Speaking of shared values, how have things been in Libya since 2004 when we clasped her to our bosom as a partner in T.W.A.T.?

Not that great, as it happens:

Despite some improvements in recent years, in Libya serious rights abuses persist. The absence of a free press, the ban on independent organizations, the torture of detainees, and the continued incarceration of political prisoners, some of them “disappeared,” remain matters of deep concern. To date, international engagement with the oil-rich country has focused on counter-terrorism and business ties. Human Rights Watch welcomes improved relations between Libya and other governments, but not at the expense of human rights and the rule of law.

Counter-terrorism and business ties. Hands up who’s feeling safer and richer? Put your hands down, you arms dealers, you don’t count.

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.

There are many stories from this great nation of ours. Here’s another one to make your heart swell with something or other.

Let me tell you the Ballad of Beatrice Guessie.

They came for young Beatrice in the dead of the night
Taking her back to Cameroon on the next available flight
The immigration officer, three guards and the doctor
They hadn’t got far before they’d threatened to clock her.

Still bruised and still bleeding, they put her back in Yarl’s Wood
There’s an Early Day Motion for the great and the good
Nineteen have signed, condemning the thuggery
That’s one sixth of the number celebrating the rugby.

Write to the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.

Update: But it’s all going to be ok, hopefully some time next year:

The Home Office says it will change the way abuse allegations against immigration staff are handled following criticisms from a government watchdog.

The Border and Immigration Agency’s Complaints Audit Committee said immigrants’ and asylum seekers’ complaints were often not followed up.

It found just 8% of complainants were interviewed and 89% of investigations were “neither balanced nor thorough”.

The presidency is now a criminal conspiracy:

“Waterboarding is torture,” Daniel Levin was to write. Daniel Levin was no theorist and no protester. He was no troublemaking politician. He was no table-pounding commentator. Daniel Levin was an astonishingly patriotic American and a brave man.

Brave not just with words or with stances, even in a dark time when that kind of bravery can usually be scared or bought off.

Charged, as you heard in the story from ABC News last Friday, with assessing the relative legality of the various nightmares in the Pandora’s box that is the Orwell-worthy euphemism “Enhanced Interrogation,” Mr. Levin decided that the simplest, and the most honest, way to evaluate them … was to have them enacted upon himself.

Daniel Levin took himself to a military base and let himself be waterboarded…

King Abdullah’s crass intervention has also revealed a greater truth about the relationship between Britain and Saudi Arabia, often described in a lazy piece of diplomatic shorthand as a “partner in the war on terror”. If these two governments failed to co-operate in the months running up to 7 July 2005, then what exactly is the point of this relationship?

read the erst

According to the Foreign Office minister Kim Howells, the relationship between Britain and Saudi Arabia is based on ‘shared values‘.

Now, I’m not a patriot, but why isn’t Howell’s languishing in the Tower of London after that? What did he do for an encore, take a big steaming dump on the Union Flag? Flog the Queen for showing her legs in public? Declare that the British Government could learn a lot from Peter Sutcliffe?

King Abdullah had a ‘meeting of minds‘ with Gordon Brown while on his state visit according to a spokesman. Which is a terrifying thought that a British Prime Minister would share any thought processes with the leader of an abattoir state like Saudi Arabia. Although there are parallels in that both fight shy of electoral accountability, have a demonstrable contempt for their citizens and put cold hard cash above all other considerations.

Needless to say, Gordon didn’t do anything as distasteful as raise human rights concerns with his guest. No, despite him telling us only weeks ago in his party conference speech that ‘human rights are universal‘, it was too much too expect any consistency from him on this occasion. You might as well wait for diamonds to drop out of your dog’s backside.

If truth be told, the government do seem to be betraying a hint of embarrassment at the lavish treatment of the blood-soaked old tyrant. Abdullah’s visit merits only this parsimonious entry on the Number 10 website:

The UK and Saudi Arabia have pledged to boost cooperation on issues such as technology and taxation.

