News of the screwed posted by Richard Seymour

Labels: 'free speech', libel, media, news, news of the world

The fallout from 'free speech' posted by Richard Seymour

So, about this free speech that no one really believes in (as the furore over the puny and pointless 'Islam4UK' reveals). Apparently, words and language have consequences. Apparently, the unchecked expression of racist vilification, in streets and town halls across the land, results in more racist hate crimes. Baffling, isn't it? Reality is just so random that way.

Labels: 'free speech', bnp scum, fascism, racism, unite against fascism

Guilt by linkage posted by Richard Seymour

Jews Sans Frontieres draws attention to Harry's Place's BNP links. You know the kind I mean. It just reminded me of one of Justin Horton's posts for this blog a few years back:

HP's writers are, briefly, McCarthyites. Their practice and purpose is to support the Iraq War, Israel, and general warmongering, by throwing mud at their opponents: by slandering those who oppose them as terrorists and anti-Semites. Their squalid means of achieving this squalid goal, I'd narrow down to two: a game called We Are Fighting Terrorists, Therefore You Are One and a slightly different one called Links.

In Links, or Two Degrees of Separation, you say this: because X is connected with Y who is connected with Z - who is apparently an anti-Semite - therefore X is an anti-Semite too. It is an easy game, because nearly everybody is connected with nearly everybody else, especially in a broad movement (the movement against the war being, as it goes, pretty broad, encompassing as it does most of the population of the world). Curiously, though, it is never played with the war's proponents: we do not say, for instance, "Tony Blair is best mates with George Bush whose best mate was Ken Lay who was a prodigious crook". Nor do we go via Lord Levy, or via Tessa Jowell's husband, or straight to Silvio Berlusconi.

Indeed. And we do not go via Harry's Place straight to the BNP. Because that would be jolly unsporting.

Labels: 'free speech', bnp scum, hp scum, racism

The scalps posted by Richard Seymour

Sami al-Arian, Norman Finkelstein, Joel Kovel, William I Robinson, Nagesh Rao, Loretta Capheart, Margo Ramlal-Nankoe... From HR 3077 and the 'Academic Bill of Rights', to the ongoing drive to have students rat on left-wing professors, the kulturkampf of the right that was so energised by 9/11 continues to claim its scalps.

Labels: 'free speech', academia, education, Israel, neoconservatism, reactionaries, zionism

Statement by Iranian Bloggers on Hossein Derakhshan posted by Yoshie

Statement by Iranian Bloggers on Hossein Derakhshan

We, the undersigned, view the circumstances surrounding the Iranian authorities' arrest of Hossein Derakhshan aka Hoder, one of the most prominent Iranian bloggers, as extremely worrying.  Derakhshan's disappearance, detention at an unknown location, lack of access to his family and attorneys, and the authorities' failure to provide clear information about his potential charges is a source of concern for us.

The Iranian blogging community is one of the largest and most vibrant in the world.  From ordinary citizens to the President, a diverse and large number of Iranians are engaged in blogging.  These bloggers encompass a wide spectrum of views and perspectives, and they play a vital role in open discussions of social, cultural and political affairs.

Unfortunately, in recent years, numerous websites and blogs have been routinely blocked by the authorities, and some bloggers have been harassed or detained.  Derakhshan's detention is but the latest episode in this ongoing saga and is being viewed as an attempt to silence and intimidate the blogging community as a whole.

Derakhshan's own position regarding a number of prisoners of conscience in Iran has been a source of contention among the blogging community and has caused many to distance themselves from him.  This, however, doesn't change the fact that the freedom of expression is sacred for all not just the ones with whom we agree.

We therefore categorically condemn the circumstances surrounding Derakhshan's arrest and detention and demand his immediate release.

Signed, in alphabetical order:

Arash Abadpour
Niki Akhavan
Hossein Bagher Zadeh
Sanam Dolatshahi
Mehdi Jami
Jahanshah Javid
Abdee Kalantari
Sheema Kalbasi
Nazli Kamvari
Nazy Kaviani
Peyvand Khorsandi
Nikahang Kowsar
Omid Memarian
Pedram Moallemian
Ali Moayedian
Ebrahim Nabavi
Masoome Naseri
Shahrnush Parsipur
Khodadad Rezakhani
Leva Zand

---

This statement first appeared in Pedram Moallemian's blog Eyeranian.net on 18 December 2008.  The links to the text of the statement are added for informational purposes.

