Please support my work!

Thanks to the generosity of 20 friends and supporters over the last four days, I have raised $1000 of the $2500 I was hoping to raise to support my research and writing on Guantánamo — and all of the other topics that make up my palette of interests — over the next three months, and as my quarterly fundraising appeal comes to an end, this is my last call for financial support for now.

I understand that times are tight, and I also understand that, as a result, many of you who read my work are unable to contribute, but if you do read the 100 or so articles that I write every three months, and value independent journalism that shines a light on crimes of arbitrary detention and torture that those in power would prefer to keep hidden, then please consider that just $25 or $50 — £15 or £30 — from dozens more readers will make a big difference, and will demonstrate that reader-funded journalism is a viable option.

You can pay via PayPal from anywhere in the world, but if you’re in the UK and want to help without using PayPal, you can send me a cheque (address here — scroll down to the bottom of the page), and if you’re not a PayPal user and want to send a check from the US (or from anywhere else in the world, for that matter), please feel free to do so, but bear in mind that I have to pay a $10/£6.50 processing fee on every transaction. Securely packaged cash is also an option!

In this exciting and alarming year, I have continued to shine a light on my core topic, Guantánamo, embarking on a 70-part, million-word series, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” involving a hugely detailed analysis of the classified US military documents released by WikILeaks in April, on which I worked as a media partner.

This project will continue into 2012, and needs your support, but it is not the only topic that has captivated me this year. I have also been enthralled as the people of the Middle East rose up against their oppressors, and people in the West — myself included — took to the streets to protest about the imposition of an ideologically driven “age of austerity,” and took over public spaces to create a new movement, the “Occupy” movement, challenging the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few, which is accompanied by an increasingly callous disregard for everyone else.

I am delighted that people have been waking up from their materialistic slumber, or have finally broken free of the fear that authoritarian regimes use to keep their populations cowed in countries where a more savage brutality is the norm, and I will continue to cover these topics and others — including the travails of Bradley Manning, the alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower, the death penalty in the US, the shocking use of solitary confinement in US prisons, and more — as we move into 2012.

As ever, I look forward to your company on this journey into the unknown. On the fundraising front, I’ll see you again in March, and as for the writing, I promise to get back to it immediately. I hope that, as we raise our voices to call for the closure of Guantánamo on the 10th anniversary of its opening (on January 11, 2012), and as we continue to take to the streets to demand a better world, that I’l be meeting up with some of you — in London, New York, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Chicago and elsewhere.

Andy Worthington
London
December 9, 2011

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles.

Please support my work!

Thanks to the generosity of twelve friends and supporters over the last two days, I have raised nearly $400 of the $2500 that I’m hoping to raise to support my work over the next three months. My thanks to those who have helped out, and, while I understand that many of my friends and supporters would like to fund my work, but are financially unable, I would like to use this opportunity to put out another appeal, as a freelance investigative journalist in the new media, to those who read my work and might be able to contribute.

Just $25 or $50 — £15 or £30 — from dozens more readers will make a big difference, and will demonstrate that reader-funded journalism is viable, and will also allow you, the reader, to know that you have contributed to help me write the articles that I’ll be writing — more or less on a daily basis — for the next three months.

All contributions are welcome, whether it’s $25, $100 or $500. Readers can pay via PayPal from anywhere in the world, but if you’re in the UK and want to help without using PayPal, you can send me a cheque (address here — scroll down to the bottom of the page), and if you’re not a PayPal user and want to send a check from the US (or from anywhere else in the world, for that matter), please feel free to do so, but bear in mind that I have to pay a $10/£6.50 processing fee on every transaction. Securely packaged cash is also an option!

Since I began blogging nearly five years ago, the Internet has transformed the way we see the world, allowing researchers and commentators like me an opportunity to challenge the mainstream media’s narratives, to provide sustained commentary on issues that ebb and flow with the short attention spans of the news cycles, and to cover topics in depth that are only sporadically covered by the mainstream, or, in some cases, not even covered at all.

It has been rewarding to be part of this world, in which readers and other bloggers — via search engines, and, increasingly, through social networks — decide what is, and what isn’t important, rather than being dictated to by those with corporate agendas, or a misapplied, or even deceitful sense of “objectivity.” In addition, it has been rewarding to realize that, as a journalist in the new media, if you choose your topics, work assiduously, and have some ability, you will find an audience, as I have, and may also, eventually, end up securing paid work.

