I am awake at this unholy hour because I am about to start the tortuous Sunday rail journey between Ramsgate and Diss, in order to attend Julian Assange’s fortieth birthday party at Ellingham Hall.
I am not sure who else is going, but the initial invitation did not give train information, but did tell you where to land your private plane or helicopter. I am going because I think Wikileaks do essential work and because I think Julian is an extraordinary mand and is being stitched up – his appeal against extradition is on Tuesday and this week he could be in a cell in Sweden on those entirely ludicrous sexual assault charges. I am also gong because I hope that some of the whistleblowing community might be there. And I am going because it says “party”!
Nonetheless, I worry that the amusing fact that the invitation tells you where to land your private jet or helicopter, actually is an indication of where Wikilleaks is going wrong.
That is perhaps strange for me to say of a thriving organisation with funds and staff, who have exposed much more of government wrongdoing than I ever managed. But I could not understand why Julian was using the celebrity media lawyer Stephens rather than one of our great, solid human rights lawyers. I emailed wikileaks several times before the trial to say they had absolutely the wrong kind of lawyer, and that there were several much more appropriate human rights lawyers used to dealing with politically motivated criminal charges, with a terrific record and respect in the courts, and who may well take it on pro bono. I got no reply. I presumed that this was because Wikileaks were being loyal to lawyers who believed in them, had been their lawyers before criminal charges arose, and who worked for them for nothing. But I now read that Assange has unpaid legal bills of £200,000. I think that Don King haired lawyer bloke who yelled a lot was a major mistake.
I also worry that they managed to fall out with David Leigh of the Guardian, for whom I have huge respect (which he has made plain to me is not mutual, but that is another story). I was myself very offended indeed when I was kicked off the panel of Assange’s New Statesman debate on whistleblowing. I suspect it was a combination of establishment objections, and a desire to curry favour with the New Statesman and Al Jazeera, for both of whom I made room. But the whole Stephens/Al Jazeera/stately home/celebrities in private jets thing indicates to me a fascination with the bubble celebrity which will leave you crying when it bursts.
I am one of Assange’s admirers, not one of his detractors. I am going along to show my genuine support. There may in fact be a good turnout, because this is probably the best chance this weekend for the radical chic wealthy to get together and thrill over the wounds of Murdoch. There is an auction of donations to raise funds for his legal expenses, which I hope goes well – personal bids will establish a reserve price, and then the items will go on to ebay. I do hope that goes well too. And I hope when Assange’s celebrity dies down, those helicopter riders will still support him.
I just doubt it.
Maybe Julian can recover some monies by setting up a franchise selling ‘celebrity double-strength condoms’?
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“Wiki-not-leaks”
Craig
You should have arranged for John to pick you up from the station and take you. He loves a good party. Enjoy yourself and be interested to hear who was there..
A useful summary of how, when it shows signs of becoming seriously effective, dissent is dealt with by the Establishment.
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In spite of hosting a Cablegate mirror, I am somewhat ambivalent about Assange; but I have MAJOR problems with what Wikileaks proper has become. You only have to scan Wikileaks Central’s coverage of Libya to see that it is now part and parcel of the gamut of organisations and methodologies used to co-opt and neutralise effective dissent from the Left.
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Agreed, Assange himself IS being stitched up; but Wikileaks in turn has itself become part and parcel of Frank Wisner’s “Mighty Wurlitzer”
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Plus ca change
Ah, just as well there’s a landing-strip. Now I can direct my pilot on precisely where to park my Lear. Oh, but wait, I’d better remove the orange jumpsuits from the cupboards, the bolts and chains from the floor…
This could be the party from Hell. Don’t forget to take lots of Buckfast.
At last. The opportunity to confront the guilty men: to seek face-to-face explanation as to why you were suddenly disinvited from the (shamelessly self-promotional) New Statesman/Frontline ‘Whistleblower’ Fest at Kensington Town Hall earlier this year.
