting a reference to certain other people who would do just about anything to avoid facing Murray on fair or open terms... but instead I think I'll just remind people that Jack Straw is now Secretary of State for Justice.

:o)

Life, eh?

We now have a Lib Dem MP onside

2007-10-01T08:40:00.000+01:00

Lynne Featherstone - The perils of blogging: the Alisher Usmanov affair: First - I'm all for people who publish things online being held accountable for what they say - but people who publish online should also have reasonable protection. It is possible to get an injunction against a book, newspaper etc before going ahead with a full action for libel - but there are hurdles you have to meet and in the end you have to make your case in court and win if you want to stop the allegations being distributed. That's not what has happened here as far as I can see - one threatening legal letter, and that's it - bing! - the site went.

Actually, it was four threatening letters, but otherwise she's right. More news later this morning.

Ouch.

2007-09-28T16:16:00.000+01:00

Matt Wardman writes: If Mr Usmanov were employing Schillings Lawyers to generate attention for himself rather than to try and muzzle it, they would be performing very well indeed. Here are a couple of graphs from the useful Blogpulse Service, which racks how much attention is being devoted to different topics on the blogs. The first bulge is Alisher Usmanov buying part of Arsenal. The second bulge is the interest after Mr Usmanov used Schillings Lawyers to close down Craig Murray's critical website.

And what a bulge it is. Go and see the graphs, and picture how much Schillings must be hurting right now. This is a bloody train wreck for them.

Wouldn't you love to be a fly on the wall at Friday drinkies?

:o)

UK libel law: a discussion

2007-09-28T15:52:00.000+01:00

Join an ongoing discussion of the current state of play and possible ways forward over at Unity's:

Ministry of Truth - Rewriting Britain's Libel Laws (1)

Time-consuming, but important.

TRANSCRIPT: Parliamentary privilege (EU edition)

2007-09-28T15:41:00.000+01:00

The transcript of the speech made by a Member of the European Parliament has been published here on the European Parliament website. Matt has the details and says; "If you are carrying a self-produced transcript of the speech, I suggest you update it."

Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz

2007-09-28T14:48:00.000+01:00

You'll want to read the second item on this post. The matter is tightly related to what we're dealing with here.

New poll

2007-09-28T12:36:00.000+01:00

I've closed the existing poll a little early, as it was argued (quite fairly) that it did not present fair options for voters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The new poll does.

The parties in this new poll have been chosen according to the following criteria (with the help of Gus Abraham and Mick Fealty); UK parties either polling 15%+, having current representation, or being in office or coalition at a devolved level.

ANSWER ONLY IF YOU SUPPORT CHANGES TO EXISTING UK LIBEL LAW:-
If a snap election is called, how do you plan on voting?

The new poll is now live in the sidebar... VOTE NOW!

(Also, to keep you busy over the weekend... please send us your best summary/summaries of this case so far.)

List of supporters

2007-09-28T11:20:00.001+01:00

Below if the official list of blogs and bloggers that support this fight for free speech. Many thanks to Justin McKeating for hosting and managing the original.

This new version of the original list is managed by Aaron Heath. To add your blog to this list, simply send a permalink to your initial/primary post on this subject to:

tyger AT tygerland DOT net

If you're worried about arriving late for the party, don't.

If you haven’t blogged this yet and would like to, or have but haven’t let us know about it, please do so now.

[Note - We've removed the function that allows bloggers to copy and paste these links, as the resulting posts were sending multiple pings that disrupted conversations.]

The Alisher Usmanov Affair - current list of supporters:

