200 prisoners at
Guantanamo Bay are on hunger strike, according to a lawyer representing a
number of clients at the base.
Clive Stafford Smith,
who returned from Guantamo a week ago, told an audience at the Greenbelt
Christian Festival in Cheltenham: 'The world needs to know that these guys are
going to die in the next two to three weeks. They are starving themselves to
death.'
Oscar Reyes. Heard the one about the worldwide
union mobilisation against Wal-mart, the global supermarket chain which owns
Asda in the UK? Well, don’t hold your breath. A Union Network International (UNI) conference
in Chicago, which brings together service sector unions from across the globe,
has opened a ‘channel of communication’ with the company. Experience shows that
this may not be enough to change the behaviour of a firm George Monbiot
once called ‘the most ruthless employer in the world’, and whose own propaganda site dedicates considerable
effort to bashing unions. But some positive initiatives have come out.
Journalists locked out of Canadian public broadcaster CBC are striking back by creating their own alternative media source. 5,500 employees have been locked out by the stating, after they rejected management plans to put more staff on temporary contracts. In response, they have launched CBC Unplugged,
which gathers dispatches from picketlines and uses blogs to gather lockout-related news and music. The site also raises wider issues about casualisation in the media industry.
Doctors for Iraq are reporting that a new offensive has
been launched on the city of Al Qaim in Western Iraq. The city is under curfew
and eyewitnesses have reported heavy bombing. US and Iraqi
forces have attacked Al Qaim several times in the past few months, and the health
and humanitarian situation inside the city and surrounding areas is desperate.
