Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months of the Trump administration.

Dear friends, supporters, and any stray passers-by,

My most recent article, WORLD EXCLUSIVE: Ex-Guantánamo Prisoner Salem Gherebi’s Letter Explaining Why He Voluntarily Returned to Libya from Senegal Despite the Danger in Doing So, was something of a milestone for me — my 3,000th article published here on my website since I first began publishing articles here, on an almost daily basis, nearly eleven years ago. 

Almost 2,200 of those articles have been about the prison at Guantánamo Bay and the men held there, the main focus of my work as a writer and a campaigner since the spring of 2006, when I began working on the manuscript for my book The Guantánamo Files, which I completed in May 2007, and which was published that September.

If you’ve been with me all that time — as some of you, perhaps, have been — you’ll know that I started publishing articles here after the fourth prisoner at Guantánamo died, a man named Abdul Rahman al-Amri, allegedly by committing suicide. After spending 14 months researching and writing about the prisoners, based on a forensic analysis of the many thousands of pages of information about them that the Pentagon had been obliged to release after they lost a Freedom of Information lawsuit, I think it’s fair to say that I knew more than anyone in the world about the prisoners at that point, but although I pitched a proposal to the Guardian, I was told that they’d pick up on the Associated Press’s wire, and so I published it myself, as I already had a website up and running (technically, a WordPress blog), and hoped people would notice. Read the rest of this entry »

Please support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist, commentator and activist.

Seven years ago yesterday, I was admitted to hospital after suffering for two months with severe pain in two toes on my right foot. As a human rights campaigner, it was, I thought, somewhat ironic that I was in such pain that I was suffering from sleep deprivation, unable to sleep for more than a few minutes before being jolted awake in excruciating pain, a situation that lasted for at least a month, if I recall correctly after all this time.

Eventually, doctors worked out that I had a blood clot, which was what was turning my toes black, but it wasn’t until I was admitted to hospital — and, specifically, St. Thomas’s, where I was taken on March 20, that specialists worked out what to do for me — or, rather, what they would try, to see if it worked — which involved me, for five days, having what felt like liquid cement pumped into me, in an effort to widen the artery that fed my toes and, ultimately, to save them. (I wrote about my experience at the time, in an article entitled, Intimations of Mortality — And Why This Is the View From My Bedroom).

Their endeavours, I’m very glad to say, were successful. After 12 days in hospital, thoroughly marinaded in morphine (a miraculous pain-killer that doctors work hard to prevent mere mortals from having access to on a regular basis, presumably to prevent the world from being overrun with morphine addicts), I returned home, to resume my life, to allow my toes to fully heal, and, eventually, to start a new life. Read the rest of this entry »

Please click on the ‘Donate’ button below to make a donation towards the $2000 (£1500) I’m trying to raise to support my work on Guantánamo for the next three months!

Dear friends and supporters,

It’s Day 4 of my quarterly fundraiser, and I’m grateful to the friends and supporters who have helped me reach 20% of my target of $2500 (£1800) to continue my work on Guantánamo over the next three months. However, I’d like to ask you, if you can, to join in helping me, as, for the most part, a reader-funded journalist and activist, to raise the funds I’m seeking to enable me to keep working — writing the 50 or so articles I publish every quarter, plus all my social media work, and, when they happen, media and personal appearances.

I have no institutional backing for my work, and no revenue stream that comes through the mainstream media and its advertisers’ support, so almost everything I do is dependent on your financial support for me to continue — not just my writing and campaigning to close Guantánamo, but also my work in defence of social housing in the UK (including ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, the new documentary film that I narrate and am preparing to tour around the UK), my protest music, with my band The Four Fathers, and my London photography project, ‘The State of London.’

If you can help out at all, please click on the “Donate” button above to make a payment via PayPal. Any amount will be gratefully received — whether it’s $500, $100, $25 or even $10 — or the equivalent in any other currency. The donation page is set to dollars, because the majority of my readers are based in the US, but PayPal will convert any amount you wish to pay from any other currency — and you don’t have to have a PayPal account to make a donation.

You can also make a recurring payment on a monthly basis by ticking the box marked, “Make this a monthly donation,” and if you are able to do so, it would be very much appreciated. Read the rest of this entry »

Please click the ‘Donate’ button to make a donation towards the $2500 (£1850) I’m trying to raise to support my work on Guantánamo for the next three months!

Dear friends and supporters – and anyone happening to pass by,

It’s that time of year again, when I ask you, if you can, to support my work as an independent journalist, activist and commentator, working primarily to educate people about the prison at Guantánamo Bay and to get it closed down — and, if you wish, my campaigning work to try and prevent the destruction of housing estates in London and across the UK, my London photography, and my music, with my band The Four Fathers.

