Donald Trump

Here’s my report about – and link to – an interview about Guantánamo that I undertook this week with Linda Olson-Osterlund on KBOO FM, a community radio station in Portland, Oregon. Linda and I have, it’s sobering to note, been discussing Guantánamo for eleven years.

My analysis of the broken Periodic Review Board system at Guantánamo, a parole-type process introduced by President Obama, to assess whether or not prisoners regarded as “too dangerous to transfer but not feasible for prosecution” could be released. The PRBs recommended 38 prisoners for release under Obama, whilst approving the ongoing imprisonment without charge or trial of 26 others. Under Trump, however, the process has become meaningless, because not a single prisoner has been recommended for release, and, as a result, the prisoners are now boycotting the process, with the most recent example being Hassan bin Attash, a Saudi who was just 16 or 17 years old when he was seized in 2002, and who has now, shamefully, spent over half his life imprisoned without charge or trial.

Following up on a report about the outrageous cost of running the prison at Guantánamo Bay by Carol Rosenberg in the New York Times, in which I suggest that her figure of $13m per prisoner per year, based on figures for last year, is actually understated, and is, instead, $14m per prisoner per year. Such a waste of money, as well as being a legal, moral and ethical abomination.

Following up on an ABC News feature about Guantánamo – a rarity for the US mainstream media, with the exception of Carol Rosenberg at the New York Times – about the case of Abdul Latif Nasser, a Moroccan prisoner who was approved for release from Guantánamo three years ago, but is still held because the necessary procedures weren’t completed by the time President Obama left office, and Donald Trump, of course, has no intention of releasing anyone from Guantánamo under any circumstances.

This year, on the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, which I’ve been writing about most years since 2007, generally in relation to Guantánamo and the CIA torture program, I examine the latest horror story to emerge from the US, via Donald Trump’s migrant detention program, recently described by a visiting doctor as comparable “to torture facilities.”

My response to the outrageous and alarming decision by the US Justice Department, under Donald Trump, to charge Julian Assange of WikiLeaks under the Espionage Act, and how fundamentally it threatens press freedom, plus my call for the British government to refuse to extradite Assange to the US, and also to move him from Belmarsh, where his mental health is deteriorating.

I follow up on a recent New York Times article by Carol Rosenberg about the US military’s problems with aging prisoners at Guantánamo, looking in particular at how these problems have arisen because, after 9/11, the US embraced torture (whch is incompatible with justice) and indefinite detention without charge or trial, which is also fundamentally unacceptable — and, of course, continues to be supported by Donald Trump.

My analysis of the significance of Julian Assange’s arrest in London last week, and why – regardless of what anyone may think about Assange personally – it’s hugely important that there is concerted resistance to any effort by the US to clamp down on media freedom by pretending that Assange and WikiLeaks were not engaged in journalism, but in some sort of espionage.

Linking to – and discussing – my detailed half-hour interview about Guantánamo with Chris Hedges on his show ‘On Contact’ on RT America. Shamefully, although the continued existence of Guantánamo ought to be a source of shame for all decent people, over 17 years since the prison first opened, it has almost disappeared from the mainstream media.

As Daesh’s would-be Caliphate crumbles in Syria, I express my disgust at UK home secretary Sajid Javid’s cynical and unacceptable decision to strip the citizenship of ISIS bride Shamima Begum, who was just 15 when she travelled to Syria, and also look at other countries’ responses, including those of the US.