That’s prettier than anything purporting to categorise me has any right to be. Wordle - Beautiful Word Clouds - is just that. It’s a clever little site that interprets documents, or in this case RSS feeds (the one from this here blog), and makes clouds to highlight common themes. Very much fun playing with it, and I’m indebted to Someday I Will Treat You Good for the tip.
Happy to see evidence that, whether my labor-geek interests are going anywhere or not, above all I’m trying
Worrying news out of Italy for us labor-geeks. Davide Barillari, a rep with IBM Italy, and one of the prime movers behind the international web-based linking and virtual world protests of the last year, is concerned his union may be trying to sideline his attempts to evangelise for the transition to a 2.0 organisation, by removing him from international responsibilities through a snap works council election.
He feels so strongly about this that he’s set up a blog (”WE trust in Davide“) and an online petition to give his side of the story. He thinks he’s probably been trying to move the union too far too fast - not to mention irking his employer - and this is the reaction to it.
This is always going to be a thorny one for unions. We have a responsibility to stay true to our democratic structures, which are what make us accountable and give us legitimacy to speak for all our members. Many unions will see they have an agreed way forward, and fairly enough view radical departures suggested by minority voices with extreme scepticism.
But if unions are going to make the most of the new ways of working that web 2.0 brings us, we also need to find a way to open up to the possibilities of direct involvment with a wider range of people (who may not be representative, but who have talents and ideas we shouldn’t ignore). The trick is doing this without compromising our accountability, and (surprise, surprise) I don’t have any real answers here yet.
Anyways, I know and like Davide enough to trust him myself, so am happy to sign his petition, and hope I get the chance to work with him and his ideas for some time to come.
This vid looks to have been up on their site for months now, but I only just noticed it after I found myself thinking a lot of Morgan Tsvangirai and the terrible challenges he and the MDC are facing over the next days, and humming through this namechecking song about bravery and devotion, so I went to check it out again.
By way of background - Back in the mists of the last decade, the greatest pop combo to play some of Oxford’s grottiest venues were the Holy Roman Empire. A formidable pop songwriting talent hitched to universally derided musical skills, but with a punky enough attitude not to care and the charisma to get them forgiven for a lot, HRE were lefty, internationalist, life-affirming, funny, and too clever by half. Many years on and Ste Fleming from HRE seems as though he may be on the verge of coming back (as Le Emu Tavern), with a new sound like the missing link between Morrissey and Phil Oakey that you never knew you needed. That would be a good thing. I’m only hoping this tribute vid to Morgan Tsvangirai doesn’t end up relevant in the same sad way as that of HRE’s old single Benazir Bhutto.
Wellington Chibebe and Lovemore Matombo are the leaders of the Zimbabwean union federation, the ZCTU. They were arrested after a May Day rally for ’spreading falsehoods prejudicial to the state’ (ie: telling the truth) and Mugabe is trying to silence them in the run up to the run off of the presidential election, with a trial on Monday that could go badly for them, and a ban on appearing in public or making public statements.
The TUC and others have an extremely ambitious plan to try to make a giant photo mosaic of Lovemore and Wellington, made up of hundreds and hundreds of tiny pics of supporters’ faces from around the world. Wellington and Lovemore may be banned from appearing in public, but this is a nice way for thousands of people to show solidarity and help them to “appear” at the London demo called to conincide with their trial on Monday, and in other demos that will be happening around the world. The plan is to use the picture to get more attention on the issue and demos in the media.
There are only 3 days to get hold of all the photos, so this is going to be ludicrously difficult. Your face is needed! If you have a mugshot you’d like to see as part of a giant mosaic, please email it (right now) to zim@tuc.org.uk or MMS a quick cameraphone snap to 07546 229055 (0044 7546 229055 internationally).
Please do help out. I’ve met both of them in the past and they are extremely brave people, going voluntarily into their trials on Monday, even though they are no strangers to being savagely beaten in custody. Anything that can be done to help them is a big big good!
Remember Derek? 3,000 Facebook unionists came together to get our Canadian pal reinstated in the good book, after he was banned for making friends too quickly, whilst trying to evaluate Facebook for unions and campaigners.
Well, now he’s out on his cyber-ear again. He was kicked this time, apparently with no hope of reinstatement as his account has been totally deleted, because he’d answered too many messages of support (not sent messages, just answered ones he’d been sent by friends). And it opens up a whole can of worms for unionists and campaigners. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve recently visited your website for the Judicial Review of the increased congestion charge for London. At a time when the world is becoming more environmentally conscious, Porsche is showing itself to be an utter relic, moving its business into heavier and more polluting vehicles like the Cayenne, and trying to buy its way out of environmental regulation through legal threats. Read the rest of this entry »
The Union Island project (to build a home for international unionists in Second Life - or Second LifeTM to its friends) launches formally on 1 May, with a big Virtual May Day shebang. Events on the day are going to range from plain-and-simple parties to focused help sessions for reps and organisers. Read the rest of this entry »
Mad Bob’s guns are on their way back to China in an alternative international relay just in time for the Olympics, and Thabo Mbeki has seen what his people really think of his stance - from a long way behind them.
Mind you, dockers round the world have a habit of doing that.
Two months back now, I was lucky enough to get an invite to a big French conference on Web2.0, society and business, called Netxplorateur, and very slackly I’m only just getting round to blogging about it. –>
Great news that Mahmoud Salehi was freed on Sunday. He had already served his one year jail sentence, and it looked worryingly as though the authorities were planning to cook up fresh charges to keep him inside, prompting him to go on hunger strike and fellow unionists in Iran and around the world to join in protest until he was released. He joins Ebrahim Madadi of the Tehran bus workers’ union and, who were both also released from jail late last year, after arrests earlier in 2007 for union activity. Still behind bars though, with continuing fears for his health is Mansour Osanloo. Read the rest of this entry »
The occasional scrapbook of a UK labor-geek.
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All of this obviously being my own thoughts and nothing you can pin on my employers present or past, my union, my local party, my mates, or anyone else you might confuse me with - most of whom don't agree with me about very much anyway.
(When not out 
Great news that Mahmoud Salehi was 
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