WikiLeaks a besoin d'argent, vite.

Cet article de Guy Adams envoyé depuis Los Angeles  pour The Independent, montre à quelles expédients doit se résoudre une organisation qui ne structure pas son fundraising à temps.



Can the cult of Assange save cash-strapped WikiLeaks?



Roll up, roll up! The great WikiLeaks memorabilia auction has just begun. The laptop computer on which "Cablegate" was compiled is on offer for £6,000, while some signed versions of those famous diplomatic cables can be yours for just £2,100. And do I hear £240 for a sachet of prison coffee once purloined by an incarcerated Julian Assange?

With normal sources of revenue stifled by a financial services embargo – and running costs and legal fees mounting – the website's proprietors are doing what comes naturally to cash-strapped citizens of the internet era: selling a selection of prized second-hand possessions on eBay.

The first of four fundraising auctions was announced at the weekend, featuring 10 intriguing lots ranging from a print of the directive in which Hillary Clinton asked US officials to spy on the UN, to a signed photograph of Mr Assange, the WikiLeaks founder.

"In this framed unique photo, Julian Assange leans against a column at the front of Ellingham Hall where he has spent almost 300 days under house arrest," reads the accompanying blurb, which informs bidders that the image was autographed at Mr Assange's 40th birthday party. "It is one of only four photos of Julian in the world that were signed on this occasion," it adds.

That item was going for £640 last night, although bidding will not reach its crucial stages until Thursday. Bigger ticket items include the laptop computer, described as having "led to hundreds of front pages and a causative element in ongoing political turmoil and reforms". It has attracted a bid of £6,000.

Some of the organisation's prominent supporters have also chipped in. Vivienne Westwood is offering two tickets to her Paris fashion show later this month for £8,000. Chef Sarah Saunders will cook dinner at your home for £800. And John Pilger, the filmmaker, has contributed a signed movie poster, currently going for £420.

WikiLeaks, which is funded by donations, said the auction is an effort to replace cash lost during an "unlawful financial embargo" during which the Bank of America, Visa, Mastercard, PayPal and Western Union have refused to process payments to its accounts.

The celebrity sales patter attached to some auction lots may, however, lead critics to complain that the organisation has become unduly interested in promoting its founder. Mr Assange's soaring profile is reported to be a factor in simmering disputes which have recently seen several of his former colleagues resign from WikiLeaks.

Included in the auction, for example, is a coffee sachet purloined by Mr Assange during his stay at Her Majesty's pleasure before Christmas. "This rare item has been signed on one side: 'Julian A, Prison coffee, smuggled out of Wandsworth Prison by me on 17 Dec 2010'," reads the blurb. "On the other side of the sachet Julian has inked a fingerprint. The sachet is unopened."

Mr Assange is currently staying at the 650-acre Ellingham Hall estate, in Norfolk, while he fights extradition to Sweden. He denies charges of sexual misconduct with two women in Stockholm, saying they are part of a wider conspiracy against him.

Whistleblower's wares on offer

Item: CableGate preparation computer

Description 'The database machine allowed the WikiLeaks team to search the full set of cables and extract the cables to be sent encrypted to media organisations throughout the world.'

Item: Julian Assange's prison coffee sachet, signed and fingerprinted

Description 'Scarce item of memorabilia from Julian Assange's time in prison. When he left to go under house arrest in Norfolk, he smuggled out this, one of three sachets of coffee. The sachet is unopened.'

Item: Cable on UN spying, signed and fingerprinted

Description 'The unique cable details Hillary Clinton asking her diplomats to spy on UN officials, requesting them to collect details of UN officers, including Ban Ki-moon's DNA. Julian has also written the WikiLeaks' slogan on the cable: "Courage is Contagious."'

Item: Signed photograph of Julian Assange

Description 'Exclusive photo (13cm x 18cm) of the organisation's founder. It was taken at Ellingham Hall where Julian is under house arrest.'

Vendre de la bonne conscience

U jeune homme tiré d'affaire grâce à vos dons.

Le monde autour de nous est parfois désespérant. C'est notamment le cas lorsque nous sommes confrontés à des situations qui heurtent nos convictions humanistes.

