Lawyers Schillings, acting on behalf of mercenary commander Tim Spicer, persuaded my publisher to pull out of publishing my new book, The Catholic Orangemen of Togo and Other Conflcits I Have Known. Tim Spicer has made millions from the war in Iraq, and the UK has become notorious for the ability of the rich to close down criticism because of the massive costs – often hundreds of thousands of pounds – of defending a legal action.

There is access to the courts in big libel cases only for the ultra-rich. So much so that just a simple letter like this

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/Schillings.pdf

can kill a book. This process is known in the trade as “Chilling”. Schillings are the acknowledged leaders in chilling.

But the law was formulated in an age when a limited number of printing presses were the only means of mass communication. Not only does this not apply in the digital age, but by using the “Streisland effect” we can make sure that any attempt at “Chilling” results in ten times more people actually reading the book. Eventually this will discourage clients from using firms like Schillings, and hopefully put the leeches of repression out of business.

So as a lesson to Schillings and their potential clients, here is The Catholic Orangemen of Togo and Other Conflicts I Have Known. I am making it available across the internet, absolutely free to read. You can find it here:

http://cryptome.org/cot-murray.zip

(At midnight my platform is refusing to upload, saying the file is too large – how embarassing! I hope we will get our own hosted copy up in the morning, when I can get help).

Let me be clear: there is no libel in this book – it is all true and based on my own eye-witness account. It contains not libel, but rather truth some people wish to hide.

It is going online in the next 24 hours in over thirty jurisdictions – Schillings will have their work cut out trying to get all those taken down, and it would make a dent even in Spicer’s bank balance to try.

So please read it, pass it around, copy it and post it to your site. You will be striking a blow for freedom, and you will ultimately contribute to making libel lawyers poorer.

If you want a hard copy, I have self-published and had some privately printed. You can buy it here.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/01/buy_the_catholi.html

I should be most happy if people wished to buy the book – you can widen the effect by giving it as a present! My last book, Murder in Samarkand was a non-fiction bestseller, so Schillings have cost me a lot of money. It will be more than worth it if we can get the truth out more widely, and strike a blow against the libel laws.

I have been obliged to self-publish my new book, The Catholic Orangemen of Togo and Other Conflicts I Have Known, because legal threats from mercenary commander Tim Spicer scared off my publisher:

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/Schillings.pdf I

I have accordingly decided to make it available free online from 12 January as a PDF hosted on over a hundred different websites, in almost thirty different juridictions. I have, however, had physical books printed for those who wish (and purchased carbon offset). I hope to get copies into bookstores shortly, though this is difficult. It is available from Amazon.co.uk for just £11.87

You can however purchase it here, direct from me, for the cover price of £17.99. This includes postage and packing to anywhere in the World, plus a signature and message if you wish.

I should fess up that I stand to make 80p profit on every copy sold though Amazon, but about £3.60 on every copy sold direct here. So, in addition, for every copy sold direct I will make a donation of £1 to either People and Planet, Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch. You can choose the nature of your donation below when you make your purchase via PayPal, and your donation choice will be confirmed by email.

If you want a signed copy, please note this in the “Special Instructions to Merchant” box when you enter the delivery address, together with any dedication you want with the signature.

The book is an autobiographical prequel to Murder in Samarkand and covers the period 1998 to 2002. It exposes the links between blood diamonds, crime and British mercenary involvement in Africa. it argues that the disregard Tony Blair showed for both British and international law in dealing with Sierra Leone prefigured the disaster of Iraq. It also covers my role in the dawn of democracy in Ghana.

More importantly, it is intended in an entertaining way to present questions of African development, drawing on thirty year’s practical experience. I am deeply critical of current fashionable doctrines in the field of overseas aid. I hope it will inform and entertain as Murder in Samarkand did, but on a different set of issues. Here is the blurb from the book:

Craig Murray’s adventures in Africa from 1997 to 2001 are a rolliciking good read. He exposes for the first time the full truth about the “Arms to Africa” affair which was the first major scandal of the Blair Years. He lays bare the sordid facts about British mercenary involvement in Africa and its motives. This is at heart an extraordinary account of Craig Murray’s work in negotiating peace with the murderous rebels of Sierra Leone, and in acting as the midwife of Ghanaian democracy. Clearly his efforts were not only difficult but at times very dangerous indeed. Yet the story is told with great humour. Not only do we meet Charles Taylor, Olusegun Obasanjo, Jerry Rawlings and Foday Sankoh, but there are unexpected encounters with others including Roger Moore, Jamie Theakston and Bobby Charlton! Above all this book is about Africa. Craig Murray eschews the banal remedies of the left and right to share with us the deep knowledge and understanding that comes over 30 years working in or with Africa. Gems of wisdom and observation scatter the book, as does a deep sense of moral outrage at the consequences of centuries of European involvement: even though he explains that much of it was well-intentioned but disastrous.

