Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.

My thanks to Chris Cook of Gorilla Radio, in Victoria, Canada, for reaching out to interview me last week about the coordinated monthly vigils for the closure of Guantánamo which take place in London, across the US and around the world on the first Wednesday of every month, and which I initiated in February (following up on monthly vigils in London, which began last September) by reaching out to friends and colleagues elsewhere to join us. Chris and I have spoken many times over the years, and it’s always a pleasure to talk to him.

Our interview takes up the second half of the one-hour show, available on Substack here, and beginning at 28:45, following an interview that is also worth listening to — with William S. Geimer, a peace activist, Professor Emeritus of Law at Washington and Lee University, a military veteran who resigned his 82nd Airborne commission in opposition to the war against Vietnam, the author of the book, ‘Canada: The Case for Staying Out of Other People’s Wars’, and the founder of the Greater Victoria Peace School.

Chris was following up on my recent article, Photos and Report: The Coordinated Global Vigils for the Closure of Guantánamo on November 1, 2023, and as I explained, although the numbers taking part are small — because, fundamentally, so very few people care about the monstrous ongoing injustice of Guantánamo — the effort is worth it because, as I also explained, it’s “one of those things that you do that’s an important reminder that it hasn’t gone away and that not everyone has forgotten”, and that “there’s a huge difference between nobody turning up and a handful of people bothering to make their presence felt.”

Read the rest of this entry »