La vilenie des hommes, même lorsqu'ils sont victimes, l'incapacité de certaines sociétés à s'organiser, à sortir de la barbarie, interpelle nos certitudes.

La réaction de la majorité des donateurs est souvent la fuite devant la réalité. En offrant un don ils échappent à la nécessité de connaître le pourquoi et le comment.

Dans cet article de l'Independent consacré à l'action de l'association caritative britannique Bernardo au profit des enfants difficiles, on sent très bien que le journaliste présente le cas de ce jeune noir dans l'optique traditionnelle des gens de gauche.

La lecture de l'article met en lumière les mécanismes de la lettre destinée à un public plutôt conformiste. A aucun moment l'auteur ne s'interroge sur la responsabilité des personnes impliquées dans les malheurs qui les accablent.

C'est la faute à la société et cette société est incapable d'arranger le coup.

La seule solution vient de l'implication d'une association caritative.

Adrssez-nous votre don aujourd'hui même.

Ben's mother couldn't save him. then Barnardo's stepped in...

How do you stop black boys from the Leeds district of Chapeltown graduating to a life of crime? Jonathan Brown finds out

When Ben Wilson's behaviour started to go badly awry soon after his 13th birthday his mother tried the usual remedies. She read books about dealing with adolescents, set out rules, offered incentives and drew up progress charts, but the calls kept coming from school complaining about his threatening attitude.

Although at home everything seemed to be going well, once he was inside the gates of his high-achieving school it was another story. "I was having fights and disrespecting teachers and other people and being totally out of order. I was shouting and swearing and being abusive. I felt no one listened to me and I felt frustrated because when I had a problem no one would do anything about it," explains Ben.

His mum Deanne, a qualified teacher, was perplexed and horrified in equal measure. Nothing seemed to work and the stresses on the family were intolerable. She was called to collect Ben so many times that she had to quit her job. "You think, 'I am a teacher and this shouldn't be happening to me,'" she says. "It felt really frustrating. I did everything but there was no place I could go for help. When I asked my doctor if there were any referrals they said mental health, but I thought that was too drastic."

Ben's behaviour deteriorated to an unacceptable level. By year nine he held the school record for the number of detentions and "inclusion" sessions where he was taught apart from his classmates, but the final straw came when he threatened a member of staff. "A teacher got in my face and I told him to get out before I hit him," he admits. Ben was told he would be permanently excluded from school.

The Wilsons knew this would have disastrous implications for a young man who, despite aggressive behaviour towards his teachers, was a caring brother and son and highly intelligent. "A lot of it was pride," he recalls. "There was peer pressure from my friends. I didn't want to look like a chump in front of them. When I put my hand up the teachers ignored me so I'd shout and they would say, 'Shut up.' I let that get the better of me."

Luckily for Ben his school and parents worked together to find an answer. Reach is a project started by the community in the Chapeltown area of Leeds in 1994 to help black youths stay away from crime after being excluded from school.

The inner-city area has in the past been blighted by rioting and poverty still has high levels of unemployment among its well-established Afro-Caribbean population. Today Reach, which is funded by Barnardo's – one of the three charities in this year's Independent Christmas Appeal – deals with adolescent boys and girls aged 11-16 from all backgrounds although the majority are still from black and ethnic minority families.

Its service manager Ian St Rose has seen a lot of youngsters like Ben cross his path. Many are angry, many are confused, he says. "Some have been holding everything in for so long they are like a bottle of Coke that has been shaken up and they are ready to explode," he says.

Those referred to him undergo a 12-week course. Typically nine or 10 youngsters use the service four days a week, during which they are steered away from drugs and crime and learn to evaluate their lives and the impact their actions are having on their futures. All aim to leave with a qualification and credit towards their GCSEs plus improved self-esteem and better behaviour. Nearly all return to education.

For many it is the first time they have come across young black teachers who can relate to them. Others simply need to hear the positive message from someone they respect outside their own family.

A lot of young people resort to reinforcing the stereotype of the inner-city kid as their only way to exert power, says Mr St Rose. "Young people are exposed to so much more from the media and peer pressure. We are trying to get some balance for them."

