Wednesday, 8 May: Morning – arrived home from N.Y. Evening to “The Century Club” where there was a panel discussion, Q & A and a video link to Julian Assange; the focus of the event was support for Bradley Manning.

I met Emma who works for the club and intends to make it a political forum and Katya and Naomi who co-ordinated the event. Human rights campaigner, Peter Tatchell, spoke. As you know, Peter is active in gay rights and gays are building support for Brad. The panel was impressive – journalist Andy Worthington, author of “The Guantanamo Files”, I was particularly interested that he helped get 25,000 people on the streets of Lewisham to protest the closure of the hospital as I’m interested in protesting the evictions of people from their homes in Clapham where I live [so the council (Lambeth) can sell the houses as part of their economic squeeze (short term madness, storing up trouble for the future)]; Ben Griffin, ex-career soldier in the British Army, who publically countered British government claims that we had no part in the torture and rendition programme in Iraq then founded Veterans for Peace UK, http://veteransforpeace.org.uk/; and Chase Madar, author of “The Passion of Bradley Manning”.

I am going to pick up later in the diary on what we discussed and Julian’s contribution as the discussions were also the subject of later events. At these meetings you meet others protesting American legal outrage and their victims, e.g. I met the brother of Talha Ansam, an innocent who was recently extradited.

At the moment I’m not doing much preparation on Gold Label (though Andreas is doing some). I’ve worked a bit on my other lines. The thing that always takes a lot of my time is dealing with requests and invitations and keeping in touch with people and keeping things moving and happening. There’s always a backlog. This applies to anyone who works in any managerial job. I would say this takes two thirds of my working life. So if in future I mark my time as ‘uneventful’ or leave gaps you will know what I mean. I’m thinking of how I can answer your emails. Maybe I can get my son Ben to do it for me – He runs the Worlds End web site. In addition I have been doing Q v Q.

Tuesday, 14 May: Olivier from France who has ‘Purple’ magazine popped in for half an hour to interview me. He is so passionately against nuclear energy and upset that it continues. I don’t know what to think – it is supposed to be the cleanest in comparison to fossil fuels; the greatest killer is carbon but there is a great body of anecdotal evidence for death from nuclear. The hope lies in solar and fusion. Dams cause untold destruction, which isn’t great; we need efficient national grids. 

Olivier left for N.Y. His travel bag was so small – not much bigger than a wash bag. He doesn’t need clothes, just underwear because he’s always in black leather – like Joe Rush. When Joe washes his shirt he’s bare-chested under his leather jacket. And me – in this usually cold and changing weather chaos I wear every day my lederhosen.

Wednesday 15 May: Photo by Rankin for Marie Claire and interview. This is for a green issue so that’s why I agreed. I don’t do interviews on just fashion. However for a time I’m going to stop all photos and interviews because I have some projects outstanding for quite some time, like fundraising for ‘Cool Earth.’

Rankin’s studio is very busy – of course it’s the headquarters of the magazine ‘Dazed and Confused’. Lovely breakfast, then lovely lunch; lots – help yourself. I was worried it would get wasted. No, it’s never wasted, they cook for 50 people each day.

Then on to Andy Gotts (same outfit means I only have to prepare once). Andy’s well known for his portraits of film stars. He does charity work. He is doing a book -proceeds to Elton John’s charity – on fashion people and pop stars. In the quiet of a suite in the St.James Hotel there is just him; comfortable, no fuss, no assistant; he uses the same lighting always. Hence his popularity, “People don’t like having their photos taken, I make it simple.” It was a pleasure to have him take my photo. He offered his service to me for any charity work.

I had time to walk over to the National Gallery for an hour. I had a cup of tea then looked at Henri Rousseau and bought a good little book on him. Then got the bus home.

Thursday 16 May: I went to LSE in the early evening to hear James Hanson speak. He is the most well respected scientist in the world. He told his story.

He is the fifth of seven children of itinerant farmers. It was good business, they took a share of the profits; easy to make money in those days, (the 50’s) He went to university then, then to NASA.

By applying his studies of Venus to Earth he discovered the dangerous rate of global warming in relation to CO2 emissions. In the 70’s he spoke out and was attacked by the scientific and political authorities. He wasn’t good at dealing with this so he stepped back from debate and continued his work for 15 years. He has four grandchildren and when Sophie the eldest, now 12, was born he stepped back into the public arena to testify his findings.

He told the story through family photos. One day when the world was destroyed his grandchildren would ask, “Why didn’t grandfather try to do something?”