Labels: 'free speech', bloggers, freedom, ideology, iran, media

Thoroughly Modern McCarthyites posted by Richard Seymour

I will tell you what this is all about. David T of the Harry's Place blog is attempting to get someone fired for reviewing a book I wrote, positively, in The New Statesman. Now, this could be because the reviewer namechecked the Harry's Place blog in passing. It could be because, so far, Mr T has not found a way to get me fired from anything. It cannot, however, be the result of any personal animus. I know this because David T would like nothing more than to be friends. Every now and again, he will send a missive to invite me to his birthday party, or to try and get a rise out of me in some way. He will coyly approach if he spots that I am available on Google chat, and try out a new opening line. This despite the fact that I had made it perfectly clear online that I regard him as something of an unstable creep. Even after I 'outed' him, when he launched a witch hunt against selected academics for thought crimes, he still didn't turn off the charm. Only the other day, he wrote to say that he had dreamed about me the previous night - me and him doing lawyer talk, apparently.

True, I didn't agree to go to his party, and it is only because of my weakness for taunting imbeciles that I didn't block his e-mail address, but you would be a fool and a communist to make anything of it. There is no personal element to David T's latest inquisition. He just doesn't like the fact that I have written a book, that it has been reviewed positively, and that as a result of the review and subsequent coverage (some of it, ironically, on Harry's Place), the book's UK Amazon sales rank soared, leaving said supplier with only one book left to sell. Unfortunately, David T is arguably even less equipped to properly review my book than the strict orthographer, Oliver Kamm. However, since he has developed a taste for vindictive attacks on individuals whom the Harry's Place mob have any reason to dislike at all, he decided to attack the author of the first review to appear in a major publication. Describing the reviewer, Owen Hatherley, as the "Dilpazier Aslam" of the New Statesman (recalling a case in which a trainee journalist was fired from The Guardian, having written an article that included praise for Hizb Ut-Tahrir while he was a member of said organisation), the post on Harry's Place claims that Owen Hatherley is a member of the Socialist Workers' Party. He is not, and never has been. But it is on the basis of this single fabrication that the author of the post launches a lengthy diatribe effectively demanding that the New Statesman publish a correction and fire the reviewer. It is a small irony that, while in effect demanding a purge on the basis of an invention, David T fantasises that it is SWP members who are 'totalitarian'.

On the one hand, all of this is immensely encouraging. If the deranged political cult of liberal bombers didn't find the book in some sense threatening, they would not waste so much energy on vain attempts to undermine it. On the other hand, this petty, spiteful attack comprises a maniacal McCarthyite troika. It not only seeks to have a positive review of my book retracted and a 'correction' published. It also attempts to hound someone who did absolutely nothing wrong out of a livelihood, and to establish an ominous precedent of surveillance for actual and supposed members of the Socialist Workers' Party on the basis of ignorant claims about it made by David T and his cohort. A while ago, you will remember, Harry's Place launched a frantic campaign of vilification against one Jenna Delich. It resulted in a complaint to the site's service provider, which decided that the libellous nature of the posts meant that the terms of its agreement with the blog's authors had been breached. The site was taken down, and the Harry's Place posse complained of oppression, declaring that their 'free speech' was under attack. Some websites foolishly extended their 'solidarity' to these corrupt and unscrupulous opponents of free speech. I hope that after this episode it will be obvious even to them that Harry's Place deserves no comradeship, especially from those who might themselves be the targets of such an attack if the occasion arose.

Labels: 'free speech', hp scum, mccarthyism, the complete and utter works of richard seymour, the liberal defense of murder

Another 'free speech' controversy posted by Richard Seymour

As usual, it involves Them (not because They are particularly responsible for frustrating free expression, but because They preoccupy the minds of newspaper editors). The story is that a debut novelist named Sherry Jones wrote a book about Muhammad's wife, Aisha, as part of a $100,000 book deal with Random House. An historian at the University of Texas, who happens to specialise in Islamic history, was given an advance galley of the book and described it as both historically inaccurate and offensively anti-Muslim. In all likelihood, if Random House was prepared to pay that much for a debut novelist, they were going to publicise it like crazy. It's a big investment, and so I suppose they expected the frisson of a juicy novel about the original patriarch of Islam and his wives would result in big bucks. Well, the whiff of a backlash caused Random House to freak out. They postponed the book deal purportedly on account of safety fears, and then signed a termination agreement with the author so that she could pitch it to someone else. Gibson Square in London, (the publisher of Melanie Phillips' racist crap, Londonistan), took up the offer. The millionaire owner's house in Barnsbury was then clumsily attacked, apparently by three young males who are said to have shoved a petrol bomb through the letter box. But said publisher is now standing firm, resolute, unwilling to be forced back into the "dark ages" (or into the red, as it used to be called).