Two years on, Ben is back in school studying for 14 GCSEs and, assuming he doesn't play for Manchester United, he wants to be a pilot. "At Reach there were kids like me. The staff said it was my life and no one could ruin it except me. They said the teachers can make or break you but it is up to you. The teachers there were different. They didn't call us children but treated us like young people. They made you feel respected," he says.

For his mother Deanne, Ben's transformation has been life changing: "He has matured and has realised his mistakes. Without Reach he would have ended up permanently excluded. Now he is getting cards that say 'well done'. He is doing exceptionally well."

The charities in this year's Independent Christmas Appeal

Children around the world cope daily with problems that are difficult for most of us to comprehend. For our Christmas Appeal this year we have chosen three charities which support vulnerable children everywhere.

* Children on the Edge was founded by Anita Roddick 20 years ago to help children institutionalised in Romanian orphanages. It still works in eastern Europe, supporting children with disabilities and girls at risk of sex trafficking. But it now works with Aids orphans in South Africa, post-tsunami trauma in Indonesia, disturbance in East Timor and Burmese refugee sex slaves in India and Thailand. www.childrenontheedge.org

* ChildHope works to bring hope and justice, colour and fun into the lives of extremely vulnerable children experiencing different forms of violence in 11 countries in Africa, Asia and South America. www.childhope.org.uk

* Barnardo's works with more than 100,000 of the most disadvantaged children in 415 specialised projects in communities across the UK. It works with children in poverty, homeless runaways, children caring for an ill parent, pupils at risk of being excluded from school, children with disabilities, teenagers leaving care, children who have been sexually abused and those with inappropriate sexual behaviour. It runs parenting programmes. www.barnardos.org.uk

L'objet du délit, sacrifié sur l'autel de la notoriété.

Voici un papier de Kathy Marks dans The Independent qui met en lumière les déviances d'une association à la recherche d'échos médiatiques.

Whaling activist sunk own boat 'as a publicity stunt'



It was one of the most dramatic moments in the annual hostilities between the Japanese whaling fleet and members of the militant conservation group Sea Shepherd: the ramming of a protest boat, which sank in the icy waters of the Antarctic.

But all was not as it seemed, according to the Ady Gil's captain, Pete Bethune, who claimed yesterday that Sea Shepherd deliberately scuppered its own boat last January as a publicity stunt. Acting on orders from the group's founder and president, Paul Watson, Mr Bethune boarded the vessel with two fellow activists and opened compartments and hatches to let in water, he said.

The allegation was denied by Mr Watson, who released emails revealing that Mr Bethune, a New Zealander, had been expelled from the organisation. The group posted a video on its website which appears to confirm that Mr Bethune let the Ady Gil sink while it was being towed back to port by another Sea Shepherd vessel, the Bob Barker.

However, the sabotage claim and the public war of words between the two former comrades seem certain to damage Sea Shepherd's credibility.

Mr Bethune told Radio New Zealand that the Ady Gil, a high-tech trimaran owned by a Californian businessman of that name, had been salvageable. Of the alleged plot to scupper it two days after the collision, he said: "It was all done in secret. I was ordered not to tell any of the crew, not my family, and especially not Ady Gil. I was ashamed of it at the time, and I'm ashamed of it now." Accusing the Sea Shepherd leadership of "apparent moral bankruptcy", Mr Bethune said Mr Watson wanted to "garner sympathy with the public and to create better TV".

The Ady Gil sank after being hit by a Japanese factory ship, the Shonan Maru II. Sea Shepherd claimed the Japanese vessel deliberately rammed its boat, shearing off its bow. The Japanese blamed the protesters, saying they abruptly slowed down while crossing the path of the ship, which was unable to stop.

A month later, Mr Bethune was arrested by the Japanese, after boarding the Shonan Maru II to confront its captain over the incident. He spent five months in jail in Japan, pleaded guilty to trespass, assault and other charges, received a suspended sentence and was deported.

A possible reason for Japan's leniency, it has emerged, is that Mr Bethune blamed Mr Watson, saying he ordered him to board the ship and carry out other illegal actions. As a result, Mr Watson is now on Interpol's Blue List, which means border authorities are notified that he is a "person of interest".