[Justin McKeating], Curious Hamster, Pickled Politics, Harry’s Place, Tim Worstall, Dizzy, Iain Dale, Ten Percent, Blairwatch, Davide Simonetti, Earthquake Cove, Turbulent Cleric (who suggests dropping a line to the FA about Mr Usmanov), Mike Power (Mike has also produced this video), Jailhouse Lawyer, Suesam, Devil’s Kitchen, The Cartoonist, Falco, Casualty Monitor, Forever Expat, Arseblog, Drink-soaked Trots (and another), Pitch Invasion, Wonko’s World, Roll A Monkey, Caroline Hunt, Westminster Wisdom, Chris K, Anorak, Mediawatchwatch, Norfolk Blogger, Chris Paul, Indymedia (with a list of Craig Murray’s articles that are currently unavailable), Obsolete, Tom Watson, Cynical Chatter, Reactionary Snob, Mr Eugenides, Matthew Sinclair, The Select Society, Liberal England, Davblog, Peter Gasston Pitch Perfect, Adelaide Green Porridge Cafe, Lunartalks, Tygerland, The Crossed Pond, Our Kingdom, Big Daddy Merk, Daily Mail Watch, Graeme’s, Random Thoughts, Nosemonkey, Matt Wardman (i, ii, iii, iv, v), Politics in the Zeros, Love and Garbage, The Huntsman, Conservative Party Reptile, Ellee Seymour, Sabretache, Not A Sheep, Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, The People’s Republic Of Newport, Life, the Universe & Everything, Arsenal Transfer Rumour Mill, The Green Ribbon, Blood & Treasure, The Last Ditch, Areopagitica, Football in Finland, An Englishman’s Castle, Freeborn John, Eursoc, The Back Four, Rebellion Suck!, Ministry of Truth, ModernityBlog, Beau Bo D’Or, Scots and Independent, The Splund, Bill Cameron, Podnosh, Dodgeblogium, Moving Target, Serious Golmal, Goonerholic, The Spine, Zero Point Nine, Lenin’s Tomb, The Durruti Column, The Bristol Blogger, ArseNews, David Lindsay, Quaequam Blog!, On A Quiet Day…, Kathz’s Blog, England Expects, Theo Spark, Duncan Borrowman, Senn’s Blog, Katykins, Jewcy, Kevin Maguire, Stumbling and Mumbling, Famous for 15 megapixels, Ordovicius, Tom Morris, AOL Fanhouse, Doctor Vee, The Curmudgeonly, The Poor Mouth, 1820, Hangbitch, Crooked Timber, ArseNole, Identity Unknown, Liberty Alone, Amused Cynicism, Clairwil, The Lone Voice, Tampon Teabag, Unoriginalname38, Special/Blown It, The Remittance Man, 18 Doughty Street, Laban Tall, Martin Bright, Spy Blog The Exile, poons, Jangliss, Who Knows Where Thoughts Come From?, Imagined Community, A Pint of Unionist Lite, Poldraw, Disillusioned And Bored, Error Gorilla, Indigo Jo, Swiss Metablog, Kate Garnwen Truemors, Asn14, D-Notice, The Judge, Political Penguin, Miserable Old Fart, Jottings, fridgemagnet, Blah Blah Flowers, J. Arthur MacNumpty, Tony Hatfield, Grendel, Charlie Whitaker, Matt Buck, The Waendel Journal, Marginalized Action Dinosaur, SoccerLens, Toblog, John Brissenden East Lower, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Peter Black AM, Boing Boing, BLTP, Gunnerblog, LFB UK, Liberal Revolution, Wombles, Focus on Sodbury…, Follow The Money, Freedom and Whisky, Melting Man, PoliticalHackUK, Simon Says…, Daily EM, From The Barrel of a Gun, The Fourth Place, The Armchair News Blog, Journalist und Optimist, Bristol Indymedia, Dave Weeden, Up North John, Gizmonaut, Spin and Spinners, Marginalia, Arnique, Heather Yaxley, The Whiskey Priest, On The Beat, Paul Canning, Martin Stabe, Mat Bowles, Pigdogfucker, Rachel North, B3TA board, Naqniq, Yorkshire Ranter, The Home Of Football, UFO Breakfast Recipients, Moninski , Kerching, e-clectig, Mediocracy, Sicily Scene, Samizdata, I blog, they blog, weblog, Colcam, Some Random Thoughts, Bel is thinking, Vino S, Simply Jews, Atlantic Free Press, Registan, Filasteen, Britblog Roundup #136, Scientific Misconduct Blog, Adam Bowie, Duncan at Abcol, Camera Anguish, A Very British Dude, Whatever, Central News, Green Gathering, Leighton Cooke (224), , Skuds’ Sister’s Brother, Contrast News, Poliblog Perspective, Parish Pump, El Gales, Noodle, Curly’s Corner Shop, Freunde der offenen Gesellschaft, otromundoesposible, Richard Stacy, Looking For A Voice, News Dissector, Kateshomeblog, Writes Like She Talks, Extra! Extra!, Committee To Protect Bloggers, Liberty’s Requiem, American Samizdat, The Thunder Dragon, Cybersoc, Achievable Life, Paperholic, Creative-i, Raedwald, Nobody’s Friend, Lobster Blogster, Panchromatica (251), Back off, man…, Dan Hardie, Krusenstern, Brendadada, Freace, Boriswatch, Fork Handles, Chris Applegate, Christopher Glamorgan, West Virginia Rebel’s Blog, Instapundit, Powerpymes, iDiligence Forum, Gizmotastic, Demos, Gary Andrews, Neweurasia , Never Trust a Hippy, sub specie aeternitatis, Bananas in the Falklands, The Sharpener, Virtual Light, Stu News, Scraps of Moscow, Danivon, As A Dodo, La Russophobe, PJC Journal, Mick Fealty’s Brassneck, dead brains don’t dance, A Comfortable Place, Bamblog, Robert Amsterdam, The Customer, No Longer at Ease, Rachel-Catherine, Humaniform, Mike Rouse, Chesus Yuste, anticapitalista, Aderyn Cân, Ulla’s Amazing Wee Blog (294), Ross200, Disruptive, Internazionale.it, The Obscurer, A Lefty Down Under, Things I Learned or Made Up, Pickled Bushman, Persons Unknown, Gnus of the World, Postman Patel, Parburypolitica (ii) Miscellany Symposium (306) Omnium (ii), In the Café and the Station, James Cridland's blog, Small Beds and Large Bears, Christopher White, Rolled-up Trousers, Lynne Featherstone, ßench, Random Comments from South London, Chap Sticks, (316) Suraci, UK Politics - Can't Get Enough, Critical Facility Dojo, MetaMedia (IHT), LFCM: Casualty Monitor, IP Democracy, (322) Magna Carta Plus News, Antony Loewenstein, Sports Blog, football is fixed, Mailstrom, B2fxxx, (328)

Schillings

2007-09-27T10:13:00.001+01:00

Yesterday, thousands of witnesses (most of them authors of key weblogs or their readers) watched Fasthosts punk out... again. They had their chance to make good and they blew it.

Next cab off the rank: Schillings.

You'll like this one; it's short and sweet...