So, now it's a 'free speech' issue, and the predictable battle lines are being manned. The right, and their liberal allies, insist that it's a straightforward matter of Anglosphere traditions of free speech being subverted by Johnny Foreigner (I have decoded the artful euphemisms to save you the trouble). Well-meaning liberals say that there's no such thing as free speech, that there exist taboos and restrictions on expression that we barely even acknowledge as well as ones that we are all perfectly well aware of. They say that 'we' defer to the sensibilities of many other groups, but not Muslims, and thereby communicate that 'we' don't give a damn about what they consider important. Moreover, since this is connected to the conspicuous dehumanisation of Muslims in the context of the 'war on terror', anti-racists ought to take the side of the embattled community and expose the demands for 'free speech' as in fact demands for the protection of racism. I will not equivocate. I find the latter view far more persuasive and sociologically realistic than the former, which is obviously implicit in the way I've presented the arguments. I am not arguing for a book to be banned, but nor am I going to be picketing Random House: they aren't obliged to publish a book if they don't want to, and there's no indication that they broke their contractual agreements. It is unfortunate that publishers have so much more bargaining power than writers, but that isn't a problem peculiar to the case of Sherry Jones. This is not a case for protected speech. As for Gibson Square Books Ltd, there is no serious threat to its owner: the three stooges have been arrested, and they don't appear to have been professional operatives if they were nabbed by police at the scene of the crime. In truth, the publisher will have the damages repaired, lap up the publicity and reap the profits. That is business, not bravery. Yet there is something troubling about the well-meaning liberal argument.

This is an example of the kind of argument I'm referring to. It rightly estimates that the commitment to free speech is really fictitious. It rightly judges that publishing anti-Muslim material in this day and age is far from heroic. And it rejects the idea that there could ever be absolute free speech, arguing instead that such restrictions as do apply should be fair and judicious (and, one could add, cautiously applied). We have plenty of examples across Europe that support the first point: here are a few, a small sample but compelling enough in themselves. And there are plenty of curtailments of expression that have been designed with Muslims in mind, such as restrictions on the wearing of the hijab in several European countries, albeit wearing the hijab is an entirely harmless procedure that could offend no one but a bigot. There is also a restriction on speech that 'glorifies' terrorism. There is also a restriction on the kinds of published material one might possess, such that the so-called 'lyrical terrorist' Samina Malik was prosecuted and convicted for possessing materials likely to be useful for terrorism, despite the fact that she was obviously not a plotter. On the matter of who gets protected and who doesn't, recall that it was suggested in 2005 that Muslims might be entitled to the same protection against bigotry as other groups targeted by racists. This was another occasion for a 'free speech' binge, in which liberals moaned that their right to criticise religion was being attacked (this was false). And shortly thereafter, there was a legal case in which Nick Griffin and Mark Collett of the BNP were acquitted of incitement to racial hatred, in part because of their defense arguing that they had attacked Islam as a religion, not Muslims as such. The fact is that Muslims can experience racism every day, but may not expect any help from the law because it is not officially considered racism. This says a great deal.

Plain enough. However, there is a trap in basing the argument too much on respect for a particular sensibility, inasmuch as it is not obvious that one can ascribe a particular sensibility to a whole class of people. The example of The Satanic Verses makes this clear. Though it is clear that many Muslims were offended by it, it is not clear that most wanted to see it banned, much less see the author get done in by an amateur assassin. And I suspect that most Muslims couldn't really give a toss what some trash novelist says about their religion. Even if I am wrong in those inferences, the basic point remains that discussing the issue in these terms hands the argument to those who claim to be defending 'free speech', who can say that you're actually deferring to the sensibilities of 'extremism', to sensibilities that many Muslims reject. The real issue is that 'free speech' is not involved here, at all. While commentators including Salman Rushdie and Geoffrey Robertson QC bluster about "self-censorship" and "cowardice" on the part of the publishers, the reality is far more prosaic.

The mundane truth is that one publisher protected its reputation by postponing and then cancelling publication of a putatively offensive anti-Muslim novel, while another intends to build on its reputation by publishing said material. The big publishers avoid controversy, the small ones crave it: who knew? Despite the energetic efforts of polemicists and hacks to produce a dense collage of imagery and associations whose total effect is to incriminate Muslims in particular as an egregious threat to free expression, this is not about courage or Enlightenment or ethics, but about strategies for conquering market share. As far as I know, neither publisher has been the recipient of a legal threat, and the current publisher is protected by the state in the unlikely event that a handful of sad young arsonists tries to burn his house down again. There has not been any censorship worth the name. If there were to be censorship, perhaps in the form of a legal challenge to prevent publication, then there would be an argument. And if a court decided that the book was actually in violation of the law - unlikely given the law's bias against Muslims - one could then talk about whether censorship was justified, what the limits on free speech should be, etc. As it is, 99% of this melodrama has been concocted by overheated imaginations.