At the time, Sea Shepherd said the Ady Gil sank after its tow line snapped and it began taking in water. Mr Watson insisted that Mr Bethune, as skipper, had made the key decisions. "Pete is on camera saying, 'yes, I guess we're going to have to let it go'," he said.

During Mr Bethune's trial, Sea Shepherd distanced itself from him, which it later said was a ploy to help him secure a light sentence. According to the group, it spent more than US$500,000 (£314,000) on his defence, but later discovered he had given "false information" to Japanese police.

For his part, Mr Bethune claims he was not expelled from the group, but quit in disgust. His version of events appears to be supported by Mr Gil, who told Radio New Zealand that Mr Watson used publicity stunts to attract funding and Mr Bethune was pushed into sinking the boat.

The bitterness between the two former colleagues is clear from their emails, in which Mr Watson accuses Mr Bethune – who was at the Ady Gil's helm when it was struck by the factory ship – of not having control of his own vessel. He also says Mr Bethune failed to show courage in custody, unlike other Sea Shepherd activists detained in the past in Canada and Norway.

Mr Bethune, meanwhile, writes that three of his fellow Ady Gil crew members can support his account, and are prepared to sign affidavits and undergo lie detector tests.

The row is a serious blow to Sea Shepherd's image. Chris Carter, a former New Zealand Conservation Minister, told Associated Press that Mr Watson's credibility and the group's anti-whaling programme had been "compromised" by Mr Bethune's claims.

The rivals

Paul Watson

A veteran of marine activism who has spent years roaming the oceans attempting to save life in the sea, the 59-year-old started early. Aged nine, the young Canadian destroyed traps intended to catch beavers, according to the Sea Shepherd website. He claims to have been one of the founders of Greenpeace and embarked on a series of voyages to try to prevent nuclear testing. He was part of the Greenpeace campaign against whaling, confronting the Soviet whaling fleet. He left Greenpeace in 1977 in a disagreement over the use of direct action campaigns and set up the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. He freely admits to damaging property in pursuit of his goals but says that in more than three decades of confronting whalers and sealers he has never injured a person.

Pete Bethune

Pete Bethune was the captain of the powerboat Ady Gil when it and a Japanese whaling vessel collided and sparked the series of events that led to the bitter falling out with Paul Watson. The 45-year-old New Zealander was convicted in July by a Japanese court after throwing a bottle of butyric acid – likened to a stink bomb – over a whaler.

Mr Bethune climbed aboard the Japanese vessel, intending to arrest its captain for attempted murder and bill him for the sinking of the ship. Instead he was arrested and taken to Tokyo for trial. At the trial, the prosecution showed a video shot by the whalers that appeared to show him whooping with delight after throwing the liquid. Mr Watson, who was not before the court, said at the time that Mr Bethune was "being used as a political football by right-wing nationalists in Japan".

La fin d'une industrie

Le marketing direct s'interroge sur la survie su courrier traditionnel à une époque quand le volume du courrier papier diminue et quand le mail se développe. Le monde de l'édition fait lui aussi face à une évolution technologique comparable. Un intéressant papier de John Walsh dans The Independent fait le point.

Is the publishing industry doomed?

It's the busiest week in the publishing calendar – with a host of events from the Frankfurt Book Fair to the Man Booker Prize. But this year, there's only one topic of conversation at the awards ceremonies and public receptions...

Today, in the endless, cavernous halls of the Frankfurt Book Fair, British publishers and agents are dealing in next year's books. They're buying and selling the rights to Kiran Desai's follow-up to her Booker Prize-winning The Inheritance of Loss. Martin Amis's new novel State of England: Lionel Asbo, Lotto Lout, despite its heinously awful title, is much discussed. The air is thick with hype, spin, competition.

Meanwhile, in Stockholm later this afternoon, will come the announcement of who has won the Nobel Prize for Literature – always an important moment in the books year, and a guarantee of sales, no matter how obscure the recipient.

And next Tuesday is Man Booker Prize Night. At 9.45pm, at a candlelit dinner in London's Guildhall, Sir Andrew Motion, chairman of the judges, will announce whether Peter Carey has won the prize for the third time. The winning book will be reverentially brandished. Publishers and agents will congratulate or console one another, while the nation's top booksellers will beam at the prospect of massive sales in coming weeks, as the trade gears up for Christmas.