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First to tackle, I suggest, is the repellant upwardly-mobile NS editor Jason Cowley, who chaired the farrago in the most cack-handed, almost embarrassing, fashion.
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Feel sure I’m by no means the only one of your fans eager to learn of Cowley’s response. I repeatedly sought explanation at the time from the Frontline Club, whose gopher seems to have done most of the phoning round; didn’t even get the courtesy of a summary reply. So much for Frontline’s commitment to openness. Not been to one of their events since.
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Brother Julian is lucky to have found a refuge whose owner has deep pockets. Vaughan Smith’s first priority, however, is to promote his club & restaurant in Paddington. It is not, as his non-response to protests over your still-unexplained disinvitation sadly demonstrates, a commitment to freedom of information. Nor is it a commitment to the ultimate well-being of Assange. VS is politically naive rather than malign. JA needs to bear in mind that his host first entered photojournalism as a direct consequence of his being an officer in the Grenadier Guards. Lack of caution when accepting a Swedish accommodation offer is what landed Assange in this imbroglio in the first place.
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Has Vaughan Smith at no point received an invitation for a discreet spot of lunch and a chinwag at the Travellers Club? If not, Her Majesty’s spookocracy would be failing, I suggest, in its perceived duty to the taxpayer. Due caution and, above all, what happened to JA in Sweden, requires that he should have politely checked this point with his generous host. Has he?
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As for the early instruction of Buzzfuzz Stevens, veteran of the media rep company, it caused me astonishment when announced. At last he’s been replaced, after far too long, by the wonderful Gareth Pearce. I still imagine the inappropriate choice of Stevens was the consequence of an ill though-out knee-jerk response from JA’s then minder & adviser Gavin MacFadyen, who’ll also be there today.
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Might I invoke the Wikipedia motto? Be bold!
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One of the best opportunities in yonks to exercise your finest diplomatic skills.
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A useful summary of how, when it shows signs of becoming seriously effective, dissent is dealt with by the Establishment.
3rd attempt to post this. I’ve removed one link this time to see if inclusion of more than one external link is the reason for appearing to have become persona non grata.
In spite of hosting a Cablegate mirror, I am somewhat ambivalent about Assange and have major problems with what Wikileaks proper has become. You only have to scan Wikileaks Central’s to see that it is now part and parcel of the gamut of organisations and methodologies used to co-opt and neutralise effective dissent from the Left.
Agreed, Assange himself IS being stitched up; but Wikileaks in turn has itself become part and parcel of Frank Wisner’s “Mighty Wurlitzer”
Plus ca change
Bingo.
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Include more than one external link and your comment is blocked in spite of it incrementing the comment count.BTW – The 1st and 2nd paras of above comment should appear in reverse order.
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[Mod: sorry, just found your other two comments in the moderation queue. Remove the aich tee tee pee colon slash slash to make a non-clickable link that doesn’t get queued]
Sorry about this. That link issue really screwed things up.
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The Wikileaks Central reference was to their recent Libyan coverage – though there is a lot of other evidence too. This was the link, which may be allowed now as the rule appears to be one per post:
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coverage of Libya
Just checked. Final edition of the Hackers’ & Bribers’ Gazette unaccountably fails to include a free sick bag.
Glad you are standing by him Craig? Does John Pilger still support him? That would be my test.
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Will Jemima Khan be there? She is said to be the half sister of Princess Diana after James Goldmith and her mother Frances Shand Kydd had an affair. Zac Goldsmith would then be her half brother. There is a likeness.
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I suffered from that Wikispooks on the previous post. I think there are four or five that are ‘awaiting moderation’. Probably not important now but off putting nevertheless. If you write something it is necessary to give a link to confirm. One was about the close friendship of Blair and Brooks and their dinner engagements etc.
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Craig mentions Al Jazeera. Suspect now because of unconfirmed reports of funding from a rich Egyptian Jew who supports Israel and Netanyahu. http://trueslant.com/nealungerleider/2009/10/08/al-jazeeras-new-owner-an-american-jew/
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Finer Stephens (Mark Stephens) intimidated a friend who is a supporter of Palestine although the writ was not issued ultimately.