Schillings

----- Original Message -----
From: Clive Summerfield
To: legal@schillings.co.uk
Cc: Tim Ireland
Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2007 10:01 AM
Subject: Usamanov/Schillings/Summerfield/Murray - Request for correspondence

Dear Sirs,

This is a request for copies of all correspondence sent to Fasthosts from your organisation involving material published on the websites of Craig Murray and Tim Ireland. In case you're not aware, Fasthosts have so far failed to show me anything beyond your first letter.

We're feeling a little ignored over here, and in no mood to waste time. We've set a perfectly reasonable deadline of 6 hours, which we hope you will meet as a sign of good faith.

Please keep in mind that statements made by your representatives seeking to lay the blame with Fasthosts would carry much more weight if you were able to show that they acted in an unreasonable fashion to reasonable demands.

Clive Summerfield
[CC: Tim Ireland]

That gives them until 4pm this afternoon. Let's see what they come back with.

UPDATE (5:30pm) - Tch. That's what you get for trying to be accommodating; we got nothing back. Not a sausage.

So, basically, Schillings' case to the public is that they made perfectly reasonable demands of Fasthosts, but we're not allowed to see them.

Fine by me. The longer they stick with this line, the longer people will suspect that Schillings own an unknown but not insignificant percentage of this almighty cock-up.

They're not afraid of appearing rabid (in fact, they seem quite proud of it), but it won't do them much good to look stupid.

:o)

A note on cross-spectrum support

2007-09-27T09:48:00.000+01:00

(Note - I'm using the term 'cross-spectrum' instead of 'cross-party' to include the many non-aligned bloggers who are in on this.)

One thing outsiders appear to be struggling with is how significant the level of cross-spectrum support is on this issue. Unprecedented is a perfect word for it.

I found this post to be particularly striking; what's right is right:

I must confess that I am a couple days late to this fight for the inexcusable reason that I simply cannot abide Tim Ireland, but in truth that has nothing to do with the outrageousness of some jumped up plutocrat throwing his weight around like this. However much I might dislike the notion I am forced to support Tim Ireland unequivocally.

That's the most honest and compelling thing I've read on a blog in a very long time. Perry de Havilland, who wrote it, also blockquotes Mr Eugenidies' thoughts on the subject, as many other bloggers have:

And let's be clear on this point; these blogs are down not because Usmanov has been libelled, but because he says he's been libelled, and has a room full of paid monkeys sitting at typewriters firing off threatening letters to that effect.

I don't give a shit about this character, or Arsenal FC (no offence to any Gooners out there); nor do I share all or even most of Tim Ireland or Craig Murray's politics. But that's far from the point. If you can be silenced for calling a businessman a crook, then you can be silenced for calling a politician a crook, too. Then it's everyone's problem.

Quite.

There's also this from Harry's Place:

Tim Ireland is a manic sort, whose politics I often find a bit odd. He is also one of the longest serving of the British blogging community.

Craig Murray, as readers of Harry's Place will know, is a man who is sometimes right and sometimes not. He has inspired some of us, and has been a tremendous source of fun for others.

Bloggers cannot operate if they are bullied by rich plaintiffs. Defamation law in the United Kingdom is both farcical and unfair, and is in desperate need of fundamental reform. Errors on blogs can easily be remedied: particularly where they permit open commenting (a libel risk in itself) which allows postings to be criticised, facts corrected, and arguments opposed. I know what it is like to be at the receiving end of a well funded threat of defamation proceedings, and it is no fun at all. It is outrageous that the law of defamation should be used to break bloggers: like butterflies upon wheels.

Frankly, we might as well shut up shop altogether if we do not stick together on this issue.

For all these reasons both of them deserve our support, and we should give it to them.

And you can rest assured that I for one won't be pissing it away in pursuit of a personal or party-political agenda.

Watch for significant changes to this weblog and a cross-spectrum evolution of this campaign once the fact-finding process nears completion; if you're hesitant because you think you'll be marching under my banner or Craig Murray's, think again.

Everyone should have the right to take part in open and honest debate online; this is going to be your best chance to fight for that right, secure it in law or precedent, and finally establish the importance of blogs in general.

UPDATE - This, from Justin McKeating:

291 people now linking to and blogging about this story... I've noticed one or two people apologising about 'coming late to the party'. Please, don't. This isn't a race, this about sharing views and showing solidarity. If you haven't blogged this yet and would like to, or have but haven’t let us know, please do.

Summaries

2007-09-27T08:38:00.000+01:00

I saw this excellent summary of recent events earlier that focuses admirably on Schillings:

Here's a new proposal for a case study for Schillings' prospectus:

The problem
Our client was a lardy foreign oligarch looking to take over a leading British football club. The former British Ambassador to his country had published allegations about him which he considered to be false and defamatory.

The solution
We put the frighteners on the former Ambassador's webhost to such an extent that it shut down not only his blog, but also other high profile blogs which had nothing to do with it, including that of the Conservative candidate for London mayor, and others in elected office. The allegations then spread around the internet and the mainstream media like wildfire.

I need more summaries. Impassioned or neutral, and maybe a bit in bewteen.

A useful summary could focus on Alisher Usmanov, Arsenal, Schillings, Fasthosts, the law etc.

A more useful summary would rope it all in and tell people why they need to care about this issue in general, because that's where we're headed.

(I'm trying to do the same myself, but am cutting it straight to video, which can be helpful but time-consuming. I also tend to get impossibly long-winded when I'm mired in detail as I am right now.)