Labels: 'free speech', censorship, islam, islamophobia

Not free speech martyrs posted by Richard Seymour

Those who keep themselves mercifully removed from the murky world of blogging narcissism will not be aware that for a brief period today, Harry's Place had their free speech violated. Their service provider removed their blog on the grounds that it violated the user agreement. The cry went up that censorship was afoot, and several blogs - several left-wing ones at that - protested in the name of free speech. It transpired that there had been a complaint. Someone had complained that a post on Harry's Place concerning one Jenna Delich, a Sheffield-based academic, was slanderous. Allegedly, the complaint was from Jenna Delich herself. The service provider apparently agreed with the complaint at any rate and, referring to their terms of use, pulled the blog for several hours before restoring it.

The post concerning Jenna Delich was actually one of a series of perfectly frantic and childish provocations about her - and, beyond her, about the true bête noire of Harry's Place, the Left. Delich was and is the subject of Harry's Place scrutiny for several reasons. The first is that she is an academic, and therefore is someone whose ideas can get her fired, particularly in light of well-known precedents. The second is that she contributes to the UCU mailing list, excerpts from which are regularly 'leaked' to Harry's Place, and the UCU is a regular target of HP saucery because a significant number of its members are prepared to support the Palestinian campaign to boycott Israeli institutions. (See this for a past example of HP's attempts to intimidate UCU academics). The third is that, in an absolute gift to Harry's Place and its miniature deep throat, she chose to support an argument about Israel by linking to a story on the website of David Duke, the white supremacist and antisemite. In and of itself the story does not appear to be explicitly antisemitic or fascist - although its author, who is not David Duke, may well be. It was reproduced from another website, which is apparently devoted to 'alternative' theories about 9/11 and other major events (both paranormal and parapolitical). It may be objectionable for other reasons, or it may contain alarming formulations, but a casual reader might easily read it and mistake it for a useful summary of facts.

In due course - or rather with indecent haste - Harry's Place posted the comment that she had made, along with a crudely subtitled photograph of her with her name featured in white-on-black lettering. In the photograph's subtitle, a deliberately ambiguous wording is deployed: "Sheffield-based academic, Jenna Delich - links to far right websites associated with the Ku Klux Klan". This could be read as meaning that she has links to far right websites associated with the Ku Klux Klan, rather than that she has 'linked', once, to said websites. The ambiguity was, in all probability, intentional. They headed their post 'UCU and the David Duke Fan'. Thus, Harry's Place asserted, based on this single incident, that Jenna Delich was a 'fan' of a Nazi ideologist. Further to this, the post accused her of "viciousness against Jews", which it said the UCU union had refused to act against (ie, it had refused to suppress her speech).

None of this is subtle. It is not a dog-whistle, even if it did set off a round of ferocious barking. It is a quite explicit campaign of vilification and demonisation, fucking someone over before the full facts are known, while distorting such facts as are known. The effects of falsely identifying someone as a Nazi sympathiser and an antisemite, particularly if they work in an educational institution, can be terrifying for the person thus calumnied. Universities are charged by the government with combatting 'extremism', monitoring both staff and students as part of the UK's 'war on terror'. Academics can be dismissed if they are explicit racists or Nazis. Reading about herself online, the academic would have realised that being identified in this way could mean her being fired. She would have known that it could mean her not being able to work in education any more. At the very least it would draw opprobium from colleagues and students alike. Personally, unless someone was an explicit or obvious member of a Nazi organisation, I would not like to be the one to expose them to that risk. I am not an investigator, nor a jury of her peers, nor a judge unto myself. And I do not carry out God's will, as far as I know (He is not as talkative as He once was). But Harry's Place, which is no better qualified than I am, had no hesitation in putting Jenna Delich through all that, without knowing what the situation was. It could be that Ms Delich was or is an antisemite, but it could just as well not be the case. She may have made a mistake; she may have been careless; she may have posted in haste having followed a chain of links from other less toxic websites; she may not know a great deal about the American far right. When Harry's Place decided to launch their attack on Jenna Delich, they did not know what the case was.

Or did they? They may at least have had good reason to think that she goofed up and was not being deliberately malicious. Their secret informer will surely have told them that, contrary to their insistence that UCU is filled with antisemites, the posting by Ms Delich was met with immediate criticism. That person would not have ommitted to mention, either, that Ms Delich acknowledged her mistake and apologised. If Harry's Place has been made aware of either fact at any point, it has ommitted to mention them. Instead, it has persisted with the insinuation that it is exposing a Nazi sympathiser and antisemite. Jenna Delich listened the advice of a Jewish socialist academic named Mike Cushman at the LSE, who was participating in the UCU forum. He advised her that she had a legitimate grievance, that she had been potentially libelled by Harry's Place, and that the proper procedure was to complain to the internet service provider. Whatever one thinks of the libel laws, this does not seem to me to be an unreasonable response. Harry's Place was quite vindictively sabotaging her career, and she had a right to seek accountability somewhere. However. Because the service provider in question warned the blog proprietors that they were in breach of their terms of use, and that as such it would be removed, Harry's Place was able to reinterpret its attack on free speech as the defense of free speech. They have behaved unconscionably, thuggishly, in a manner that befits far right websites such as Redwatch (to my knowledge, one of the few other websites that posts photographs, personal information and inflammatory material about private individuals). Because their behaviour resulted in their being pulled, if only for a few hours, bloggers who had utterly ignored the campaign against Jenna Delich decided that Harry's Place were free speech martyrs. It was a natural, but regrettable, instinct. They saw their own toys being taken away from them by moaning minnies, and their hearts went out to their fallen comrades. They extended 'solidarity' to the tormenters of Jenna Delich, but none to her. Even the Index on Censorship published a brief article about it, quoting David T, the blog's proprietor.

Jenna Delich has now been removed from the UCU discussion forum. In a message from the moderator, Matthew Waddup, it was averred that "having reviewed this and previous conduct; I have now suspended their list membership indefinitely". Waddup implied that he had acted on the basis of information that he had not previously considered. My own provisional conclusion, (you may draw a different one at liberty), is that he is caving in under a virulently nasty campaign of vilification. According to one of her colleagues, Jenna is now receiving hate mail and death threats. Her sole crime, so far as I am aware, is to have posted a link to a far right website featuring an article that in itself made no explicitly antisemitic or Nazi-like claims. If this was malicious, intending to cause hurt and offense, I would believe that further action would need to be taken both within the union and her educational institution. But as she apologised and accepted her mistake, it ought to have gone no further than that. Those who decided to take it further, and to distort the evidence to fit a prefabricated template for discussing such matters, are bullies, not defenders of free speech.

One last thing. It is important to at least take note of the broader political argument within which this preposterous, ugly saga has unfolded. David Hirsh of Goldsmiths College, and the website Engage, makes the argument explicit in his contribution:

Antisemitism within the UCU started to become a serious problem when people in the union began to support the campaign to exclude Israelis from British universities as a protest against Israeli human rights abuses. This campaign has dominated academic union Congresses in 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008.

It is an antisemitic campaign. There is no proposal to boycott any academics from any country other than Israel. It seeks to exclude a significant proportion of the world’s Jewish academics. It treats Israel as though it was a unique evil in the world and as though it was an illegitimate state.

Predictably the campaign for this antisemitic exclusion creates an antisemitic atmosphere within the union.

The argument that a boycott campaign against Israel is 'antisemitic' is unsustainable and invidious. States have been singled out in the past and will be in the future. It is in the nature of politics that such 'singling out' will happen. Some states have been treated as illegitimate in the past (South Africa and Rhodesia, for example), and it is unsurprising that a minority of supporters of the Palestinians (myself included) don't accept Israel's inherent 'right to exist' as a state based on Zionist organising principles. Particularly since such an assumed 'right' seems to militate against the demands of justice for millions of refugees. What is distinctive about Israel's oppression of the Palestinians, however, is how little attention has been paid to it in the past, and how much effort went into explaining and justifying its actions. That this is no longer the case, and that a growing minority of people are deciding to take action in solidarity with the Palestinians - in this case, at the specific request of Palestinian trade unionists who are bearing the brunt of Israeli oppression - is not something to be angry about. Historically, the British Left has been complicit with the dispossession of the Palestinians, and a particular responsibility therefore falls on the British Left to help undo the effects of this (just as it once bore a particular responsibility for helping to combat colonialism and apartheid). In truth, there is something shameful and a little sordid about those whose response to this is to classify the whole enterprise antisemitic. Yet, without so branding it, and without therefore slandering thousands of well-meaning left-wing activists as antisemitic in toto, this cruel and idiotic spectacle would have been impossible.

Labels: 'free speech', academia, hp scum, Israel, palestine, zionism

Bollinger imperialism and free speech posted by Richard Seymour

The President of Columbia University is being severely criticised by much of his faculty, in part for his preposterous, bellicose remarks when the Iranian president visited to chat with the kids. His defense:

Mr. Bollinger, who likened his experience at the faculty meeting to watching open-heart surgery on himself, said that in his remarks to Mr. Ahmadinejad he was simply exercising his free-speech rights.

The fact that he has such rights is evident in the fact that he didnt' get tased, but how is this for an academic standard? No one can mark me down, because - although I have got everything wrong and presented opinion as fact - to do so is injurious to my free-speech rights. No one can hold me accountable, whatever the responsibilities of my role, because I am owed completely unaccountability by the Bill of Rights. Nothing I say can ever be criticised, because it's just, like, my opinion man. I don't have to bow down to you truth-fascists. Imagine a university that worked like that: I suspect that Bernard-Henri Levy would be at home in such an instution, as would Alan Plagiaritz. (In fact, I'm convinced they'd both be at home in another institution I have in mind.) The next time some neoconservative blithers about academic standards being in decline, I suggest people remind them that they are the biggest beneficiaries of such a process.

Labels: 'free speech', belligerati, iran

What Happens When You Annoy a Bumpkin Billionaire? posted by Richard Seymour

This. And this. And this. (If those links are working by the time you read this, the crisis is over). Craig Murray's website, Tim Ireland's website, Bloggerheads, and that of Councillor Bob Piper, have been pulled by their service provider, Fasthosts Internet Ltd of Gloucester. The reason? Allegations made about Arsenal shareholder Alisher Usmanov. (It transpires that a number of websites, including Bob Piper's and , were removed even though they said nothing about this topic, simply because they shared a server with Craig Murray and Tim Ireland. Fasthosts' conduct is predictable, but also a disgrace).

I do not, at present, know the content of these allegations. (Correction: now I do). Craig Murray, as former ambassador to Uzbekistan, has raised these claims on his website and was followed by a number of other blogs and message boards. Evidently, Usmanov feels threatened by them, and has employed the libel lawyers, Schillings, who have applied pressure to service providers to pull the websites in question - before a single thing has been tested in court. The issue as it now stands is not whether the allegations against Mr Usmanov are correct, but whether you should have a right to hear about them and whether the promise of the internet can be shut down by an affronted oligarch. It is one thing to expect a single post to be withdrawn, although even this is unconscionable if it results from straightforward goldplated bullying by a plutocrat. But to take down the whole site is outrageous. Fasthosts is not a free service: you pay to register the website, and you to pay for the web hosting. Whatever contractual stipulations they might use in their defence, Fasthosts ought to be compelled to defend the internet access of their customers and specifically to restore the websites in question. (Update: looking through the Google cache of some of Murray's articles mentioning this, I see that the service providers repeatedly edited his posts after threats from Schillings).

We've had repeated attempts to threaten and bully bloggers in this fashion. You may recall that when the revelations about Mazher Mahmood of the News of the World were released, Zak Newland, an employee of that Murdoch rag, threatened to sic the lawyers on us:



They didn't succeed, and nor should Mr Usmanov and his laywers. Here is Murray's article:

Alisher Usmanov, potential Arsenal chairman, is a Vicious Thug, Criminal, Racketeer, Heroin Trafficker and Accused Rapist

I thought I should make my views on Alisher Usmanov quite plain to you. You are unlikely to see much plain talking on Usmanov elsewhere in the media becuase he has already used his billions and his lawyers in a pre-emptive strike. They have written to all major UK newspapers, including the latter:

“Mr Usmanov was imprisoned for various offences under the old Soviet regime. We wish to make it clear our client did not commit any of the offences with which he was charged. He was fully pardoned after President Mikhail Gorbachev took office. All references to these matters have now been expunged from police records . . . Mr Usmanov does not have any criminal record.”

Let me make it quite clear that Alisher Usmanov is a criminal. He was in no sense a political prisoner, but a gangster and racketeer who rightly did six years in jail. 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 Socilist 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. Far from being on Gorbachev’s side, Karimov was one of the Politburo hardliners who had Gorbachev arrested in the attempted coup that was thwarted by Yeltsin standing on the tanks outside the White House.

Usmanov is just a criminal whose gangster connections with one of the World’s most corrupt regimes got him out of jail. He then plunged into the “privatisation” process at a time when gangster muscle was used to secure physical control of assets, and the alliance between the Russian Mafia and Russian security services was being formed.

Usmanov has two key alliances. He is very close indeed to President Karimov, and especially to his daughter Gulnara. It was Usmanov who engineered the 2005 diplomatic reversal in which the United States was kicked out of its airbase in Uzbekistan and Gazprom took over the country’s natural gas assets. Usmanov, as chairman of Gazprom Investholdings paid a bribe of $88 million to Gulnara Karimova to secure this. This is set out on page 366 of Murder in Samarkand.

Alisher Usmanov had risen to chair of Gazprom Investholdings because of his close personal friendship with Putin, He had accessed Putin through Putin’s long time secretary and now chef de cabinet, Piotr Jastrzebski. Usmanov and Jastrzebski were roommates at college. Gazprominvestholdings is the group that handles Gazproms interests outside Russia, Usmanov’s role is, in effect, to handle Gazprom’s bribery and sleaze on the international arena, and the use of gas supply cuts as a threat to uncooperative satellite states.

Gazprom has also been the tool which Putin has used to attack internal democracy and close down the independent media in Russia. Gazprom has bought out - with the owners having no choice - the only independent national TV station and numerous rgional TV stations, several radio stations and two formerly independent national newspapers. These have been changed into slavish adulation of Putin. Usmanov helped accomplish this through Gazprom. The major financial newspaper, Kommersant, he bought personally. He immediately replaced the editor-in-chief with a pro-Putin hack, and three months later the long-serving campaigning defence correspondent, Ivan Safronov, mysteriously fell to his death from a window.