I’m grateful to Cageprisoners and the Future of Freedom Foundation for their constant support, and to other organizations for the projects and commissions that come my way out of the blue — including, this year, WikiLeaks, amongst others. However, as I hope to have demonstrated over the last three months, working on the biggest project of my life — “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” an ongoing, 70-part, million-word series, telling all the Guantánamo prisoners’ stories, and involving a forensic analysis of the classified military documents released by WikiLeaks — I am constantly working on material that is only partly funded, and, in the case of my coverage of other pressing issues — the Occupy movement, economic crises and austerity measures, revolution in the Middle East, and the US prison system — is not funded at all.

So there you have it. You get the message. Please support me if you can. Yesterday, I published the latest instalment of “The Complete Guantánamo Files” — Part 32 of the series, featuring 13 stories and 20,000 words (enough for a slim book), which involved many days of work — and I’d be delighted if you can help me to complete the project, while also keeping an eye on the social and political movements that, we all hope, are leading us towards a better world, in which the 1 percent no longer dominate us with their financial crimes, their wars of aggression, and their disdain for the law.

Andy Worthington
London
December 7, 2011

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles.

Please support my work!

It’s three months since I last asked you, my friends, readers and supporters, to help me to continue my research and writing on Guantánamo and other issues by providing me with donations, however large or small.

All contributions are welcome, whether it’s $25, $100 or $500. Readers can pay via PayPal from anywhere in the world, but if you’re in the UK and want to help without using PayPal, you can send me a cheque (address here — scroll down to the bottom of the page), and if you’re not a PayPal user and want to send a check from the US (or from anywhere else in the world, for that matter), please feel free to do so, but bear in mind that I have to pay a $10/£6.50 processing fee on every transaction. Securely packaged cash is also an option!

My last appeal, in September, raised over $1800 from 22 supporters, enabling me to continue my work as an investigative journalist, researcher and commentator working mainly in the new media, combining money from a handful of sources for whom I write regularly (plus the occasional commission) with the reader-funded journalism that is dear to my heart, and that allows me to be truly independent.

Over the last three months, I have been plugging away at my 70-part, million-word series, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a unique project in which I have been following up on the work I have been doing on Guantánamo since 2006 by analyzing and transcribing the detailed information on the Guantánamo prisoners from the classified military documents released by WikiLeaks in April (on which I worked as a media partner). I have been adding this information to what was already known about the prisoners, to create what I believe is an important resource for anyone who wants to understand the realities of Guantánamo and the “war on terror” beyond the official propaganda issued by the Bush administration.

With the prison at Guantánamo still open, as the 10th anniversary of its establishment approaches (on January 11, 2012), and with President Obama unwilling to push for its closure and lawmakers committed to keeping it open forever, this project has a contemporary relevance, rather than just a historical significance, and it is my intention, when I complete the 70 articles (which will probably not be until spring 2012), to then proceed with some devastating analyses of what the documents reveal.

I have received some funding for this project, but your support makes the entire endeavour more financially viable, and, of course, also helps to support all the other work I have been doing, without any financial support whatsoever, on other topics of concern — the importance of the Occupy movement, the economic crisis in the Eurozone (and particularly in Greece), the revolutionary movements in the Middle East, other US injustices (the death penalty, solitary confinement in US prisons, the treatment of Bradley Manning), and, in the UK, the Tory-led coalition government’s continued assault on the British state (particularly in relation to the NHS, welfare and education).

I hope that my regular forays into these topics, and others, have not detracted from my core work on Guantánamo, as far as you, my readers and supporters, are concerned, but I have been unable to ignore the great changes happening in the world, and I also believe that the economy, social justice and issues of war and national security are all intertwined.

This has been an extraordinary year, and although it is clearer than ever that we are confronted by an unprecedented crisis that our leaders are, for the most part, unwilling to address, this year has seen people rising up in revolt from Tunis and Cairo to Athens, Madrid, and London, and from Wisconsin to Wall Street — mobilizing and asking questions in a way that was inconceivable a year ago.

With your help, I will continue to monitor, take part in and commentate on these developments, as well as maintaining my focus on the remaining prisoners in Guantánamo, to try and make sure that they are not forgotten, and that justice will eventually prevail.

