Please click on the ‘Donate’ button below to make a donation towards the $2,500 (£2,000) I’m trying to raise to support my work on Guantánamo over the next three months.

Dear friends and supporters,

Every three months, I ask you, if you can, to make a donation to support my ongoing work as a genuinely independent journalist and activist, primarily in relation to my work on the US prison at Guantánamo Bay (on which I have written and published 2,600 articles over the last 17 years), but also touching on other topics that seize my attention, including, these days, two topics of colossal importance that are generally either misreported or under-reported by the mainstream media — Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, and the biggest “war” that any of us have ever experienced; namely, the war waged by humanity on a liveable climate, which is manifesting itself via the unmistakable signs of unprecedented climate collapse.

If you can help me to continue this work, please click on the “Donate” button above (or here) to make a payment via PayPal. Any amount will be gratefully received — whether it’s $100, $25 or even $10 — or the equivalent in any other currency.

You can also join my monthly sustainers by making a recurring payment, ticking the box marked, “Make this a monthly donation,” and filling in the amount you wish to donate every month. If you are able to do so, a regular, monthly donation would be greatly appreciated.

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Please click on the ‘Donate’ button below to make a donation towards the $2,500 (£2,000) I’m trying to raise to support my work on Guantánamo over the next three months.

It’s over 18 years since I gave my life over to telling the true story of the prison at Guantánamo Bay and the men and boys held there, and to the seemingly endless task of trying to get the prison closed.

I began with a book, The Guantánamo Files, which absolutely consumed 14 months of my life, and since then I’ve written over 2,000 articles, about every aspect of Guantánamo’s story, mostly here, but also, at various times, for the New York Times, the Guardian and Al Jazeera, as well as on the Close Guantánamo website, which I established with the US attorney Tom Wilner in 2012.

I also co-directed a film, ’Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo’, released in 2009, and have worked with the United Nations, WikiLeaks, Reprieve and Cagepisoners (now CAGE International). I’ve also spoken publicly about Guantánamo at every opportunity, have undertaken numerous TV and radio appearances, and, more recently, via podcasts and other online media outlets, have written and recorded songs about Guantánamo (and the CIA’s “black site” torture program), and have launched numerous campaigns.

These include, most recently, an ongoing photo campaign involving posters marking every 100 days of Guantánamo’s existence, and ongoing monthly coordinated vigils for the prison’s closure, which take place across the US and around the world on the first Wednesday of every month, and which have specifically focused on the 16 men (out of the 30 still held) who have long been approved for release, but who are still held because the decisions taken to release them were purely administrative, meaning that no legal mechanism whatsoever exists to compel the government to free them if, as is abundantly apparent, the Biden administration has no interest in prioritizing their release. In fact, as recently became clear, in the cases of eleven of these men, the Biden administration specifically prevented their resettlement after the events of October 7, fearing the “political optics” of doing so.

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Please click on the ‘Donate’ button below to make a donation towards the $2,500 (£2,000) I’m trying to raise to support my work on Guantánamo over the next three months.

I never meant to become a world authority on Guantánamo, or the most persistent independent journalist and activist campaigning for the prison’s closure, but over the last 18 years, as my youth has given way to middle age, that is, apparently, what I’ve become.

I’ve done this through a combination of personal tenacity, through persistent efforts to navigate and not drown in the ever-changing media landscape of the 21st century, through a refusal to accept the false distinction between journalism and activism that makes far too much “liberal” journalism self-defeating, and through a belief that, in the face of almost complete indifference from politicians, the mainstream media and the American people, those of us who recognize that the prison at Guantánamo Bay is a uniquely lawless affront to all notions of decency need to do all that we can to persistently raise our voices and to be heard.

When I began this work on a full-time basis, in March 2006, social media and smartphones barely existed, and the internet was much more of a level playing field than it is now. Drawing on publicly available documents — largely extracted from the US government through Freedom of Information legislation — I spent 14 months researching and writing my book The Guantánamo Files, and then began writing and publishing articles here on my website, which has subsequently become the largest repository of publicly available information about Guantánamo, with none of it hidden behind a paywall, and none of it having been erased, as is sadly the case with the archives of so much of the mainstream media.

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Please click on the ‘Donate’ button below to make a donation towards the $2,500 (£2,000) I’m trying to raise to support my work on Guantánamo over the next three months.

It’s nearly 18 years since I first began writing about Guantánamo on a full time basis, first via the research and writing I undertook for my book The Guantánamo Files, (which quite literally consumed my life from March 2006 until May 2007), and, ever since, via the more than 2,500 articles I’ve written for this site, many of which have also been posted on the website of the Close Guantánamo campaign, which I established with the US lawyer Tom Wilner in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the prison’s opening.

While I have undertaken paid work with various publications and organizations over the years, including the United Nations, WikiLeaks, the New York Times, the Guardian and Al Jazeera, most of my writing — as well as my campaigning work to get the prison closed — has been published here, establishing this website not only as the most significant repository of information about Guantánamo, but also as a kind of living diary of my existence since May 2007, when I first began publishing articles here.

I was recently reminded of the durability of my writing by Ed Charles, the editor of the World Can’t Wait’s Spanish website, where, for many years, most of my articles have been translated to reach an audience in the Spanish-speaking world. I was taken aback when, a few months ago, Ed translated dozens of my articles dating back to when I first began writing about Guantánamo, and, when I asked him why, he said that not only was my writing important, but also that many other historical mainstream media reports covering Guantánamo have disappeared from the internet, making the archive here on this site even more significant in terms of providing a rolling history of Guantánamo, as written at the time.