Books – their writing, publishing, sale and celebration – make up a rich weave in the nation's cultural quilt. But who, looking at the faces in Frankfurt or Stockholm or at the Guildhall could tell that the industry that produces them is in disarray? Is this the last time that all these people (and these large, solid books) will exist in the same professional relation to each other? Will these authors, agents, publishers and booksellers be speaking to each other next year, after the current toxic dust has settled? Will they all, by then, be doing each other's jobs? Or just doing each other out of a job?

British publishing is in a parlous state. Year-on-year sales of books are down. Guaranteed-bestseller celebrity memoirs are no longer bestselling. Discounts to booksellers are unhealthily bulky, margins are narrowing, profits are down, cash advances are a fraction of their former munificence and acquisitions of exciting new books have dropped to a rumoured one per day. But worse is the turmoil into which these sensitive men and women have been thrown by the advent of the electronic book (or e-book).

"Technology has made virtually anything possible," says Neill Denny, editor-in-chief of the publishing industry magazine The Bookseller. "If you look at it conceptually – there's a five-link chain between the person who writes and the person who reads. You've got Author-Agent- Publisher-Retailer-Reader. Theoretically, the three middle bits could all now vanish and the author could write online directly to the reader."

However, he continues, "A more likely possibility is that just one of the three central links will vanish on-line. It could be that Amazon, the retailer, becomes the publisher. Or that the agent becomes the publisher, or the publisher becomes the retailer, and you go to a publisher's site to buy the book. One of those links will certainly disappear on-line. We just don't know which."

The paperback-sized e-books haven't been responsible for all the trouble, but they certainly started it. Literary types took one look at the Amazon Kindle's sleek metallic lines and rejected it on the grounds that it looked nothing like a Penguin copy of David Copperfield with dog-eared pages and a bookmark stuck inside, and was therefore Not A Book. Newspaper bibliophiles harrumphed about its lack of page numbers (they were made redundant by the variable size of the text – larger words generate more pages). Clubmen pretended to be terrified that an electronic device that could hold hundreds and access thousands of books would spell the end of the personal library. Less anxious commentators thought the Kindle might be handy to take on holiday, because it was lighter than carrying six books in your luggage.

Few noticed its incendiary power to torch the publishing world. Nicholson Baker, the lofty author of The Mezzanine, called it "an alpenhorn blast of post-Gutenbergian revalorisation". In Time magazine, Jacob Weisberg, editor-in-chef of the Slate group, called it "a machine that marks a cultural revolution. Printed books, the most important artefacts of human civilisation, are going to join newspapers and magazines on the roads to obsolescence."

Apocalyptic stuff. But you may think: "Where's the evidence? I don't see so many people reading books on screens." And the new phenomenon might indeed have remained a passing fad, had it not been for the involvement of four major companies: Amazon, Sony, Apple and Google. It's their quadrilateral Battle of the e-books that is sending gouts of blood all over the arena.

Two years ago, Amazon ran the show. It had the Kindle, and had millions of books in its warehouses that could be scanned electronically into it. Sony had the rival Reader e-book, but didn't own any books – it had to arrange with publishers for the digital rights to their authors' works. In January this year, Steve Jobs of Apple announced the iPad, a laptop computer which can run e-books while allowing its owner also to play films and games and send emails. Apple owns the iBooks store, where you can buy millions of "virtual" titles.

Suddenly the electronic publishing world was a battle for "intellectual property", the digital rights to books new and old. Then in April, Google entered the fray. It announced that it had scanned 12 million books, and its products, named Google Editions, would be ready for customers to access, online, this winter.

Holy moly, as they say. It was a battle between corporate titans to buy and sell more e-books to the world's readers. "There are no official figures yet for e-book sales," says Denny. "There are only estimates – and they estimate that e-books now constitute between 2 and 5 per cent of total UK book sales. But it's growing. I think they'll count for 10 per cent of all book sales in the next four or five years." How alarming is that? "It depends who you are. If you're a publisher, and e-book prices are kept reasonably firm, it won't matter that the electronic books are cannibalising your print sales. You'll still be making a decent margin, because you haven't got to print or distribute virtual books. The losers could be independent bookshops. They risk being cut out of the loop, because people will buy e-books direct from the publisher or, more likely, from a third-party retailer like Amazon or Apple, rather than from a local bookshop."