And as ever, without you, none of this would mean anything.

Andy Worthington
London
December 5, 2011

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles.

Please support my work!

Well, my friends, with the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks almost upon us, and every mainstream media outlet bombarding us with far too much information, as though, by now, the anniversary has become some sort of giant annual defining event of America’s identity, those of us who plug away at exposing the dark underbelly of America’s suffering on a regular basis — the damaging response of the Bush administration, with its arrogant and inept “war on terror,” its torture program, its disdain for the Geneva Conventions and its dislike of capable and humane interrogators — are still plugging away, hoping our voices will be heard amidst all the noise that, for the most part, signifies nothing.

I’ve been too busy with “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” my ongoing 70-part, 700,000-word series telling the stories of all the Guantánamo prisoners — for the first time with the inclusion of information drawn from the classified military documents released by WikiLeaks in April, on which I worked as media partner — to fully indulge in the feeding frenzy, and I’ll still be here next week, when the media pack moves on to something new, putting out the 19th or 20th part of the series, and moving on to the next part of the project — a series of ten articles telling the stories of the 111 prisoners released (and the three who died) in 2006.

My aim, as I pore over the thousands of pages of these documents, transcribing and editing them, is to complete this project for another dreadful anniversary that is on the horizon — the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, on January 11, 2012, when i hope to have this project finished, and to be able to throughly analyze all the data to demonstrate, more comprehensively than ever before, how Guantánamo has been a humiliating aberration from the law, and a disgrace, with innocent men and boys brutalised with low-level foot soldiers in a prison outside the law in which only a handful — a few dozen at most — of those held were actually involved in terrorism.

Those of you who know my work — and there are many of you, as this site now receives between 250,000 and 300,000 page views a month — know that I do this work on a relative shoestring. A handful of organizations support me, but to be truly independent in the 21st century I’m also trying to establish reader-funded journalism as a viable career for those of us taking advantage of the Internet to get stories out across the world like never before.

Fourteen friends, colleagues, supporters and supportive organisations have ensured that, of the $2500 target I set for this quarter, I am now looking to pull in just $700. My thanks to those of you who have donated, and also to those who read my work, and share it, and comment on it, but who are unable to help out. I fully understand, and my relationship with you is not, I hope, one based on money, but if you are able to donate at the end of this fundraising week, it will help me to keep shining a light on the darkness and crimes that are still so easily obscured.

If you can help, please click on the “Donate” button above to make a payment via PayPal. All contributions are welcome, whether it’s $25, $100 or $500. Readers can pay via PayPal from anywhere in the world, but if you’re in the UK and want to help without using PayPal, you can send me a cheque (address here — scroll down to the bottom of the page), and if you’re not a PayPal user and want to send a check from the US (or from anywhere else in the world, for that matter), please feel free to do so, but bear in mind that I have to pay a $10/£6.50 processing fee on every transaction. Securely packaged cash is also an option!

So that’s it, my last appeal until December. Thank you again for all your support.

Andy Worthington
London
September 9, 2011

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, on tour in the UK throughout 2011, and available on DVD here — or here for the US), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles.

Please support my work!

It’s the second day of my quarterly fundraising appeal, and I’d like to thank the six readers and supporters who, to date, have donated $600 to help me continue my research and writing on Guantánamo and torture.

I realize that times are tough, and only getting tougher, and I completely understand if you are unable to donate to support my work, but being a freelancer is a precarious experience at the best of times, and, as I explained yesterday, I was recently hit by hackers, and will have to pay out to improve the security of my site.

As I also explained, I’m particularly hoping to have your support for my latest project, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, 700,000-word series providing the most detailed information available anywhere regarding the 779 prisoners held at Guantánamo.

For this project — for which the first 17 parts are complete — I’m drawing on the classified US military files released by WikiLeaks this April (an event on which I worked as a media partner), adding the information contained in those files to what I had already reported (in my book The Guantánamo Files, and in my articles over the last four and a half years), to create the most comprehensive analysis of who is still held at Guantánamo, and who has been held over the last nine years and eight months, which will be complete for the 10th anniversary of the prison’s opening on January 11, 2012.

I have some backing for this hugely time-consuming project, but if I tell you that I’m being paid just £60 ($100) for each article (each of which takes many days to research and write, and is 10,000 to 15,000 words in length), I hope you’ll understand why I’m appealing to you, my readers and supporters, to supplement my income.