Following talks in Downing Street between the Prime Minister and King Abdullah, representatives from the two countries signed a number of bilateral agreements, including a technical and vocational memorandum and an accord on double taxation. Chancellor Alistair Darling was among the signatories present before the two leaders.

The Prime Minister and King Abdullah’s talks focused on the issues of counter-terrorism and the Middle East.

And that was it. Not a lot to show for all that taxpayer’s money - Gordon spent it, at least he could have had the courtesy to tell us what we were getting for our dollar. How many gold commodes, how many tins of black boot polish for the king’s beard, and all that.

Now, I’m mature enough to know that in uncertain times we need to form alliances with less than savoury characters - that seems to be the line to take in tolerating torture, beheadings and fundamentalism (except when al Qaeda are doing it). Actually, to be honest, I’m not mature enough. Modern political pragmatism is responsible for more death and misery than just about anything else on the planet. It’s a disease from which very few recover.

I spit on pragmatists. Round our way, being pragmatic is a vice akin to fiddling with children, just better regarded in the wider world, obviously. Ruin a woman’s life at 12 by abusing her and you’re a monster. Give her 90 lashes for being gang-raped and you get tea with the Queen. But like I said, immature, that’s me.

Anyway, did you know Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah is town this week on a state visit? He’ll meet the Queen, Gordon Brown and David Cameron:

Yet both political leaders refuse to make a commitment to even mention human rights to the king. Instead, he will ride in a golden carriage with the Queen, and be guest of honour at a Buckingham Palace banquet.

Apparently though, there is trouble in paradise. Abdullah’s not happy about how The War Against Terror is going and lays some of the blame at the UK’s door.

Now, he’s got a point - I’ve got an apple tree with a better mind for international affairs than New Labour. But coming from a man who rules a country that gave us Osama bin Laden and the majority of the September 11 hijackers this is, how shall we put it, a bit sodding rich.

(more…)

I have relatives who are foster carers. They’ve been doing it for around fifteen years. They could tell you stories about what happens to unwanted children in this country that would turn your hair white. God knows the stories make me want to take a horsewhip to some of the social workers involved. We can’t or won’t properly look after many of the vulnerable children we have in this country today.

And so we’re back to abortion this week. Those with a view want the upper limit for an abortion reduced from 24 to 20 weeks. Most people say this is down to advances in medical science which mean foetuses can survive from 24 weeks (although the debate tends to shy away from discussions of the quality of life these children have). In my view, it’s a dishonest approach to which no one will say what they mean, which is they’re trying to abolish abortion by degrees. They know they can’t get rid of it in one fell swoop so they’ll settle for a piece at a time.

There also doesn’t seem to be much discussion about how these unwanted children are to be supported (see above). Forgive me, but I won’t take any lectures on child welfare from the likes of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor. Or, frankly, right-wing libertarians. Where’s the extra money going to come from to look after these children many if not most of who are going to require long-term medical care?

These self-styled ‘pro-lifers’ (hands up anyone who’s anti-life) should be campaigning for tax rises to fund child welfare in tandem with stricter abortion legislation if they’re going to be consistent. I don’t see the moral consistency in a standpoint that calls abortion murder but is willing to see children a) born into underfunded hospitals lacking the necessary facilities, b) born into poverty-stricken families or c) put in the hands of seemingly uncaring, definitely underfunded, social services.

The medical technology required for a foetus to survive at 24 weeks is nowhere near universal, so where are the calls for further investment for specialist baby units across the country? Where’s the lobbying to spare parents of premature babies the pain of waiting long months for an uncertain outcome? And if we want the foetuses that escape abortion to have good lives, where are the calls for a hypothecated tax or similar for child welfare? That’s a no-no when you see where some of these ‘pro-lifers’ are coming from politically, isn’t it? They want the state to control a woman’s body but they’re damned if they’re going to tell the state to give that woman welfare. I see a trap closing around these women.