In one photo Sophie showed him a letter to Obama which she knew he would like because she had written, “Why don’t you listen to my grandfather?” He showed photos of the monarch butterfly which migrates from one mountain top in Mexico to his home in California, where they flock to the milkweed bushes his family plants for them; he made the point that if Earth gets hotter they will have to plant higher up his home mountain until they reach the top.

James’ idea is carbon price. It’s a very simple idea: fossil fuel companies would pay a pollution tax at source before fuel enters the market. This tax would be passed on to the customer, who would realize the effect, e.g. when a gallon of petrol cost $1 more. However, all the tax collected would be paid direct to the citizen. Each US citizen would receive $3,000 per annum paid into their bank account in monthly instalments; children would receive $1,500 so a family with two kids would receive £9,000. People who had no car or green car would make a profit. The tax would increase each year. This scheme would put money into circulation and stimulate the green economy. Governments are interested. James was on his way to testify to the EU. He had another idea: to prosecute the U.S. government.

Amongst the questions James was asked was, “How do we get more people engaged in activism?” He didn’t know, he said, “Bill McKibben got 35,000 people on the streets recently in Washington to protest the pipe line from the tar sands. It wasn’t “enough.” (The pipeline has been temporarily stopped. James was amongst the people arrested).

 Wednesday 22May: Until now nothing eventful except (it blew me away as usual) a concert at the Barbican to mark conductor Gergiev’s 60^th birthday. Gergiev is artistic director of the Mariinsky Theatre, St Petersburg, home of the legendary Kirov ballet. His genius and inspired leadership have ramified, via events and festivals, into ever-increasing cultural prestige – national and global. Amongst his world-wide activities he is Principal Conductor of the LSO (London Symphony Orchestra, home – the Barbican). Russia has already rewarded him with a new concert hall and now and now in 2013 a new Mariinsky Opera house. I hear he is a pal of Putin – he must be – and although I have very much enjoyed meeting him once or twice I haven’t broached the topic of politics but I would like to –  so I will if I get the chance. Don’t forget concert tickets start at £10.00. Great value, great acoustics/ no tricks – just people power and centuries of skill.

Friday 24 May: A special treat to mark the honour of having a tulip named after me: tea at the Dutch Embassy; I should invite 30 guests. Tizer was clever – why didn’t I invite our couture customers, those who were around? And our pattern cutters and sewers.

The Ambassador’s speech touched me. She felt that I appreciated the importance to culture of Dutch painting and spoke of this often and that my fight for the environment, along with true human values is share by the best that is Dutch.

Ligthart Bloembollen the man who invented the tulip presented me with a bunch. It takes 25 years. The tulips are a fiery, burnt orange with yellow lights inside and purple lights outside; their petals are framed with a tough little fringe. I love them.

I spoke on the importance of culture. If people only bought beautiful things that would be Climate Revolution. I enjoyed meeting and being with everyone and pianist Nelly Akopian- Tamarina who looked so chic in our dress of black Cluny lace framed with a navy Cluny lace which also bordered its diagonal cut, played a little piece of Chopin.

Yes, I am a fan of 17^th century Dutch painting. There is no progress in art and this is the place to start if you wish to love art. Its small format and original and intimate subject matter is intended to hang in houses with smaller rooms. Starting from here you can go forward and back in time to know painting but if you start at, say – the Impressionists, you might go on in time, to Picasso but after that there are only birthday cards. You might get stuck there and never discover the past.

Saturday, 25/Sunday 26 May: We drove to the country with our friend, Robert. He has a workshop near to Tunbridge Wells in a part of Kent amongst the Weald which he thinks is the most luscious country landscape in Britain. He used to be a tree surgeon. He can build anything – furniture, wood sculpture, sets – for clubs, for our catwalk shows: he built a forest on the 3rd floor in Harrods. Robert told us we could stay with Megan who rents a lodge in the deer park of an estate belonging to a family descended from the Nevilles (It must be the family who fought in the War of the Roses). We travelled down with Rema. She had lived in Ibiza and had travelled in India; she lives in Hastings and wants to move back to London. I know her father, Craig: there was a period when my children were very young that I did not work but lived on Malcolm’s student grant and my precious family allowance – I was studying to go to university but my plans changed when I borrowed £100 from my mother and Malcolm and I opened ‘Let it Rock’ in the back half of a shop which is now called ‘World’s End’. For a few years, our diet was macrobiotic and I bought brown rice etc. from Craig’s shop in the Portobello Road – there were very few wholefood shops then. Craig headed the Soil Association for many years. Rema told me that she knows a family in Spain who have been living on sunshine and water for seven years (photosynthesis?). The two year old child does not eat, though her mother breast fed her. Someone gave her a mango but she just played with it.

