NORML Conference, 18–19th May in Bristol

LEAP_logoThis com­ing week­end NORML UK will be hold­ing its first AGM and nation­al con­fer­ence in Bristol.

Mr Nice, aka Howard Marks, will be open­ing the event and speak­ing on the Sat­urday night dur­ing the two-day event.

Join­ing the event to dis­cuss the need for a sens­ible and evid­ence-based rethink about drug policy will be many oth­er speak­ers from groups such as Trans­form, Stu­dents for Sens­ible Drug Policy, the Beckley Found­a­tionRelease, former Chief Con­stable of Cam­bridge­shire Tom Lloyd, and of course, Law Enforce­ment Against Pro­hib­i­tion.

The head of LEAP UK, former Met police detect­ive and forensic money-laun­der­ing expert Row­an Bos­worth-Dav­ies, will be speak­ing on Sunday19th May.

I shall be speak­ing at the con­fer­ence on the Sat­urday after­noon, and then enjoy­ing the even­ing with Howard Marks et al.  Come along if you can.

Talk at the Icelandic Centre for Investigative Journalism

Wikileaks spokes­man, Kris­tinn Hrafns­son, invited me to speak at the Iceland­ic Centre for Invest­ig­at­ive Journ­al­ism while I was in Ice­land in February.

While focus­ing on the inter­sec­tion and con­trol between intel­li­gence and the media, my talk also explores many of my oth­er cur­rent areas of interest.

Ice­land Journ­al­ists talk 2013 from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

Talks in California, September 2008

In Septem­ber I was invited over to Cali­for­nia to give two talks about intel­li­gence, whis­tleblow­ing, and 9/11 and its impact on the world.  I focused on the erosion of our tra­di­tion­al freedoms and basic civil liberties

Two meet­ings were organ­ised for me in Mar­in, San Fran­sisco, and Dav­is by the Cali­for­ni­an 9/11 move­ment.  They were great meet­ings — packed out — and the response was bril­liant.  It’s heart­en­ing that so many people care about these issues, and the adverse impact the “war on ter­ror” is hav­ing, not just on the lives of people in the Middle East wars, but also on our way of life in the West.

Two men in black, appar­ently car­ry­ing hand­cuffs, turned up at the meet­ing in Mar­in, sat at the back and spent much of the time mut­ter­ing into their mobiles dur­ing the talk.  At the end, while every­one was clap­ping, they sat with their arms crossed, glower­ing at me, and for one mad moment I thought they were going to haul me off for talk­ing in pub­lic about dan­ger­ous notions such as demo­cracy, civil rights and peace.

Any­way, thank you to all who made this pos­sible, par­tic­u­larly Gab­ri­el, Kev­in, and Byron.  And thanks also to Ken, Hum­mux and the team for film­ing the talk in Mar­in.  DVDs of the talk can be obtained here.

Here’s the talk in Marin: