The Case of the Disappearing Blogs

September 21st, 2007 § 0 comments

Who’s the odd on out?

Craig Murray.
Tim Ireland.
Alisher Usmanov.
Bob Piper.
Boris Johnson.
Clive (of The UK Today blog)

Well, Craig Murray is the ex-ambassador to Uzbekistan, and a political blogger, whose blog has been pulled.
Tim Ireland is a political blogger and activist amongst other things whose blog has been pulled.
Bob Piper is a Labour councillor for Sandwell and a political blogger.
Boris Johnson was the Conservative MP for Henley and is now hoping to be Mayor of London, and also is a political blogger whose blog has been pulled.
Clive is also political blogger, whose blog has also been pulled.

That just leaves Alisher. He hasn’t had the plug pulled on his blog by his lawyers. His lawyers have been doing the pulling.

Alisher has not the best of reputations and his lawyers, Schillings, are trying to stop this reputation from following him all the way from Uzbekistan as he tries to buy Arsenal.

Too late!!

I don’t really give a toss about football and footballers, but this isn’t about football anymore. It’s about freedom of speech.

You see, Craig Murray, in his capacity as ambassador to Uzbekistan has heard of Mr Usmanov on more than one occasion, posted on his blog an article about Alisher that wasn’t very flattering to say the least. Parts of this was then reposted on Tim’s Bloggerheads site, and blogged about on others.
Legal letters were sent, posts, er, posted and eventually (most of) the articles were removed or changed to be not quite so offensive to the delicate Uzbeki flower that is Alisher pending othe rlegal action etc, as is normally the case.

But then from yesterday, all the sites above, and a couple of others (i think) just disappeared.
Where did they go?

Obsolete has the answer and some background:

Alisher Usmanov and his shower of lackeying legal cunts, Schillings, have finally pulled off a very pyrrhic victory. Despite comprehensively failing to remove Craig Murray’s original blog post about Usmanov, which is still around if you know where to look, they’ve managed to spook Tim Ireland’s webhost so much that they’ve pulled the plug on Tim and Clive’s cluster of sites, also including Bob Piper, Boris Johnson and Craig Murray’s blogs.

See the problem?

At the most only the relevant pages should’ve been taken down, but the host shat themselves and unplugged the server which them effected people that are completely uninvolved. That is too much. Once again money shuts up free speech.

Someones gonna be really annoyed now.

Go to Chicken Yoghurt, as that seems to be the rallying point with links to lots of background info.

Update: If you want to know exactly what all the fuss is about and why Mr Usmanov is so upset and trying to get everyone to forget about his past, there is a blog called Alisher Usmanov. Well worth a read.
As it’s hosted bby blogger in the USA, there is not a lot that the Jolly Fat Guy can do.

There is no way he can win this. If he could, don’t you think he would’ve sued Craig by now…?

And another:
From Skysong.eu: Schillings is looking for more blogs victims from IP range 217.33.207.164 – 217.33.207.191.

Labels: Freedom of Speech,

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