A fundraising appeal

Today is the 20th anniversary of the release, by the Pentagon, on April 20, 2006, of the first ever publicly-released prisoner list revealing the names and nationalities of 558 of the 779 prisoners held at Guantánamo at that point in time, after the prison had been almost entirely shrouded in a deliberate veil of secrecy for the first four years and three months of its existence, enabling torture and other abuse to take place, inflicted on men and boys held as “unlawful enemy combatants” without any fundamental rights whatsoever as human beings. A second list, revealing information about all 759 prisoners, was released in May 2006, and 20 more prisoners — mostly alleged “high-value detainees” — arrived at Guantánamo from CIA “black sites” in September 2006, and also in 2007 and 2008, when transfers to the prison came to an end. The list was unwillingly released by the Pentagon through Freedom of Information legislation, via a lawsuit submitted by the Associated Press, and it provided the first significant key to enable me, as an independent researcher, to begin to build up a coherent picture of who was held at Guantánamo, by cross-referencing the list with other documentation, and to understand how and why the Bush administration had fundamentally misled the world by claiming that the prisoners were “the worst of the worst.” As I have always maintained, there was never any evidence that any more than a few percent of prisoners held at Guantánamo had any meaningful connection to Al-Qaeda or other groups allegedly involved in terrorism. My work led to the publication, after a year of incessant research and writing, of my book “The Guantánamo Files”, published in September 2007, and my subsequent work as an independent journalist and human rights activist, writing and publishing thousands of articles on my website, telling more of the prisoners’ stories, and campaigning to get the prison closed.

An appraisal of my work as an independent journalist and human rights activist in the 20th year since I first began, on a full-time basis, researching and writing about Guantánamo and the men held there, and exposing the truth about the Bush administration’s lies and distortions regarding their alleged status as “enemy combatants”, who, they claimed, in defiance of all international and domestic laws and treaties, could be held indefinitely without charge or trial. I also reflect on my other writing over the years, most recently about Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and I invite your support, if possible, for what is an ongoing truth-telling endeavour, involving in-depth articles that provide more detail than is usually available through the mainstream media, and with a moral compass that also generally eludes the “liberal” media gatekeepers, with their alleged “objectivity” and “impartiality”, which either discourages entirely valid outrage, or props up the establishment “status quo.”

My latest quarterly call for support for my ongoing Guantánamo work, in which I also promote a crucial new way to be informed about my various endeavors, via my brand-new Substack account, which bypasses censorship and algorithmic suppression by delivering all my news directly into your inbox.

My latest quarterly fundraiser, in which I ask you, if you can, to make a donation to support my ongoing work on Guantánamo, as a reader-funded independent journalist and activist, over the next three months. As well as providing some context for why this work remains important, I also discuss my other writing — on Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and climate collapse — pointing out how, to varying degrees, my work is part of a wider effort by other independent voices to counter the general indifference and misinformation that pervades almost the whole of the mainstream media.

My latest quarterly fundraiser, in which I ask you, if you can, to make a donation to support my ongoing work on Guantánamo, over the next three months, as a reader-funded independent journalist and activist, and also my ongoing detailed writing about, and analyses of Israel’s horrific genocide in Gaza.

My latest quarterly fundraiser, in which I ask you, if you can, to make a donation to support my ongoing work on Guantánamo, over the next three months, as a reader-funded independent journalist and activist. My aim, every three months, is to raise $2500 (£2000) to enable me to continue my work, now in its 19th year.

My latest fundraiser, in which I explain why my work is uncompromising and uncompromised because I’m an independent reader-supported journalist and activist, and ask for your support to enable me to keep writing about Guantánamo, and campaigning to get the prison closed, over the next three months.

Celebrating 2,400 days since I first began posting photos and essays about London as ‘The State of London’ on Facebook (and later on X), and seeking donations to enable me to continue this unique photo-journalistic project, in which, as I describe it, I look at “London’s history, its social housing, its takeover, in recent decades, by predatory capitalism, the changing seasons, forgotten corners, rivers, hills and canals, parks and graveyards, seats of power, poverty and protests.”

My latest fundraiser, seeking $2500 (£2000) to support my work on Guantánamo (writing, campaigning, public appearances and media appearances) for the next three months, and also, if it’s of interest, to support my ongoing photo-journalism project ‘The State of London.’ I am an entirely reader-funded journalist and activist, and can only continue my work with your assistance.

My latest fundraiser, in which I ask you, if you can, to make a donation to support my work on Guantánamo for the next three months. I have no institutional backing, and so am dependent on your generosity to enable me to continue to function as a reader-funded, and truly independent, journalist and activist.