Here:

I was told that there is an official order from a high-ranking official in the Ministry of the Interior to investigate me. They will pick me up anytime in the next 2 weeks.

The issue that caused all of this is because I wrote about the political prisoners here in Saudi Arabia and they think I’m running a online campaign promoting their issue. All what I did is wrote some pieces and put side banners and asked other bloggers to do the same.
he asked me to comply with him and sign an apology. I’m not sure if I’m ready to do that. An apology for what? Apologizing because I said the government is liar when they accused those guys to be supporting terrorism?

To expect the worst which is to be jailed for 3 days till we write good feedback about you and let u go

there may be no jial and only apologizing letter. But, if it’s more than three days, it should be out. I don’t want to be forgotten in jail.

The Saudi authorities came for Fouad al-Farhan, a blogger, on December 10:

The Saudi interior ministry said Mr Farhan was being held for “interrogation for violating non-security regulations” and declined all further comment.

Let’s hope that they’re affording Fouad the same right to silence. Somehow, I doubt it. But let’s hope that, him being an unusual case, he’s not getting the usual treatment from his jailers. When the British government talk about sharing values with the House of Saud, let’s also hope they’re not taking notes on this occasion.

Fouad’s blog is here. The ‘Free Fouad’ blog is here. The contact details (including email address) for the Saudi Arabian embassy in London are here.

For the people most threatened by the revolting masses talking back are those paid to opine from the tops of the mountain: the old school, mainstream media commentators and opinion journalists. If there are people out there who will do what you do, for free, for the sheer pleasure of it, and who are quite capable of dissecting and critiquing your piece, and who, in doing so, prove themselves equally impassioned, equally well-informed, then that is a threat. Mediocrity will suffer. Too damn bad.

read the rest

I know a lot of people think blogging about blogging and blog wars, spats and tiffs are tedious. But when they break the fourth wall and begin to threaten people’s real world reputations, then they become anything else but dull.

Witness Ellee Seymour’s recent conduct towards Tim Ireland. She deserves to be on the wrong end of a stiff letter from a lawyer.

Britain’s leading blogger, ladies and gentlemen.

Update: Some rules for conducting yourself in other people’s blog comments.

I’ve been recruited into the Liberal Conspiracy.

Built by Pickled Politics‘ Sunny Hundal, the Liberal Conspiracy is more than just a group blog or talking shop. The site brings together not just bloggers but activists and think tanks.

It’s hoped that it will give liberal-left debate in the UK the kick in the pants it so badly needs right now; giving it a home and some space to stretch out. The debate will then, with luck, translate into consensus, activism and lobbying. Look for something from me over there later in the week.

As the site’s FAQs say:

We don’t define what it means to be on the liberal-left. Instead we want to challenge conventional ideas by constantly asking: ‘what should the liberal-left position be on this issue?’

I plan for my contribution to focus in the main on human rights and civil liberty issues. I’m hoping it will be a move away from largely commentary and into linking issues to specific campaigns and campaigning organisations.

Come join us.

(Sunny will be on Radio 4’s PM programme between 5 and 6pm today.)

Another fine example of the ‘dominant’ right-wing blogosphere.

The rest of right-wing blogging’s leading lights are pissing on the medium’s vestigial reputation so why shouldn’t Ms Dorries? Monkey see, monkey do.

UPDATE: There’s now an alternative way to leave feedback for Ms Norries now that she’s turned off her blog comments. Put it on your blogroll.

Contrary to what that propagandist would have you believe, I do not obsess over Iain Dale.

I do, however, worry a great deal about the potential that’s being pissed away by Dale and others like him who declare themselves the masters of the blogosphere while rejecting everything that makes blogging valuable to the electorate.

I often heard Dale claim that the UK is/was “4-5 years behind the Americans” with regards to political blogging, when this simply wasn’t the case at the time. Unlike the Americans, a couple of short years ago we enjoyed cross-party dialogue that actually involved elected officials. Take-up was slow because of the challenges involved (tricky things like transparency and accountability) but we had something valuable that the Americans did not, and it was growing.

Then a whole bunch of carpet-baggers came charging in with Iain Dale and Paul Staines at the head of the pack. They mimicked the counter-productive shouty and tribal approach used in the US and declared themselves pioneers.

Suddenly, certain elected officials, activists and media controllers felt free to run faux-weblogs because accountability no longer appeared to be a defining or requisite factor. This turn of events also allowed certain other elected officials, activists and media controllers to refuse to engage on the basis that the blogging community had nothing valid to offer.

read the rest

This made me smile: Guido Fawkes (and attendant bandwagon jumpers) having the sheer balls to lecture the Independent newspaper on its ethical standards. And they say satire is dead. A speech from John Prescott decrying the obesity crisis can only be mere moments away.

