Podcast: I Discuss the Shameful State of the World, and Resistance and Hope in 2025 with Andy Bungay for Riverside Radio
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If you have the time and the inclination, please check out my latest interview with my colleague Andy Bungay, posted below as a YouTube podcast, and originally broadcast, as the latest in an ongoing series of monthly interviews, during Andy’s shows last Saturday and Sunday on Riverside Radio, a community radio station in Wandsworth, in south west London, and subsequently made available on his Mixcloud page here and here. I’m pleased to note that Andy also played the latest live recordings by my band The Four Fathers, as well as ‘They Don’t Care’, the latest online single by my son Tyler, the beatboxer and singer known as The Wiz-RD.
In a freewheeling 80-minute discussion, we focused on some of the many profoundly dispiriting events dominating our lives as 2024 draws to a close — the imminent return as the US president of Donald Trump, the ongoing genocidal carnage being inflicted by Israel on the trapped Palestinian civilian population of the Gaza Strip, and the growing menace of catastrophic climate change.
All are thoroughly depressing topics, of course, but unlike last month, when my discussion with Andy, available here as ‘World on Fire: Gaza, Climate Collapse and the Collective Derangement of Western Politicians’, was rather dark (almost certainly because of the intensity of Israel’s “genocide within a genocide” in northern Gaza), this month’s conversation was threaded through with resistance and hope.
World on Fire: I Discuss Gaza, Climate Collapse and the Collective Derangement of Western Politicians with Andy Bungay
Please support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist, commentator and activist. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.
If you have an hour to spare, and want to listen to the kind of political analysis of current events that is completely absent from mainstream media, I hope you’ll listen to me discussing the situation in the Gaza Strip, climate collapse and the collective psychic derangement of our politicians in the west with Andy Bungay, recorded last weekend and broadcast on Andy’s show on Riverside Radio, a community radio station in Wandsworth, in south west London.
Andy has interviewed me numerous times over the years, in connection with a variety of topics including Guantánamo and London’s housing crisis, and in July we spoke at length about the UK General Election, Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the right to protest and the release of Julian Assange, leading to a new arrangement whereby, once a month, we’ll discuss topic of concerns in a new hourly slot on Andy’s show.
In this first monthly interview, posted below via YouTube, and featured as part of Andy’s whole show here, we began by discussing Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, which allowed me to discuss at length the “genocide within a genocide” that has been taking place for the last month in northern Gaza, via a truly abhorrent new plan that mixes starvation with extermination, the destruction of hospitals and efforts to displace the surviving population through ethnic cleansing, prior to Israeli colonization.
Podcast: I Discuss the UK’s General Election, Warmongering, Protest and Julian Assange’s Release with Andy Bungay
Please support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist, commentator and activist. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.
I’m pleased to have just posted on my YouTube channel the full audio recording of an interview I undertook on July 13, nine days after the UK’s recent General Election, with Andy Bungay of Riverside Radio, a community radio station in Wandsworth, in south London. Some of what we discussed drew on the article I wrote just after the election, Despite the Landslide, Labour Have No Vision and Only Won the UK General Election Because the Tories Lost So Spectacularly.
Parts of the interview were broadcast live that evening, with the full interview subsequently included in a longer version of the show posted on Andy’s MixCloud page, as the latest instalment of a monthly show, the Colin Crilly Takeover, incorporated into Andy’s weekly show, The Chiminea.
It was a great pleasure to chat to Andy about the relief that so many people were feeling about being rid of the cruel, corrupt and incompetent Tory government, and I was pleased to have the opportunity to explain how so much of this derangement was because of Brexit, when, after Theresa May lost her struggle to try and make it work in a rational manner, we were burdened with a succession of dreadful Prime Ministers — Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak — who fundamentally gave up on governing, and focused instead on deranged fantasies: treating the UK as a tabula rasa, a lawless blank slate which they intended to remake as little more than a corrupt kleptocracy and an authoritarian nightmare, a place where refugees would all be treated as criminals, and flown on a one-way trip to Rwanda, and any kind of protest was akin to terrorism.
Radio: I Discuss Israel’s War on Gaza with Andy Bungay of Riverside Radio
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I’m pleased to post below an interview about Israel’s war on Gaza that I undertook two weeks ago with Andy Bungay of Riverside Radio, a community radio station in Wandsworth, which was previously included in a podcast here.
I hope you have time to listen to it, and that you’ll find it interesting. Anyone who knows my work will know that, when it comes to Guantánamo, which I’ve been writing about and speaking about for 17 years, I can talk about it eloquently at any time of the day or night, but this interview was the first time that I’d spoken publicly about Israel and Palestine. I have subsequently discussed it with Chris Cook on his Gorilla Radio show in Victoria, Canada, and I’m more than willing to discuss it in future with anyone who is interested in my perspective.
In my interview with Andy, I discussed my revulsion at Israel’s actions in Gaza, where, as of November 14, 11,320 people have been killed, including 4,650 children and 3,145 women, suggesting that it amounts to a genocide, a conclusion reinforced by several assessments, in the last few weeks, by experts in genocide.