But who should set the basic price for an e-book? The chaps who brought it into the world? Or those who put it online? This is uncharted territory. Publishers once set a book's "recommended retail price", and it was protected by the Net Book Agreement, which forbade discounts. When the Agreement was abolished in the Nineties, there was a discounting free-for-all; bestsellers went on sale at half-price in supermarkets; small bookshops, which rely on top sellers for their basic income, saw their profits slashed. Retailers went head-to-head with each other, while publishers watched their profit margins decline.

How can booksellers survive? "It's hard for them to work in the digital arena," Denny acknowledges. "But I don't think they're finished. Their main hope is to make the local angle work. And, of course, there's browsing, which is much better done in a shop than online. Finding a book you didn't know you wanted – it's much harder to do that on Apple or Amazon." His voice becames dreamy. "Physically bumping into a book, in a shop, in real life. Having a bookseller put it into your hand..."

In July, the literary agent opened a new front in the war. Andrew Wylie, the feral super-agent who represents everyone from Martin Amis to Madonna, made a Hiroshima-like proposal. He said he was creating his own imprint, to publish his clients' books online and sell the digital rights direct to Amazon – thus cutting out the publishing middleman completely. This was a spectacular slap in the face to his former friends in the trade. Random House replied curtly that, if he went ahead with his scheme, they would never again buy or publish any of his clients' print books. Wylie eventually backed down.

"I think publishers are learning to be retailers, but I'm not sure agents are trying to be publishers," says David Godwin, former MD of Jonathan Cape, now a well-respected agent representing Vikram Seth, Howard Marks, Simon Armitage and Claire Tomalin. "I think Wylie's proposal was a wheeze to make publishers nervous. It wasn't serious. Frankly, a man less qualified to be a publisher is hard to imagine."

Godwin is a keen evangelist for the e-book. "Here's an amazing fact. I sat yesterday with Jonathan Galassi, the man who published Jonathan Frantzen's Freedom in America. There are about a million copies in print, he's sold a huge amount – and 35 per cent are e-books. That's phenomenal. That's a jump forward that's happened in America in just a year. But when there's a terrific buzz about a book, as with Frantzen, that's exactly when people want the book immediately... The bigger the book, now, the bigger the e-book sale will be."

There remains the thorny question of who decides the price of an e-book. Since the Kindle was born, most publishers resignedly assumed that Amazon would call the shots. A gripping standoff took place in January this year, when the head of Macmillan, John Sargent, told Amazon that publishers should set the price of their books in any format and, furthermore, that if Amazon didn't like the idea, Macmillan wouldn't sell them any more books. Within days, Amazon removed all Macmillan e-books from its shelves. A seismic shudder went through the industry. Other British publishers threatened to copy Macmillan – and Amazon finally gave in.

"A friend of mine bought his wife a Kindle," says Godwin, "and she bought three books in the current Top 10 for £2 each. A total of £6! Amazon priced its books very low, firstly because you can only read them on a Kindle, and secondly because they wanted to get as big a share of the market as they could. But all that's going to change now in the US – the price of the e-book is now controlled at $12.95. It's vitally important that prices are controlled, otherwise retailers will use it to take a huge share of the market and damage the profits for both writers and publishers."

On this side of the pond, Hachette, Britain's largest publishing conglomerate, has signed a deal with Apple, to try to impose a flat price for e-books – namely £6.50, less than half the price of a new hardback, and cheap for a paperback. However, warns Neill Denny, "some of the other retailers aren't agreeing to it, or they're not implementing it, even though they've agreed in principle. Or they disagree in principle because they think they know better than the publishers what the price should be. It's a hot topic, the struggle's going on right now, and it's not clear what the outcome will be."

There's the war, in plain sight: publishers on one side, retail companies on the other. What complicates things is that companies like Apple and Amazon are so huge, they don't actually need to sell books at all. "They'd be quite happy selling books for 50p," said Denny, "because they make their money from selling hardware. They can afford to make a loss on a few e-books while they're building their market share."