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Please click on the ‘Donate’ button below to make a donation to support my photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’.

Dear friends and supporters,

Today marks 2,400 days — or a little over six and a half years — since I first set up ‘The State of London’ Facebook page, and began posting a photo a day, with an accompanying essay, drawn from the photos I had been taking since I first began cycling around London and taking photos throughout the capital’s 120 geographic postcodes five years before — on May 11, 2012, to be precise. I also post the photos on X (formerly Twitter).

From the beginning, this has been something of a deranged hobby. I have no financial backing for the project and, as a result, am reliant on you, my readers and followers, to provide me with any kind of monetary recompense for the ridiculous amount of time that I’ve spent cycling around London with a camera over the last eleven and a half years — and, in particular, the many hours I spend researching and writing about the photos that I post to entertain and inform you about 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.

In the last six months, for example, I’ve celebrated pubs and cafes, inter-war council estates, Art Deco and Brutalist triumphs, delved through the archive for coverage of lost or soon to be lost reminders of London’s history — Coal Drops Yard in King’s Cross, prior to redevelopment, slipper baths in South Bermondsey, council flats in Homerton, a lodge in Archway and a prefab in Stepney Green, and have also posted about horrible new developments in Pimlico, Canary Wharf, the City, Vauxhall and Lewisham, as well as covering the massive and frequent protests against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

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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.

Every three months (at the start of March, June, September and December), I ask you, if you can, to make a donation to support my ongoing reader-funded work on Guantánamo — my frequent writing, my regular campaigning, my public appearances and my media appearances, all of which are generally unpaid.

If you can make a donation to support my work, please click on the “Donate” button above to make a payment via PayPal. Any amount will be gratefully received — whether it’s $500, $100, $25 or even $10 — or the equivalent in any other currency.

You can also make a recurring payment on a monthly basis by ticking the box marked, “Make this a monthly donation,” and filling in the amount you wish to donate every month. If you are able to do so, a regular, monthly donation would be greatly appreciated.

Read the rest of this entry »

Please click on the ‘Donate’ button below to make a donation towards the $2,500 (£2,000) I’m trying to raise to support my work on Guantánamo over the next three months.

Dear friends and supporters,

Every three months I ask you, if you can, to make a donation to support my work as an independent journalist and activist, working to get the prison at Guantánamo Bay closed, and telling the stories of the men held there, as I have been doing for the last 17 years. I have no institutional backing for any of this work, so I really am dependent on your financial support.

If you can make a donation to support my work, please click on the “Donate” button above to make a payment via PayPal. Any amount will be gratefully received — whether it’s $500, $100, $25 or even $10 — or the equivalent in any other currency.

You can also make a recurring payment on a monthly basis by ticking the box marked, “Make this a monthly donation,” and filling in the amount you wish to donate every month. If you are able to do so, a regular, monthly donation would be greatly appreciated.

Read the rest of this entry »

Please click on the ‘Donate’ button below to make a donation towards the $2,500 (£2,000) I’m trying to raise to support my work on Guantánamo over the next three months.

Dear friends and supporters,

Every three months I ask you, if you can, to make a donation to support my entirely reader-supported work as an independent journalist, focusing on the prison at Guantánamo Bay, telling the stories of the men held and campaigning to get the prison closed.

If you can make a donation to support my work, please click on the “Donate” button above to make a payment via PayPal. Any amount will be gratefully received — whether it’s $500, $100, $25 or even $10 — or the equivalent in any other currency.

You can also make a recurring payment on a monthly basis by ticking the box marked, “Make this a monthly donation,” and filling in the amount you wish to donate every month. If you are able to do so, a regular, monthly donation would be greatly appreciated.

Read the rest of this entry »

Please click on the ‘Donate’ button below to make a donation to support my photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’.

Dear friends and supporters of ’The State of London’,

Every three months I ask you, if you can, to make a donation to support my unique, reader-funded photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’, which over 6,000 of you follow on Facebook — and nearly 1,500 on Twitter.

Long ago, in the mists of time, when David Cameron’s Tories had only been in power for two years, Brexit hadn’t even been conceived, and London was gearing up for the jingoistic orgy of nationalism that was the 2012 Olympics, I set out on my bike, with a little point-and-shoot Canon camera, to record the changing face of London.

That was in May 2012, and five years later I began posting a photo a day from my archive, and from the photos I was still taking on a daily basis, on ‘The State of London’ Facebook page, along with accompanying essays — about cynical council estate demolitions, the proliferation of new high-rise office blocks in the City and Canary Wharf, as well as photos taken on the sometimes long distance journeys that I undertook through London’s 120 geographical postcodes.

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Please click on the ‘Donate’ button below to make a donation towards the $2,500 (£2,000) I’m trying to raise to support my work on Guantánamo over the next three months.

Dear friends and supporters,

Every three months I ask you, if you can, to support my work as an independent journalist and activist, primarily as the chronicler of the prison at Guantánamo Bay over the last 16 — now nearly 17 — years, telling the stories of the men held and campaigning to get the prison closed.

I also work on other topics — the extraordinarily urgent climate crisis, and the unjust imprisonment of Julian Assange, to name just two — as well as chronicling London on an ongoing basis via my photo-journalism project ‘The State of London’, and making protest music with my band The Four Fathers.

All of this work is unpaid — or, more specifically, is only viable because of your support, so if you can make a donation to support my work, please click on the “Donate” button above to make a payment via PayPal. Any amount will be gratefully received — whether it’s $500, $100, $25 or even $10 — or the equivalent in any other currency.

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