Please support my work!

Dear friends and supporters,

It’s that time of year again, when I ask you, if you can, to help to support my ongoing work on Guantánamo and the 166 men still held there, with a donation. Although I do receive some income from the “Close Guantánamo” campaign, which I founded last year with the attorney Tom Wilner, and from the Future of Freedom Foundation, for whom I write a regular column, much of the work that I do is unpaid, and I cannot survive as an independent researcher, writer, photographer and activist without your support.

All contributions are welcome, whether it’s $25, $100 or $500 — or, of course, the equivalent in pounds sterling or any other currency. Readers can pay via PayPal from anywhere in the world (click on the “Donate” button above), but if you’re in the UK and want to help without using PayPal, you can send me a cheque (address here — scroll down to the bottom of the page), and if you’re not a PayPal user and want to send a check from the US (or from anywhere else in the world, for that matter), please feel free to do so, but bear in mind that I have to pay a $10/£6.50 processing fee on every transaction. Securely packaged cash is also an option! Read the rest of this entry »

Please support my work!

My thanks to the ten friends and supporters who have made donations to help to support my ongoing work as an independent journalist, investigator and commentator, working primarily to close the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, through humanizing the men held there, and exposing the enduring lies put forward by the Bush administration.

These lies are summed up in Donald Rumsfeld’s claim that the prisoners at Guantánamo are the “worst of the worst,” when the truth is that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the men held had no involvement whatsoever with terrorism, and the cases against them are built up not of verifiable evidence, but of unreliable statements made by their fellow prisoners, most of whom have been exposed as unreliable witnesses by analysts within the US military and intelligence communities.

I’m also a concerned citizen of the UK, appalled at my government’s malevolent ideological assault on the poor, the ill, the unemployed and the disabled — as well as the attempt to destroy the NHS — and I write about these issues when possible, as well as being involved in a project I established in May this year, to photograph the whole of London by bike, a project that is also politically charged. Read the rest of this entry »

Please support my work!

It’s the third day of my quarterly fundraiser, in which I ask you, my friends and supporters, to help support my work as an independent journalist, researcher and activist — primarily on Guantánamo, and America’s embrace of torture and indefinite detention, but also on other issues, including, in the UK, ideologically driven austerity programmes targeting the most vulnerable members of society.

I’m sorry to report that, so far, I have only received $140 towards my target of $2500, and hope that you can at least help me to reach $1300 before the week is over — that works out at just $100 a week over the next three months.

If you appreciate the work that I do — and if you understand that most of it is unpaid — a donation of $25 or £15 would work out at two dollars a week or £1 a week; a small price, I hope, for maintaining this website, with its associated costs, and for allowing me to keep campaigning for the closure of Guantánamo, to work as an activist on other issues, to take part in events, and to undertake radio interviews, when I receive no funding for most of that work. I don’t have an NGO or a university backing me, and I rely on your support to make it possible. Read the rest of this entry »

Please support my work!

When certain pundits gaze over the media landscape in the second decade of the 21st century and warn apocalyptically of the demise of newspapers and of serious journalism, they tend to overlook the fact that, ever since formatted blogging first became massively popular around 2005, allowing anyone to write and publish without being a techie, much of journalism’s future has migrated steadily away from the traditional mainstream media and onto the Internet.

Here, and especially in what is sometimes called the progressive blogosphere, anyone seeking detailed information about newsworthy topics can compare and contrast material from countless different sources (both traditional and new media), moving definitively away from a model that demanded allegiance to one particular newspaper, and can also, in general, research topics in greater depth than was available when the traditional media were the gatekeepers of the news. Providing a depth of research and commentary about Guantánamo is something that I have tried to do since I began blogging on a full-time basis four years ago, and along the way I have established an archive of over a thousand articles that keeps the story of Guantánamo alive (as the mainstream media’s interest ebbs and flows), and that also continues to draw in new readers. Read the rest of this entry »

Please support my work!

It’s Day Two of my quarterly fundraising appeal, in which I ask my readers and supporters — who made over 300,000 page visits to this site last month, and who have made it a regular feature in Technorati’s Top 100 World Politics Blogs — to support my research and writing on Guantánamo and related topics — as well as the revolutionary movements in the Middle East, and the parlous state of Tory-led politics in the UK.

Since the appeal began, ten friends have kindly donated $500 — a quarter of my aim — leaving $1500 still to raise. Yesterday evening, a friend in London, who I haven’t seen for far too long, actually cycled over to my house, after reading my initial fundraising request on Facebook, to give me £50 ($80), which was a wonderful gesture of solidarity.

I believe that other supporters are sending donations by mail, and if you would also like help me to continue my unique work on Guantánamo, which, in the last few months, has been acknowledged through my work as a media partner with WikiLeaks, please click on the “Donate” button above to make a payment via PayPal. As I explained yesterday, all contributions are welcome, whether it’s $25, $100 or $500. Read the rest of this entry »

Please support my work!

As I celebrate four years of blogging about Guantánamo, 1300 blog posts and the updating of my four-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, it’s three months since I last reached out to you, my readers and my supporters, to ask you to provide some financial support as part of the quarterly fundraising process that is such an important part of maintaining my work.

Being a freelance investigative journalist is a precarious existence, and although I have some regular support, one of my key sources of income is about to come to an need, leaving me in a rather more precarious position than I have been in for the last year. This is not where I had hoped to be at this particularly point in time, and as a result, if you can help me out at all, your support will be greatly appreciated.

If you can help out, please click on the “Donate” button above to make a payment via PayPal. All contributions are welcome, whether it’s $25, $100 or $500. Readers can pay via PayPal from anywhere in the world, but if you’re in the UK and want to help without using PayPal, you can send me a cheque (address here — scroll down to the bottom of the page), and if you’re not a PayPal user and want to send a check from the US (or from anywhere else in the world, for that matter), please feel free to do so, but bear in mind that I have to pay a $10/£6.50 processing fee on every transaction. Securely packaged cash is also an option! Read the rest of this entry »