A quick, and getting rather late, plug for the new ITUC website, We Are ZCTU (www.wearezctu.org). It’s set up in support of Wellington Chibebe and Lovemore Matombo of the Zimbawe Congress of Trade Unions, who are due in court in Harare this Wednesday (30 July).

They’ve been charged with “spreading falsehoods prejudicial to the state”, which translates as telling the truth about the state-sponsored violence in the run up to the sham elections in their country. They were originally supposed to be in court last month, but the case was postponed, most likely so as to keep the punitive bail conditions in force for as long as possible, effectively shutting up the unions’ public voice whilst Mugabe got about stealing the election.

Unionists all over the world are coming out in support of the pair online, with a giant photo mosaic that you can pan and zoom on the new site, and other ways to show your support. Read the rest of this entry »

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