Reporting from the US, Including My Photos of the Close Guantánamo Rally Outside the White House, Jan. 11, 2020
See my photos of the rally on Flickr here.
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 of the Trump administration. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.
It’s now five days since a sad occasion that I traveled to the US from the UK to mark — and to rail against: the 18th anniversary of the opening of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, on January 11, when I took part in a rally outside the White House organized by numerous rights groups, including Amnesty International USA, the Center for Constitutional Rights and Witness Against Torture.
This was the tenth year in a row that I’ve traveled to the US to mark the anniversary, and I’m still here, about to take part in a speaking event at Revolution Books in Harlem this evening, and also taking part in numerous media interviews — for the Scott Horton Show, and with Sunsara Taylor on her show “We Only Want the World” on WBAI in New York. Yesterday, I was interviewed on RT America (video posted below), today I’m speaking with Paul DiRienzo on WBAI and with Mickey Duff for “Project Censored” on KPFA, Pacifica Radio in Berkeley — and tomorrow I’ll be speaking with Latif Nasser on WNYC, New York Public Radio, and on the Michael Slate Show in Los Angeles. Do get in touch if you’d like to be added to this list!
Here’s that RT America video, which represents, I believe, the sole focus on Guantánamo, on the 18th anniversary of its opening, in the whole of the US-based broadcast media:
Video: Calling for the Closure of Guantánamo Outside the White House on the 18th Anniversary of the Opening of the Prison
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 of the Trump administration, including my current visit to the US to call for the prison’s closure. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.
Yesterday was the 18th anniversary of the opening of the prison at Guantánamo Bay, and, for the tenth year running, I was in Washington, D.C., calling for its closure.
I was there as a representative of Close Guantánamo, an organization I established eight years ago — on the tenth anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo — with the attorney Tom Wilner, and I was delighted to be part of a line-up of speakers that included representatives of numerous other campaigning groups and lawyers’ organizations — Amnesty International USA, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Justice for Muslims Collective, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, and Witness Against Torture, to name just a few, as well as some other individuals playing music and performing spoken word pieces.
The video is posted below, via the Center for Constitutional Rights’ Facebook page, and I hope that you have time to watch it in its entirety. If you want to see what happened when I distilled a year’s worth of rage and indignation at Guantánamo’s continued existence into four minutes, my speech begins around 55 minutes in.
My US Visit to Call for the Closure of Guantánamo on the 18th Anniversary of Its Opening, Jan. 10-20, 2020
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 of the Trump administration, including my imminent visit to the US. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.
On Friday I fly into New York’s JFK Airport from London for what will be my tenth successive January visit to the US to call for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay on the anniversary of its opening.
The main focus of my visits, from that first year onwards, has been a rally outside the White House of groups calling for the prison’s closure, including Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, Witness Against Torture, and the World Can’t Wait. and, most years, I have also taken part in a panel discussion about the future of Guantánamo at New America, a D.C.-based think-tank. For more, check out the archive for my visits in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.
Even that first year (2011), the rally was an example of tenacity over hope, and it remains so today, something that has to be done, because the existence of Guantánamo is an abomination, but, sadly, with no expectation that it will fundamentally change anything.
As $738 Billion Defense Bill Is Passed, Guantánamo Prisoners Are Ignored by Congress
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I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.
Two months ago, I reviewed the situation at Guantánamo as it relates to Congress, providing a succinct summary of the extent to which Congress has — and hasn’t — been involved in establishing and maintaining the prison since it first opened nearly 18 years ago, and establishing that Congress has largely been complicit in the existence of Guantánamo.
Lawmakers facilitated its creation under George W. Bush, and, when both the Senate and the House were controlled by Republicans under Barack Obama, imposed restrictions on Obama’s efforts to close the prison, in the annual National Defense Authorisation Act (NDAA), that largely remain in place today.
These restrictions — on the countries to which prisoners can be released, on the transfer of any prisoner to the US mainland for any reason, and on spending any money to create a replacement for Guantánamo on the US mainland, or to close the facility in Cuba — largely make no difference under Donald Trump, because Trump has no interest in releasing prisoners, or in closing Guantánamo under any circumstances. As Military.com explained, the requirements regarding Guantánamo in the NDAA “fall in line with Trump’s Jan. 2018 executive order to keep Guantánamo open indefinitely.”
Radio: I Discuss Boris Johnson’s Alarming Election Victory – and Guantánamo – with Chris Cook on Gorilla Radio
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On Thursday, I was delighted to be interviewed by Chris Cook, in Victoria, Canada, about the parlous state of British politics, and the ongoing and outrageous injustice of Guantánamo, on his weekly show, Gorilla Radio, which is “dedicated to social justice, the environment, community, and providing a forum for people and issues not covered in the corporate media.”
The show is here (and here as an MP3), and I’m also pleased to be able to embed it below. My interview is in the first half of the one-hour show:
Here’s how Chris introduced the show on his website, accurately capturing the madness of the UK right now:
Last week, Britain followed America’s lead in electing an ultra-conservative, faux populist based on the single premise of, if not making Britain Great again, at least carrying through with the years-old promise to take the country out of the European Union. The great mystery to those looking from outside the country is why?