I have say that personally, it’s always mystified me why people get so steamed up over the issue of Europe. The non-impact of the issue on my day-to-day life and habits is profound. It’s an argument I steer well clear of, it seemingly being a honey pot for psychopaths and other people pathologically incapable of mature debate (particularly the anti-EU crew who enjoy their little jokes like the federast/pedarast pun and other such devices for the furtherance serious engagement). There’s an important and serious debate to be had about Europe, just don’t go looking for it on the blogs.

I suppose I’m pro-Europe in a vague, touchy-feely way if only for the reason that when I’m there it’s a welcome break from the pissy, shitty Little Englander tendency that’s making this country such a grey and grim place to live right now.

UPDATE: Simon Hoggart in the Guardian:

Gordon Brown saw his opportunity. He leapt in with a stunning piece of Euro-jargon, the “passerelle”.

Apparently it was Lady Thatcher who first legislated for the passerelles.

I logged onto an EU website, hoping that a passerelle would turn out to be a delicious Belgian pastry, filled with cream and pralines. It isn’t. Instead it means “a word meaning a footbridge, referring to the possibility of either moving a policy area from the intergovernmental third pillar to the supra-national first pillar, or changing the voting rules in the council, or the extension of the article’s scope of application.”

No wonder we are not getting a referendum.

Gordon Brown knows that nobody has the faintest wish to have to understand any of that. So he’s safe.

Exactly.

Anybody who wants to impress upon me the importance of all this and whether we should have a referendum on the constitution/treaty/whatever, will have to first read it, demonstrate to me that they understand it and show an ability to communicate that understanding in a honest fashion.

Until then, everybody should just shut up about it. Until they’ve read it, both sides are speaking from positions of supreme ignorance. And if a referendum were called, the people would be voting from that same standpoint. It’s meaningless.

Garry Smith, the artist formerly know as Curious Hamster, has got himself a shiny new home at Big Sticks and Small Carrots. Go and say hello.

…at Westminster Wisdom.

On the matter of reducing blogging to a cheap Channel 4 Saturday night filler: What Chris said.

I have lots of favourite blogs. To rank them is to insult them.

Excellent piece by Sunny on Comment is Free about the Iraqi Employees campaign, the spot of bother with Mr Usmanov, and what it all means for blogging and activism.

If you’d like to get involved with the Iraqi Employees campaign, here’s a few things you can do:

…is at Liberal England.

I’ve been remiss recently in not linking to the Britblog Roundup, not least because I’ve had mentions in the last few after a bit of an absence - thanks to whoever’s been nominating me.

Anyway, this week’s is over at Clairwil’s place. Matt Wardman’s also keeping a directory of past roundups along with MP3s of it featuring on Five Live’s Pods and Blogs slot.

Litro (via Pond) is gorgeous. Straplined as ‘original fiction for the underground’, you print off the two page PDF, slap them back to back, fold them in half and voila, a little book for the tube, bus or bog.

I know we’re supposed to be going paper free but the concept is just so damn appealing. I haven’t given up on the idea of producing something similar from blogs. But without having to re-learn Quark or similar, and devote a chunk of time to manually laying the thing out each week, I’m not sure how to do it.

Ideally it should be an automated process but as far as I can see the technology is lagging behind. (A cascading style sheet convention for fluid text, for example, which would allow newspaper column style web-based layouts, is lacking.) The thing seems tantalisingly just out of reach - the Wordpress printable page, say, nicely formatted and PDFed shouldn’t be that hard.

HP Blog Printing goes some way towards it for individual blogs (click on ‘printable version’ at the top of this page for a taster) but the results from the printer are aesthetically disappointing A4 tranches (reading anything off A4 is crap) that come nowhere near the very haveable little pamphlets that Litro produces.

Robert McCrum’s article in the Observer yesterday getting stuck into blogging was so poorly written and seemingly based on deeply entrenched ignorance, I almost took it for some ironic post-modern joke, guilty as it was of many of the crimes it levelled at blogging.

Blogs are ‘ignorant, bilious, semi-literate and depressing’, said McCrum, in his ignorant, bilious, semi-literate and depressing way. Basing his argument on George Orwell’s essential essay ‘Politics and the English Language‘, McCrum says that the English language is once again under attack; this time, not from politicians attempting to defend the indefensible, but from ‘the violence the internet does’ to our Mother Tongue.

The biggest drawback of Orwell’s rich and varied canon is that he can be all things to everyone. McCrum says blogging comes out badly when compared to the standards laid down in ‘Politics and the English Language’. I can refute his argument using a passage from the very same essay:

The defense of the English language implies more than this, and perhaps it is best to start by saying what it does not imply.

To begin with it has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of obsolete words and turns of speech, or with the setting up of a “standard English” which must never be departed from. On the contrary, it is especially concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outworn its usefulness. It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one’s meaning clear, or with the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a “good prose style.”

