Andy Worthington's Blog, page 159

Photos of Blackheath and Greenwich: Olympic Memories and Other Journeys

Blackheath and Greenwich: Olympic Memories and Other Journeys, a set on Flickr.

In my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike, which I began in May, the extent of my cycling, and of my photography, has far exceeded my ability to upload the photos to my Flickr account. I have over 160 photos sets to upload, of photos taken before my family holiday in August, and in the six weeks since my return — photos from the West End, the City, from east London, north London, west London and south London.

As autumn continues, and the days get shorter, and the weather — presumably — will become less conducive to photography, I will no doubt find more time to make these photos available, but for now I’m dipping in and out of the archive, uploading whatever draws my attention, and to that end this latest set features photos from a visit I made, with my son Tyler, to Blackheath, the big, high plateau to the east of where I live in Brockley, in south east London, on August 1. This was when the Olympic Games were in full swing, and Greenwich Park, accessed from Blackheath as well as from the centre of Greenwich, at the foot of the hill, was the venue for the equestrian events, which I initially photographed here.

This set also features photos from later that same day, when I cycled with my wife and son to Greenwich peninsula to catch a film at the Odeon cinema — the rather wonderful new adaptation of the Spider-Man story, “The Amazing Spider-Man,” featuring Andrew Garfield.

The Olympics are long gone now — and perhaps interest in them has dissipated too — but I rather like these photographic reminders of the major upheavals in London this summer as a result of the Games, and the small rewards in the general life of the City, away from the hubbub of the sporting venues — in this set, the big screen on Blackheath and the Olympic rings that were briefly displayed on the river in Greenwich before being moved further west to central London.

Other Olympic reminders are in other sets from this period that I have not yet posted, and although they are now instantly dated, they provide a good snapshot of elements of life in London, which I hope are a valid part of my photographic project, capturing my perceptions of the fabric of London, and the movements of those who live here, at this crucial time in its history — on the one hand, overrun with speculative building projects and wealthy opportunists from all over the world, and, on the other, apparently in such dire financial straits that ordinary people are being subjected to an “age of austerity,” of unprecedented savagery, by the Tory-led coalition government.

Someone is lying — and it’s increasingly clearly that the liars are those who told us we were all in this together, and that we’d all have to tighten our belts — and now that the great diversion of the Olympics has moved on, I expect that, at some point, these ideologically motivated lies and the resultant punishment of all but the rich and the super-rich — which is designed to do nothing less than to destroy the state in its entirety — will rebound on the politicians not just at the ballot box but also in the streets.

I hope you enjoy these photos. More photos of Blackheath and Greenwich are available here and here, and I’ll be uploading some other south London photos very soon.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the new “Close Guantánamo campaign,” and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Development Frenzy: Photos of the Regent’s Canal from St. Pancras Basin to King’s Cross

Development Frenzy: The Regent’s Canal from St. Pancras Basin to King’s Cross, a set on Flickr.

This set of photos is the 40th in my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike, which I began in May, and it follows on from three previous sets recording a particular journey I made on September 3, 2012, when I cycled from Tottenham Court Road, up Hampstead Road to Mornington Crescent, and then along Camden High Street, through busy Camden with its many lively markets to the Regent’s Canal.

From there I cycled along the tow path of this wonderful artery that avoids the traffic-choked chaos of London’s roads to St. Pancras Basin and King’s Cross — or, to be specific, the King’s Cross development project that is currently underway, which, it seems to me, is rather dangerously at odds with the spirit of the canal, as a place of calm, and an antidote to the clamour of money that is so incessant elsewhere.

Since the redevelopment of London’s docklands in the 1980s, waterside developments have increasingly become the preserve of the rich and the brash, and once the entire shoreline of the River Thames was exhausted (only a few undeveloped dockets remain), developers turned their attentions to the canals — and specifically, to the Regent’s Canal, which runs in a huge loop, all the way from Limehouse to Little Venice (near Paddington), where it joins the Grand Union Canal, via Mile End, Hackney, Islington, King’s Cross and Camden. In Hackney, for example, giant housing blocks tower over the towpath, and the same is happening at King’s Cross.

Obviously, change is part of London life. The Regent’s Canal, on which work began exactly 200 years ago, was originally an investment, and a thoroughfare for trade, thriving for only a relatively short time until the railways took over from the canals. Saved largely by devotees, the canals then became a haven for those who loved living off the beaten path in all manner of boats, or who loved — for pleasure rather than for work — navigating Britain’s extensive canal network, in which the Regent’s Canal had once played such a major role, joining the Grand Union Canal to Limehouse Basin and the River Thames.

With such changes in the last 200 years, there is no watertight precedent for refuting contemporary arguments that what London’s canals need is the proximity of aggressive office blocks and acres of speculative high-rise housing, but those advocating it — especially at the King’s Cross development, a 67-acre site east of St. Pancras Basin, between the St. Pancras and King’s Cross railway lines, where there will be eight million square feet (nearly 750,000 square metres) of offices, retail outlets, and a mixture of properties for sale or rent — have no argument that can sway those who prefer their canals to be places of quiet contemplation, or alternative thoroughfares, or places where history still lives, or simply places to dream, and to dream beside water.

For these people — and I count myself as one of them — what we’d like is for those with power and money to keep a sense of proportion when it comes to London’s canals, but instead, and with varying degrees of hypocrisy, developers, architects, corporate interests and politicians from the local to the national level are involved in grafting civic rationales for their development plans — and their turnover — onto what is, essentially, the brash show of money — that of transnational corporate vultures, moving into new state of the art headquarters, and/or investing in speculative housing for the mainly foreign investors who continue to drive London prices so high that, within a generation, the arrogant and careless rich may find that there is no one left to do their menial work, as everyone poor has been driven out of the capital altogether.