If you wish to pay by cheque or postal order, please write with your details to Craig Murray, 31 Sinclair Gardens, West Kensington, London, W14 0AU. Cheques for £17.99 should be made payable to Craig Murray.

As legal sharks Schillings caused my publisher to back down, causing me to have to self-publish The Catholic Orangemen of Togo and Other Conflicts I Have Known, we have needed to think imaginatively about promoting the book. One plan will involve promoting some individual short quotes. I have been through the book and extracted some personal favourites, which I need to whittle down to about ten.

Any of these strike anyone as particularly attractive or a turn off?

Autobiography is a form in which individuals observe sharply the failings of others, but are themselves near-perfect.

It is not always the man society finds most respectable who is likely to try to do what is right.

Thousands of senior British diplomats, civil servants and members of the military knew of our policy of acceptance of torture.

You don’t have to be a saint to call torture when you see it.

Diplomats rather pride themselves on not caring.

Blair believed that he alone was the judge of right, and did not care how many had to die to prove it.

Blair’s policy of “Projection of hard power” was simply the return of formal Imperialism.

In conflict with Cook over ethical foreign policy, Blair would always overrule his Foreign Secretary, especially if the interest of the UK arms industry could be invoked.

The great fallacy of the Blair years was that foreign conflicts could be seen in black and white, as goodies versus baddies.

George Washington was fighting for the right to keep black people in chains.

Executive Outcomes ?” as enthusiastic a band of white killers as has been unleashed on Africa since King Leopold ran the Congo.

UN official, I regret to tell you, too often means corrupt and untrustworthy.

Having met Spicer, I was worried about his intentions and didn’t trust him.

A fundamental part of this new Blair doctrine was to be the ultimate privatisation ?” the privatisation of killing.

The Sandline Affair was a deeply squalid plot to corner the market in Sierra Leone’s blood diamonds.

It was the old story ?” trained white men go in, shoot up a load of Africans and gain control of key economic resources.

Sandhurst has been responsible for educating those who generated untold repression and economic ruination in Africa.

President Abacha died in bed with three hookers, from an overdose of Viagra. I quipped that it would take days to nail down the coffin lid.

The Customs and Excise team told me that the recommendation was that both Spicer and Penfold be prosecuted for breach of the embargo.

The dossier was returned to Customs and Excise from the Crown Prosecution Service the very same day it was sent. It was marked, in effect, for no further action.

The decision not to prosecute in the Sandline case was the first major instance of the corruption of the legal process that was to be the hallmark of the Blair years.

Hundreds of thousands of people have died in Iraq, including thousands of British and American soldiers, but some people have made huge amounts of money from the war.

Tim Spicer has made a fortune out of the Iraq War.

Tim Spicer has long been an advocate of shooting civilians in case they have bombs.

Butchering your live victims’ limbs with a machete is only more horrific in its immediacy than planting a car bomb or bombing an Iraqi town from the air in your invulnerable jet.

I realised that I was almost certainly the only person in that room who had never killed anybody.

Isaac was the product of the sores of Africa: he was a hardened killer, but he was also the little boy forced to kill his own mother.

Having led the way in African nationalism, Nkrumah was pioneering the forms of economic mismanagement that were to destroy the economies of the continent and bring starvation and immeasurable suffering to millions.

Those who did benefit, massively, were the dictators, their cronies, and the bonus-quaffing Porsche-driving bastards of the City of London.

Africans have destroyed their own regional trade, for the protection of corrupt private interests.

These first years of Rawlings in power unleashed political terror on Ghana which outstripped anything done by British colonial rule or by Nkrumah.

“That’s about the right number,” opined the Prince, “We have about six hundred and fifty MPs, and most of them are a complete bloody waste of time.”

There are some things that are too weird even for me, and the lower reaches of the Royal household are one of them.

Personally, I never understand why people accept honours, when there is so much more cachet in turning them down.

The United States, in what seemed to me an absurd example of political correctness, sent a delegation of blind election observers.

I was myself to encounter more electoral fraud in Blackburn than I ever did in Ghana.

In West Africa, among people who wear silk suits and are driven in Mercedes, the standards of truthfulness sadly leave in general a great deal to be desired.

Valerie Amos is the very antithesis of a democratic politician. One of the Blair inner circle, she rose to Cabinet level without ever having faced the electorate.

At launch over one third of Travant’s first equity fund came form DFID. A few months afterwards Baroness Amos, ex DFID minister, joined the board of this profit-making private equity firm.