None of this will be apparent to the browser in the high street branch of Waterstone's this autumn. Bookshops will continue to stock thousands of print copies of old classics and modern bestsellers, the lovely mixum-gatherum of cookery and fitness and travel books alongside sober works of reference, biographies and misery memoirs. But out there in cyberspace, starting in the US and gathering strength, the digital revolution is under way.

The rise of online selling had for years threatened to put bookshops out of business. Now the e-book scramble threatens to do the same for publishers. And the agents, who own the destinies of the writers whose works we long to read, may also become redundant. All that's needed is for a bestselling novelist to publish a new book online, inviting readers to check it out – as Stephen King and Stephenie (Twilight) Meyer have done. In both cases, though, they did it for free.

Who'll be the first to charge for a money-based, author-reader relationship that dispenses with agent, publisher, retailer, editor, production department and glamorous publicity director?

Homos dans le pétrin

Ben Summerskill, patron de Stonewall, préfère l'opinion de ses donateurs à celle des activistes des médias. Il a raison de privilégier l'enquête interne à un ralliement prématuré qui pourrait réduire son ROI.

L'association britannique de défense des droits des homosexuels Stonewall (20 000 adresses de donateurs récents au compteur), se trouve au coeur d'une controverse. D'un côté les militants qui souhaitent que les unions de même sexe puissent être des mariages comme les autres et puis les désirs de la communauté homosexuelle bien plus nuancés sur la question.

On a toujours tendance à réduire l'opinion des personnes homosexuelle à celle des figures de proue du mouvement qui, dans la plupart des cas, sont des farouches partisans de l'affichage public de leur orientation sexuelle et de sa reconnaissance par l'Etat et par la société notamment par le biais du mariage.

Mais voilà, patatras, Stonewall par le biais de son président Ben Summerskill dévoile qu'une telle reconnaissance aurait un impact fiscal de cinq milliards de livres !

Ce pavé dans la mare horrifie les activistes médiatiques qui poussent à la roue pour l'adoption par le parlement du principe du mariage homosexuel.

Les cris d'orfraie des homos médiatiques ne font pas trembler Stonewall qui se préoccupe de l'opinion de ses donateurs avant celle du buzz médiatique. En fin de compte, ce sont les donateurs qui financent Stonewall.

Or il se trouve que les homosexuels sont bien plus divisés sur la question du mariage que ne le laissent penser les médias.

C'est cette réalité du terrain dont Stonewall est le reflet qui dérange les excellences roses du monde médiatico-politique.

Cette affaire soulève l'intéressant exemple d'une association militante qui n'est plus en phase avec l'opinion publique mais qui préfère sauvegarder son coeur de cible.

Dans cette affaire, je pense que Stonewall et son président Ben Summerskill ont choisi la bonne option à moyen et long terme.

Les comptes de Stonewall sont disponibles ici. En deux mots : dépenses liées au fundraising, 450 000 livres; dons de personnes physiques, 896 000 livres; Fondations et associations, 777000 livres; mécénat d'entreprise, 589 000 livres.


Scott Roberts: Embarrassment for a charity lagging behind public opinion


When Britain's largest gay rights charity is even at odds with Boris Johnson on the position of marriage equality, it knows it has a problem.

Two weeks ago, Ben Summerskill, the Chief Executive of Stonewall, threw a Molotov cocktail at the campaign for same-sex marriage. Rather than backing proposals – put forward by the Liberal Democrats – he warned they could potentially cost Britain "£5bn" over the course of 10 years.

Related articles
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Mr Summerskill's justification for the high figure stems from the fact that the policy would also open up civil partnerships to straight couples – currently only legally applicable to same-sex partners.

But for the head of Stonewall to make this argument days before members voted overwhelmingly to endorse the policy, has left many people unsurprisingly infuriated.

Steve Gilbert, the openly gay MP for Newquay and St Austell accused Mr Summerskill of "putting a price on equality".

Stonewall's position is made all the more confusing because the charity has publicly said that it is "consulting" its 20,000 members on whether or not to endorse gay marriage. Many also see Mr Summerskill's £5bn figure as a gift for homophobes looking for an excuse to curb gay rights.