In some cases, the investors at work in King’s Cross and elsewhere are also involved in the creation and management of new high-rise blocks for those who are less wealthy, who may well discover that this housing, like the well-intentioned tower blocks of the 1950s to the 1970s, turns out to be as much of a disappointment as so many of those projects were. The only difference this time around, it seems to me, is that the developers are not councils, but private companies, or private-public partnerships, who are interested — solely, it seems — in squeezing far more money out of their tenants than the well-meaning councils of the post-war years would ever have contemplated.

This photo set deals with these extremes — the tranquility of St. Pancras Basin against the high-rise hubris of the King’s Cross developers. It may be that I am wrong, but increasingly, as more and more of London is privatised and ever higher skyscrapers rise up in the City and Canary Wharf, by and for the same people who nearly bankrupted the world in the global financial crash of 2008, and as high-rise unaffordable property continues to replace affordable housing all over the capital, from north to south, and from east to west, I am anxious to forego whatever limited civic improvements might accompany this Darwinian show of wealth and power, and to take back our streets, our houses and our canals for the people.

In future journeys, I will continue to explore these themes, but for now I hope you enjoy this last part — for now — of my journey along the Regent’s Canal.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the new “Close Guantánamo campaign,” and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

In US Election, No Time for Guantánamo, But Torture Rears Its Ugly Head

Last week we were reminded, via the Miami Herald, of how Guantánamo is not on the agenda for the forthcoming Presidential election. In 2008, President Obama was preparing to order the prison’s closure, but his executive order in January 2009, promising to close it within a year, failed to lead to the prison’s closure, and this time around the Democrats’ official message is more nuanced. “We are substantially reducing the population at Guantánamo Bay without adding to it,” their official literature proclaims, adding, “And we remain committed to working with all branches of government to close the prison altogether because it is inconsistent with our national security interests and our values.”

Mitt Romney has also not spoken about Guantánamo on the campaign trail, although in 2007, while he was unsuccessfully seeking the Republican nomination, he said, during a debate on Fox News, that “we ought to double Guantánamo.”

Sadly, although Guantánamo has dropped off the radar, despite being a permanent  source of shame for all Americans who respect the rule of law, torture, it seems, is back as a topic of discussion.

When President Obama promised to close Guantánamo, on his second day in office, he also issued an executive order banning the use of the torture techniques introduced by President Bush in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, ordering interrogators to return to the established, non-abusive techniques in the Army Field Manual.

Despite this, President Obama has been a disappointment for those concerned to thoroughly repudiate the lawlessness of the Bush years. The Army Field Manual contains an Appendix allowing torture techniques to be used in certain circumstances, and there have been regular stories of the ill-treatment of certain prisoners in Afghanistan.

Moreover, although Obama backed away from the already discredited program of extraordinary rendition and secret CIA torture prisons introduced by President Bush, he has largely replaced it with a policy that involves a secret “kill list” and drone attacks in numerous locations — including the assassination of US citizens — that has, understandably, attracted widespread criticism, as well as retaining military commissions at Guantánamo and the Patriot Act at home, and, by failing to close Guantánamo, normalizing the concept of indefinite detention.

Even so, as the New York Times explained on Saturday, “Mr. Romney’s advisers have privately urged him to ‘rescind and replace President Obama’s executive order’ and permit secret ‘enhanced interrogation techniques against high-value detainees that are safe, legal and effective in generating intelligence to save American lives,’” according to a policy proposal drafted in September 2011 by 18 advisers, including Michael Chertoff, secretary of homeland security under George W. Bush and the co-author of the Patriot Act, and Charles “Cully” Stimson, who was deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs under President Bush.

Most alarmingly, another of the advisers is Steven Bradbury, who was the head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) under President Bush after Jay S. Bybee and Jack Goldsmith. The OLC is supposed to provide impartial legal advice to the executive branch, but under Bush, John Yoo, a lawyer in the OLC (and a law professor in Berkeley), who was close to Dick Cheney and his senior lawyer, David Addington, cynically approved the Bush administration’s torture program in a series of memos signed by his boss, Jay S. Bybee (now a judge in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals), which will forever be known as the “torture memos.” Although Goldsmith rescinded them, Bradbury largely approved Yoo and Bybee’s dangerous aberrations from the law in an additional series of “torture memos” for the CIA issued in May 2005.

As the New York Times explained, Bradbury “took a fresh look at CIA interrogation tactics and reapproved them as not violating an antitorture statute, even when combined,” and “also concluded that they did not violate a more sweeping prohibition on ‘cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment’” established in the UN Convention Against Torture, which was signed by Ronald Reagan in April 1988 and ratified by the Senate in October 1990.

Details of what Mitt Romney specifically thinks about torture are largely unknown, although last December, in Charleston, South Carolina, he promised, “We’ll use enhanced interrogation techniques which go beyond those that are in the military handbook right now.” He also stated that he would “not authorize torture,” but told a reporter that he did not think waterboarding — used under President Bush — was torture. Waterboarding is, of course, an ancient torture technique that involves controlled drowning, so Romney’s stance is not encouraging.

What is particularly troubling is that Romney’s advisers are so poisonously pro-torture, writing in their policy brief that it was not possible to state which techniques he should approve, because more research needed to be undertaken. This was not because torture is illegal, immoral and counter-productive, but because, in their opinion, President Obama had “permanently damaged” the value of some of the techniques when, in April 2009, as part of a court case, he released a series of “torture memos” — the Bradbury memos from 2005 and a previously unreleased Yoo and Bybee memo from August 2002.

Unfortunately, while the Obama administration has openly stated that waterboarding is torture, the majority of the mainstream media — the New York Times included — have failed to take the necessary moral stand in their reporting. Although the article last week by Charlie Savage was important, its tone, as dictated by the Times‘ house style, was as coy about torture as the paper has been since the use of torture was first revealed under George W. Bush.

