The US military will no longer publicly disclose whether prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are on hunger strike.

Hunger strikes have taken place at the prison camp since it was opened in 2002, but normally it was possible for the press to discover how many in-mates were making the protest, and how many of them were being force fed.

A Guantanamo Bay official said the camp authorities would “no longer further [prisoners’] protests by reporting the numbers to the public.” The US holds 164 prisoners at Guantanamo, most of them without charge.

“The old dies and the new cannot manage to see day. In the interim a large diversity of  morbid symptoms surges forth” (Antonio Gramsci)

The latest data on the state of Italy’s economy puts it in second place behind Greece for the level of absolute and relative poverty, with half of its population on €1,000 a month or less and nearly 45% of young people without work.

On 29 November, the Home Office attempted to deport Isa Muazu, a Nigerian refugee.

Muazu had been on hunger strike for over 100 days against his detention at Harmondsworth immigration removal centre and was feared to be close to death. However, the privately-charted jet the Home Office hired to deport him was not allowed to land by Nigerian authorities, and Muazu is now back in the UK.

The Communication Workers Union (CWU) is recommending a deal to its members in Royal Mail that secures a 9% pay increase over three years and legal protection against outsourcing, casualisation, and zero-hours contracts, but also radically restricts the union’s ability to strike.

The official consultation period for the Collins report on Labour-union links closes on 24 December.

Then Collins, commissioned by Labour leader Ed Miliband, is due to produce proposals to go to a Labour special conference in spring 2014.

The whole thing starts from a speech by Ed Miliband in July when said that individual trade unionists in affiliated unions should “opt in” to paying political levies to Labour.

Since 1946 the system has been rather than individuals can “opt out”. It was “opt in” only between 1927 and 1946 under a law passed by a Tory government.

The Observer on 8 December published a leaked Labour Party memo showing that Alan Milburn is to have a role in Labour’s planning for the general election in 2015.

Just how big a role is really not clear. The memo outlines no fewer than 22 committees to run election strategy!

But Labour’s elected National Executive figures nowhere in the maze of committees. Nor do trade unionists. Milburn does figure.

Milburn was a Blairite Labour minister from 1998 to 2005, responsible for introducing Foundation Trusts and PFI in the Health Service.

Trade union and LGBT liberation activists came together on Sunday 8 December to launch the Rainbow International LGBT Activist Solidarity Fund.

It is a new initiative which will provide critical financial assistance to frontline LGBT rights activists — principally in the countries where being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender is still illegal — so as to empower individuals and groups to campaign for LGBT rights, sexual liberation, equality, justice, democratic change, and working-class unity.

This is slightly different from the version published in the printed paper.

At least twice in early December, anarchist students at Sussex University have carried out physical attacks on Socialist Workers Party stalls.

The worst of the cuts in local government are yet to come. Cuts in England in Wales amounted to £5.2 billion in the last two years, and are estimated to be £6.3 billion in the next two.

Leaders of Birmingham city council say they need to find £840 million over the next eight years. They have announced 1,000 job cuts and are warning they may not be able to fund all statutory services. Many other smaller councils are looking at the same kind of future.

Britain faces a housing crisis, possibly the gravest housing shortage since 1945.

Simultaneously we have colossal housebuilding programmes which dramatically worsen the crisis. Travel through Hackney, east London, for example and you see massive housing projects being constructed. But it is all luxury housing. Rents start at £500 a week, rising to £1,500. Some houses cost up to £1,500,000. One Tory-controlled local authority is building whole new estates, but only for those on incomes of £90,000 a year or over.