My Interview with Riverside Radio’s Andy Bungay About the Horrors of the Truss Government, Guantánamo, and the Plight of Julian Assange
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.
On Friday I was delighted to be interviewed by Riverside Radio’s Andy Bungay, for the last hour of an extended podcast of his Saturday night show, The Chiminea, for which, once a month, he is joined by Colin Crilly for the Colin Crilly Takeover Show.
The three-hour show is here, on Mixcloud, and our interview takes up most of the last hour, with some musical interludes.
For the first 20 minutes, from 2:02 to 2:22, we discussed the current collapse of the UK under Liz Truss, an unprecedented disaster that no one could quite have foreseen, even though it was clear — in that long summer of the campaign for a new Tory leader to replace the disgraced Boris Johnson — that she was a dangerous far-right ‘libertarian’ ideologue, heavily influenced by the unaccountable think-tanks in Tufton Street, who are obsessed with shrinking the state, and enriching the rich, and who are also ferociously pro-Brexit, and prominent players in the deranged world of climate change denial.
Radio: I Discuss The Future of Guantánamo Under Joe Biden with Andy Bungay and Colin Crilly in South London
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.
On Saturday, I was delighted to take part in a remotely recorded radio show for Riverside Radio, a community station in Battersea, with Andy Bungay, who hosts ‘The Chiminea’, the 11pm to 2am slot on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and his colleague Colin Crilly.
Our interview starts about 27 minutes into the two-hour show, which is available on Mixcloud here, and Andy began by playing ‘This Time We Win’, a recently released eco-anthem by my band The Four Fathers, recorded with and featuring the great Charlie Hart on keyboards.
I then introduced myself, particularly mentioning my Guantánamo work, which I’ve been undertaking for the last 15 years, and my photo-journalism project ‘The State of London.’ We talked about the successful campaign to secure the release from Guantánamo of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison, who was held for 14 years without charge or trial, but was eventually released five years ago, on October 30, 2015, as I noted on Facebook, following up with a photo from a Parliamentary reception for Shaker, hosted by Jeremy Corbyn, which took place on November 17, 2015.
Radio: I Discuss Guantánamo and the Tidemill Campaign on Wandsworth’s Riverside Radio, Also Featuring Songs by The Four Fathers
Please support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist, commentator and activist. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.
On Saturday, I was delighted to be visited by Andy Bungay, from Wandsworth’s Riverside Radio, for an interview broadcast on Andy’s evening show on Sunday, in which we discussed Guantánamo, which I’ve been covering for the last 13 years, and campaigning for its closure, and the housing crisis in London, which I’ve also been involved in challenging for the last few years. I was on Andy’s show back in September, and it was great to have the opportunity to talk again.
Our interview starts about 1 hours and five minutes into the show, with a discussion of Guantánamo, and, in part, the case of Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in Guantánamo, whose release in October 2015 I campaigned to secure, initially working with the Save Shaker Aamer campaign, and, over the last year of Shaker’s imprisonment, via We Stand With Shaker, a campaign I set up with fellow activist Joanne MacInnes. This involved creating a giant inflatable figure of Shaker, a PR stunt that might have been widely ignored, but that, instead, led to a hundred celebrities and MPs being willing to have their photos taken with the figure, and to call for his release.
At 1:22, Andy played ’Song for Shaker Aamer’, a solo version of The Four Fathers’ song, used as the campaign song for We Stand With Shaker, which was recorded live in Washington, D.C. in January 2016, where I played it at an event calling for Guantánamo’s closure on the evening before the 14th anniversary of its opening, with lyrics amended to reflect Shaker’s release. The part about Shaker being “back in London” got a big cheer from the crowd!
Radio: I Discuss London’s Housing Crisis, the Tidemill Occupation and Guantánamo on Wandsworth Radio, Plus the World Premiere of ‘Grenfell’ by The Four Fathers
Please support my work as a reader-funded investigative journalist, commentator and activist.
Last Saturday, I was on community radio station Wandsworth Radio for two hours, taking part in a freewheeling, wide-ranging political discussion with host Andy Bungay and regular monthly co-host Colin Crilly.
The show is here, and below I’ve broken it down into various topics, if you’re interested in navigating to various discussions.
From 9:00 to 15:00 we discussed the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, which I’m involved in, and which I’ve written about here and here, the latter linking to my article for Novara Media, The Battle for Deptford and Beyond.
From there, from 15:00 to 23:20, we moved on to discussing ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, the documentary film about the destruction of council estates, and residents’ resistance to the destruction of their homes, which I narrate, and we also discussed the Grenfell Tower fire, and the important work of ASH (Architects for Social Housing), including their post-Grenfell public meeting, ‘The Truth About Grenfell Tower’, which was where I met Nikita Woolfe, the director of ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, and we also discussed the extent of post-Grenfell cladding issues, and how the government has still failed to address them adequately. Read the rest of this entry »
Who's still at Guantánamo?