After noting that “Bush administration lawyers approved as legal, despite antitorture laws, such tactics as prolonged sleep deprivation, shackling into painful ‘stress’ positions for long periods while naked and in a cold room, slamming into a wall, locking inside a small box, and the suffocation tactic called waterboarding,” the article proceeded to explain that, when information about the torture program surfaced, it “ignited a heated debate that continues to flare.”

“The policy’s supporters say they were lawful and extracted valuable information that helped save lives,” the Times continued. On the other hand, “Critics contend that they were illegal and damaged the United States’ moral standing, and that the same or better information could have been obtained with nonabusive tactics.”

One can only wonder what hope there is for torture to be thoroughly repudiated when, even in an important exposé of a Presidential candidate being given advice about torture by his advisers (some of whom are implicated in the Bush-era torture program), waterboarding is only referred to as a “suffocation tactic,” and critics of the program are only allowed to “contend” that the techniques used were torture, and that torture is illegal — as well as being immoral and counter-productive.

The Times was correct to note that no information was obtained through the use of torture that could not have been obtained through nonabusive means, but it will continue to rear its ugly head while those who should know, unambiguously, what torture is — lawmakers, lawyers and newspaper editors, for example — continue to duck the issue.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the new “Close Guantánamo campaign,” and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published exclusively on the website of the Future of Freedom Foundation.

At Dusk: Photos of the Regent’s Canal from Camden Lock to St. Pancras Basin

At Dusk: The Regent’s Canal from Camden Lock to St. Pancras Basin, a set on Flickr.

Out of London’s many attractions, its wonderful canals are relatively unknown, which is, to be honest, inexplicable, as they are an endlessly fascinating — and generally very soothing — antidote to the capital’s often stressful roads.

Both of London’s major canals — the Regent’s Canal, and the Limehouse Cut — feed into the Limehouse Basin, between Tower Bridge and the Isle of Dogs, which was once so busy that it was said that it was possible to walk the whole way across the dock from boat to boat. It opened in 1820 as the Regent’s Canal Dock, joining the River Thames to the whole of the national canal system in the decades that followed.

In July, I visited — for the first time ever, I’m slightly ashamed to admit — the Limehouse Cut, which joins the River Lea upstream, on a journey to Stratford from Limehouse to look at the Olympics site. However, the Regent’s Canal had to wait until September, apart from one brief visit — also in July — when I cycled along the towpath from Commercial Road to Bethnal Green and back, for an event that I was speaking at. You can also see my commentary on those journeys here and here.

The Regent’s Canal — 8.6 miles long, and built from 1812-1820 — is an extraordinary achievement, running all the way, in a huge loop, from Limehouse to Little Venice (near Paddington), where it joins the Grand Union Canal, via Mile End, Hackney, Islington, King’s Cross and Camden. Unlike the Limehouse Cut, it was not unknown to me, as I have cycled or walked most of its length during the 27 years I have lived in London, but revisiting it as part of my ongoing project to photograph the whole London by bike provided me with a wonderful opportunity to scrutinise it more closely than I had before, and it constantly rewarded me, even though some stretches of it have been — or are in the process of being — ruthlessly exploited by developers building huge tower blocks that are horribly inappropriate.

Some of that is happening around King’s Cross, featured in the next photo set, and some in east London, which will feature in a number of photo sets to follow, from a big journey I took in September along the whole of the canal from Islington to Limehouse. I still have to cycle the section from Camden to Little Venice, but have no idea when that will take place — or when I’ll have time to upload the Islington to Limehouse set — as I currently have around 3,000 photos to upload, from the almost daily journeys I’ve been undertaking — some local, some further afield — since I began this project in May.

I hope you’re enjoying the journeys. For me this huge project makes every day fascinating, as I find new places to explore and photograph, or revisit old haunts, and begin to understand London more comprehensively than I ever have before. Thank you for your company and enjoy the journey along the Regent’s Canal!

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the new “Close Guantánamo campaign,” and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Andy Worthington and Omar Deghayes Speak about Guantánamo at Peace Conference in Sheffield on October 5, 2012

[image error]On Friday (October 5), I’m heading to Sheffield, in the company of my friend — and former Guantánamo prisoner — Omar Deghayes, to take part in a conference at Sheffield University, entitled, “Confronting US Power after the Vietnam War: Transnational and International Perspectives on Peace Movements, Diplomacy, and the Law, 1975-2012.” The conference, which concludes on Saturday, is sponsored by the university’s Centre for Peace History, and the Peace History Society, and was organised by Michael Foley, co-director of the Centre for Peace History and an organiser for the campaigning group Witness Against Torture, who I join in Washington D.C. every January 11 to protest about the continued existence of Guantánamo on the anniversary of its opening (on January 11, 2002).

The panel Omar and I are taking part in on Friday evening — the conference’s keynote event — is entitled, “Resisting Empire: Global Resistance to Guantánamo and Torture,” and it begins at 6:30pm in the Richard Roberts Building Auditorium, in the east wing of the Dainton Building, on Brook Hill (postcode S3 7HF).

Joining us will be Jeremy Varon, Associate Professor of History at the New School for Social Research in New York, who is also a member of Witness Against Torture. Also speaking is Katie Taylor of the London-based legal action charity Reprieve, for whom I used to work, whose presentation will mainly be focused on the challenges of resettlement and the work of Reprieve’s Life after Guantánamo Project. Omar will be talking about his experiences, and his work with the Guantánamo Justice Centre, and, as a representative of the campaigning group Close Guantánamo, I will be talking about the fundamental problems with the supposed evidence against the prisoners, and the injustice of the US continuing to hold 86 prisoners (out of the remaining 166) who have been cleared for release as a result of multiple review processes, some as long ago as 2004.

