Welcome to Andy Worthington

As the second Covid lockdown bites, I wonder how many “non-essential” businesses will survive, but take heart from the news that office rents are collapsing, and that residential rents in inner London are down by 14.9% on this time last year. I can only hope that the uncontrolled property greed that was so dominant before Covid has finally hit a wall, and will be unable to recover.

Reprieve has just launched a website counting, in real time, how long their client Ahmed Rabbani has been on a hunger strike — 2,846 days, as of Nov. 17, 2020. This is a shocking amount of time, as is Ahmed’s skeletal state — he weighs just 39 kilos, or 6 stone 2 pounds. I argue that it is time for Ahmed, like other “forever prisoners,” who genuinely don’t pose a threat to the US, to be released.

After congratulating Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for persuading enough people to vote Democrat to end the dangerous presidency of Donald Trump, I urge Biden to resume releasing prisoners from Guantánamo, and to work towards the long-overdue closure of the prison in its entirety.

A link to, and discussion of my half-hour interview on the topic of “Will Joe Biden Close Guantánamo?” with Ebrahim Moosa on South Africa’s Radio Islam International, after the Biden-Harris team’s victory over Donald Trump in the US Presidential Election.

My thoughts on the eve of England’s second Covid lockdown, set to last for a month from November 5, in which, as well as being critical of the government’s typically slow and muddled response, I also reflect on the importance of live music and other forms of culture, and how they have flickered to life, against all the odds, since Covid hit, as well as how they might resume when this lockdown ends.

On the second anniversary of the violent eviction of the occupied Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, I recall that experiment in community solidarity, and also cast a critical eye over other current housing developments in the London Borough of Lewisham, ending with a call for councils across the capital to come to terms with the Covid-induced end of “business as usual” in a housing market that, for far too long now, has been shamefully devoted to private housing profits and unaffordable rents.

A link to the video of a two-hour Action4Assange show I took part in on Saturday, discussing the proposed extradition of Julian Assange, my statements during the recent hearings at the Old Bailey, and the significance of the classified military files from Guantánamo, released by Wikileaks in 2011, on which I worked as a media partner. Also interviewed was filmmaker Juan Passarelli.

Sad news via the United Nations and the Associated Press, updating the story of 18 Yemenis sent to the United Arab Emirates between 2015 and 2017, after being unanimously approved for release from Guantánamo by high-level US government review processes. Promised new lives, they — and a handful of other ex-prisoners, including some Afghans and Guantánamo’s last Russian prisoner — found themselves imprisoned in abusive conditions instead, and, adding insult to injury, the Yemenis are now being threatened with repatriation to Yemen, where their lives are at risk.

An update in the story of Asadullah Haroon Gul, a genuinely insignificant prisoner, and one of the last two Afghans at Guantánamo, who has been on a hunger strike for five months, and weighs just 110 pounds. AFP recently visited his family in the refugee camp where they live, in north western Pakistan.

Promoting “The War on Journalism: The Case of Julian Assange”, a 38-minute film directed by Juan Passarelli, which provides a powerful summary of what the extradition case against Julian Assange is all about, and why it is such a chilling effort to both silence one man and to restrict press freedoms. I was interviewed for the film along with many other people including John Pilger and UN torture rapporteur Nils Melzer.