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Photos from, and my report about the eleven global monthly coordinated vigils for the closure of Guantánamo that took place across the US and around the world on September 4, 2024. The vigils take place on the first Wednesday of every month, and the next date is October 2.

This is meant to hit hard, and I hope it does. It’s my analysis of how, faced with the the gravest threat humanity has ever experienced — wildly accelerating climate collapse, which will make the planet uninhabitable for humans, and probably in the not too distant future — our leaders have, instead, suffered a massive psychic collapse, unable to accept that, as I describe it, “everything our neoliberal societies have worshipped and profited from over the last 40 years is killing us”, and have “collectively retreated into a broken psychic landscape in which, as so often in human history, if faced with something uncomfortable — as, in this case, our own wilful and self-imposed extinction — they have chosen to slaughter everyone instead, and to lay waste to human environments to make them uninhabitable.”

A long read in which I highlight the profound and consequential differences between those who see the events of October 7, 2023 as having occurred in a vacuum, and who seek to justify their extraordinarily murderous response as some sort of necessity borne of their perceived “exceptionalism”, and those who, in contrast, correctly understand that the events of October 7, however horrendous, were part of a 57-year history of, on the one hand, occupation, oppression, apartheid, murder and brutal arbitrary imprisonment, and, on the other, the resistance to it, and that nothing can justify an open-ended military response of such severity, and involving the indiscriminate slaughter of so many civilians that it not only invites comparisons with the most brutal regimes in history; it also threatens to fatally undermine the international “rules-based order” established in the wake of the Second World War to try to prevent such atrocities from ever taking place again. In an attempt to understand the position taken by those who are trapped in a bubble of exterminating fury focused on the events of October 7, I draw on a recent and revelatory article by the renowned scholar Omer Bartov, written after a recent and disturbing visit to his home country, and I also seek to understand the position taken by most of the leaders of the west, whose unquestioning support for this unending aggression makes a mockery of their claims to hold any kind of moral high ground, has led to the disturbing and unprecedented suppression of internal dissent, and also threatens, eventually, to lead to them being held complicit in the grave crimes that have been taking place over the last ten and a half months.

Promoting the release of ‘Warriors (Freedom Version)’ by The Four Fathers, an amended version of the song ‘Warriors’, which I wrote about Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, and which we released in February, while Julian was still held in HMP Belmarsh, fighting his proposed extradition to the US in the UK courts. We released the updated song to mark 50 days since Julian unexpectedly regained his freedom as the result of a plea deal at the end of June, and I hope that you have time to listen to it, and that you’ll share it if you like it. Julian hasn’t made any public statements since his release, although last month his wife Stella posted the wonderful photo of the whole family together on a beach in Australia, which we used as the cover image, and I’m sure I’m joined by many other supporters in wishing him the opportunity to enjoy his freedom in peace, as I’m sure it will take him a considerable amount of time to recover from his long ordeal – of nearly seven years in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and then five years in Belmarsh.

My detailed report about the disturbing news that the majority of the 28 former Guantánamo prisoners from Yemen, who were resettled in Oman between 2015 and 2017 because it was unsafe for them to be sent home, have been forcibly repatriated in recent weeks. To provide some necessary context, my article also includes an overview of the Obama administration’s resettlement program, in which, from 2009 to 2017, 125 former prisoners were resettled in 28 countries around the world, and I also discuss some glaring examples of countries that have failed to treat these men fairly or humanely, as supposedly required in the “diplomatic assurances” agreed with the US. The news from Oman is particularly dispiriting because the resettlement program there had been successful, with many of the men securing work, and marrying and having children. Oman has provided no explanation, and comments by US officials have been particularly troubling, with one State Department official stating that the US government had “never had an expectation that former Guantánamo detainees would indefinitely remain in receiving countries.” Another US official suggested that the Omanis were “making room” for a new arrival of former prisoners from Guantánamo, eleven men whose resettlement was supposed to take place last October, but was cancelled after the Hamas attacks on October 7. Both are alarming positions for the US government to take, as they blithely ignore the fact that, for the last 15 years, Congress has included provisions in the annual National Defense Authorization Act specifically preventing the repatriation of any Yemenis from Guantánamo because of security concerns. The Omanis’ actions, with US support, also violate the fundamental principle, under international human rights law, of non-refoulement, which prohibits the return of anyone to a country where they may face torture or other forms of abuse, which is a distinct possibility in divided and war-torn Yemen. Of particular concern, however, are the ramifications of the suggestion that resettlements were never meant to be permanent, which needs to be robustly challenged, because otherwise it will indicate to some of the other countries who resettled former prisoners between 2009 and 2017 that they too can get rid of these men if they find their continued presence inconvenient.