If you’re in Sheffield on Friday, it would be wonderful to see you at the conference. It is just three months until the 11th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, and the prison does not become any more acceptable the longer it is open. The men held there may no longer be defined as “enemy combatants,” but they are neither prisoners of war protected by the Geneva Conventions, nor criminal suspects, and they are still essentially prisoners without rights, as the Bush administration intended.

I hope that the conference helps to galvanise our efforts to demand, in January, that the new administration — to be elected in November — closes Guantánamo, and that there will be no more excuses for not doing so. In our thoughts will be Adnan Latif, a Yemeni who died in Guantánamo last month, despite having been repeatedly cleared for release over the last six years. Those of us who want Guantánamo to be closed are permanently aware that, without decisive action by the US authorities,  there will be more deaths at Guantánamo — of men who haven’t seen their families for ten years, despite never having been charged or tried or convicted of anything, for the most part — and we are also determined that Adnan Latif’s death will not have been in vain.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the new “Close Guantánamo campaign,” and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Alternative London: Photos of Camden High Street

Alternative London: Camden High Street, a set on Flickr.

This is the 38th set of photos in my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike, and follows on from the previous set, recording a journey from Tottenham Court Road and up Hampstead Road to Mornington Crescent on September 3, 2012. The following two sets will feature a journey along the tow path of the Regent’s Canal from Camden Lock to King’s Cross.

Unusually, this set features photos from just one street — Camden High Street, which I followed from Mornington Crescent tube station in the south to Camden Lock and the Regent’s Canal, shortly after which it becomes Chalk Farm Road.

In my 27 years in London, I have always lived in the south, except for a short stay in west London in the 1980s, and consequently I spent a lot of time in my immediate neighbourhoods — Brixton for eleven years, and Brockley for the last 13. However, other places have been magnets at various times — the West End, of course, and, on various occasions, Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove, Islington, and Camden Town, a long-standing focus of youth culture, and, in years past, quite often an edgy  place, and/or a very drunk one. With its markets, established in the early ’70s, and its many pubs and music venues, Camden has, for the last 40 years, always been a reliable place to meet and mingle.

Moreover, although I recall several pleasant escapades in Camden Town in the 1980s — and remember with fondness the unparalleled Compendium Books (1968-2000, replaced by a Doc Martens outlet) — and although I also flirted with Camden when I worked briefly in Primrose Hill and off the Pentonville Road in the ’90s, my best memories of Camden involve the excellent Reclaim the Streets movement, which began on May 14, 1995, when two cars were deliberately smashed into each other on Camden High Street and the entire road was taken over for a street party — a great day that I recall with hazy fondness (there was drink and a woman involved) — and that also makes me feel slightly sad, as it appears unthinkable that such a combination of anarchy, environmentalism, and anti-corporate, anti-consumerist activity could take place today, for two reasons: firstly, because that collective spirit seems to have actually been destroyed in the last decade, as wealth and consumerism have come to dominate almost every aspect of existence; and, secondly, because if it were to happen, those involved would be hunted down and imprisoned.

Camden Town is not what it was, of course, and not just because anarchic street parties are now apparently something resembling ancient history. As Carnaby Street and the King’s Road lost their edge after the ’60s and ’70s, so everywhere else was either bought up or found itself watered down after an initial burst of cultural creativity. To be fair, the commodification of everything has led to the creation of lots of nice places to eat and drink and hang out — and, of course, ubiquitously, to shop for clothes and shoes — but it has also, I think, led to the loss of something important that involved spirit and not just stuff, and in this the changes at Camden Town are by no means unique.

Young people, still drawn to Camden in their droves — and still, disproportionately, including those of the Gothic persuasion — might have something to say to the middle-aged man remembering events from the ’80s and ’90s — about how they are living now, and how they are not content to live in a world in which we are what we buy, and far too many people dress, think and behave as though they are permanently the star of an imaginary movie of their lives, but as the Western world continues to enrich the rich through the trickle-up effect of relentless shopping and an overheated property market, I still find myself longing for dramatic intervention — like that crashing of cars in Camden High Street back in May 1995.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the new “Close Guantánamo campaign,” and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Finally, Omar Khadr Leaves Guantánamo and Returns to Canada

I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January with 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.

Eleven months late, the Canadian government has finally signed the paperwork authorizing the return to Canada from Guantánamo of Omar Khadr. A Canadian citizen, he was just 15 years old when he was seized, in July 2002, after a firefight in Afghanistan, where he had been taken by his father, an alleged associate of Osama bin Laden, and subsequently flown to Guantánamo, where he was held for the last ten years.

As a juvenile — those under 18 when their alleged crimes take place — Khadr should have been rehabilitated rather than being subjected to various forms of torture and abuse, according to the the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, to which both the US and Canada are signatories. Instead,  the US put him forward for a war crimes trial, on the unproven basis that he threw a grenade that killed an American soldier at the time of his capture, and the Canadian government abandoned him, even though courts up to and including the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that his rights had been violated when Canadian agents interrogated him at Guantánamo. In 2010, the Court stated, “Interrogation of a youth, to elicit statements about the most serious criminal charges while detained in these conditions and without access to counsel, and while knowing that the fruits of the interrogations would be shared with the U.S. prosecutors, offends the most basic Canadian standards about the treatment of detained youth suspects.”

Khadr was put forward for a trial by military commission at Guantánamo, and, under the terms of a plea deal that he agreed to in October 2010 — solely to be released from Guantánamo, in exchange for an eight-year sentence, with one year to be served at Guantánamo and the remaining seven in Canada — he admitted to being an “alien unprivileged enemy belligerent,” and to throwing the grenade, whether he did or not. He was also obliged to concede that, by partaking in combat with US forces during wartime and in an occupied country, he was a war criminal.

