From a first-hand account of what it is like to be imprisoned inside Guantánamo Bay to our enduring affection for bookshops, here is my pick of some of the most interesting links from around the web.

Jay Rosen has teamed up with the Guardian to provide alternative coverage of the 2012 US Presidential campaign. The aim is to articulate the ‘citizens agenda’ by making election coverage more relevant to voters’ needs and concerns.

Mohammed el Gharani, the youngest prisoner to be sent to Guantánamo Bay – he was arrested at 14 – has written a personal account of his imprisonment in Guantánamo for the London Review of Books.

Crikey has posted a video of Barbara Walters interviewing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Walters poses some fairly tough questions to Assad, but for the President accusations of state brutality are ‘false allegations and distortions of reality’ and he denies killing his citizens – something, he insists, only a ‘crazy’ leader would do. UN Security General Ban Ki-moon, however, says otherwise.

Over at New Matilda, Freelance journalist Inga Ting has made a moving multimedia interview with Bosnian refugee Zirajeta Torlakovic.

Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul appeared on Antiwar Radio last month, where he spoke critically about America’s endless wars and the value of a non-interventionist foreign policy.

A number of US companies, including Lowes and Bank of America, have pulled their advertising from reality television show, ‘All-American Muslim’. The Florida Family Association, which led the campaign urging companies to pull their ads from the show, calls ‘All-American Muslim’ ‘propaganda clearly designed to counter legitimate and present-day concerns about many Muslims who are advancing Islamic fundamentalism and Sharia law.’

Glen Greenwald on the ‘utter meaninglessness of the word Terrorism’.

Guernica magazine interviews Azu Nwagbogu, the founder of LagosPhoto, an annual photography festival based in Lagos, Nigeria.

The New York Review of Books looks behind Haruki Murakami’s mirror in a lovely review of his new novel, 1Q84.

‘The bookstore’s continued ability to generate affection, even among those of us whose actions end up undermining it, perhaps speaks less to our love of books and reading and more to our desire to feel ‘in touch’ with our local environment’ – Caroline Hamilton writes about the future of bookshops over at her blog, Printed Matters.