I’m Off to WOMAD, Back on Monday: Please Listen to Me Discussing Bagram on the Radio with Scott Horton

26.7.12

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Every year, on the last weekend in July, WOMAD (World of Music, Arts and Dance), the world music festival, takes place in the UK — for the last few years, in Wiltshire, on a wonderful site in Charlton Park — and this year is its 30th anniversary. My wife has been running children’s workshops there since 2002, and every year a group of us — friends and our kids — get to hang out together for four days, to do the workshops and create a wonderful sculpture for the children’s procession on the Sunday, to eat great food (unlike the kind of catering that will be in place for the Olympics), to watch great music, and to chill out backstage, and also in the backstage camp. My guitar is tuned, and I’m looking forward to some strumming and singing.

I’m back on Monday, but while I’m away, please check out the photos I’ve been posting regularly over the last month, if you haven’t yet seen them, beginning with yesterday’s excursion to the Olympic Park in the blazing sun — and see below for a bonus photo from Greenwich, which I took on my way back home. Click on the photo to enlarge it — and I’ve also just added it to the Olympics set on Flickr.

Two security guards demonstrating the laid-back atmosphere in Greenwich on July 25, 2012, a day before the start of the Olympic Games. Photo by Andy Worthington.

If you want something to read, please check out my latest articles about Guantánamo, For Ramadan, Write to the Forgotten Prisoners in Guantánamo and At Guantánamo, Another Bleak Ramadan for 87 Cleared Prisoners Who Are Still Held.

If you have the time, I’d also like to urge you to listen to my latest interview with the ever-indignant Scott Horton, formerly of Antiwar Radio, who is now working independently. Scott and I go back many years. Our first interview was five years ago, and there have been dozens more interviews since. He’s one of the most persistent supporters of my work, and if you can support him at all, it would be very much appreciated.

Our latest 20-minute interview is here, and it came about because Scott had read my most recent article about the ongoing injustice of the US prison at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, the graveyard of the Geneva Conventions and a place from which it is as impossible for cleared prisoners to be freed as Guantánamo. That article was Bagram: Still a Black Hole for Foreign Prisoners, and this is how Scott described the show:

Andy Worthington discusses how Bagram prison in Afghanistan is “Still a Black Hole for Foreign Prisoners;” President Obama’s contempt for the Geneva Conventions and the Boumediene Supreme Court decision that granted Guantánamo prisoners habeas corpus rights; problems with keeping prisoners of war for the duration of an interminable “War on Terror;” and how the Bush torture legacy remains intact under Obama.

OK, that’s it. I’m back on Monday. I leave you with the headlining act at WOMAD this year, the excellent Jimmy Cliff, still in fine voice after all these years, singing “Many Rivers to Cross” on the BBC show, “Later with Jools Holland,” just a few years ago.

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, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “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, and please also consider joining the new “Close Guantánamo campaign,” and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.


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7 Responses

  1. Andy Worthington says...

    On Facebook, Dejanka Bryant wrote:

    Enjoy it. It’s going to be sunny and warm.

  2. Andy Worthington says...

    Dave Tinham wrote:

    going on saturday, hope to bump into you there

  3. Andy Worthington says...

    Ann Alexander wrote:

    Have a great time, Andy. Hope the sun shines for you.

  4. Andy Worthington says...

    Thanks, Dejanka. Yes, it was mostly sunny and warm – hot, even – with very little rain. Excellent company and great music too. It’s hard to come back to a house after four days camping in a field with good friends.
    Sorry to have missed you, Dave. Hope you had a great time – I’d be very surprised if you didn’t!

  5. Andy Worthington says...

    And thank you, Ann. Yes, the sun shone marvellously, for the most part, and it was a lovely long weekend.

  6. Andy Worthington says...

    George Kenneth Berger wrote:

    Good to hear you had a good time, Andy.

  7. Andy Worthington says...

    Thanks, George. Yes, it was wonderful. Photos to follow soon.

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Andy Worthington

Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo and We Stand With Shaker, singer/songwriter (The Four Fathers).
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