This was an absurd and insulting interpretation of the kind of vile activity — massacring civilians, for example — that is supposed to constitute war crimes, and the conviction was only made all the more reprehensible because it was applied to a former child prisoner.

However, while this is a shame that ought to dog the Obama administration forever, the responsibility for Khadr was handed over to the Canadian government once the plea deal was agreed, and it is the Harper government — and specifically Prime Minster Stephen Harper and Public Safety Minister Vic Toews — who are to blame for the fact that, since the first anniversary of the plea deal, on October 31 last year, he spent another eleven months in Guantánamo. Throughout this period, he was waiting to return home, while the Canadian government shamefully and publicly dragged its heels, playing to the racist undercurrents in Canadian society that have been trying, disgracefully, to claim that, despite being born in Canada, Omar could be stripped of his citizenship and abandoned in Guantánamo, a stance for which there is no foundation.

As the Toronto Star reported, Khadr, who turned 26 in Guantánamo just two weeks ago, left Guantánamo at 4.30 am on Saturday morning, arriving in Canada four hours later. He was then taken to the assessment unit at Millhaven Penitentiary in Bath, Ontario, a move that Michelle Shephard of the Star, who has followed his case cosily, described as “customary practice for inmates entering Canada’s federal service.”

John Norris, one of his civilian lawyers in Canada, spoke to him by phone, and told the media, “He’s finding it hard to believe that this has finally happened,” adding, “His spirits are good. He is very, very happy to be home. He is also anxious about having to learn a whole new world in a Canadian prison but we know he can do that.”

Speaking of the conditions at Millhaven, and the staff there, Norris said, “We are hopeful they will see he’s not a management problem and that he has tremendous potential. We like the idea of the assessment based on someone who actually sits down and talks to Omar and gets to know him as opposed to an assessment based on the caricature the government has propagated. As the Toronto Star also noted, “It is unclear how long the assessment will take. Norris said traditionally it lasts six weeks although he has had clients who take longer.”

Meanwhile, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews “insisted he needed to satisfy himself” that Khadr “would pose no threat to public safety,” as the Canadian Press put it. Describing Khadr as “a known supporter of the al-Qaida terrorist network and a convicted terrorist,” which is a rather literal reading of the rigged “confession” that Khadr agreed to in October 2010, to secure his release from Guantánamo, he also criticized his family, and noted that he has been away from Canadian society for so long that he will require “substantial management” to re-integrate.

Toews also pointed out to his fellow citizens that “it will be up to the parole board to determine how many more of the six years remaining on his eight-year sentence Khadr will have to serve in custody,” as the Canadian Press described it, and he moved to quell disproportionate fears about Khadr’s presence in Canada, stating, “I am satisfied the Correctional Service of Canada can administer Omar Khadr’s sentence in a manner which recognizes the serious nature of the crimes that he has committed, and ensure the safety of Canadians is protected during incarceration.” He also stressed his confidence that, if he is granted parole, which may be as soon as June 2013, the parole authorities will insist on “robust conditions of supervision” to ensure public safety.

This was important, but even more important was Toews’ decision to point out, as the Toronto Star put it, that Khadr “was born in Canada and is a Canadian citizen. As a Canadian citizen, he has a right to enter Canada after the completion of his sentence.”

Referring to the more inflammatory aspects of Vic Toews’ comments, John Norris said “it was finally a time that justice had triumphed over politics,” and expressed surprise at Toews’ position. “We’re at a loss to understand why the government continues to demonize Omar and to stoke public opinion against him,” Norris said, adding, “We know him to be a kind, intelligent thoughtful young man who has tremendous potential and we know that he will live up to that.”

Although there was an outpouring of racist and Islamophobic opposition to Khadr’s return on the comments pages of various media websites, the Canadian Press pointed out that one reader had correctly identified the issues, writing, “We treat child soldiers from other countries with compassion but this man, who was also a child soldier brainwashed by his own parents, we treat with a complete lack of understanding and hatred.”

In response to the news, human rights groups expressed their delight. The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights correctly identified Khadr’s case as “one of the ugliest chapters in the decade-long history of Guantánamo.”

Baher Azmy, CCR’s Legal Director, stated:

Khadr never should have been brought to Guantánamo. He was a child of fifteen at the time he was captured, and his subsequent detention and prosecution for purported war crimes was unlawful, as was his torture by US officials. Canada should not perpetuate the abuse he endured in one of the world’s most notorious prisons. Instead, Canada should release him immediately and provide him with appropriate counseling, education, and assistance in transitioning to a normal life.

For the ACLU, Jennifer Turner, a human rights researcher with the Human Rights Program, said:

We welcome Khadr’s repatriation and hope the Canadian government will give Omar Khadr a meaningful opportunity for rehabilitation and reintegration into society, which Canada is required to provide under the child soldier treaty that Canada itself helped establish. At the same time, we cannot forget his decade-long imprisonment in abusive US custody. Khadr was denied the fundamental rights of former child soldiers such as humane treatment, fair trial and other juvenile justice protections. His abhorrent Guantánamo experience should never have happened.

Human Rights Watch also issued a statement, in which Andrea Prasow, senior counterterrorism counsel, said:

Omar Khadr’s repatriation provides an opportunity for Canada to begin to right a wrong. International law provides him the right as a former child soldier to be reintegrated into society. Now that Khadr is back in his own country, Canada should assist in his rehabilitation. But Canada should also do all it can to hold accountable those who are responsible for his abuse.

Human Rights Watch also stressed that the Optional Protocol “requires the rehabilitation of former child soldiers within a country’s jurisdiction, mandating that a state provide ‘all appropriate assistance for their physical and psychological recovery and their social reintegration,’” and added, “Khadr is now within Canada’s jurisdiction, obligating Canada to provide assistance to him.”