(That said, I’m not naive enough to fail see that fiscal considerations and the need for massive investment in order for a reduction from 24 to 20 weeks to be viable must have been a factor in the government’s refusal to consider the idea. Money is refusing to talk on both sides of this argument.)

Nobody likes the idea of abortion. I have known several women who’ve had one and not one of them ever said, ‘you know, abortions are brilliant’. You want to reduce the number of abortions in this country? The way to do it is cheap, easy and mature, and doesn’t rely on inflammatory arguments using dog-whistle and politically-loaded phrases like ‘the abortion industry‘, ‘licensed murder’, ‘pro-life’, ‘pro-choice’ and other examples unspeak.

Here’s what we do. We, as a country, ditch the hot-faced neo-Victorian prudishness (that prevents us talking about our bodies in a mature fashion) that’s been paradoxically spliced to a whinnying schoolyard prurience (as embodied by the likes of Nuts magazine). We teach proper and compulsory sexual health education in our schools - contraception, sexually transmitted diseases, how to be in control of your own body and a proper exploration of the giddying emotions involved in sexual relations; the full nine yards. Conservative and/or religious interests are going to have to accept a trade off between abortion and contraception - you can’t have it both ways in a modern society and is ludicrous to try. And we stop blaming ‘a “celebrity culture” that condoned alcohol abuse, drug addiction and promiscuity’. Let’s try teaching a little personal responsibility shall we? It’s a radical suggestion, I grant you.

Let’s all go away, grow up a bit, lobby our representatives and come back when we’re ready. Let’s have a maturer attitude towards sex and relationships, universal specialist medical care for premature babies, proper and comprehensive welfare arrangements, a massive improvement in the funding and practice of social services and child protection agencies and support for foster carers. And then let’s talk about the number of abortions in the UK.

Still no word on when Gordon Brown is going to get Aung San Suu Kyi out of jail, him being so admiring of her courage and everything during his Labour Party leadership bid:

For me, Suu Kyi defines the meaning of courage. Once courage was seen chiefly as a battlefield virtue. In most accounts the emphasis is on the physical - physical risk, physical vulnerability or physical triumph. It has been seen as an almost exclusively male, physical attribute: courage as daring and bravado, even recklessness; indeed, in many languages, the word for courage is derived from the word for ‘man’. But Suu Kyi represents the power not of the powerful but of the powerless: a woman, a prisoner of conscience up against a state with one of the worst human-rights violation records in the world; a country of only 20 million people with 1,000 political prisoners, 500,000 political refugees, children as young as four in prison, and poets and journalists tortured just for speaking out.

So what, if anything is being done, by our doughty defender of human rights, bravely speaking out in print, and his government? According to the Burma Campaign UK (via Ten Per Cent), not an awful lot:

With tight restrictions inside the country, organisations and projects promoting human rights and democracy have to be based in exile, and work through underground networks in Burma. Despite the International Development Committee reccomending funding for these organisations, D[epartment] f[or] I[nternational] D[evelopment] is still refusing to fund such projects. Many of these organisations played a crucial role in getting news and images out of Burma during the recent protests and crackdown.

‘This is not joined up government,’ said Mark Farmaner. ‘The government isn’t putting its money where its mouth is. The Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary have been leading the international community in supporting Burma’s democrats, but DFID seems to be going in a different direction, only prepared to deliver aid to people and projects that the Burmese dictatorship agrees to.’

Still, look at it this way, Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma might be no closer to freedom after 120 days of her great admirer being in power, but at least they’re no further from it either. And isn’t that the very essence of our courageous Prime Minister? No boom, no bust, just steady-as-she-goes. Sometimes it takes courage to do absolutely sod all.

Remember Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov and his lawyers Schillings wielding the big stick against Craig Murray’s and others’ webhost and bringing their sites down? Well, the virus is out in the open and mutating. This will sound familiar:

Dr Andy Lewis runs a website called Quackometer: he criticised the Society of Homeopaths (Europe ’s largest professional organisation of homeopaths) in no uncertain terms.