Mary,
The advice seems to be for more than one link leave out the {http://} or use {curley brackets} around subsequent links.
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Craig’s post is indicative that a money driven society corrupts even the best of us. Changing that is a century away but lately I believe the ‘Mighty Wurlitzer’ is losing some of its chords, a good sign for the future.
Jonangus,
Yes, I precisely advised them – eight months ago – that hey had the wrong lawyers and must get Gareth Peirce. I also advised them, before the first rejected bail hearing and Julian’s spell in Wandsworth, that it was essential for the bail application to have a “normal” address and offered him to stay in Ramsgate.
Weirdly enough, I did a strange christian channel chat show appearance with Zac Goldsmith and rather liked him. All of us are shaped by the accident of birth; but he’s a basically decent person underneath. I expect the same is true of Jemima.
Indeed. May of those who are secure in their power are decent people – just as many as exist within the general population. The point, surely, is not their personal decency (or otherwise), but the structures which allow power and wealth to be amassed to an obscene degree and the wars and other forms of systemic oppression that are both instrument and outcome of that acquisitory process.
To be fair, though, Craig, I have heard that Jemima, too is a very decent person. Mary, I hadn’t heard that rumour before! Hmn. There is a certain resemblance. Any links? I’ve just spent around 8 hours across two days watching Henry VI, Parts I and II and Richard III, performed outdoors, for free, in Glasgow’s Botanic Gardens – fabulous!! They kept saying things like (I paraphrase), “Thou excrescence of vile bastardy spawned!”. Among the aristocracy, nothing changes.
@Craig: re; Ramsgate:
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On both sides of the Atlantic, a former sword-bearer is infinitely preferable to a loose cannon.
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Not that I’m for a moment suggesting anything sinister in JA’s initial choice of refuge. It was, via Gavin MacFadyen, the logical one.
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Just that the reliability of the no doubt well-intended Vaughan Smith, if subjected to covert pressure from above, should have been, as far as poss, checked from the start. I doubt very much that this has happened.
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An added irony, as relevant watchers must have been quick to spot: the Frontline Club itself is just handy walking distance, should the need have arisen, from Britain’s most secure police station.
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Hi Craig, thanks for your writing. Always informational and interesting to read. With your experience I’m sure you don’t take much at face value but be careful when dealing with JA. To me, looking at the whole WL situation, JA and everything else going around in the world in terms of information warfare and perception management run by overbudgeted intelligence conglomerates, it looks like he is an operative himself.
Oh yes, the lawyer situation. Well there could be other reasons for the choice of lawyer. One is that this particular lawyer was already directly or indirectly connected to the network of the WL operation since its beginning.
@Sunflower: I appreciate, as they say, where you may be coming from. ‘It looks like he may be an operative himself.’
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In the politest possible way: bollocks.
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Meanwhile, today’s real front page:
http://www.ou1.com/53
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Sunflower,
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I admire your caution, you have the same apprehension as I did, some or many months ago. I started digging and I know some will accuse me of name dropping, yet it was only after talking to Annie Machon I realised that JA heads up the intelligence agency of the people.
“In the politest possible way: bollocks.” Jonangus Mackay
Now that was worthy of a line from Richard III (!)
I did just that Mark and still got the ‘awaiting moderation’ messages.
I was not casting nasturtiums on the Goldsmiths btw. Don’t know them or anything about them though the father was a ruthless type in his business dealings wasn’t he? Tina Brown (Harold Evans’ wife) started the talk on the Goldsmiths’ relationships. If you google ‘diana jemima zac’ several links come up, some on rather scurrilous looking sites but the photographic comparisons are interesting.
Jemima Khan tweeted something about Kate’s hips being of the non-childbearing type which was very catty. She, her mother, Blair and Rosa Monckton were notable non-invitees to the Royal Wedding even though Rosa Monckton, wife of Dominic Lawson, was Diana’s best friend.
