Quarterly Fundraiser: End of Week Appeal for $1500 to Continue My Guantánamo Work

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.