Crucially, Human Rights Watch added, “Even absent any action by Canada to fulfill its obligations under the Optional Protocol, Khadr will be eligible for parole after serving one-third of his sentence, or 32 months, meaning he could be released as early as June 2013.” Andrea Prasow added, “Canada violated international law and its own Charter when it failed to protect its citizen detained in Guantánamo. Khadr should be released as soon as the law allows and provided with all assistance necessary that will help his reintegration.”

Roll on next June — and pray that no one in the Canadian government tries to fight to keep Omar imprisoned. He has already endured ten years in a horrendous experimental prison whose continued existence should shame all decent Americans, where he has been unfairly tarred as a war criminal, and he needs the opportunity to rebuild his life in freedom.

Note: CCR also appealed for the Canadian government to take in other prisoners. Baher Azmy noted, “Canada should also accept other men from Guantanamo who cannot safely return to their home countries. An ideal candidate is Djamel Ameziane, a citizen of Algeria [profiled here in April] who fears persecution if he is returned there. Ameziane lived in Canada as a refugee legally from 1995 to 2000, has family living in Quebec, and is sponsored by the Anglican Diocese of Montreal. He has applied for resettlement in Canada under their sponsored refugees program.”

Please also note that the courtroom sketch at the top of this article, by Janet Hamlin, is reproduced courtesy of Janet Hamlin Illustration.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the new “Close Guantánamo campaign,” and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

See the following for articles about the 142 prisoners released from Guantánamo from June 2007 to January 2009, and the 70 prisoners released from February 2009 to July 2012, whose stories are covered in more detail than is available anywhere else –- either in print or on the Internet –- although many of them, of course, are also covered in The Guantánamo Files: June 2007 –- 2 Tunisians, 4 Yemenis (here, here and here); July 2007 –- 16 Saudis; August 2007 –- 1 Bahraini, 5 Afghans; September 2007 –- 16 Saudis; September 2007 –- 1 Mauritanian; September 2007 –- 1 Libyan, 1 Yemeni, 6 Afghans; November 2007 –- 3 Jordanians, 8 Afghans; November 2007 –- 14 Saudis; December 2007 –- 2 Sudanese; December 2007 –- 13 Afghans (here and here); December 2007 –- 3 British residents; December 2007 –- 10 Saudis; May 2008 –- 3 Sudanese, 1 Moroccan, 5 Afghans (here, here and here); July 2008 –- 2 Algerians; July 2008 –- 1 Qatari, 1 United Arab Emirati, 1 Afghan; August 2008 –- 2 Algerians; September 2008 –- 1 Pakistani, 2 Afghans (here and here); September 2008 –- 1 Sudanese, 1 Algerian; November 2008 –- 1 Kazakh, 1 Somali, 1 Tajik; November 2008 –- 2 Algerians; November 2008 –- 1 Yemeni (Salim Hamdan) repatriated to serve out the last month of his sentence; December 2008 –- 3 Bosnian Algerians; January 2009 –- 1 Afghan, 1 Algerian, 4 Iraqis; ; February 2009 — 1 British resident (Binyam Mohamed); May 2009 —1 Bosnian Algerian (Lakhdar Boumediene); June 2009 — 1 Chadian (Mohammed El-Gharani), 4 Uighurs to Bermuda, 1 Iraqi, 3 Saudis (here and here); August 2009 — 1 Afghan (Mohamed Jawad), 2 Syrians to Portugal; September 2009 — 1 Yemeni, 2 Uzbeks to Ireland (here and here); October 2009 — 1 Kuwaiti, 1 prisoner of undisclosed nationality to Belgium; October 2009 — 6 Uighurs to Palau; November 2009 — 1 Bosnian Algerian to France, 1 unidentified Palestinian to Hungary, 2 Tunisians to Italian custody; December 2009 — 1 Kuwaiti (Fouad al-Rabiah); December 2009 — 2 Somalis, 4 Afghans, 6 Yemenis; January 2010 — 2 Algerians, 1 Uzbek to Switzerland, 1 Egyptian, 1 Azerbaijani and 1 Tunisian to Slovakia; February 2010 — 1 Egyptian, 1 Libyan, 1 Tunisian to Albania, 1 Palestinian to Spain; March 2010 — 1 Libyan, 2 unidentified prisoners to Georgia, 2 Uighurs to Switzerland; May 2010 — 1 Syrian to Bulgaria, 1 Yemeni to Spain; July 2010 — 1 Yemeni (Mohammed Hassan Odaini); July 2010 — 1 Algerian, 1 Syrian to Cape Verde, 1 Uzbek to Latvia, 1 unidentified Afghan to Spain; September 2010 — 1 Palestinian, 1 Syrian to Germany; January 2011 – 1 Algerian; April 2012 – 2 Uighurs to El Salvador; July 2012 — 1 Sudanese.

The Road North: A Photographic Journey from Tottenham Court Road to Camden

The Road North: Tottenham Court Road to Camden, a set on Flickr.

On September 3, 2012, as part of my ongoing project to photograph the whole of London by bike, inspired by a journey from Triton Square through Fitzrovia to Oxford Street and Soho Square that I had taken just three days earlier, I returned to central London, to the giant Crossrail project that has currently devoured the junction where Oxford Street and New Oxford Street meet Charing Cross Road and Tottenham Court Road (known as St. Giles Circus), and cycled north, up Tottenham Court Road, across Euston Road and up Hampstead Road to Camden Town.

