The UN has pledged to send an international peacekeeping force to Darfur but it is being held up largely because no country has yet donated any of the 24 helicopters needed for the operation.

This petition is to ask Gordon Brown to set an example to the international community by immediately providing 5 of the helicopters required.

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Upon her return to the UK, Gillian Gibbons will be accorded celebrity status. It is scripted: there will be interviews both by tabloids and on TV, and there will inevitably be a book contract. She will enjoy her moment of fame.

And, she will follow the by now all-too-predictable multicultural meme: she will express affection for and tolerance of the savages who jerked the west around yet again, and use her pardon for the crime of “religious insensitivity” as an example of reason and negotiation over force.

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Now, Jean-Marie Guehenno, the United Nations peacekeeping chief, has said that the obstacles raised by Sudan are putting in doubt the planned deployment of a peacekeeping force for Darfur.

“Do we move ahead with the deployment of a force that will not make a difference, that will not have the capability to defend itself, and that carries the risk of humiliation of the Security Council and the United Nations, and tragic failure for the people of Darfur?” asked Guehenno.

So it seems that, once again, the UN is proving itself to be completely and utterly fucking useless. What a surprise.

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During the two-and-a-half years I lived in Sudan, expatriates were regularly targeted by the authorities.

Aid workers who provided information about human rights abuses in Darfur were often arrested or expelled as spies.

On one occasion a small private party of aid workers and peacekeepers in Darfur was violently broken up by national security and one of the women was sexually assaulted by an officer.

The story that appeared in newspapers the next day was of a Western orgy having been halted.

In view of some of the incidents reported in this article and the apparent naivety of Gillian Gibbons, I wonder, “Does the Foreign Office issue sufficiently strong warnings and adequate guidelines to those British citizens who work or intend to work in this region?”

This is what can happen when one doesn’t keep up with the latest BBC ‘updates’ to the democratic process.

“from the river to the sea” includes all of Israel, of course.

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Reading Daniel Howden’s article, one learns that, as a result of this case, the young woman’s lawyer, Saudi Arabia’s foremost human rights advocate, has been suspended and has had his passport confiscated, that the Saudi Justice Ministry has launched a deliberate “campaign of defamation” against the girl and that her own brother has reportedly tried to kill her.

As a result of her refusal to keep silent, her punishment has been doubled by the Saudi Authorities. What’s really angered them is the massive overseas publicity this case has generated. Frankly, I’m not surprised. This horrific story and the way that the Saudi authorities have dealt with this unfortunate young woman and indeed their attitude to women in general just reminds the rest of the world, if a reminder was needed, what a primitive, violent and sick country Saudi Arabia is.

If it wasn’t for the oil, what free and democratic country would want anything to do with them? The fact that we do trade so extensively with them should give us no pride whatsoever.

But by pretending that it is, aren’t the Sudanese authorities ridiculing Islam?

They must free Gillian Gibbons, now.