…

In his opinion, and he amassed some examples: they do not enforce their own “Code of Practice” (you’re not even allowed to imply you can cure a named disease!) it is a figleaf; and they fail to censure their members over dangerous claims.

…

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.

It really is time to close the loophole in our libel laws that make webhosts liable for the content of their servers. You don’t blame the postman when bad news arrives in the mail.

Peter Risdon has more.

Remember Fastshosts, the webhost of Craig Murray’s and Tim Ireland’s (amongst others) websites? They folded faster than George Bush playing Snap after threats from Alisher Usmanov’s lawyers?

Well, their excellent service continues:

Cybercriminals are attempting to tarnish the reputation of a website designed to fight online money transfer frauds and other scams. UK hosts Fasthosts unwittingly played into their hands by temporarily suspending Bobbear.co.uk over the weekend in response to fraudulent emails.

I get ‘Joe Jobbed‘ from time to time. It’s a minor pain in the arse - I don’t have a reputation protect after all - but like warts tends to go away if ignored. Having a very professional, calm and collected webhost, unless their servers are being hammered by the attack, there’s no bother and things sail on as smoothly as before. Fasthosts should try it.

(Via PDF)

UPDATE: Tim has more.

Still not fully fit and will hopefully blog on this in more detail soon (in the interim, see Dan, Davide, Robert, Sunny, Daniel, We Owe it To Them and all the other s) but need to point to this:

1. David Miliband’s written statement outlining the Government’s woefully inadequate scheme to assist its Iraqi employees past and present is here.
2. Dan Hardie has a list of talking points for another round of letters to MPs here. Ask your MP to sign Early Day Motion 2057.
3. David Miliband has written about his statement on his blog and is taking comments here. I urge you to get across there and have your say. Please be polite. I enjoy saying horrible things about government ministers as much as the next blogger but insulting them on government forums will only be harmful to this campaign.

We’ve got a foot in the door on this, we just need to keep pushing.

Mark Brockway will be appearing on Channel 4 News tonight to speak about the Iraqi Employees campaign.

Mark is a former Warrant Officer in the Territorial Royal Engineers, who ran the British Army’s Quick Impact Reconstruction Projects in 2003, when he hired a great many Iraqi staff in 2003. Mark has been in close contact with them since and knows of at least one who has been recently murdered.

To say that many of us campaigning are less than impressed with the Prime Minister’s paltry offer is an understatement. Dan Hardie spells it out: this announcement abandons people to the threat of torture and death.

Gordon pipes up at last:

Mr Speaker, I would also like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of our civilian and locally employed staff in Iraq, many of whom have worked in extremely difficult circumstances exposing themselves and their families to danger.

And I am pleased therefore to announce today a new policy which more fully recognises the contribution made by our local Iraqi staff who work for our armed forces and civilian missions in uniquely difficult circumstances.

Existing staff who have been employed by us for more than twelve months and have completed their work will be able to apply for a package of financial payments to aid resettlement in Iraq or elsewhere in the region, or - in agreed circumstances - for admission to the UK. And professional staff — including interpreters and translators — with a similar length of service who have left our employ since the beginning of 2005 will also be able to apply for assistance.

We will make a further written statement on the detail of this scheme this week.

I’ll wait for the details until commenting further as I’m sure will most people. I have to say though that I really, really, really don’t like the look of that ’staff who have been employed by us for more than twelve months and have completed their work‘ proviso. Don’t put that champagne on ice yet.

See you tomorrow?

UPDATE: And this shouts out as well:

And professional staff — including interpreters and translators — with a similar length of service who have left our employ since the beginning of 2005 will also be able to apply for assistance.

I might be wrong but I’m guessing that excludes teenage laundry workers.