Photos of Camden, and of the journey I took along the Regent’s Canal from Camden to King’s Cross, will follow soon, but this set focuses on the great artery north, technically the A400, that takes its name from a manor house just to the north west of the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street, which, during the time of Henry III (1216–1272), belonged to William de Tottenhall. By the time of Elizabeth I, it was known as Tottenham Court, and now, as Tottenham Court Road, it is a busy shopping street, with electronics shops at the southern end and big furniture stores further north, although, as with most things to do with the retail environment, these certainties are generally in flux, and shops come and go with the whims of fashion, the ludicrous ease of internet shopping (consigning young people to work in warehouses in the middle of nowhere), and the state of the economy.

Tottenham Court Road has been a part of my life for many years. As a teenage visitor to London, I would get off at Tottenham Court Road station and make my way to Denmark Street to visit Forbidden Planet, or Soho for arthouse cinemas and, at one particular point even earlier, an extraordinary comic shop called Dark They Were, And Golden-Eyed (from a short story by Ray Bradbury), in St. Anne’s Court (also see here and here). Later, after I moved to London as a 22-year old, I worked for a short period in Forbidden Planet, and I also worked in Fitzrovia for a while, drank in the neighbourhood and went to gigs at the Astoria (a prominent casualty of the Crossrail works), where I saw an little-known band, Nirvana, who were third on the bill at a gig of Seattle bands that also featured Tad, a giant ex-butcher, and Mudhoney, who once sabotaged one of their own gigs by insisting that they wouldn’t start until the entire audience was on stage with them.

I still find Tottenham Court Road interesting — although I have more time for the less hectic streets of Fitzrovia — but its continuation, known as Hampstead Road, which starts across Euston Road, heading up to Mornington Crescent and Camden, is generally a street I know less about, an artery that I only occasionally cycled in years gone by to get from central London to Camden and beyond, as I would often travel by Tube. Peppered with council estates, and with the railway and traces of industry, it is a far different beast, and one whose side streets and estates I will be visiting again when the opportunity arises.

For now, I hope you enjoy this journey, and that you’ll stick around for Camden Town and the canal at dusk!

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the new “Close Guantánamo campaign,” and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Obama Releases Names of Cleared Guantánamo Prisoners; Now It’s Time to Set Them Free

On Friday, as part of a court case, the Justice Department released the names of 55 of the 86 prisoners cleared for release from Guantánamo in 2009 by President Obama’s Guantánamo Review Task Force, which consisted of officials from key government departments and the intelligence agencies. The Task Force’s final report was issued in January 2010.

Until now, the government has always refused to release the names, hindering efforts by the prisoners’ lawyers — and other interested parties — to publicize their plight.

The rationale for this was explained by Ambassador Daniel Fried, the State Department’s Special Envoy for the Closure of the Guantánamo Bay Detention Facility, in June 2009, when he stated that “indiscriminate public disclosure of the decisions resulting from reviews by Guantánamo Review Task Force will impair the US Government’s ability effectively to repatriate and resettle Guantánamo detainees” under the executive order establishing a review of the prisoners’ cases, which was issued on President Obama’s second day in office in January 2009, at the same time that he promised to close Guantánamo within a year.

Ambassador Fried also explained that having the government solely in charge of the negotiations for resettlement was the best way forward, because, if prisoners’ lawyers became involved, “it could confuse, undermine, or jeopardize our diplomatic efforts with those countries and could put at risk our ability to move as many people to safe and responsible locations as might otherwise be the case.”

In the filing last Friday, officials explained why they had now changed their minds:

In the over two years since the Task Force completed its status reviews, circumstances have changed such that the decisions by the Task Force approving detainees for transfer no longer warrant protection. The efforts of the United States to resettle Guantánamo detainees have largely been successful — they have resulted in 40 detainees being resettled in third countries because of treatment or other concerns in their countries of origin since 2009. In addition, 28 detainees have been repatriated to their countries of origin since 2009. Consequently, the diplomatic and national security harms identified in the Fried Declaration are no longer as acute. In Respondents’ view, there is no longer a need to withhold from the public the status of detainees who have been approved for transfer.

Advocates for an end to the ongoing injustice at Guantánamo responded positively to the news. Zachary Katznelson, senior staff attorney on the national security project of the American Civil Liberties Union, which had submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for the release of the names, said, “Today’s release is a partial victory for transparency, and it should also be a spur to action.” He added, “These men have now spent three years in prison since our military and intelligence agencies all agreed they should be released.”

It is indeed time that these men were released, as many of them were initially cleared for release five or six years ago, by military review boards under the Bush administration.

In June this year, I produced a report, “Guantánamo Scandal: The 40 Prisoners Still Held But Cleared for Release At Least Five Years Ago,” in which I identified 40 prisoners cleared for release under President Bush, but never freed, and 28 of those men turned up on the list released by the Justice Department. Most of the 28 were cleared for release in 2006 or 2007, but the list also included one man — Saleh al-Zabe (or al-Thabbi), a Yemeni — who was cleared for release on September 3, 2004.

The others who were cleared under President Bush — and again by President Obama’s Task Force — include 12 more Yemenis, the last five Tunisians in Guantánamo, three Algerians, a Saudi, Mohammed Tahamuttan (the last Palestinian), Umar Abdulayev (the last Tajik), the last three Uighurs (Muslims from China’s Xinjiang province), and Shaker Aamer, the last British resident in the prison.

Of the 27 prisoners not originally cleared under President Bush, 13 are Yemenis, four are Syrians, four are Afghans, and one each are from Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates.

For the most numerous of these men, the Yemenis, the problem is that, just before the Task Force issued its final report, in January 2010, a Nigerian named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, recruited in Yemen by an offshoot of al-Qaeda, tried and failed to blow up a plane bound for Detroit with a bomb in his underwear. As a result of that foiled plot, President Obama responded to a wave of hysteria by announcing a moratorium on releasing any cleared Yemenis from Guantánamo. This remains in place two years and eight months later, even though it is a monstrous injustice to continue holding men cleared for release and to pander to populist fearmongering by insinuating that the very fact of being Yemeni is tantamount to being a terrorist — or, at the very least, a terrorist sympathizer.