Those of us who work as journalists in the new media are carving out a new world — one in which those who find the mainstream media inaccessible, or full of too many constraints, are trying to create a new environment, in which funding comes partly from organizations that are not part of the mainstream, but which are paying writers in a field where exploitation is often the norm, and also, crucially, from our readers and supporters.

If you like this model, and like the work I do, researching and writing about a topic that the Obama administration has failed to address adequately, then please help out if you can. You can click on the “Donate” button above to make a payment via PayPal.

All contributions are welcome, whether it’s $25, $100 or $500. Readers can pay via PayPal from anywhere in the world, but if you’re in the UK and want to help without using PayPal, you can send me a cheque (address here — scroll down to the bottom of the page), and if you’re not a PayPal user and want to send a check from the US (or from anywhere else in the world, for that matter), please feel free to do so, but bear in mind that I have to pay a $10/£6.50 processing fee on every transaction. Securely packaged cash is also an option!

As ever, my work would mean nothing without you, and I thank you for your support.

Andy Worthington
London
September 6, 2011

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, on tour in the UK throughout 2011, and available on DVD here — or here for the US), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles.

Please support my work!

On the eve of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 that precipitated the “War on Terror” that has consumed my life for the last five and a half years, through my work chronicling the illegality and the human cost of the Bush administration’s cruel and misguided response to those attacks, it is, I’m rather astonished to note, three months since I last reached out to you, my readers and my supporters, to ask you to provide some financial support to help me to continue my work.

Every three months I ask for donations to help me maintain my existence as a journalist working mainly in the new media, combining traditional journalism (paid for by those who publish it) and reader-funded journalism (supported directly by my readers) as a viable model for a writer in 2011. My last appeal in June — for $2,000 — was thoroughly successful, and with the help of 36 wonderful friends, readers and supporters (and my apologies if I didn’t manage to thank you all personally!), I succeeded in raising that amount, and, with donations received over the summer, exceeding my expectations.

As a result, I’m putting out an appeal for $2,500 this quarter. This is not a vast amount of money, and nor is it enough to live on, but if those who enjoy my work provide me with $10,000 a year then I am less reliant on the vagaries of the freelance world, and can pursue the kind of research and analysis that I have been undertaking since May, when, after liaising with WikILeaks on the release of previously classified military files from Guantánamo, I began a colossal project chronicling all the prisoners in Guantánamo, adding information from these files to what was already known, to create “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part series of articles, totalling at least 700,000 words, for which I have currently completed the first 17 parts.

This project, which is taking up most of my time from now until the end of the year, is partly funded by one of the organizations that supports my work, but not to the extent necessary to make it viable and self-supporting financially, and so, if you can help out at all, please click on the “Donate” button above to make a payment via PayPal.

All contributions are welcome, whether it’s $25, $100 or $500. Readers can pay via PayPal from anywhere in the world, but if you’re in the UK and want to help without using PayPal, you can send me a cheque (address here — scroll down to the bottom of the page), and if you’re not a PayPal user and want to send a check from the US (or from anywhere else in the world, for that matter), please feel free to do so, but bear in mind that I have to pay a $10/£6.50 processing fee on every transaction. Securely packaged cash is also an option!

In return, I promise to continue shining a light on the dark corners of the United States’ activities since 9/11, and also, when possible, to comment on other stories that have proven of interest to my readers — primarily, the revolutionary movements in the Middle East, the ongoing global financial crisis, and the appalling political state of the UK under a Tory-led coalition.

Over the next three months I will also be working with a number of organizations and concerned individuals on plans to raise the profile of Guantánamo, and the 171 prisoners still held, for the 10th anniversary of the prison’s opening, on January 11, 2012.

This is a terrible anniversary that, when President Bush left office and Barack Obama took over, seemed to be one that would be marked by the closure of Guantánamo and the restoration of America as a nation ruled by law, in which the arbitrary detention of foreigners in an offshore prison would no longer be tolerated, and those who were responsible for creating Guantánamo and redefining and authorizing torture would be held accountable for their actions.

That did not happen, of course, and so the long road to justice and accountability has grown longer still, but with your help I will continue to call for accountability and a return to the rule of law, and to demonstrate why both remain necessary.