All this, both on Gazprom and the journalist’s death, is set out in great detail here:
http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/archives/2007/06/russian_journal.html

Usmanov is also dogged by the widespread belief in Uzbekistan that he was guilty of a particularly atrocious rape, which was covered up and the victim and others in the know disappeared. The sad thing is that this is not particularly remarkable. Rape by the powerful is an everyday hazard in Uzbekistan, again as outlined in Murder in Samarkand page 120. If anyone has more detail on the specific case involving Usmanov please add a comment.

I reported back in 2002 or 2003 in an Ambassadorial top secret telegram to the Foreign Office that Usmanov was the most likely favoured successor of President Karimov as totalitarian leader of Uzbekistan. I also outlined the Gazprom deal (before it happened) and the present by Usmanov to Putin (though in Jastrzebski’s name) of half of Mapobank, a Russian commercial bank owned by Usmanov. I will never forget the priceless reply from our Embassy in Moscow. They said that they had never even heard of Alisher Usmanov, and that Jastrzebski was a jolly nice friend of the Ambassador who would never do anything crooked.

Sadly, I expect the football authorities will be as purblind. Football now is about nothing but money, and even Arsenal supporters - as tight-knit and homespun a football community as any - can be heard saying they don’t care where the money comes from as long as they can compete with Chelsea.

I fear that is very wrong. Letting as diseased a figure as Alisher Usmanov into your club can only do harm in the long term.

Labels: 'free speech', arsenal, billionaires, craig murray

The curious case of the controversial cartoons that didn’t count posted by ejh

"Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"
"To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
"The dog did nothing in the night-time."
"That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.

Some short time ago, some of you may recall, there was something of a controversy involving the publication of controversial cartoons in Denmark linking, shall we say, the Prophet Mohammed with terrorism. These cartoons caused a certain reaction, as they were intended to do. During the ensuing controversy, many people thought it best to express solidarity with the provocateurs, by reprinting the cartoons, by expressing sympathy with them, by marching in their support and by publishing a great number of articles and internet comments condemning people who had threatened the publishers - or even disagreed that they had a right to publish these cartoons.

It was a freedom-of-speech issue. There were no complexities here, no questions of provocation or offence and anybody who observed that it wasn’t necessarily so simple could be expected to be abused as an apologist for terrorism, a relativist and what you will. (It was, however, quite in order to abuse the cartoons’ Muslim opponents for thinking there was only one side to the question, a paradox I seem to remember noticing in a letter I wrote at the time to Private Eye.)

Anyway, that was then and this, apparently, is now. Yesterday, in the Western liberal democracy where I live, a High Court judge ordered a cartoon banned and all copies of the magazine that published it seized. Police were sent to raid newsagents and the editors of the magazine were ordered to reveal the name of the artist who produced the cartoon, so that proceedings could be considered against them, proceedings which could lead to a two-year prison sentence for all involved.

These cartoons did not seek to inflame ethnic tensions, nor did they imperil national security (assuming a cartoon could do so). Their offence was simply to lampoon the Royal Family, in a manner which was certainly rude but not destructive. Giles Tremlett reports in the Guardian:

The cartoon on the front cover of El Jueves (“Thursday” – ejh)….showed Crown Prince Felipe and his wife Letizia in the midst of an ardent session of love-making.

A speech bubble issuing from the prince's mouth makes a joke about the amount of work done by the royal family and a government decision to give families €2,500 (£1,680) for each new child.

"Do you realise what it will mean if you get pregnant?" the prince asks. "This is going to be the closest thing to work that I've ever done."

Not all that ardent, really, if you look, but leaving that aside, this is the sort of social commentary which surely falls a long way within the bounds of legitimate free speech - if free speech is to mean anything. Is Prince Felipe depicted as a terrorist? He is not. He is depicted having sex with his wife. We know they do this, because they had their second child just a few weeks ago.

I bother with the detail and the circumstances, by the way, because it is possible that this controversy has passed you by. This is because for some reason this case has not brought on the worldwide outcry occasioned by the other matter to which I alluded earlier.

Which is a strange thing. The case, one would have thought, is no less strong, in fact it is a rather less complicated matter. It is surely an outrage in a Western democracy that newsagents should be raided, magazines seized, editors required to reveal names of contributors, people threatened with prison, all for no more pressing reason than there appears to have been an offence to the dignity of a member of the Royal Family (if, indeed, he was actually offended). It is the sort of thing that might have appeared in a cartoon and been prosecuted in 1820s Britain, where Crown Princes - and indeed, Kings - were frequently the butt of cartoonists' abuse. When people talk about modernity and the need to defend it, you would think this would be exactly the sort of thing they mean. You’d think this would be a cause célèbre.