May is the crown of the year and because nature is late this year we were in perfect time: everything in leaf and in blossom, bursting – steaming and swaying into the big blue sky. Highlights:
A visit to the cottage of the mothman. By complete coincidence he is the father of Emma who hosts the Century Club where I went for the activists meeting for Bradley Manning. This private collection of moths is an important one. He is a third generation of moth specialists, instead of collecting them he traps moths, records them and sets them free. He was an important spy during World War II. He is descended from Nelson.

Megan happens to be a friend of Julian Assange and among her guests for dinner were some of the activists for Bradley whom I’d met, including Emma and her young daughter,who live nearby commutes to London each day. She had made a delicious Thai curry – I had it again at breakfast. It was kind of Megan to invite me. Megan does acupuncture and she works on better treatment of farm animals. She did the fire walk.

The full moon, big and low.

Late morning visit to the house of the Neville’s estate and its gorgeous garden: a stunning old cedar and a giant oak standing squat on a mound heaving up its too many arms like a basket till its fingers scratched the sky. And the lawn leading down to a view of May in all its green glory, rolling in a ring of hills, while Andreas and I entered the warmth of the grass paths walled by bushes of every kind and many in flower, especially the fiery azaleas.

Sunday, 30 June: I’ve been too busy to finish the diary until now. I have had several speaking engagements which focussed on Climate Revolution one of them in Cannes (crowded and noisy but we met young Brandon there, Pamela’s son who was working on Lion International festival).

Prior to my stay in Cannes Andreas and I stayed 2 days with his uncle Cristel and Otmar who have a house on the neighbouring hillside leading up from Nice to St. Paul. They are a really glamorous couple and I so much enjoy their company.

St. Paul is famous because so many artists stayed there e.g. Matisse. We visited the Fondation Maeght – modern art. Half the garden sculpture was by Miro who is 90% bore (one wall fountain was good) I liked a painting by Braque. I find cubism uninteresting and I had never looked at him. This painting was less formulaic and quite beautiful. Braque had also contributed a stained glass window to the restrained décor (by artists) of a tiny chapel. The wooden crucifixion was donated by Balenciaga. I have never experienced something so complete; austere, sublime, it made the soul quiet. St. Paul itself is full of derivative art reproductions for tourists and the other shops all sell the same stuff, same clothes, same gew-gaws as every place on earth. Didn’t find any real French restaurants – just generic chi-chi, tasting banal.

I took part in a discussion about Human Rights with Clive Stafford Smith of Reprieve (he got more than 300 people off death row), after a performance of a play by the Belarus Company at the Young Vic. Belarus still has the death penalty.

On Thursday the 20th we shot our publicity campaign with photographer Jack Pearson and on Sunday we did our MAN catwalk show in Milan.
So now I’m going to deal with only the most important things I’ve been doing and thinking about Climate Revolution.

I’m talking about events that have helped me see more clearly what is happening in the world and what we can do about it. These events are: the Bradley Manning demonstration; what I learnt from Julian Assange in an interview I did with him for Yoko Ono’s Meltdown Festival at the SouthBank; the information released by whistle-blower Edward Snowden which we heard about in early June; also the fact of reading about events in India (Arundati Roy: Broken Republic).

PARTI

PARTII
I went to the Bradley Manning demonstration on June 1^st. You remember our plan to ask NGO’s to go on each other’s demonstrations because everything is connected under the banner of Climate Revolution. Well, we phoned around and emailed but I didn’t see anyone I knew from amongst the NGO’s.

Our company did very well – there were 34 of us and I hope they learnt a lot and enjoyed themselves (we are all getting together for a  a chat, you are also invited). There were 300-400 people there, but I think nearer to 300. I was shocked – I thought there would be at least a couple of thousand – some of our colleagues had even asked if they might be attacked by the police!

A young man who reads this Diary came down specially for the day from Manchester. Please contact me through the Blog – I can’t remember your name! It was a fantastic event with great speakers and singers of protest. Wonderful people. We really care about Bradley Manning and we care about the poor people who were shot down by soldiers who treat killing people as a game.

