They say that when Wall Street sneezes, Europe catches a cold. But it seems that when London puts a freeze on facts, the chill can spread just as well the other way.
What I'm about to tell you was censored in Britain until yesterday night because of a "super-injunction" won for the oil-trading company Trafigura by the famously aggressive media law firm Carter-Ruck. Super-injunctions, for those unfamiliar with Britain's baroque libel and media law, are gagging orders which cannot themselves be mentioned, thus allowing corporations and oligarchs to carry on their business untainted by public suspicion. They have become increasingly popular with both British and foreign litigants who have something to hide--and with lawyers who make fortunes squeezing foreign libel cases into the British courts. Such is the chilling effect of these dubious legal instruments that even The Nation, First Amendment champion par excellence, felt obliged to hold an earlier version of this post for two and a half days while its lawyers considered the risks of publication. It's only because Trafigura has lifted the injunction in Britain after an outcry on the internet, in the press and in the House of Commons that you are reading this now.
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