I'll set a limit you can regard to be soft if you like; 10-20 word introduction paragraph, 200 words maximum.

I may dig some prizes out of the Special Cupboard if you bring me something really nice. I have treasure.

-

PROGRESS:

Blogroll: On its way

Translations: Please check in if you have or wish to make a translation of the (ahem) detailed text summary in this post.

Schillings: Later this morning.

-

Arsenal petition

2007-09-27T08:31:00.001+01:00

Via Matthias, something for fans of the game to share:

PETITION: Investigate Alisher Usmanov as being unfit to invest in Arsenal FC

Sound off under comments if you think it belongs in the sidebar.

[NOTE - I would want to draw more facts out of this case and come to some form of consensus with supporters from across the political spectrum before attempting a petition to the Prime Minister.]

UPDATE - A few emails about there already being a Downing Street petition for Arsenal fans:

PETITION - Draw up a rigorous "fit and proper person" test for football club ownership

We're still holding fire on a law/rights petition for the moment.

Fasthosts: a timeline of excellent service

2007-09-26T17:34:00.000+01:00

THE MAIN PLAYERS

Alisher Usmanov: Uzbek billionaire, current owner of 21% of Arsenal FC.

Schillings: Lawyers for Alisher Usmanov.

Fasthosts: UK-based provider of web hosting.

Clive Summerfield: Reseller for Fasthosts and manager of two dedicated web servers provided by them.

Craig Murray: Former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan; site [www.craigmurray.co.uk] hosted by Fasthosts via Clive Summerfield.

Tim Ireland: Non-aligned political blogger; site [www.bloggerheads.com] hosted by Fasthosts via Clive Summerfield.

SUMMARY OF EVENTS
[Please advise us via email if you intend to translate the text summary to a foreign language.]

On 02 September 2007, Craig Murray (the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan), wrote and published an article on his weblog [http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/] about Alisher Usmanov, the Uzbek-born billionaire who had just bought a 14.58% stake in the English team Arsenal Football Club and announced his intention to increase his stake to 25%

Schillings, a London law firm claiming to specialise in 'media, entertainment, internet, new media and sports legal issues, particularly defamation law', issued a legal threat to Fasthosts demanding removal of the article within 24 hours.

This action bypassed the author of the article (Craig Murray) and the reseller for Fasthosts (Clive Summerfield) who managed two dedicated webservers, including one that hosted Craig Murray's website, and a few other personal, professional and/or political websites.

This was the first in a series of four complaints involving Craig Murray's website and the website of Tim Ireland [http://www.bloggerheads.com/]. Correspondence from Schillings was only shared with the reseller on that first occasion. From the second (minor) complaint onwards, Clive Summerfield and the clients involved had little to no idea exactly what content Schillings objected to and/or on what legal grounds they were making their complaint.

On the third complaint, relating to a post made by Tim Ireland on Bloggerheads.com that included a heavily-censored excerpt from Craig Murray's article, Clive was given a mere 15 minutes in which to remove the article in question. This deadline was met.

Upon the fourth complaint from Schillings (on 20 September 2007), which related not to any new articles written by Craig Murray, but to two older articles in his archives (one of which was almost two years old), Clive Summerfield immediately deactivated Craig Murray's website and told Fasthosts of his intention to begin a dialogue between Schillings, Murray and himself. Fasthosts were invited to take part in that dialogue.

Fasthosts responded by closing down not just Craig Murray's website, but the entire account. Both servers managed by Clive were removed from service resulting in the closure of the websites of Craig Murray, Tim Ireland, Clive Summerfield, Bob Piper (Labour Councillor for Sandwell), Boris Johnson (Conservative MP for Henley), and many other bystanders. Only two of the dozen or so websites involved published anything about Alisher Usmanov.

A backlash began amongst bloggers, starting at the website of Justin McKeating [http://www.chickyog.net/] and soon spread to the news media. It was at this time that Fasthosts issued a statement to the press saying:

"There were certain statements on one individual site which we asked were removed because they were potentially defamatory. The customer was repeatedly advised of the breach and upon failing to permanently remove the content in question their customer account was terminated, the unfortunate result being the possible downtime of other unrelated websites of which we understand boris-johnson.com was one."

In reality, Clive Summerfield had done everything within his power to meet with demands that often came without explanation or documentation. Further, the fourth and final complaint not only appears to be on very shaky ground, it could in no way be construed as a failure by Clive Summerfield to meet with previous demands.

Since then, Clive Summerfield and Tim Ireland have issued a request to Fasthosts for all relevant Schillings correspondence, a retraction and/or correction of the above statement, an apology, plus a fair offer of compensation for all parties concerned:
http://b-heads.blogspot.com/2007/09/requesting-response-from-fasthosts.html

Fasthosts did not reply to that request, and, at the time of writing, have also stopped taking questions from the press regarding this matter.

In effect, Schillings had a number of articles removed or edited with only the threat of legal action (as opposed to legal action itself).

The constant barrage of threats (of varying substance) was certainly a contributing factor to Fasthosts deciding that they were better off out of it... and it was this decision that led to the sudden and unexpected closure of the sites of Craig Murray, Tim Ireland, Clive Summerfield, Bob Piper, Boris Johnson and others.