I am, it seems, a very modern creation — a writer and campaigner funded almost entirely by my supporters, so if you can help out at all, please click on the “Donate” button above to make a payment via PayPal. Any amount will be gratefully received — whether it’s $500, $100, $25 or even $10 — or the equivalent in any other currency.

You can also make a recurring payment on a monthly basis by ticking the box marked, “Make this a monthly donation,” and if you are able to do so, it would be very much appreciated.

The donation page is set to dollars, because the majority of my readers are based in the US, but PayPal will convert any amount you wish to pay from any other currency — and you don’t have to have a PayPal account to make a donation. Read the rest of this entry »

Please feel free to support ‘The State of London’ and my photo-journalism with a donation, if you wish. I receive no institutional funding for it whatsoever.

300 days ago, on May 11, 2017, I began publishing a photo a day on Facebook as part of a photo project called ‘The State of London.’ I’d actually begun the project five years before, on May 11, 2012, when I’d first started cycling around London taking photos of whatever interested me, the intention being to create a photographic record of the capital at this particular time in its history — under Tory rule, with the Olympics about to begin as the project started, and with hideous towers rising up everywhere, as the latest phase of the primary focus of capitalism in London over the last 20 years — an endless, artificially-sustained housing bubble that is a disaster for almost everyone except the very rich, and, of course, the developers.

As I began cycling around London and taking photos, I decided that I would visit all 120 of inner London’s postcodes — the ones beginning WC, EC, SE, SW, W, NW, N and E — as well as trying to visit as much of outer London as possible. In the first rush of my enthusiasm, I hadn’t genuinely taken on board quite how big London is, and how long it takes to cycle across it, while being regularly distracted by photo opportunities. It took me until September 2014, if I recall correctly, to visit all 120 postcodes, and, to date, I’ve only visited a handful of the outer postcodes — in particular, those nearest to me, for example, designated BR (for Bromley) and CR (for Croydon).

As the project has developed, I suspect that some of my enthusiasms have become apparent. To some extent, I have come to regard myself as a barometer of the weather, because I cycle almost every day, whatever the conditions (which, along the way, has also helped to keep me healthy, and has made me realise that we are meant to be outdoors much more than we generally are), and the photos inevitably reflect that, with some photos capturing torrential rain, for example, which is generally quite rare, and others capturing the dullness of the typical overcast weather that defines so much of the British weather (and, by extension, the British psyche — once a heavy dose of Puritanism has also been added). Other photos capture the beauty and clarity of the many different types of sunlight — at different times of the day, and at different times of the year, and I freely admit that I’m always in search of the strong, low light and long shadows that can be found towards the end of the day, and that I particularly love. Read the rest of this entry »

Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months of the Trump administration.

This article is the 23rd in an ongoing series of articles listing all my work in chronological order. It’s a project I began in January 2010, when I put together the first chronological lists of all my articles, in the hope that doing so would make it as easy as possible for readers and researchers to navigate my work — the nearly 3,000 articles I have published since I first began publishing articles here in May 2007, which, otherwise, are not available in chronological order in any readily accessible form.

I receive no institutional funding for my work, and so, if you appreciate what I do as a reader-funded journalist and activist, please consider making a donation via the Paypal ‘Donate’ button above. Any amount, however large or small, will be very gratefully received — and if you are able to become a regular monthly sustainer, that would be particularly appreciated. To do so, please tick the box marked, “Make this a monthly donation,” and fill in the amount you wish to donate every month.

As I note every time I put together a chronological list of my articles, my mission, as it has been since my research in 2006-07, for my book The Guantánamo Files, first revealed the scale of the injustice at Guantánamo, continues to revolve around four main aims — to humanize the prisoners by telling their stories; to expose the many lies told about them to supposedly justify their detention; to push for the prison’s closure and the absolute repudiation of indefinite detention without charge or trial as US policy; and to call for those who initiated, implemented and supported indefinite detention and torture to be held accountable for their actions. Read the rest of this entry »

Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months of the Trump administration.

Happy New Year to my friends and supporters, and to anyone passing by! If you don’t know me, I’m a reader-funded journalist, activist, photographer and musician, working through these media to inform, educate and entertain, and to address important issues involving human rights and social justice. Below are my main passions, and what I hope to achieve in 2018, and you’re more than welcome to get on board and get involved with any or all of them! Donations to support my work, however large or small, are always welcome, as I very genuinely cannot do what I do without your support.

