Guantánamo: Andy Worthington on the Radio with Michael Slate, Rose Aguilar and Linda Olson-Osterlund

Last week, when I was in the US campaigning for the closure of Guantánamo on the 9th anniversary of the prison’s opening, my media appearances mainly involved TV — Democracy Now! in New York, and Press TV and two appearances on Russia Today in Washington D.C. I was also filmed on a number of occasions by independent journalists, and was very pleased that the panel discussion I organized at the New America Foundation on January 11, with Morris Davis, Tom Wilner and Ben Wittes, was filmed in its entirety.

During my visit, I was only interviewed on one radio show. On Thursday, just before heading to the airport to return to the UK, I was a guest of the veteran talk show host and political activist Peter Werbe, on his show which airs in the Detroit area. This was a fascinating 20-minute interview, but it does not yet appear to be available online. I’ll keep you posted.

On Friday, however, dogged with jetlag after snatchng just three hours sleep in the air, I did two shows, speaking first with the veteran “revolutionary journalist” Michael Slate on his weekly show, The Michael Slate Show, which is broadcast on KPFK in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, The 20-minute interview at the top of the show is available here, and is followed by an interview with Larry Everest, a friend and activist from the Berkeley area. Michael was a wonderfully supportive host, and we had the opportunity to run through the problems with Guantánamo that I highlighted in my recent article, The Political Prisoners of Guantánamo.

I then spoke with Rose Aguilar (who interviewed me back in October, as part of “Berkeley Says No to Torture” Week) on her show “Your Call,” broadcast on KALW, San Francisco and KUSP, Santa Cruz and available here. I spoke to Rose in the last 20 minutes or so of the hour-long show that also featured California Watch’s Chase Davis, and Tax Notes’ David Cay Johnson discussing Gov. Brown’s proposed tax budget for California, and again had the opportunity to run through the current problems facing the remaining 173 prisoners, in a discussion that led Rose to suggest that we should revisit this topic in greater detail in the near future — which I’ll be happy to do, as Rose is an engaging and knowledgable host.

While I’m mentioning recent radio appearances, I’d also lke to mention a show from a few weeks ago, which slipped through my net over the New Year period. On December 23, I spoke to Linda Olson-Osterlund for her Year End Wrap-up show on KBOO FM in Portland, Oregon, and the 29-minute interview, on the program entitled “A Deeper Look,” is available here. I have spoken to Linda on several occasions over the last few years, and it was a pleasure, as ever, to talk to her. She described the show as follows:

2010 is coming to an end and the prisoners at the illegal prison in Guantánamo Bay have less reason to expect release than at any time since coming into the hands of the U.S. Military. Join host Linda Olson-Osterlund and her guest, Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files, and co-director of the documentary “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo.” Who is still there? Who has been released? The trial of Omar Khadr and what we can learn so far from documents released by WikiLeaks.

Note: The photo above is by Sarah Hogarth, and her album of photos from the January 11 events in Washington D.C. can be found here.

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 and Twitter). Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in July 2010, details about the new documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, currently on tour in the UK, and available on DVD here), 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.