The most important thing we learnt is the case the prosecution intend to push for: Bradley has admitted leaking information on war crimes; he will not be allowed to submit his motives or claim that no one has been harmed or bring witnesses to prove it. People say the court will give him 20 years. But the prosecution wants more than that; they say: if a whistle-blower gives information to any media outlet and the outlet publishes, then that information is in the public domain and the public includes terrorists, therefore the whistle-blower has helped the enemy. This is a capital offence and they will ask for life imprisonment without parole.

This is crazy because it means that the media must self-censor and they will only be safe when they publish what the government tells them. Most importantly, it reveals the logic of our rulers: The Public is the Enemy.

We have since received a letter from Lindi who organized the demonstration, updating us with the progress of the trial. Here is the letter:

Thank you, Cynthia – 

So lovely to see you all there, and thank you for all that tweeting and promoting! (still don’t know which person you are, tho!)
I didn’t get your email till I got back because I left here early on Friday and didn’t have internet access after that. I’m a bit of a technophobe dodo really so don’t have eg access by phone… 

Don’t know how much you are going to be able to follow the case, but things are going well in court atm – the prosecution’s attempts to prove the ‘aiding the enemy’ charge + the ‘conspiracy’ element (which they want to establish to help them go after Julian) are not working out very well for them….the testimony from their own witnesses is not proving supportive of this. Partly because there is no evidence (and it’s a load of rubbish anyway!), and partly because David Coombs really is a very good lawyer.  There’s several months to go yet, of course….however, it’s a great start! Especially as these are prosecution witnesses. 

And their attempts to suggest that Bradley was focused on gathering information for WikiLeaks and not concentrating on his work have just met something of a dead end as prosecution witnesses (up his chain of command) have testified that though Bradley was a junior analyst, he was far more organized and ‘providing more info to shared drive than more experienced analysts’, and his direct supervisor has just testified that he gave ‘excellent’ work product. 

Bless his heart! 

Lindi

Xxxxxx 

I am so delighted that despite the prosecution’s long preparations, threatening and stacking up witnesses against Bradley, that the witnesses, instead of being intimidated and contrary to expectations, told the truth.

After the demonstration some of us went to a café where we discussed reasons why we in the privileged part of the world don’t get out on the streets like we used to. Some cite the anti-Iraq demonstration when two million people (official figure one million) massed in Hyde Park – but the British government ignored them and declared war on Iraq straight away, so now people think demonstrations aren’t effective. For sure it matters how directly you are affected, for example during the Vietnam War, which led to the hippie movement. There was conscription in the US; It could be you or your son that got killed. I heard that today there is only one American politician who has a soldier son. Let’s hope that climate Revolution’s idea of building protest by all the NGO’s joining in each other’s demonstrations and getting through to the public the idea that everything is connected; Affecting the public directly – through their pockets – because “What’s good for the planet is good for the economy.” All the amazing NGO’s could achieve massive results, e.g. if James Hansen gets his carbon price adopted it could make literally a world of difference. But let’s remember – our rulers never want what’s good for the people and they don’t want what’s good for the economy; they like the economy we’ve got which creates poverty and and takes off all the profits for a few.

N.B. Richard Branson, Jochen Zeitz and Arianna Huffington have just announced the ‘B Team’.  They have a plan B capitalist system which will be good for people, not only for the corporations.

Wow, that’s a lot to digest in one go. Sorry.

When I did the interview with Julian Assange, I asked him: The petitions people sign on the internet (Avaaz, etc.), how important are they? It’s easy for people to click on a button but how committed are they? These petitions can be effective. How important are they in comparisons to public demonstrations.

Julian was very clear. I asked him to speak from his own experience: When “Time” magazine conducted a readers’ poll for Person of the Year 2010, Julian won twice as many votes as the person who came second – you can check the vote here because it’s done online.
“Time” rejected the vote and decided on one of the other candidates as winner; in their Person of the Year poll 2012 the Guardian heavily promoted the case of Malala Yousafzai, the girl who was shot by the Taliban but Bradley Manning won overwhelmingly. The Guardian delayed then published the result discreetly on an inside page.

The point Julian was making is that there is mass support for people and for policies which the official media ignores and that social media is a more accurate consensus – ‘Body Politic’ he calls it – of opinion. Due to Wikileaks and other online outlets people can now see the difference between the misrepresentation by the official media and the truth of what really happens.

This new Body Politic already gives power to the people (perhaps it gave power to the witnesses who refused to be intimidated by prosecutors or Bradley Manning) and it must affect our rulers.