As always, it is good to have you with me, and without your support, of course, my work means nothing.

Andy Worthington
London
September 5, 2011

P.S. On a more prosaic note, I also need donations to secure some technical support for my site, as my security was recently compromised. This is a less glamorous side of the expense of running a website and working in the new media, but it is, of course, of vital importance, as cyberthreats continue to proliferate.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, on tour in the UK throughout 2011, and available on DVD here — or here for the US), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles.

Please support my work!

When certain pundits gaze over the media landscape in the second decade of the 21st century and warn apocalyptically of the demise of newspapers and of serious journalism, they tend to overlook the fact that, ever since formatted blogging first became massively popular around 2005, allowing anyone to write and publish without being a techie, much of journalism’s future has migrated steadily away from the traditional mainstream media and onto the Internet.

Here, and especially in what is sometimes called the progressive blogosphere, anyone seeking detailed information about newsworthy topics can compare and contrast material from countless different sources (both traditional and new media), moving definitively away from a model that demanded allegiance to one particular newspaper, and can also, in general, research topics in greater depth than was available when the traditional media were the gatekeepers of the news. Providing a depth of research and commentary about Guantánamo is something that I have tried to do since I began blogging on a full-time basis four years ago, and along the way I have established an archive of over a thousand articles that keeps the story of Guantánamo alive (as the mainstream media’s interest ebbs and flows), and that also continues to draw in new readers.

One of the problems for journalists in this new world is, or course, how to make a living, and over the last four years, in which I have written on an almost daily basis about Guantanamo and related issues, and have recently branched out into dealing with the revolutionary movements in the Middle East, and the depressing state of Britain under the Tories (and their Lib Dem stooges), I have found myself inadvertently establishing a career as a freelance investigative journalist that has involved (1) working, some of the time, for new media outlets and other organisations that pay their writers and researchers, (2) writing much of the time for no money at all, and also being involved in other activities — attending events or being a commentator, for example — which are often unpaid, and (3) also seeking to establish a viable model of reader-funded journalism.

In pursuing the model of reader-funded journalism, I have been putting out a fundraising appeal every three months for the last two years, and this week I have asked my readers and supporters to help me raise $2000. This is not a vast amount of money, and nor is it enough to live on, but if those who enjoy my work provide me with $8000 a year then I am less reliant on the vagaries of the freelance world, and can pursue the kind of research and analysis that recently led to me updating my four-part definitive Guantanamo prisoner list (see the introduction here, and see Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four), and which, over the next six months, will involve me analyzing, transcribing and reporting on all of the 765 classified military documents relating to the Guantanamo prisoners (the Detainee Assessment Briefs) that were released by WikiLeaks in April, when I worked with them as a media partner.

This week my quarterly fundraising appeal has, to date, raised $1200, from 17 generous friends and supporters, and as the week ends I’m putting out a final appeal for support, asking those who believe that my work is important to help me raise another $800.

If you can help out at all, please click on the “Donate” button above to make a payment via PayPal. All contributions are welcome, whether it’s $25, $100 or $500. Readers can pay via PayPal from anywhere in the world, but if you’re in the UK and want to help without using PayPal, you can send me a cheque (address here — scroll down to the bottom of the page), and if you’re not a PayPal user and want to send a check from the US (or from anywhere else in the world, for that matter), please feel free to do so, but bear in mind that I have to pay a $10/£6.50 processing fee on every transaction. Securely packaged cash is also an option!

My thanks again for all your support. I couldn’t keep this up without your interest, and your positive feedback, and my work only has meaning through those who read it, and comment on it, and tell others about it.

Andy Worthington
London
June 10, 2011

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, on tour in the UK throughout 2011, and available on DVD here — or here for the US), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles.

Please support my work!

It’s Day Two of my quarterly fundraising appeal, in which I ask my readers and supporters — who made over 300,000 page visits to this site last month, and who have made it a regular feature in Technorati’s Top 100 World Politics Blogs — to support my research and writing on Guantánamo and related topics — as well as the revolutionary movements in the Middle East, and the parlous state of Tory-led politics in the UK.

Since the appeal began, ten friends have kindly donated $500 — a quarter of my aim — leaving $1500 still to raise. Yesterday evening, a friend in London, who I haven’t seen for far too long, actually cycled over to my house, after reading my initial fundraising request on Facebook, to give me £50 ($80), which was a wonderful gesture of solidarity.