The Task Force had cleared 29 Yemenis for release, and had placed a further 30 in a category they dreamt up without consulting Congress, which they termed “conditional detention,” declaring that those in this category could be released if there was an improvement in the security situation in Yemen. After the failed bomb plot, however, the other 29 Yemenis also had their release halted, and only one has since been freed. It is certain, therefore, that all the Yemenis who were supposed to be freed when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boarded a plane with his useless bomb are on this list, and it is, moreover, probable that the 31 names of cleared prisoners not included by the government feature the 30 Yemenis consigned to “conditional detention” by the Task Force.

Mentioning the fate of the cleared Yemenis — and the indecency of holding cleared men on the basis of the guilt supposedly attached to their nationality — has been taboo in the mainstream American media since President Obama issued his moratorium in January 2010, although the death of another cleared Yemeni at Guantánamo on September 8 at least prompted the Los Angeles Times to publish an editorial questioning the moratorium.

The man in question, Adnan Latif, had mental health problems, and had been cleared for release under President Bush and also by Obama’s Task Force. He had also won his habeas corpus petition, but this decision had been overturned by the appeals court in Washington D.C., which has gutted habeas corpus of all meaning for the Guantánamo prisoners. Failed by all three branches of government, he died at Guantánamo nearly six years after a military review board first recommended him for release.

Noticeably, although the Task Force had cleared him, no attempt was made to liaise with the Justice Department, which, logically, should not have challenged his habeas corpus petition, and should not have appealed when he won. Sadly, however, that approach was not pursued, and Latif was not the only victim. Under Obama, a total of nine of the 55 cleared prisoners on the list released last Friday had their habeas petitions challenged. Seven subsequently had their petitions denied, and in two other cases, when the prisoners won, the Justice Department appealed, and won on appeal.

In the Los Angeles Times, the editors, addressing what they called “America’s detainee problem,” noted that “the administration needs to make more of an effort to arrange the repatriation or resettlement of individuals no longer considered a threat,” adding, “That would probably mean lifting the blanket ban on transfers to Yemen.”

That carefully worded suggestion is far from a ringing endorsement of the need to get rid of the moratorium, but it is some sort of progress, and will hopefully have been noted in the corridors of power. To avoid the deaths of any more cleared men, and to do something to rescue his appalling record on the treatment of “war on terror” prisoners inherited from the Bush administration, Barack Obama needs to release all the Yemenis without further delay, and also to do the same with the 29 others.

Shaker Aamer, the Saudi-born British resident whose wife and four children await his return in south London, could be sent home tomorrow, as could the five Tunisians, who could not be freed before the fall of President Ben Ali in January 2011, as they had all been sentenced in absentia in show trials and faced abuse on their return. Some of the others can also probably be freed in their home countries, but if it is unsafe for them to be returned home, because they face the risk of torture or other ill treatment, they can join the other prisoners who need new homes, and who, if no willing and appropriate countries can be found, should be rehoused in the US — the Algerians, Umar Abdulayev, Mohammed Tahamuttan, the Syrians and the three Uighurs, who are the last of 22 Uighurs in total, the rest of whom were resettled in various countries between May 2006 and April 2012.

In conclusion, the release of this document, which pierces the veil of secrecy that has surrounded the men since January 2010, is important, and, after the death of Adnan Latif, needs to lead to the release of all the cleared prisoners, so that Adnan Latif’s cruel and unjust death at Guantánamo was not in vain.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the new “Close Guantánamo campaign,” and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

As published exclusively on the website of the Future of Freedom Foundation.

London Skies: Photos of Big Fluffy Clouds

London Skies: Big Fluffy Clouds , a set on Flickr.

“Little fluffy clouds,” famously, was a quote in an interview with the wonderful singer/songwriter Rickie Lee Jones, which was sampled by art pranksters The Orb for their 1990 single of the same name. This is the exchange:

Interviewer: What were the skies like when you were young?

Rickie Lee Jones: They went on forever. We lived in Arizona, and the skies always had little fluffy clouds in ‘em, and, uh, they were long and clear and there were lots of stars at night. And, uh, when it would rain, it would all turn — They were beautiful, the most beautiful skies as a matter of fact. Um, the sunsets were purple and red and yellow and on fire, and the clouds would catch the colours everywhere. That’s, uh, neat ’cause I used to look at them all the time, when I was little. You don’t see that. You might still see them in the desert.

The skies in south London may not match those in Arizona in Rickie Lee Jones’ youth — and in her memories — but they certainly catch my attention on a regular basis, and, since I began photographing London by bike on an almost daily basis nearly five months ago, I always find my gaze drawn to the horizon, to see what kinds of giant shapes the clouds are forming. I have encountered — and captured on camera — little fluffy clouds that have always reminded me of Rickie Lee Jones’ little fluffy clouds — here and here, for example — but more often that not I’m on the lookout for giant cumulus clouds, like tsumanis, dwarfing life below.

All my photos in which clouds have featured prominently can be found here, but for this latest photo set, I focused exclusively on clouds, captured in various bike rides around south east London — and almost exclusively in Brockley, where I have lived for the last 13 years, on a hill that rolls down to Lewisham to the east and New Cross and Deptford to the north, and where, between April and July, I regular found myself cycling under skies of formidable beauty, some elements of which I hope to have captured in these photos.

I’m posting these photos now as an antidote to the horrors of life under the Tory-led coalition government, which, yesterday, hit a new low by imprisoning a squatter, for the first time since squatting was changed from a civil to a criminal offence on September 1, for the alleged crime of occupying an empty flat.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed — and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, “The Complete Guantánamo Files,” a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and details about the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here — or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guantánamo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the new “Close Guantánamo campaign,” and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.