The necessary thing is to work out a structure for this new Body Politic (a cabinet of respected people we could vote for, a new government that could be truly democratic) The internet offers us a new franchise, a true Body politic.

So physical assembly in public demonstrations is a driver and a back up of  peoples real opinion on the internet. It is the aim of Climate Revolution to build that Public Assembly.

Julian next made me aware of a tremendously important fact. My way to explain it is: when President Eisenhower warned politicians to beware the ‘military- industrial complex’ he saw that the economy was being driven by the vast profits which tied these two interests so intricately together.

However the politicians backed it completely. The resulting ‘political–military-industrial’ complex became so emeshed that no-one could have separated it out. It has a life of it’s own and Julian says it is now growing like a cancer e.g. more tax is being allocated to it and away from social needs – health, education etc. and Petraeus who was general in Afghanistan became head of the CIA – it’s the same job.

Now we come to the importance of the whistle-blower Edward Snowden. We heard about his leaks around 15 June and I agree that this information is probably the most important that has ever been leaked – because it affects everybody and we have already discussed that people only face up to a threat when it affects them directly: It makes clear that to our rulers the public is the enemy. The privacy of all people has now been invaded. This is bad for society; people will self-censor and be scared to speak freely, express themselves or criticise in case they are discriminated against.

What about Orwell’s ‘1984’? – ‘Big Brother is watching you?’ That book is about power for the sake of power. Is this the logic of our rulers? Is this our world? Is the idea of unlimited profit in a finite world just a measuring device for the real motive?
Certainly our rulers are bent on destroying everything good in the world – at the root of this power is HATE.
The 4th point is embedded in the press release of my recent MAN show which was inspired by India and Bradley Manning.

Everything is Connected / Climate Revolution!

____________________________________________________

I wanted a soft more feminine feel to the clothes, more ease to the fit.

Andreas and the team took their inspiration from India. And of course the first great impression is the Indian Rajas with their heavy-lidded almond eyes and their perfumed beards, their turbans and covered in a wealth of jewels- no human creatures have ever been so wealthy.

But we passed on because I don’t have direct experience of India. I have only my romantic impressions and our inspiration comes from museums and photographs: Hindu gods and dancing and colour and flowers and spices and tigers and the jungle and the Gangees, temples and sari’s worn by the most elegant women, beauty and grace­- and the Indian children I have met in England are lively and intelligent- a huge population, the cast system. Nothing changed after the British left in 1950. The new rulers exploited the country and its people like the old colonials.

We knew we had to have colour but we began with whites, white that shines in the sun and white that looks dusty, cream and black with texture and pattern and mixed with indigo. Then checks and prints, then some colour and colour degrade. I think the overall colour effect belongs in the light of the sun.

Does sunshine disguise poverty to the English outsider.

A few motifs from Persia or Morocco crept in. There is a feeling of being in an oriental garden.

In a recent essay Noam Chomsky summed up what’s happening in the world: the rich are racing as fast as they can to destroy the world, the poor are fighting to stop them.

India is the most extreme example of this. The government is selling the country’s mineral rights to corporations and consortiums.

(these huge profits by the corporations can pay for corruption)

When the land is ruined the people have nowhere to go. Maoist organization fights the evictions and when people have nowhere to go they are considered Maoists, many do join the Maoists in the forests: young people, victims of atrocity, girls and boys join them. The police steal everything they can, rape, burn; they are paid to kill. The government is increasing the police force. They are purposely creating war. Why? Because they want the people off the land. Why? Because most of the minerals the government is selling are still in the ground.

 Photo’s and comments come from Arundhati Roy’s book ‘Broken Republic’. This excerpt reveals the cost to the poor of the need for a dam to provide water for the mine.

‘The Boghghat Dam will submerge the entire area that we have been walking in for days. All that forest, that history, those stories. More than a hundred villages. Is that the plan then? To drown people like rats, so that the integrated steel plant in Lohandiguda and the bauxite mine and aluminium refinery in the Keshkal Ghats can have the river? Who will stop the Indravati (river) from being stolen? Someone must.’

Why is Bradley Manning featured in a collection about India? (no turbans but military berets) Well I always highjack my collections to talk politics and Bradley is there because everything is connected.

The depredation in India is caused by the global political financial war machine (political-military-industrial-complex). Bradley stood in the path of this great juggernaut. He told the TRUTH by exposing war crimes and documents which revealed that the purpose of our wars is perpetual war for the purpose of total plunder.

Maoists in the forest