Yet curiously, it is not. I am unable to detect a worldwide controversy about the police raids. Or even a small one. It has of course made some small impact in Spain, where some newspaper editors and journalists still remember what it is like to face bans and the threat of imprisonment. (For this reasons, the general level of political and cultural debate seems to me to be rather higher, more serious-minded, than back in the UK.) El Mundo, for instance, reprinted the cartoon in an act of solidarity.

But where, elsewhere, are the concerned and the outraged? Where, in the UK, are the bloggers? Where are the newspaper columnists and editors? Where are the politicians? Where are the editorials, the statements, the demonstrations? Where are those who stood up for freedom in Denmark now that it is menaced in Madrid? Where are those who believe that freedom, if it means anything, means telling people what they do not want to hear?

Well, fair enough. If individuals don’t want to comment on this or that controversy, if it doesn’t particularly interest them, if they have better things to do if they just don’t feel like it then that’s OK. I mean it. One can condemn people for what they say, but one should not condemn for what they have not said – there are far too many websites that cater for the opposite persuasion. Besides, it’s not as if the internet is full of commentary on the subject from people who don't think you have to invade countries and bomb their civilians before you can be accepted as a friend of civilisation.

So it’s not that any individual person or party or paper or website isn’t saying anything. That’s not what bothers me. It’s the difference between the two situations that bothers me. Remember, when it came to Denmark, this was a Matter Of Principle. It was nothing to do with Islam, or provocation, or anything: it was to do with freedom of speech. That particular freedom had to be defended and everybody needed to say so. There were no complications. You couldn’t pick and choose. That was Relativism and that was what led to the trouble in the first place.

Well, what’s the difference? Where’s the storm of protest this time? Is freedom really not to be protected abroad as readily as it would be at home? Isn’t the real difference that those who were threatening freedom of speech in the Denmark case were a small minority of Muslims, whereas now it is the police and the courts, the apparatus of the law?

Isn’t this actually a matter not of principle so much as narrative? Isn’t that narrative one that says that the apparatus of law is what we in the West should fight for, because it is what protects our liberties - whereas the Muslims threaten our liberties so they are who we are supposed to fight? Isn't it only a matter of principle when it's a chance to Get The Muslims?

For what it’s worth, my underinformed opinion is that nobody will go to jail. Although Prince Felipe may be a chinless wonder, his father is certainly not and it would be unwise of him to have people thrown in clink merely for making ribald commentary about his family. But still, there will presumably be fines levied and precedents set.

So perhaps this is a ‘sleeper’ and there will be a torrent of complaint tomorrow or next week. Concern will be expressed by politicians, outrage in newspapers, apoplexy in the blogosphere. But if there is not, then a principle will have been created, indeed may already have been created. It is all right for cartoons to risk provoking hatred against Muslims but it is not all right for cartoons to risk provoking laughter against princes.

But we knew that already, did we not?

Labels: 'free speech'

The smallness, fear and resentment of the paid columnist. posted by Richard Seymour

Blogs are bad, blogs are wicked, blogs are too democratic, blogs are corrupting the democratic process, blogs aren't making all that much difference, really...

A heartening stream of recent complaints about bloggery, including the charge that blogs often contain mistakes (whereas printed column inches foreswear all error); are insular (whereas the media class wouldn't know the meaning of the words 'navel-gazing'); are abusive, (whereas the daily newspapers are not packed with a million and one petty slanders); are irrelevant (the blogosphere's spectacular growth being unworthy of contrast with the contraction of the audience for newspapers); are parasitical on 'old media' (the average columnist being not at all parasitical on the industry's product, and not at all leeching off the blogosphere for the occasional bit of controversy). To be sure, blogs can be all those dreadful things, yet a moment's reflection indicates that they can also be a source of untold stories that need to be told, vectors for the disclosure of valuable information, forums of more or less modest investigative journalism in their own right, providers of an alternative analytical frame to that usually imposed on events by the capitalist media, sources of humour and release from the humdrum and mundane and so on. It so happens that the most worthless, trivial blogs are usually the ones patronised by the media outlets that are now skidding their undercrackers.

Why, then, waste time with these tedious, banausic complaints? Well, they happen to coincide with, or are prompted by, a move to create a bloggers' code of conduct, something that the cretins hope will be taken up by the service providers. It says 'voluntary' now, but if it were to be taken up by, say, Blogger, it would conceivably involve a more widespread pulling of blogs, especially if complaints against them were lodged by journalists or states. This is something that some undertalented and overexposed columnists could regard with some relief. Their effort to denigrate such popular participation in online comment as exists simply provides a background score for the wider effort to bring the internet under control, to reduce popular participation to an endless exchange of moderated opinion, a feedback chamber for the advertisers, and a gentrified nattering zone for those who imagine themselves uniquely placed to pronounce on public matters, because News International, the Washington Post Company, the Guardian Media Group [etc etc] says they are.

Labels: 'free speech', bloggers, columnists, google