I believe that other supporters are sending donations by mail, and if you would also like help me to continue my unique work on Guantánamo, which, in the last few months, has been acknowledged through my work as a media partner with WikiLeaks, please click on the “Donate” button above to make a payment via PayPal. As I explained yesterday, all contributions are welcome, whether it’s $25, $100 or $500.

Readers can pay via PayPal from anywhere in the world, but if you’re in the UK and want to help without using PayPal, you can send me a cheque (address here — scroll down to the bottom of the page), and if you’re not a PayPal user and want to send a check from the US (or from anywhere else in the world, for that matter), please feel free to do so, but bear in mind that I have to pay a $10/£6.50 processing fee on every transaction. Securely packaged cash is also an option!

As I also explained yesterday, being a freelance investigative journalist is a precarious existence, and although I have some regular support, one of my key sources of income is about to come to an end, leaving me in a rather more precarious position than I have been in for the last year. I continue to write and publish original articles and relevant cross-posts with commentary on a daily basis, but although some of this work is paid for, much of it is not — and a recent example of that is my recent update to my four-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list (intro here, plus Parts One, Two, Three and Four), which provides an unparalleled resource for the stories of almost all the prisoners held at Guantánamo since that vile aberration opened on January 11, 2002.

My thanks again for your continued support. It really is very much appreciated, and without you my efforts would be in vain. The struggle to close Guantánamo is more difficult than ever, with President Obama’s failures, the cowardice of his own party, the unprincipled fearmongering of Republicans, the cowardice of the Supreme Court, the raving paranoia of appeals court judges, and the general indifference of the mainstream media, but It can be achieved, and history will, I believe, remember those who made a stand against the dangerously corrosive form of injustice that has largely prevailed over the last ten years.

Andy Worthington
London
June 7, 2011

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, on tour in the UK throughout 2011, and available on DVD here — or here for the US), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles.

Please support my work!

As I celebrate four years of blogging about Guantánamo, 1300 blog posts and the updating of my four-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, it’s three months since I last reached out to you, my readers and my supporters, to ask you to provide some financial support as part of the quarterly fundraising process that is such an important part of maintaining my work.

Being a freelance investigative journalist is a precarious existence, and although I have some regular support, one of my key sources of income is about to come to an need, leaving me in a rather more precarious position than I have been in for the last year. This is not where I had hoped to be at this particularly point in time, and as a result, if you can help me out at all, your support will be greatly appreciated.

If you can help out, please click on the “Donate” button above to make a payment via PayPal. All contributions are welcome, whether it’s $25, $100 or $500. Readers can pay via PayPal from anywhere in the world, but if you’re in the UK and want to help without using PayPal, you can send me a cheque (address here — scroll down to the bottom of the page), and if you’re not a PayPal user and want to send a check from the US (or from anywhere else in the world, for that matter), please feel free to do so, but bear in mind that I have to pay a $10/£6.50 processing fee on every transaction. Securely packaged cash is also an option!

Since I last asked for your financial support (and my thanks to the 20 good friends and supporters who answered my plea for $1500 back in March and April), I forged some interesting new relationships, working with WikiLeaks and other media partners — McClatchy Newspapers, the Washington Post, the Daily Telegraph, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, El Pais, La Repubblica, L’Espresso and Aftonbladet — on the release of 765 classified military files from Guantánamo (known as Detainee Assessment Briefs), which shine an important light on the tortured testimonies and other statements obtained through coercion or bribery that make up most of what masquerades as evidence against the prisoners.

This was a busy time, when my profile was higher than usual, but most of the work analysing this material is rather less glamorous, and involves the kind of detailed research and transcripts that I engaged in while researching and writing my book The Guantánamo Files. Some of this new research has already been undertaken — in my article, Abandoned in Guantánamo: WikiLeaks Reveals the Yemenis Cleared for Release for Up to Seven Years, and in the first three parts of my five-part series, The Unknown Prisoners of Guantanamo — but much more remains to be done, and much of my work analysing and condensing the assessments, to include them in articles and features, will take place throughout the rest of the year, and will rely, in part, on your generosity.