My recent interview with Chris Cook, on his long-running Gorilla Radio show in western Canada, in which we discussed the recently announced, but swiftly aborted plea deals at Guantánamo for three men accused of involvement in the 9/11 attacks, the latest monthly coordinated global vigils for the closure of Guantánamo, which had just taken place at ten locations across the US, and in London, Brussels and Mexico City, the far-right riots in the UK, and much more.

Photos from, and my report about the ten vigils for the closure of Guantánamo that took place across the US and around the world on August 7, 2024, marking 18 months of coordinated monthly global vigils that I initiated in February last year. The vigils take place on the first Wednesday of every month, and the next date is September 4.

My analysis of the far-right riots that erupted in the UK last week, after three girls were stabbed to death at a children’s event in Stockport, and online provocateurs spread deliberate misinformation about the attacker being a Muslim, and an asylum seeker who had recently arrived in the UK after a small boat crossing, all of which was untrue. I examine the particular role played by politicians and the mainstream media in fanning the flames of racism, xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment, with a particular focus on Brexit, and on the shameful Tory politicians, particularly in the last five years, who waged a far-right war on immigration, proposing to send refugees on a one-way trip to Rwanda, and passing legislation that, shamefully, criminalised being a refugee or an asylum seeker. I also criticise the Labour Party for its role in fomenting Islamophobia, particularly through its unquestioning support for Israel’s actions in Gaza, and I also focus on the irresponsibility and unaccountability of social media companies, who provide platforms for dangerous provocateurs like Andrew Tate and ‘Tommy Robinson’ (Stephen Yaxley-Lennon), and whose free rein to promote and amplify the far-right and their lies should have no place in any kind of responsible media landscape.

My analysis of the shameful news that, just two days after plea deals were announced in the cases of three of the men charged in connection with the 9/11 attacks — whereby the death penalty would be dropped in exchange for guilty pleas and the promise of life sentences instead — defense secretary Lloyd Austin has revoked those plea deals. The three men include Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the alleged mastermind of 9/11, and the plea deals provided what appears to be the only viable conclusion to the legal impossibility of successful prosecuting them after their torture for three and a half years in various CIA “black sites.” Efforts to prosecute them have been ongoing since 2008, but are primarily stuck in a kind of “Groundhog Day,” because the men’s lawyers correctly seek to expose the torture to which they were subjected, while prosecutors seek to hide it, although over the last two years prosecutors have been working towards the plea deals, having apparently accepted that successful prosecutions are impossible. Austin’s capitulation — to Republican criticism, and to what appears to be the Democrats’ own commitment to a type of endless vengeance when it comes to the “black site” prisoners — is therefore a deplorable failure to accept the compromises needed to bring this sordid chapter in US history to an end, as well as to provide the remaining prisoners with adequate physical and mental health treatment, as required under international humanitarian law, and it is to be hoped that his “undue command influence” will be successfully challenged in court.

Photos from, and my review of the wonderful WOMAD world music festival that took place from July 25 to 28 in the grounds of Charlton Park in Wiltshire. I’ve been attending WOMAD every year since 2002 as part of my wife’s community arts group, Dot to Dot, in which we entertain the children in the festival’s World of Children area, where, this year, we charmed the kids with a giant bee figure, Queenie. Amongst the extraordinary musicians who lifted my soul this year were DAM, the Palestinian hip-hop group featuring the rapper Tamer Nafar, Nana Benz du Togo, a brilliant five-piece voodoo feminist group, the Senegalese legend Baaba Maal, and a multi-generational highlife band from Ghana.