I’m thinking about mortality today, with the passing of one of my oldest friends, Nick Parsons, who has died aged 54. At New College, Oxford University, in 1982, it was Nick who introduced me to musicians who had a profound effect on me — Neil Young, Van Morrison, and, in particular, Bob Dylan, whose influence has been enduring. We used to listen to music in his room in the college during our first year (in the so-called ‘New Buildings’ — they weren’t very new, but nor was the college, which was founded in 1379) and by the ‘Bridge of Sighs’ on New College Lane, where Nick’s room was in our second year.

It was also Nick who, one day in June 1983, insisted that he and I and other friends (Rupert and Hugo, you know who you are) get in Rupert’s car and drive down to Stonehenge for the Stonehenge Free Festival, an eye-opening, psychedelic, anarchic jamboree that led, eventually, to me writing my first and second books on Stonehenge and the counter-culture, which, in turn, led to me writing a third book, about Guantánamo, and devoting the last 11 years of my life to getting the prison closed down.

That first visit was wonderful, on a personal level, like our own “summer of love,” and in terms of seeing how an alternative to mainstream society could actually exist. We returned again, in 1984, for what was to be the last festival, before its violent suppression in 1985 at the Battle of the Beanfield, but by then it was clear that, in what was one of the darkest years of Margaret Thatcher’s horrible rule, any coherent belief in a brighter future was unravelling under duress, and, sadly, also under self-inflicted wounds. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Wednesday (February 19), I was delighted to travel from London to Oxford to attend the presentation of the Sam Adams Associates Award for Integrity in Intelligence to Chelsea Manning — or rather, to Chelsea’s old school friend Aaron Kirkhouse, who received the award on Manning’s behalf. Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley Manning) was, of course, given a 35-year sentence in August for the largest ever leak of classified documents, including the “Collateral Murder” video, featuring US personnel indiscriminately killing civilians and two Reuters reporters in Iraq, 500,000 army reports (the Afghan War logs and the Iraq War logs), 250,000 US diplomatic cables, and the Guantánamo files, released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, on which I worked as a media partner.

I had been invited by Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst and prominent peace activist, who I met for the first time in Berkeley, California in October 2010, as part of Berkeley Says No to Torture Week, and by Todd Pierce, a recently retired military defense attorney, who worked on a number of Guantánamo cases involving men facing military commissions trials, and who has been a friend for many years. Also speaking at the event for Chelsea Manning were Ann Wright, former US Army colonel and former State Department official, who was one of only three US officials to resign over the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and who I had also met in Berkeley in 2010, and two people I had not met before — the former British ambassador Craig Murray, and MI5 whistleblower Annie Machon.

It was a powerful event, presided over by Ray, who made us all feel at home in the Oxford Union, and introduced the various speakers prior to the presentation of the award to Aaron Kirkhouse on Chelsea’s behalf. Read the rest of this entry »