Urgent news for anyone coming to the meeting at Parliament tomorrow night (Tuesday October 9). Hope to see you there:

Over to Dan Hardie:

And another announcement: the meeting on Iraqi Employees will take place on the same day (Tuesday 9th October) at the same time (7-9pm) with the same speakers in a changed venue very close to the original one: the Attlee Suite in Portcullis House (MPs’ own office block, opposite Parliament). The long-suffering and highly efficient Mette Kahlin will be standing outside the door of the old venue (Committee Room 14 in Parliament) pointing the way to the new venue, which is the Attlee Suite in Portcullis House. How do you get there? Walk to Parliament and it’s the very ugly building at the corner of Bridge Street and Victoria Embankment, facing Big Ben (or St. Stephen’s Tower, if you really must). If you get lost, which you won’t, ask one of the police officers, who are actually very helpful, or just look round for the biggest eyesore. It is unmissably hideous.

Poor Mette had the job, a couple of hours ago, of telling me that - despite the fact that she booked the room back in the first week of September, despite the fact that not double-booking rooms is a task open to the simplest person capable of using something like Outlook, despite the fact that a struggling provincial hotel could manage to avoid doing something like this- a Cabinet Minister claimed that she had previously booked the room and so we were bounced out. Oh, imagine my joy. It quite took the pleasure out of learning that I was a qualified physician.

Salt in the wound: the Cabinet Minister in question is Hazel Blears. Silver lining: we can get TV crews in to film in the Attlee Suite, which we couldn’t in Committee Room 14. That’s Committee Room 14, our old venue. And of course our new venue is the Attlee Suite in Portcullis House.

…is back after his takedown by Alisher Usmanov’s lawyers.

Stand by for fireworks.

If you saw The Times yesterday, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the campaign has been a success and we could all go home:

Hundreds of interpreters and their families are to be given assistance to leave Iraq, where they live under fear of death squads because they collaborated with British forces. Those wishing to remain in Iraq or relocate to neighbouring countries will be helped to resettle.

However, there has yet to be a formal announcement and the word is that the Foreign Office doesn’t know about this change in policy. As we’ve seen this week, stories spun to the media shouldn’t necessarily be taken at face value.

The speaker meeting at Parliament on October 9 (this coming Tuesday) is still going ahead. It’s still not too late to invite your MP along. The tireless Dan Hardie has all the details of what you need to do.

UPDATE: Dan Hardie: Wait and see

I have always said, when writing to Jacqui Smith and other Ministers, that to pre-announce asylum for Iraqi employees before they’d actually been taken to safety would increase the risks to them and to the British soldiers who would have to evacuate them. I hope desperately that this won’t happen. I also hope that we will see a genuine promise of resettlement for all who are identified as being seriously at risk for having worked for the British in Iraq.

Remember a few weeks ago when lawyers acting for Uzbek billionaire and potential Arsenal buyer, Alisher Usmanov, had Craig’s Murray’s, Tim Ireland’s, Boris Johnson’s and a bunch of others’ websites taken down? And do you remember the wave of publicity those actions received?

Well, they’re at it again, and this time it’s the mighty Indymedia on the receiving and of the threats.

Indymedia UK has been issued with a takedown notice [10th of September & 21st of September] from lawyers acting for Alisher Usmanov. The notice served to Indymedia charged Indymedia with publishing allegedly libellous accusations about Usmanov, one of the richest men in Russia, recently linked to a possible hostile takeover of Arsenal FC.

Obsolete says it best:

This only makes Usmanov’s charm offensive this week, involving the flying via private jet of at least 9 British journalists to his offices in Moscow, then putting them up in a five star hotel all the more shallow. He says he’s not a vindictive man and that some of Murray’s allegations are beneath his dignity to respond to, yet his lackey of legal brown-nosing sycophants are still trying to remove all mentions and republishing of Murray’s original post, while still failing to respond either to Murray’s request for them to sue him or to even explain how inaccurate his allegations are, apart from their completely untrue argument that Usmanov was pardoned by Gorbachev.