Suhayl. Outdoor Shakespeare in Surrey costs between £14 and £18.50! http://www.ents24.com/web/event/The-Merchant-of-Venice-Guildford-College-of-Law-2464059.html?date=1310684400
@Jonangus 🙂
@Mark ” … I realised that JA heads up the intelligence agency of the people.”
Yes, this would be the marketing strategy if this an intel operation. The key to such operation is to build trust. Not with the establishment but with those the criticise the same, i.e. the potential whistleblowers. Then depending on your specific plan and objectives you go about creating that trust. The whole charade that went on in Stockholm looks in the rear mirror (and actually when it happened as well) as staged theatre. The only _real_ outcome of the affair that went global in minutes, is that JA was established as the “Intelligence agency of the people”
Now, that’s a position you would want to be in if you are a real spook.
Thanks for Annie Machon’s name. I just had time to briefly look at her site. I’m curious to see what she writes about the 7/7 London blackop.
Ah! Well, the ‘Bard in the Botanics’ series that’s on right now consists of plays under cover of tented walls-and-roof, for which one has to pay similar amounts as in Surrey, and plays outdoors, which are free. The latter are performed by undergraduate and postgraduate (so some really skilled actors, esp. in the latter group) students from the RSAMD (Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama) and the standard is really high. We got front-row seats, so right up against the invisible ‘fourth wall’ in a grassy dell, we were sitting a foot away from the foot of Edward IV and were within touching distance of Richard III’s hump and within (literally) spitting distance of Margaret of Anjou. I’ve always thought that a lot of aristo/ haute bourgeois English girls/young women look a little like Jemima, it’s an almost archetypal facies, you know?
Craig: have nothing to do with these people. For all you know, what they are releasing is simply chaff seeded with lies any revelation that they may give is part of what Nixon called the process of ‘limited hangout’, admit to a lesser offence in order to get away with a greater one.
As for Vaughan, isn’t he just some establishment creep?
Well said Craig, this is the stictch up of the century in the making and Bradley Mannig, as well as Julian are the scapegoats.
As always I’m offering my scout/bodyguard skills, should you want to pass by on the way for a quick cuppa. From Diss to Ditchingham is more ardous than from Norwich to Ditchingham, the number 388 Anglian Buses from Norwich Busstation will get you there,you get out on Ellingham corner and hang a left past the pub and onwards you can’t miss it. Anglian also operate a Diss to Bungay to Beccles 580 service which skirts past his Ellingham abode, it runs on a sunday.
Enjoy your time and relay my best wishes, he is welcome here and you can give him my address. should he feel like an afternoon off it all.
Oh yeah, I see what you mean about disreputable sites, Mary; they’re unhealthily obsessed with the ‘Jewish’ thing. Nonetheless, the photographic resemblances are quite striking. And, taking these websites at face value (just for a moment) but turning their modus operandum around to the positive, let’s extrapolate and say that in this scenario, Diana, by their account a sort of honorary Jewess, was possibly on the point of marrying a Muslim Arab (having also been close to a Muslim Pakistani). Now would that not have been truly magnificent, especially in our profoundly silly world of assorted dualistic lunacies? Whatever Diana’s own provenance, given her position as mother and guardian of a future king (and his second-in-line), one senses that such likely serious liaisons deeply troubled those who hold power in this country and who are, in essence, remain an emanation of empire. How deeply, we may not know until close to one hundred years have elapsed, precisely how deeply, we may never know.
@Mary:
John Pilger’s support for JA is rock-solid, & likely to remain so into the foreseeable future.
Craig,
I did a case with Assange’s lawyer on the London side leading into the Privy Council.
I am now in the European Court of Human Rights, on my own, for the client.
When the case is over – I just might write about the machinations of the justice system.
Don’t totally disagree with your assessment – don’t totally agree either.
Cheers.