One supporter, who sent a donation of $100 yesterday, also sent the following message, which helped me to understand that many people regard my work as important:

Along with Julian Assange, you two have likely contributed the most important historical record of world events in modern times. Your work will live long after you both as an illumination of what’s gone wrong in our society, but also as a light to journalists & truth-seekers everywhere, telling one and all “this is how it’s done!” Thank you.

Since my last fundraiser, I have written (or cross-posted, with commentary) around a hundred articles — some on the revolutionary movements in the Middle East or the distressing state of British politics under the Tory-led coalition government, but mostly on my core topics of Guantánamo, torture and other US “War on Terror” prisons, including Bagram, which featured prominently in my work back in April. Some of these articles were paid for, but, as always, many were not, and I rely on you to help me to keep writing and publishing.

As many of you know, I also spent part of the last three months seriously ill, although somehow I managed to keep working throughout that period, even when I was in hospital. I’m delighted to report that I have now recovered , that I am no longer a smoker, and that I am slightly less manically driven in my work than I was before my illness, although I suspect that I still work too hard. I’d like to relax a bit more, but there’s always so much injustice to highlight and to oppose, and I feel a requirement to keep on chronicling and exposing the crimes of Guantánamo as thoroughly as possible.

In the last three months, this has not only involved working with WikiLeaks, but also chronicling the failures of the D.C. Circuit Court and the Supreme Court to provide justice to the 171 men still held in Guantánamo, the ongoing failure of the Obama administration to place principles above political expediency, and to secure the release from Guantánamo of anyone who is not in a coffin, and the cynical maneuvering of lawmakers, particularly in their attempts to claim torture and Guantánamo as successful ventures following the death of Osama bin Laden.

With Guantánamo now seemingly open forever, unless concerted action is taken to expose the horror of such a policy, it remains crucial that those who oppose its continued existence — as we approach the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo  — keep on explaining why it is such a disgrace. To that end, I hope that my articles, my work with WikiLeaks and, as mentioned at the start of this appeal, my recent updating of my four-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, which I first compiled in 2009, will prove useful. For the prisoner list, see the introduction here, and see Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four.

My thanks again for all your interest in reading my work and sharing it — without which it would be pointless — and, in advance, for whatever financial support you can provide. It really is very much appreciated.

Andy Worthington
London
June 6, 2011

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in June 2011, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, on tour in the UK throughout 2011, and available on DVD here — or here for the US), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles.

Please support my work!

Since I began my quest to discover the stories of the Guantánamo prisoners, and to bring those stories to the world, which I first embarked upon over five years ago, I have endeavoured to make that information as accessible as possible. A major step in achieving this took place in March 2009, when I first produced my four-part Definitive Guantánamo Prisoner List, providing the names and nationalities of all 779 prisoners, and, in over 90 percent of those cases, links to my own articles about Guantánamo (around 300 at that point), providing more information about them, or references for where their stories appear in my book The Guantánamo Files or in 12 additional online chapters.

I updated the list in January and July 2010, and have now updated it again. See Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four.

This latest update not only provides links to the 300 or so articles I have written in the last year, but also, crucially, includes information from the latest documents to be released by WikiLeaks, the classified military files, known as Detainee Assessment Briefs (DABs), which were released at the end of April. I worked as a media partner with WikiLeaks, and as a result I’m pleased to include information about 86 prisoners that was not previously known (from an ongoing five-part series of articles, entitled, WikiLeaks: The Unknown Prisoners of Guantánamo), and also to include dozens of previously unseen photos. I’ll be conducting further analysis of the WikiLeaks documents over the next few months, and will add further links as this work progresses.

As a result, when this five-part series is complete and the relevant links have been added to this list, it will provide, for the first time, references (mostly in the form of links) to the stories of all of the 779 prisoners held in Guantánamo (with the exception of three missing stories).

This is not, of course, the only online database that is publicly available. The New York Times, for example, has made all the publicly available information about the prisoners, from the Bush-era Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) and annual Administrative Review Boards (ARBs), available on its Guantánamo Docket (and the original source material remains available on the US Department of Defense’s website), although these only cover the stories of around three-quarters of the 779 prisoners held in total. In addition, there is now WikiLeaks’ trove of Detainee Assessment Briefs (DABs), supplementing these documents with crucial insights into how the authorities reached the often mistaken conclusions highlighted in the earlier documents.