THE TIMELINE

Thursday 06 Sep 2007 (am) - Fasthosts receive takedown request from Schillings for a recent post by Craig Murray [Craig Murray - 02 Sep 2007: Alisher Usmanov, potential Arsenal chairman is a....]. Clive Summerfield, is given 24 hours to remove the item.

Thursday 06 Sep 2007 (pm) - Post removed and covering post put up [Craig Murray - 06 Sep 2007: Usmanov redux]. Immediate request made for a copy of the relevant correspondence from Schillings, which was later shared with Clive Summerfield.

Friday 07 Sep 2007 (am) - Schillings contact Fasthosts to request removal of phrase "less than salubrious" from covering post [Craig Murray - 06 Sep 2007: Usmanov redux]. Fasthosts contact Clive Summerfield by phone, amendment made within minutes. No relevant correspondence from Schillings is disclosed beyond this simple instruction.

Wednesday 13 Sep 2007 (am) - Fasthosts receive takedown request from Schillings regarding a post at Bloggerheads (a separate website hosted under same reseller account); [Tim Ireland - 06 Sep 2007: Alisher Usmanov: how will bloggers and Arsenal fans react as the screws tighten?]. This post includes highly censored passages from Murray's article, but the exact content that offended has yet to be determined (see below). Fasthosts email Clive Summerfield, and phone at 8:45am, giving 9:00am deadline!!! Tim Ireland strips post of all content before deadline, pending details and/or legal advice (sadly, no relevant correspondence from Schillings was disclosed beyond the demand for removal). Fasthosts mention their terms and conditions of service to Clive Summerfield, who confirms that his terms are in line with theirs and that his clients will be reminded of their responsibilities.

-

Note from Tim #1: I still don't know exactly what it was about my article that Schillings objected to, because Fasthosts failed to share the relevant Schillings correspondence with Clive or myself and - with this complaint (complete with a 15 minute deadline) - even failed to give us the scant details required to avoid making the same mistake again. In my view, the article was pretty benign and, ironically, primarily discussed the effect of blogs on search engines and the dangerous territory Schillings had come barging into. Here's what I had to say at the time:

I'm not sure what Usmanov expected when he took on this high-profile investment. Judging by the pre-emptive strike on mainstream media (as outlined in the extract above), Usmanov did expect some unwanted attention, but I'm sensing a distinct lack of awareness about the way crowds behave in this country.

The post also included this screen capture, which is published here exactly as it was in the 'offending' post [Tim Ireland - 06 Sep 2007: Alisher Usmanov: how will bloggers and Arsenal fans react as the screws tighten?]. The following screen capture shows the top search result for 'alisher usmanov' on 06 Sep 2007:

Please note that this screen capture does not contain any sensitive material from Craig's recent article. A grab of the Yahoo result was also published at this time with sensitive information removed. Please also note that, while Google is responding to the recent inbound link to Craig Murray's latest article, it also chooses to display a much earlier article by Murray [Craig Murray - 30 Oct 2005: Craig Murray - Opposition leader tortured with drugs] as a potential result. To make this point clear; this search result was visible to most UK web users on 06 Sep 2007.

At some stage between the 6th and 20th of September, Google re-indexed Craig Murray's site in full. This meant that it no longer presented Murray's recent article [Craig Murray - 02 Sep 2007: Alisher Usmanov, potential Arsenal chairman is a....] in its cache; according to Google, the recent article they considered to be one of the most relevant to the query 'alisher usmanov' was gone, but the site many web users regarded to be relevant was still there. The algorithm chose to display the much earlier article by Murray [Craig Murray - 30 Oct 2005: Craig Murray - Opposition leader tortured with drugs] on its own instead.

It may have escaped Schillings attention early on, but as the lone result it could not be missed. The following is a screen capture of the top search result for 'alisher usmanov' from 20 Sep 2007:

There was no deliberate attempt by Craig Murray to publish a new article about Usmanov at this stage; Google simply chose to present an old one as a relevant search result... and not for the first time. Anybody looking at the page in question would be able to see the 30 Oct 2005 time-stamp quite clearly. If they were any doubt about the authenticity of its stated vintage, the main page of Craig Murray's weblog was actually captured and stored by the Web Archive project on the very day it was published (see URL for time stamp; 20051030 = 30 Oct 2005).

This article was later extended by 6 paragraphs, but probably almost immediately and certainly no later than 02 Sep 2006 and none of the additional content mentions Alisher Usmanov by name anyway.

The evidence clearly shows that this was a very old article by Craig Murray, and that no effort was made to republish it or even retro moderate it in a way designed to outmanoeuvre Usmanov's lawyers.

Keener minds with more expertise may want to cast an eye over this, but it was my understanding that you lose your chance to sue over libel or slander after a year; in this example, we're talking about nearly two years. Back to the timeline...

-

Thursday 20 Sep 2007 (am) - Email received from Fasthosts. They have suspended one of two servers managed by Clive Summerfield in response to a further takedown request from Schillings regarding two more of Craig Murray's articles/posts, one from June 2007 [Craig Murray - 01 Jun 2007: Russian Journalist Murders, and Gazprom], the other from Oct 2005 [Craig Murray - 30 Oct 2005: Craig Murray - Opposition leader tortured with drugs]. Neither of these articles had been mentioned in any previous correspondence that we were aware of. On the suspended server were the websites of Craig Murray and Tim Ireland. On the same server were the websites of Clive Summerfield and Bob Piper (Labour Councillor for Sandwell), who hadn't published a single word about Alisher Usmanov. The server is unsuspended following contact between Fasthosts and Clive Summerfield, who is unable to get hold of Craig Murray or anybody with editing access to the weblog; Clive instead uses his upper admin access to the now-functional server to halt Craig's site and Craig's site alone. Anyone trying to visit Craig Murray's website sees an Apache default page indicating that the server is up but that there is a problem with Craig's site.