Why, following the divisive and ill-defined scheme dreamt up by the David Cameron Tories of yore, did the people of that green and pleasant land, rather than punishing the authors, and bungling executors of the disastrous Brexit debacle, decide instead to reward them with massive electoral success? And for Britons, the greater question now is, what’s going to happen next?
I’m honoured that Chris has had me on his show numerous times over the last ten years — almost always to discuss Guantánamo, but occasionally to discuss other topics — and it was a pleasure on Thursday to be able to provide some analysis of the disaster area that is Britain today, following last week’s General Election.
Horribly Repressive: The Truth About Donald Trump’s Guantánamo
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In a recent article about Guantánamo — a rarity in the US mainstream media — ABC News picked up on a sad story of medical neglect and culturally inappropriate behavior by medical personnel at the prison, as conveyed to the broadcaster by Shelby Sullivan-Bennis, an attorney who represents some of the 40 men still held.
In “‘Degrading’: Aging detainees describe health care woes at Guantánamo 18 years after 9/11,” ABC News’ Guy Davies described how a “breakdown in trust between detainees and doctors” had “reached breaking point” at the prison.
The ailments of Saifullah Paracha, Guantánamo’s oldest prisoner
Davies’ article began by looking at the case of 72-year old Saifullah Paracha, Guantánamo’s oldest prisoner, who suffers from “debilitating chest pains,” an “overactive bladder and enlarged prostate,” as well as “diabetes, coronary artery disease, diverticulosis, gout, psoriasis and arthritis,” as Sullivan-Bennis told ABC News, adding that he “has also suffered two heart attacks, one of which occurred when he was held in Bagram, in Afghanistan, before his transfer to Guantánamo” in September 2004.
Quarterly Fundraiser: Seeking $2500 (£2000) to Support My Ongoing Work on Guantánamo and Torture and My London Photo-Journalism Project
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 of the Trump administration, and/or for my London photo-journalism project ‘The State of London.’
Dear friends and supporters,
It’s that time of year again when I ask you, if you can, to make a donation to support my ongoing work on Guantánamo and the US torture program, and/or, if you wish, to support my ongoing photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London.’
As a completely independent journalist, activist and commentator, I have no institutional backing whatsoever, so I’m reliant on your support to help me to keep writing and campaigning about Guantánamo, and chronicling the ever-changing face of London.
If you can make a donation to support my ongoing efforts to close Guantánamo, and/or ‘The State of London’, 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.
Close Guantánamo’s Aims for 2020’s Presidential Election Year – and New Campaign Posters
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 of the Trump administration. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.
I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.
For those of us who care about the ever-pressing need for the prison at Guantánamo Bay to be shut down for good, the coming year is going to be challenging.
As long as Donald Trump remains president, and, frankly, as long as Republicans retain control of either the Senate or the House of Representatives, it is reasonable to assume that there will be no movement whatsoever towards the closure of Guantánamo.
Forgotten or ignored, Guantánamo may not even be mentioned at all on the presidential trail, but we’ll be doing our best to make America remember this stain on its national conscience, where 40 men are still held, for the most part without charge or trial, in defiance of all the legal and judicial values the US claims to hold dear.
Standing the Test of Time: “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo”
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 of the Trump administration. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.
On Friday, I was delighted to take part in one of the few regular Guantánamo-related events that are left in my calendar, as the prison becomes something of a footnote in the history books.
This amnesia is, to be blunt, genuinely alarming, because the prison is as malignantly alive as ever, a pointless zombie facility still holding 40 men, mostly without charge or trial, for whom no legal mechanism to secure their release exists, and who will all die there unless there is a change of government, and an awakened sense of outrage in the three bodies that supposedly provide checks and balances to prevent any manifestation of executive overreach in the US — the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court, all of whom have failed the men still held.
The event on Friday was a screening of “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” — the documentary film I co-directed with Polly Nash, which was released ten years ago, in October 2009 — to second-year students at the University of Westminster, who are studying International Relations under Sam Raphael, followed by a lively discussion about Guantánamo past, present and future.
As “The Report,” About the CIA Torture Program, Is Released Online, Guantánamo Prisoner Ahmed Rabbani Urges People to Watch It
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 of the Trump administration. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.
Two weeks ago I published an article about the new movie “The Report” — which looks at the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program — entitled, CIA Torture Report Author Says More Than 119 Prisoners Were Held in “Black Sites” and More Than Three Were Waterboarded, in which I drew on a Vice News interview with former Senate staffer Daniel J. Jones, the lead author of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report into the torture program, on which the film is based.
Jones — and his team — are true American heroes, having, despite considerable opposition, trawled through six million CIA documents to produce a 6,700-page report that, via its 500-page executive summary, which is all that has been publicly released, is unstinting in its denunciation of the brutality and pointlessness of the torture program. I made his comments available — and focused in particular on the troubling statistics in the article’s title — because I thought it was extremely significant that Jones concluded that there were clearly more than the 119 prisoners included in the report, because the CIA “had no idea how many people they detained,” and that more than three prisoners were subjected to waterboarding, because, as he says, “We found a picture of a waterboard at a detention site where there were no records of any waterboarding taking place, but it had clearly been used.”
“The Report” had its theatrical release on November 15, to generally enthusiastic reviews — an 83% approval rating on the movie aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, based on 178 reviews, with 83% approval from audiences too. Last week, I spoke about it on a US radio show, and in just three days’ time, on November 29, it will be released on Amazon Prime.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