If Usmanov and Schillings want to keep digging this hole, I for one don’t mind shovelling in the dirt on top of them. Usmanov has the money and the lawyers to fight libel cases from here to judgement day. There can be only one reason he doesn’t want to - just like why Gordon Brown doesn’t want to fight an election - because he doesn’t think he can win on a level playing field.

Spread the word.

Here’s a hell of a thing. Alisher Usmanov, putative Arsenal owner and website smiter launched a charm offensive this week. You can’t buy the kind of favourable coverage he got.

Well, actually, you can. He took ten journalists to Moscow to vouch for his own character in the face of allegations made about him. Because flying ten hacks to Moscow and putting them up in a five star hotel is cheaper than a libel case, obviously.

The journalists duly wrote up their trip and what Usmanov had had to say for himself. How many of them, do you think, declared their interest and how the trip had been lavish and all expenses paid?

The answer, as uncovered by Tim Ireland, may or may not surprise you.

UPDATE 5/10: Tim gets assurances in a letter from the Financial Times:

…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.

Total insist that their presence in Burma has helped to make the place more liberal, because they’ve engaged in “constructive engagement” with the regime. That’s how to deal with murderers: never mind stopping them, constructively engage with them by helping them out. If only Maxine Carr had thought of this. She could have said, “Instead of whining from the outside about Ian Huntley I decided to constructively engage with him,” and by now she’d be in the House of Lords.

read the rest

I’ve got a piece about the Alisher Usmanov affair up at Index on Censorship.

Tim Ireland’s Bloggerheads site is back. Craig Murray will hopefully be back very soon.

Update 2/10: Clive Summerfield’s back as well.

The list of people who declared their support when Alisher Usmanov’s lawyers, Schillings, managed to take down Craig Murray’s, Boris Johnson’s, Tim Ireland’s and Bob Piper’s blogs has now moved here.

The original post has served its purpose and only became the information hub by accident - it was only really meant to be a heads-up message - but it was very heartening to see so much support become linked to it. It’s right now however that the list be based somewhere else. Many thanks to everyone who blogged, linked, emailed and slashdotted while the list was here. It was quite the exciting and busy few days.

Anybody who has blogged in support about all this and hasn’t yet made the list (we’re watching Google Blogsearch as well) can let me, Tim Ireland (bloggerheads DOT com AT googlemail DOT com) or Aaron (tyger AT tygerland DOT net) know and we’ll see that you’re added. Ditto for anybody who hasn’t yet blogged and would like to - your views, ideas and support would be extremely welcome.

That’s how many bloggers are now on the case of Alisher Usmanov a week after the initial blog takedown. The updated list is here. Keep the links coming.

(Update: A lot of bloggers on the list are now following up on their original posts - there’s a lot of great stuff put there if you do a little browsing. 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.)

Tim Ireland is now well and truly back in the saddle over at Bloggerheads: The Alisher Usmanov Affair. He now has a timeline of events describing everything that has a happened so far. Plenty of juicy detail in there with many a twist and turn.

Also worth a look is EM Daily’s Cyberactivism 101, with 10 tips for effective web activism drawn from lessons learned in the last week.

UPDATE: Tim Ireland again:

Watch for… 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 @ 4.45pm: It’s 301 now.

Oh, dear…

Tonight, during the Saryusz-Wolski report “Towards a common European foreign policy on energy” the Euro realist MEP Tom Wise will use parliamentary privilege to spell out the allegations against Alisher Usmanov. He has been talking to Craig Murray to ensure that the allegations are accurate and to the point.

Looks like Usmanov’s lawyers, Schillings, might want to review their strategy:

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.

Instead, hundred of thousands of people now know who Alisher Usmanov is, and have formed their own judgement of him in the absence of any facts or defence from Schillings. Good work.

UPDATE: MP3 of Tom Wise making his statement. Go listen - it’s dynamite. (Many thanks to Matthias at Swiss Metablog).

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