Thursday 20 Sep 2007 (midday) - Email sent to Fasthosts by Clive Summerfield. Informs them that Craig's site is down and will remain down until the end of the day at least. Clive also states that he intends to try and get a dialog going with himself, Schillings and Craig. He asks Fasthosts if they wish to be included and makes mention of the BT/AOL case.

Thursday 20 Sep 2007 (pm) - Email from Fasthosts. States that they no longer wish to be involved and have terminated Clive's account with them. Both servers managed by Clive are now down resulting in the closure of the websites of Craig Murray, Tim Ireland, Clive Summerfield, Bob Piper, Boris Johnson (Conservative MP for Henley), and many other bystanders. At 2pm, Fasthosts inform Clive that he has 48 hours to get everything off the two servers.

Thursday 20 Sep 2007 (pm) - Clive given access to servers via "lights-out" console in order to perform backups.

-

Note from Tim #2 - For those who don't know, this is the equivalent of transferring a tanker load of water with the aid of a single teaspoon. Cheers, Fasthosts.

-

Thursday 20 Sep 2007 (pm) - Clive sends request to Fasthosts pointing out that it is impossible to download backups via "lights-out" within the 48-hour 'off the servers' deadline they have issued.

Thursday 20 Sep 2007 (pm) - Justin McKeating publishes the post that informs users of these websites of recent developments. Bloggers from the left, right, middle and basement begin to express their disapproval in notable numbers.

Friday 21 Sep 2007 (midday) - Fasthosts bring both servers back and re-enable Clive's account to allow him to backup content. At the same time they unwittingly bring up Craig's website, complete with offending posts!!! As Clive has already started backups and DNS propagation, and so stops all sites on both servers; this saves Fasthosts from the embarrassment of Craig's posts reappearing.

Friday 21 Sep 2007 (pm) - The Guardian reports:

Fasthosts Internet confirmed that Mr Johnson's site was disabled as part of a clampdown on a separate web address. "Where concerns are raised to us about a website, such as in this case, in accordance with our normal procedures, we will investigate the website content," (Fasthosts) said in a statement. "In this case, we examined a website for potentially defamatory material and communicated to the customer that they had indeed breached the terms and conditions for Fasthosts Internet hosting. The customer was repeatedly advised of the breach and upon failing to permanently remove the content in question. Their customer account was terminated, the unfortunate result being the possible downtime of other unrelated websites ... of which we understand boris-johnson.com was one." Responsibility for the content of websites lay solely with their owners and publishers, the company added. A spokesman for Mr Usmanov said he was not aware of any reason why Mr Johnson's website should have been taken down. "We only requested the removal of specific statements and postings with regard to one individual site" he said.

-

Note from Tim #3 - The person who issued the statement for Fasthosts really should take a close look at our timeline and see if he/she wants to revise it. Also... *possible* downtime? Try very real downtime; they should know... they flipped the switch. Schillings also appear to be confused about he number of sites involved, but perhaps it's because they're busy calling "Your ball!"

Meanwhile, Clive and I were in no position to counter what Fasthosts had to say, as we were at their mercy until we retrieved the data. Fasthosts' statement appeared again the next day, and Schillings again called the ball for Fasthosts (albeit in a gentle manner)...

-

Saturday 22 Sep 2007 (am) - The Times reports:

Mr Usmanov’s spokesman blamed a technical glitch by the web host. “There were certain statements on one individual site which we asked were removed because they were potentially defamatory.” Fasthosts Internet said: “The customer was repeatedly advised of the breach and upon failing to permanently remove the content in question their customer account was terminated, the unfortunate result being the possible downtime of other unrelated websites of which we understand boris-johnson.com was one.”

Saturday 22 Sep 2007 (am) - Data recovery complete.

Saturday 22 Sep 2007 (4pm) - The deadline for server closure has passed. Clive notes that both Fasthosts servers are still live.

-

Note from Tim #4 - An error, or were we getting slack for the initial delay in providing a decent transfer facility, or because of the online attention and/or press we were receiving? One can't be sure A slightly different and tight-lipped line emerges from Fasthosts from Monday onwards, but this could easily have a lot to do with them speaking with a journalist who knows a thing or two about IT...

-

Monday 24 Sep 2007 (pm) - The Register reports:

Fasthosts said Murray's account had been terminated according to industry standard practice. It refused to say why unrelated websites had been hit by the takedown...

Tuesday 25 Sep 2007 (am) - Clive informs Fasthosts that all backups are finished, and receives the following reply:

----- Original Message -----
From: Abuse Support Team [abuseteam@fasthosts.co.uk]
To: Clive Summerfield
Sent: Tue, 25 Sep 2007 12:10:00 +0100
Subject: 1408052#[snip] Your email enquiry (PLEASE DO NOT CHANGE SUBJECT)

Dear Mr Summerfield,

Account Number: [snip]
Ticket Reference Number: [snip]

As you've completed retrieval of the data you require could you now instruct as us to how you would like to proceed with your account?