My emphasis. McCrum betrays his ignorance of blogging by warning that the internet ‘is in danger of becoming a cacophonous nightmare’. Had he any real understanding of the medium, he would know that blogging is a peer-reviewed medium and (except for one or two very notable exceptions) the dross is discarded and the quality will almost always out.

McCrum also betrays his snobbery; from his lofty eyrie, he looks down on blogging. But as I’ve said before, there is a larger aspect of the medium that gets overlooked by the mainstream media and even bloggers themselves.

In Britain today, we have seven million people writing for pleasure. Many may write only for their immediate social circle and have readerships in the dozens but for all that, they are thinking, learning and ordering their thoughts. And as Jamie Kenny says:

What’s good about this is that it creates the general feeling that anyone can join in, that anyone can have a go. It’s tolerant of difference. It enjoys someone with something new to offer.

Blogging is inclusive. A blogger, if he or she is to become successful must reach out to other bloggers. There is, in some corners of Blogland, a very real sense of community. Many people, me included, have made lasting ‘real world’ friendships with people whose blogs they link to.

It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one’s meaning clear.

It’s good to see British blogging’s best and brightest getting stuck into the BBC, isn’t it? If these two are whining about it, the corporation is clearly doing something right.

Iain Dale’s pooterish, self-righteous tone will surely have the BBC quaking in their boots. In fact, the only criticism of the BBC I can think of on this matter is that they seem to be taking Dale and Guido Fawkes’ partisan dogwhistle rhetoric half-seriously for some reason. The Tories are heading south in the polls so it must be the BBC’s fault, mustn’t it? The constant back-biting, fag-packet policies and sub-Blairite window dressing have nothing to do with a 10% Labour lead, obviously.

Dale’s commenters nod along in agreement like the Churchill dog and Fawkes’ hangers-on clap like brain-damaged seals as usual. The BBC clearly have much to learn from a Tory propagandist and a blogger whose stock in trade is third-rate gossip (ooh look, a picture of David Miliband on holiday!), homophobia and censorship.

I for one feel confident in letting these two be the arbiters of our national broadcaster’s output. See it from Dale and Fawkes’ point of view - look at the alternatives they offer to a biased and totalitarian BBC. Minority interest internet television and viral videos of Gordon Brown picking his nose. Gentlemen, let us away to the future!

Does anybody know where the mighty Charlie Whitaker is? Charlie, if you’re out there, sound off. We miss you.

He’s back, true believers.

Shocking scenes in Westminster when an Iraqi man was assaulted by two attackers. One beat the man, took his money and left him bleeding in the gutter. The other attacker - bizarrely - merely tickled the man’s feet.

A witness to the assault, blogger Oliver Kamm, later gave a statement to the police. While Mr Kamm was unable to say anything about the person who beat and robbed the Iraqi, he was able to give detailed chapter and verse on the feet-tickler.

And thus the streets are kept safe.

Update: Shocking scenes in Westminster when an Iraqi man etc etc…

Witnesses to the assault, Harry’s Place, later gave a statement blah blah…

John Konichiwa, may his name forever live in infamy, has tagged me with another damned meme: to list eight random facts about myself. Or should that be ‘facts’? You decide. One of the following is not true. But which one?

1. I once kissed popular British comedian Frank Skinner.
2. Thanks to the incompetent dentistry I was subjected to as a child, I have only 26 teeth.
3. I used to quite like fishing. Until I actually caught a fish.
4. I want this played at my funeral. My Viking funeral.
5. The actor Michael Jayston once came up to me in a restaurant and praised me for getting my two year-old daughter to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’.
6. In the past, in order to impress girls, I have tried both vegetarianism and Leonard Cohen. I took to neither. (Vegetarianism and Leonard Cohen, that is, the girls were very nice. Well, one was.)
7. A few years ago, while going ‘commando’, I opened the door to a man in a wheelchair. My flies were inadvertently undone and we saw eye to eye.
8. This is my fourth regeneration.

Spreading the misery, then:

1. Tim Ireland.
2. PDF.
3. Jim Bliss.
4. Clive Nosemonkey.
5. Eugenides.
6. Robert Sharp.
7. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
8. Pond.

Mr E has the merchandise.

Rachel’s terrible saga reaches its conclusion. Let there be no sequel.

Felicity Lowde, who has been harassing me for over a year, and harassing other people for years, was sentenced yesterday, to 6 months in jail, which is the maximum sentence for harassment (section 2).

So, no winners. No satisfaction, only relief. The only good to come out of it was superhuman energy and strength shown by Rachel and the solidarity shown to her by bloggers across the board. See, we can do it when we want to.

I concur with Mr Kenny.

Britblog Roundup #119 and James Higham’s Blogfocus.