Welcome to Andy Worthington

Following up on a recent Canadian news report about three former Guantánamo prisoners — Uighurs (from China’s oppressed Xinjiang province), who were resettled in Albania and Bermuda. They are seeking permission from the Canadian government to join their wives and children, who are all Canadian nationals, but are finding that discredited allegations from Guantánamo continue to haunt them.

To celebrate seven years of my photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’, in which I have been posting a photo a day for the last two years, from my archive of photos covering all 120 of the capital’s postcodes, here are my reflections on how the project began, and what it has come to mean.

My pledge of commitment to the struggle to save ourselves and much of life on earth from the worst effects of man-made catastrophic climate change and species extinction, which is already underway. With thanks to those who have recently led me to this commitment: Dahr Jamail, Extinction Rebellion, Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough. Please get involved!

Linking to and dicussing my recent half-hour radio interview with Chris Cook on Gorilla Radio in Victoria, Canada, in which we discussed the eighth anniversary of the release of classified military files relating to the Guantánamo prisoners by WikiLeaks, and also discussed the situation faced by Julian Assange since he was arrested in the UK after Ecuador withdrew the asylum it granted him nearly seven years ago.

I follow up on a recent New York Times article by Carol Rosenberg about the US military’s problems with aging prisoners at Guantánamo, looking in particular at how these problems have arisen because, after 9/11, the US embraced torture (whch is incompatible with justice) and indefinite detention without charge or trial, which is also fundamentally unacceptable — and, of course, continues to be supported by Donald Trump.

Exactly six months ago, the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, a beautiful community space and environmental asset, which had been occupied for two months by members of the local community (the Save Reginald Save Tidemill campaign) to prevent its destruction by Lewisham Council for a housing scheme, was violently evicted by bailiffs hired by the council. Here’s the story six months on.

On the eighth anniversary of WikiLeaks’ release of classified military files from Guantánamo, on which I worked as a media partner, I recall how I got involved, I reiterate the significance of the files, and I call for the release from custody, in the UK and the US, of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning.

A cross-post, with my own introduction, of a compelling and very detailed New Yorker article by Ben Taub about former Guantánamo prisoner, torture victim and best-selling author Mohamedou Ould Salahi and his guard Steve Wood.

It’s the fourth day of Extinction Rebellion’s occupation of four sites in central London, as part of a demand for immediate political change to tackle the already ongoing global environmental catastrophe. If you can get involved at all, please do. As Extinction Rebellion explain, this is an unprecedented climate emergency, and we need to do what we can to change the way we operate immediately.

My analysis of the significance of Julian Assange’s arrest in London last week, and why – regardless of what anyone may think about Assange personally – it’s hugely important that there is concerted resistance to any effort by the US to clamp down on media freedom by pretending that Assange and WikiLeaks were not engaged in journalism, but in some sort of espionage.