Best Regards
Misuse Team
Fasthosts Internet Ltd

Tuesday 25 Sep 2007 (pm) - Clive informs Fasthosts that as all sites are moved, they can close the account.

Tuesday 25 Sep 2007 (pm) - We issue a request for a response to several issues, statements and developments that we considered unfair, unacceptable or untrue. Fasthosts are given 24 hours to respond.

Tuesday 25 Sep 2007 (pm) - The Register reports:

Fasthosts says it acted according to standard industry practice and has declined to answer Reg questions.

Wednesday 25 Sep 2007 (pm) - The deadline passes, with no response from Fasthosts.

-

Note from Tim #5 – Which, to me, seems odd, because they were awfully mouthy when they held all the cards.

-

[Fasthosts will be given a further 12 hours to respond to the above timeline and submit any corrections or clarifications they wish to make.]

On the subject of Alisher Usmanov's BMI

2007-09-26T15:59:00.000+01:00

The draft timeline is complete and is being checked for accuracy. Here's a little thought for you while you wait...

BMI = a statistical measure of the weight of a person scaled according to height.

Mr Usmanov's BMI could safely be described to be in the 'overweight' or 'obese' class, and you may even somehow convince him to settle for a public test to settle the matter once and for all...

... but I think we can do better than that, don't you?

:o)

Now let that be the end of it.

[Mind you, if a solid case can be made that Alisher Usmanov conducts himself in a manner not unlike that of the fictional character Jabba the Hutt and you can work Leia's metal bikini into the equation, well, *then* you might have something.]

High Noon (and a bit)

2007-09-26T12:32:00.000+01:00

Fasthosts have not responded to this. At all.

Requesting a response from Fasthosts

But since the request was issued, they appear to have made a statement... of sorts:

The Register - Downed blogger Murray vows to continue Usmanov attacks: Fasthosts says it acted according to standard industry practice and has declined to answer Reg questions.

They picked a hell of a time to go quiet, didn't they? And yet they had no much to say about it only a few short days ago.

I now know that I have to make do with some blank spaces in the timeline.

With you shortly... we have to a dot an I or T or two.

UPDATE - Timeline is now live.

Parliamentary privilege (EU edition)

2007-09-26T09:38:00.000+01:00

Guardian - Hill-Wood: We do not want Usmanov here: Laura Tyler, of Schillings, said they did not intend to sue Murray directly because they did not want to give him a platform to express his views.

Not the most convincing line to take given the circumstances, is it?

Matt Wardman - Usmanov allegations repeated in European Parliament Debate by Tom Wise MEP: Last night Tom Wise MEP mentioned some of the Craig Murray criticisms of Alisher Usmanov in a speech in a debate at the European Parliament.

More on Schillings soon. First, we want to hear from Fasthosts.

UPDATE - Audio is available below... get your own copy to share here.

Click To Play

UPDATE (28 Sep) - Click here for details of the official transcript, which is now available online.

Immediate plans for this website

2007-09-26T09:28:00.000+01:00

Fasthosts

We're still missing some key facts from the case, primarily due to Fasthosts' reluctance to share the relevant Schillings correspondence with us.

Fasthosts should take note of the following while considering their options:

We were extremely reluctant to have the role played by Fasthosts highlighted until we had the chance to retrieve our data from their servers (we're not entirely sure why; perhaps they struck us as the panicky sort). Regardless of this, several key bloggers and assorted web publishers have already identified Fasthosts independently and questioned their actions in an entirely spontaneous fashion. We expect these people and those who are as yet unaware of the role played by Fasthosts to be even less impressed when we publish the timeline (hopefully later today).

Fastshosts' response (or lack thereof) is also likely to have a significant impact in and on the wider UK web hosting industry. We urge Fasthosts to take this matter seriously and to accept responsibility for where they went wrong; the alternative is a genuine risk that popular feeling will swing against hosting in the UK in general.

Summary

This site is badly in need of a summary as the audience shifts from those in the know to those who are just now finding out about all of this. A summary is planned to coincide with the timeline. (If we're forced to leave some unknowns in place because Fasthosts choose to suddenly go quiet, then so be it.)

Foreign Languages

A foreign language hub is planned for the sidebar, with external links to translations of the summary. Spanish is covered, and any offer to translate the summary into other languages would be welcome. Offers via email or under comments, please.

Blogroll

A blogroll will follow; this will primarily involve links to the relevant *category* pages of key supporters; i.e. bloggers who are actually generating new content regarding this matter (but if you are generating new content and categories/labels are a problem for you, do let us know). Link support is equally appreciated, and a centralised page of link supporters (that allows for rolling updates) will follow the blogroll.

Banners and Buttons

When the facts are in, or we are as close to the facts as we are going to get, we will then look at the use and promotion of new and existing banners and buttons.

Video

Ditto. A soundtrack has already been selected, and permission has been granted for its use; all that needs to be addressed before editing is a few pesky gaps in the script.

Over to you, Fasthosts. We'd love to hear from you before 12:30pm today.

Primitive but useful poll

2007-09-25T22:31:00.001+01:00

A poll has been added to the sidebar, asking the following question:

ANSWER ONLY IF YOU SUPPORT CHANGES TO EXISTING UK LIBEL LAW:
If a snap election is called, how do you plan on voting?

Results will be posted here next week. Please note that the (yes, limited) options focus on the balance of power in the UK, and no specification is made regarding the exact nature of any changes to UK libel law. I just want to find out who's interested in something other than the status quo.