Prominent figures in the community, including two of the charity's co-founders, Labour MEP Michael Cashman and Britain's leading openly gay actor, Sir Ian McKellen have criticised the charity's fears about cost.

Simon Hughes, the Lib Dems' Deputy Leader, also defended his party's gay marriage policy, saying Ben Summerskill's intervention had been "unhelpful" – while a Lib Dem press officer described the figure as "bogus".

It puts Stonewall in a deeply embarrassing position. As Peter Tatchell rightly points out, it is now the only main gay rights charity in Britain that has not joined the campaign for full marriage equality – that is despite growing political consensus from the Lib Dems, Labour, significant parts of the Conservative Party, and overwhelmingly the British people.

Maybe it is time Stonewall stopped stonewalling and joined the rest of us?

Scott Roberts is news editor for Gaydar radio


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Stonewall chief executive won't be 'jumped into' gay marriage position


By Jessica Geen • September 27, 2010 - 21:20

Stonewall chief executive Ben Summerskill defended his group's lack of a position on marriage equality this evening.

Mr Summerskill mounted a robust defence of Stonewall, although he was attacked by audience members who questioned why the charity had not begun considering marriage equality sooner.

Following criticism of him at a Liberal Democrat event last week, Mr Summerskill told an audience at a fringe event at the Labour conference in Manchester that Stonewall would not be “jumped into” declaring a position on the issue and said there remained a “wide range of viewpoints” on the matter. Last week, he claimed that Liberal Democrat proposals for equal access to both marriage and civil partnerships regardless of sexuality could cost up to £5 billion.

This evening, he spoke on a panel with lesbian Labour MP Angela Eagle, gay Labour MP David Cairns and gay journalist Johann Hari.

Today, Stonewall co-founder and Labour MEP Michael Cashman criticised the charity and called on Mr Summerskill to “speak up” for marriage equality.

Mr Summerskill said Stonewall was aiming to build a consensus on whether marriage equality should be the next step for the gay community in order to ensure any legislation would have cross-party support and pass in the House of Lords.

He said that this was a issue of “tactics” and added: “We do not feel embarrassed about raising this.”

He was speaking at an event organised by Stonewall and LGBT Labour and a member of LGBT Labour, Darren McCombe, attacked him, saying: “Why haven't you consulted earlier? Separate is not ever equal.”

To applause, Mr McCombe said LGBT Labour had quickly reached a consensus on the matter through a democratic vote.
He also raised the issue of current laws requiring trans people to end their marriages to obtain gender recognition certificates.

Mr Summerskill acknowledged the “terrible unfairness” of this situation but said he had been in talks with ministers and officials about amendments to the Gender Recognition Act.

On the issue of straight couples being refused civil partnerships, he said gay marriage had been “chained” to heterosexual rights, which Stonewall does not lobby for.

The former Labour MP David Borrow also criticised Stonewall. He said: “It is not a member-run organisation. It does not give the opportunity to LGBT people to come together.”

He said that the charity is still seen as a spokesman for the gay community and implored Mr Summerskill to “go back to Stonewall and look again”.

Mr Borrow added that the charity had a “real dilemma” in who it speaks for.

In response, Mr Summerskill said: “Stonewall has never pretended to be a democratic member organisation. We have never said we speak for all lesbian, gay and bisexual people.”

He added that it was “critical” to build alliances across parties and argued that legislation could be rejected by the House of Lords if there was a perception that there was not a consensus among gay people.

Another panel member, the journalist Johann Hari, said: “We are not the government, we are making demands on the government.”

Referring to Stonewall's estimated £5 billion cost over ten years for allowing straight couples to have civil partnerships, he argued that the disability lobby would not deliberate over the cost of wheelchair ramps.

However, Mr Summerskill responded: “It is perfectly proper to say there are arguments that will be used against us so we can counter them”.

He also pleaded with those present not to make the issue “party political”, claiming that the House of Lords would “retreat to tradition” and reject progressive legislation if this were to be the case.

Members of the LGBT Labour group had attempted to secure a debate on the issue of marriage equality at the main conference, but it was ranked at just position 13 in a priority ballot by party activists.