However, with the exception of two articles that I wrote for WikiLeaks, introducing the Detainee Assessment Briefs (WikiLeaks Reveals Secret Guantánamo Files, Exposes Detention Policy as a Construct of Lies and How to Read WikiLeaks’ Guantánamo Files), my list provides the only contextual analysis of the stories of all the prisoners held at Guantánamo throughout its long and dark history.

As a result, as I explained when I first published the list:

It is my hope that this project will provide an invaluable research tool for those seeking to understand how it came to pass that the government of the United States turned its back on domestic and international law, establishing torture as official US policy, and holding men without charge or trial neither as prisoners of war, protected by the Geneva Conventions, nor as criminal suspects to be put forward for trial in a federal court, but as “illegal enemy combatants” [or "unlawful enemy combatants," or, as they now are under President Obama, "alien unprivileged enemy belligerents"].

I also hope that it provides a compelling explanation of how that same government, under the leadership of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, established a prison in which the overwhelming majority of those held — at least 93 percent of the 779 men and boys imprisoned in total — were either completely innocent people, seized as a result of dubious intelligence or sold for bounty payments, or Taliban foot soldiers, recruited to fight an inter-Muslim civil war that began long before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and that had nothing to do with al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or international terrorism.

In conclusion, I would like to reiterate how fundamental the problem is of confusing soldiers with terrorists, and how it is a problem enshrined in the founding legislation of the “War on Terror,” the Authorization for Use of Military Force, which President Obama relies upon to justify the detention of prisoners at Guantánamo, and which lawmakers in the House of Representatives recently voted to expand.

I would also like to add that Guantánamo’s problems are not all in the past. Although 600 of the 779 prisoners held throughout the prison’s nine-year history have been released, 171 remain, and the last two prisoners to leave the prison (in February, and last month) left in coffins. The stories of these men, which I wrote about in my articles, Guantánamo Prisoner Dies After Being Held for Nine Years Without Charge or Trial, The Only Way Out of Guantánamo Is In a Coffin and Guantánamo Suicide Was Severely Mentally Ill, And Was A Case of Mistaken Identity, provide a somber epitaph for President Obama’s hopes of closing the prison, based on the bold promise to do so that he made on his second day in office, and then failed to fulfill.

It is not entirely his own fault, as there are dark forces at work — in the D.C. Circuit Court, where deeply Conservative judges are undermining the prisoners’ habeas corpus rights, granted by a Supreme Court that no longer seems to care, and in Congress, where the most cynical, negative, fearmongering Republican party of all time, with the help of cowardly Democrats, has been working overtime to try and ensure that Guantánamo remains open forever.

Nevertheless, Barack Obama is the President, and the Commander-in-Chief, and he has failed to adequately challenge his critics, or to stand up for the principles which so many of his supporters at the time of his election had been led to believe would result in a thorough repudiation of the Bush administration’s hideous novelties in its brutal and ill-conceived “War on Terror.” Instead, we have the return of kangaroo courts and indefinite detention without charge or trial, as we had under Bush, no release for prisoners cleared for release by Obama’s own Guantánamo Review Task Force, no prosecutions for torturers, and no end in sight to the endless war that the Bush administration started, and which Obama has ramped up with drone strikes and assassinations.

In many ways, therefore, this updated list provides crucial, relevant information — “actionable intelligence,” even — that is actively useful for those still seeking to close Guantánamo, and to bring to an end this bleak chapter in American history.

And believe me, a concerted effort is required if those of us who regard Guantánamo as an abomination and a vile aberration from internationally acceptable standards of detention and the humane treatment of prisoners are ever to see it close.

As ever, I thank you for your support, and if you’re able to make a donation to help me to continue my work, then I will be very grateful. Please click on the “Donate” button above to make a payment via PayPal. All contributions are welcome, whether it’s $25, $100 or $500.

For anyone interested in anniversaries, it is exactly four years since I began writing about Guantánamo as a full-time freelance investigative journalist (following the 14 months that I spent researching and writing The Guantánamo Files), and this is also my 1300th blog post.

Andy Worthington
London, June 1, 2011

Technical note: If you have problems with text overlaying any of the photos in the list, please click “refresh,” and the problem should be resolved.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed (and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and YouTube). Also see details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, on tour in the UK throughout 2011, and available on DVD here — or here for the US), my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.