PLEASE VOTE NOW

[Note - This is my first time out with this widget; if the poll allows for multiple votes or any other such nonsense, please feel free to sound off in comments.]

Latest article in The Register

2007-09-25T17:22:00.000+01:00

(The first is here for those who missed it.)

The Register - Downed blogger Murray vows to continue Usmanov attacks: Former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray has vowed to carry on making allegations against billionaire Arsenal shareholder Alisher Usmanov, despite attempts to silence him and his supporters. Murray told The Reg: "If the man believes he was libelled then he should take me to court."

Well said.

The above article also contains some juicy hints of what you can expect from the upcoming timeline (including one of my favourite bits; the out-of-the-blue Google scoop) and a rather muted response from Fasthosts.

Here's hoping they do better tomorrow.

Requesting a response from Fasthosts

2007-09-25T12:12:00.000+01:00

1) First things first...

Cheers to:

Craig Murray - for the moral courage that triggered this latest difficulty
Clive Summerfield - for handling this and many other technical difficulties
Justin McKeating - for handling the response to this latest difficulty
200+ other bloggers - for that response

Apologies to:

The many bystanders who were affected by a nuclear response to a pissweak threat.

2) Schillings used a combination of misdirection, intimidation and character assassination to silence and undermine Craig Murray instead of properly addressing the substance of what he had to say about their client Alisher Usmanov or challenging it through the courts. While the exact abuse(s) of power and inappropriate use(s) of media, law, and money differ, this is otherwise indistinguishable from Jack Straw's approach to the former ambassador to Uzbekistan (1, 2). It's comforting to know that Iain Dale considers this type of assault on free speech to be wrong but, in an effort to maintain the remarkable level of cross-spectrum support we've seen in recent days, I'm going to draw this observation to a close at that point and say no more.

3) Seeing the extraordinary level of support, it's hard not to collapse into a blubbering heap a'la Sally Field, but the reality of it is that this matters to bloggers because it could happen to any one of us. Nevertheless, Clive and I do have a responsibility to finally make clear exactly what has happened and attempt to see that some general good comes of this manifestation of absolute absurdity.

4) But before we proceed, I have a quick personal message for those representatives of the mainstream media who only regarded this to be newsworthy because of the collateral damage done to Boris Johnson and/or took people like Schillings and Fasthosts at their word without even bothering to speak to us:

*Thbbbt!*

Now, onwards...

To ensure we broadcast as clear a picture as possible, Clive and I need to deal with this matter by addressing the parties/issues involved in the following order:

- Fasthosts
- Schillings
- Alisher Usmanov
- UK libel law

Today, we begin with Fasthosts. A small part of their response will be vital to our subsequent response to Schillings, but if we have to proceed without their co-operation, then so be it:

Fasthosts

Shortly, Clive and I will be publishing a timeline of the events that led up the closure of the account, and the events that followed. However, we would like to offer Fasthosts 24 hours in which to deliver the following before we do so:

- All Schillings correspondence that Fasthosts have so far failed to show us, and an apology for the delay in disclosure.

- A retraction and/or correction of any false or misleading statements issued/relayed by Fasthosts to the press regarding the account closure, and an apology for same.

- A fair offer of compensation for all parties inconvenienced by that closure.

- An additional fair offer of compensation for the inconvenience and stress caused to myself, Clive Summerfield and Craig Murray and for the damage done to our reputations by the action (and inaction) of Fasthosts *and* for any false or misleading statements made regarding the account closure and this matter in general.

In the interests of transparency, we request that all of the above (with the exception of the Schillings correspondence itself) be addressed via a public statement to be published in this section of Fasthosts' website:
http://www.fasthosts.co.uk/companyinfo/PressReleases/

On that final request for compensation, a lot of detail will have to wait until the timeline is published, but for now we can say that we felt greatly restricted in what we could say on this matter at the time due the removal of our primary communication devices and the further complication of Fasthosts still being in possession of a large amount of our data (and their initial insistence that we move it with the equivalent of a bloody teaspoon). Fasthosts either sought to take advantage of this situation, or failed to fully communicate the exact nature of some aspects of this case to/via their PR department for reasons unknown. Either way, the message quickly spread in some quarters that we had repeatedly refused or failed to co-operate with Fasthosts over the relevant legal threats, and this simply isn't true.

We expect the response to be fairly widely-read by many opinion-makers in the field of personal web publishing, so it would also be in Fasthosts' interests to take this opportunity to also reassure current and future resellers and end-users by donning a a full-body cilice *and* outlining any changes or improvements they plan to make to their procedures when handling threats of legal action. Currently, the most popular line of thinking is that the safest way to handle matters is to host outside of the UK; therefore, we feel that Fasthosts have a unique opportunity here to help not only themselves, but the UK web hosting industry in general.

[UPDATE (26 Sep) - The deadline passed with no response from Fasthosts. The timeline had to be published with some gaps, and you can read all about it right here.]

Why we're here

2007-09-25T11:53:00.000+01:00

Bloggerheads now has new hosting, but it will take a while to adapt the MT platform to the new server. This special weblog has been set up on a Blogger.com platform so I can address this matter in a more timely fashion than would be possible with a complete restoration of the original MT platform.

Because of the nature of the initial take-down comment moderation is on and only those registered with Blogger.com may comment.