1. Closing Guantánamo

Regular readers will know that the last twelve years of my life have largely been given over to telling the story of Guantánamo and the men held there, and working to get the prison closed — first via my book The Guantánamo Files, and, since May 2007, via my website, where I have, to date, published 2,154 articles about Guantánamo, and, since January 2012, via the Close Guantánamo campaign and website that I established (with the US attorney Tom Wilner, who represented the prisoners in their Supreme Court cases in 2004 and 2008) on the 10th anniversary of the opening of the prison on January 11, 2012.

Every January, since 2011, I’ve visited the US to call for the closure of Guantánamo on an around the anniversary of the prison’s opening, and I’ll be doing the same this month, flying out to the US next Monday to take part in events in Washington, D.C. on January 10 and 11, including a protest outside the White House, and I look forward to more dates being added soon. If you want an interview, or want to stage an event, do let me know — and if you want a spur to donate to support my work, then it will help with my visit! Read the rest of this entry »

Please click on the ‘Donate’ button below to make a donation towards the $2500 (£1850) I’m trying to raise to support my work on Guantánamo for the next three months!

Dear friends and supporters,

It’s that time of year when I ask you, if you can, to make a donation to support my work on Guantánamo as an independent journalist and activist trying to get the prison closed down. It’s nearly 16 years since Guantánamo opened, and nearly 12 years since I started researching and writing about Guantánamo on a full-time basis, firstly through my book The Guantánamo Files, and, since May 2007, through my journalism, most of which has been online (here on andyworthington.co.uk, and, since 2012, also on the Close Guantánamo website). I have occasionally worked for the mainstream media, but mostly my independence has allowed me the freedom to focus relentlessly on Guantánamo on my own terms, and I know that, over the long years of my engagement with this topic, many of you have come to appreciate that.

There is a catch, however. As an independent journalist, commentator and activist, no advertisers, editorial board or institution is paying me, and I rely on you to provide me with the financial support to enable me to do what I do. So if you can help out at all, please click on the “Donate” button above to make a payment via PayPal.

You can also make a recurring payment on a monthly basis by ticking the box marked, “Make This Recurring (Monthly),” and if you are able to do so, it would be very much appreciated. Read the rest of this entry »

Please support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist, commentator, activist and photographer.

Today is the 200th day of ‘the State of London’, a photo project that I launched on Facebook on May 11 this year, the fifth anniversary of when I first began travelling around the capital by bike, taking photos on a daily basis. I also set up a Twitter page recently, and, in the new year I hope to get the website (currently just a skeleton) up and running. My article introducing the project is here, and also see here for my reflections after 100 days.

The photos cover every one of London’s 120 postcodes, and also include some of the outlying boroughs, and, since launching the daily photos on Facebook, I’ve posted photos from over half of London’s 120 postcodes.

They feature what I hope is a fascinating cross-section of the capital’s many faces beyond those seen by tourists — its abandoned and run-down places, its buildings old and new (the latter rising up like a plague of greed), night and day, the light, the rain, the seasons and the weather, political protests, and, increasingly, those parts of the city that are threatened with destruction — primarily, council estates that are being knocked down and replaced with new private developments from which the existing residents (both tenants and leaseholders) are generally excluded, a disgraceful form of social cleansing involving councils from across the entire political spectrum. Read the rest of this entry »

Please support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist and commentator — and photographer.

Back in May, I launched the first manifestation of a photo project I’ve been undertaking for the last five years — ‘The State of London’, which involves me photographing London on bike rides that I undertake every day, from small local circuits from my home in south east London to long journeys to the other side of town and back.

In the years since I began this project, in May 2012, I’ve visited all 120 London postcodes (the EC, WC, N, E, SE, SW, W and NW postcodes), and have also made additional visits to some of Greater London’s outer boroughs. A few years ago, I had a website made, with an interactive map allowing me to post photos by postcode. I hope to start using the website soon, which will also feature original essays about the capital, its history and its current state, and I’ll also soon be setting up a Twitter page, but for now the Facebook page is the place to visit to see glimpses of what I’ve been up to, and I hope that you’ll “like” it and start following what I do, if you haven’t already.

I’ve lived in London for all of my adult life, since I finished university in 1985, but it wasn’t until 2012 that I realized that huge swathes of the city were unknown to me, and that I wanted to visit all the places I’d never visited, as well as revisiting other places I’d got to know over the years. The trigger was me getting ill in 2011, giving up smoking, and realizing that I needed to get fit, and the photo project was the perfect solution. When I began, I soon realized that even the parts of London closest to me, in south east London were in many ways unknown territory, and, with a blanket ban on bicycles on trains in place in the run-up to the 2012 Olympic Games, I had to cycle through south east London to get anywhere else in London, and, as a result of these journeys and of my shorter bike rides close to home, I eventually got to know almost every street in south east London — and have also photographed many of them at some time or other. Read the rest of this entry »