We now have copies of The Catholic Orangemen of Togo and Other Conflicts I Have Known spread around over twenty different jurisdictions, ready to be put free online on 12 January. More volunteers to host the PDF, in the UK or elsewhere, are extremely welcome. To volunteer, email to [email protected].
Schillings will have their work cut out to suppress the truth about the mercenary commander Tim Spicer now that the blogosphere has got hold of it. But the quite incredible timidity of the UK mainstream media when faced by Schillings, backed by a very wealthy man, is a real phenomenon. The hideous Alisher Usmanov is again on the verge of acquiring Arsenal football club. The national UK media, all of which received a pre-emptive letter from Schillings threatening legal action if they mentioned Usmanov’s unpleasant past (and present), is again making no mention of the criminal record of the convicted blackmailer, nor of his association with the Karimov family.
Both Usmanov and Gulnara Karimova have put down their money for ten million dollar plus apartments at 1 Hyde Park, the building under construction in Knightsbridge with the apparent purpose of bringing all the world’s nastiest people under one roof. I spent twenty minutes the other day more or less stationary on a No 49 bus as I was trying to get home to Shepherds Bush.
The junction in Knightsbridge, already one of London’s worst choke points, has been impossible for a over year now because of the building site and traffic for this bling palace being built right upon it. Site construction traffic blocks the junction, the traffic lights are frequently decommissioned and an underpass into Hyde Park that was a key traffic flow relief point has been blocked off. Permission for all this disruption would never have been granted for housing for ordinary people.
This blog has been down for a few days because, immediately after I sent out all the pdfs of The Catholic Orangemen, I suffered a massive hacker attack originating in both Glasgow and the Czech Republic which penetrated my substantial defences and exported a lot of information. I called in The Geek Squad to sort it – that really is a very impressive commercial service – but it took them a solid couple of days to get me up and running again.
I try not to get paranoid about all this. Hacker attacks happen for purely commercial motives. A month ago my laptop was stolen from my hallway and that happens too. Someone ransacked my Ghanaian office at night six weeks ago, and that also can happen to anyone. But I would have to be superhuman not to worry about it.
I have set up Atholl Publishing and am in the process of getting some copies of The Catholic Orangemen of Togo printed, perhaps abroad. This is not easy as, under our ultra repressive UK libel laws, printers, distributors and retailers can be threatened too. For the few hundred pounds profit they stand to make, it is just not worth the risk of hundreds of thousands of pounds of legal expenses. I have already had one distributor (as well as my publisher) pull out specifically quoting fear of legal action.
But I think I have cracked it, and you can now order the book here:
I hope we will get a button up next week. I do apologise it is so expensive – I should explain that of that price Amazon give me £8.10. After I have paid for design, image copyrights, printing the books, packing and transport, I calculate that I will make a profit of 60p per book if we sell them all!
Before Mainstream Publishing pulled out following legal threats from Schillings, they had themselves listed the book on Amazon as The Road to Samarkand (their choice of name!) I have asked them to delist it, but they have not yet done so. If you have ordered that from Amazon, please cancel your order (which the Amazon system lets you do quite easily), and re-order from the above link.
Schillings have certainly cost me a lot of time and potential money. But I believe that the free internet posting will lead to a much wider readership for the facts they are trying to hide, and that is much more important.
2 copies on order from Amazon. But will be waiting in anticipation for 12 Jan. Very best wishes for your endeavours.
"I do apologise it is so expensive"
I just ordered my copy for £11.87 including delivery – seems very reasonable to me!
Older topic but still relevant, good Washington Post opinion piece by a US ex-interrogator:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti…
I will be ordering it as soon as it comes out. well done.
Just ordered mine! Best of luck with everything. I really admire you for perservering with this.
Best of luck Craig, all these thefts and break ins do seem to be happening rather close together.
'I try not to get paranoid' – well, a bit more healthy paranoia might've had your server secured a bit better. I imagine that the information they wanted included the addresses you'd sent the pdf to? Of course that wouldn't have been stored on a publicly-networked machine, would it?
Will you be going to the USA to promote the book?
It will definitely be a challenge to get the book out there, but I wouldn't give up on print on demand.
This comment should be posted directly as the comment challenge has now been correctly added to the template.
Bingo! Book has been (pre) ordered; and I find the price tag quite reasonable too.
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I've ordered mine too. Maybe you should put it on some African sites including Sierra Leone.
Have pre-ordered copy upon receipt will be placed proudly on the shelf next to "Murder In.." Well done Craig and I wish you and yours well over the coming season of good will and best wishes for 2009.
Congratulations on the book, Craig. I've been trying to comment here for ages, and naively thought the system was all gliched up. As in 'computer madness'. Silly me.
Well done Craig you are indomitable I have just ordered it from Amazon no problem happy xmas to you and Nadira and dont forget you are always welcome in Edinburgh Hugh Kerr
Well done Craig you are indomitable I have justordered ti on Amazon mind you I would rather have given you the money! happy xmas and a good new year to you and Nadira and dont forget you are always welcome in Edinburgh Hugh Kerr
Slightly Off Topic but thought you would like to read this Craig.
"The struggle for a nuclear-weapon-free zone in Central Asia"
By Togzhan Kassenova | 22 December 2008
"Article Highlights"
"More than a decade in the making, the Central Asian nuclear-weapon-free zone is about to come into force.
The United States, Britain, and France have held up the treaty's passage by opposing some of its language.
Support from these Western powers for nuclear-weapon-free zones is vital to pursuing a safer world and abolishing nuclear weapons"
"When Kazakhstan's Parliament ratified a treaty establishing a nuclear-weapon-free zone in Central Asia earlier this month, the effort to ban nuclear weapons from the region took its final step. Throughout the Cold War, Central Asia had been the epicenter of the Soviet nuclear testing program–with the Soviet military conducting 456 nuclear tests in Kazakhstan alone. Appropriately then, the treaty was signed by representatives from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan in September 2006 at Semipalatinsk, the main Soviet test site in Kazakhstan. (Kazakhstan was the last country to officially ratify the treaty, which only now awaits the Kazakh president's signature.)"…
http://tinyurl.com/84pwl6