Half-naked women protest Ukraine election

KIEV – Four young women naked from the waist up barged into a Ukrainian polling station on Sunday and held a rowdy protest just before a candidate in the country's presidential election cast his ballot there.

The women, members of a small feminist group called Femen known for staging eye-catching protests, were hustled out of the Kiev polling station by security guards before Viktor Yanukovich showed up to vote, an AFP photographer saw.
"Enough raping our democracy!" shouted the protesters, who held signs with slogans such as "Help! Rape!" and wore nothing except for jeans and strips of green electrical tape over their nipples.

The women told reporters they were protesting "the end of democracy" in Ukraine and not specifically against Yanukovich or in favour of his rival, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
The two candidates fought a bitter election campaign and many Ukrainians said they were with frustrated with the choice, amid deep disillusionment with the country's protracted political stalemate and economic crisis.
Femen, whose members were mostly university students, drew international attention last summer by holding a protest against Ukraine's sex tourism trade where activists picketed in central Kiev wearing bras and panties.

Source: Agence France-Presse.

[VIDEO]

5 Days With the Orange Lions: Lessons to be Learned from AIESEC in The Netherlands

I was member of the facilitator team of NatCo II of AIESEC in the Netherlands from 28th to 29th of January 2010. This was the very first time the dutch national executive board (MC) oped the application to internationals an also my first experience as an international facilitator.

I always apprehended AIESEC in the Netherlands as one of the most important country in the AIESEC network. AIESEC in the Netherlands stand in my mind for high professionally, excellence and top performance. I also knew that AIESE there works differently from other AIESEC countries and knowing these difference in it's depth was one of my motivation to apply for NatCo II. I wanted to know the "secret recipe" that makes AIESEC in the Netherlands so successful and export these ideas to AIESEC in Germany and the rest of the global network.

The AIESEC in the Netherlands foundation is composed by two main sub-organisations: "AIESEC in the Netherlands" (@NL) and "Make a Move" (MaM)."Make a Move" is an independent brand within AIESEC in The Netherlands that brings students into contact with companies for their future career and organise Career weeks (Yes, it's basically like the AIESEC Germany's FirmenKontaktGespräch).

The national Board of @NL is composed by a president, a vice president incoming exchange, a vice president outgoing exchange, a vice president finance, a vice president external relations and two vice presidents for managing the national programs and make a move.

The national programs are the "Nour program", "The Ambassador program" and "TNT Global Experience Program". These exchange projects are very exclusive, selective and accept only top talents as participant (20 out of 500 applicants for the Ambassador program).
The local executive boards (EB) of @NL are composed by a president, one vice president and three coordinators for exchange (In and Out) and MaM. 

LC EBs are full time and earn no money during their one year term but you can apply for a 100-200 euros scholarship from the university. Student still apply for EB positions because of the very good external Positioning of @NL. It's almost certain that you will be well payed after your studies if you have an EB experience with AIESEC.
This membership quality standard is also implemented in recruiting members. Every single member in the 10 Dutch Local Committees (LCs) have a unique Job Description with at least 15 Hours of workload per week during 6 or 12 months and are tracked regularly by the EB. If the members want to continue in his position after his term, he must to reapply for the job. Vacant places in the LCs are also well calculated before beginning the recruitment. 

Example: If one LC know that he usually realise 3 or 4 exchanges in Quarter nr. 1 and another 3 or 4 in Quarter nr. 2 (just check the history of the LC to see the needs), they recruit only one person to manage the 3 Trainees (If we assume that one member can manage 3-4 trainees).
Theoretically, there is no need for members if you don't realise exchanges, which is in my opinion very true!

All executive boards (local and national) in the Netherlands are selected and not elected. For example, the MCP is selected out of the applicants by current MC team and the Board of Advisors that seems to play a very important role in the organisation. This sounds not very democratic but guarantee an objective selection and the quality of the elected person. Another interesting point is that the positions are opened to all Students and not only AIESECers.
I know so many examples in AIESEC Germany of Vice President's (VP's) and Local Committee President's (LCP's) with no real motivation or knowledge that got elected just because they made a good 10 min speech or very good members with alot of experience that got refused because they couldn't convince the audience. Rhetoric skills shouldn't be the key argument to elect someone and easily influence inexperienced LC members and/or newly elected LCPs on a MC election.

@NL don't use the Global Competency Model of AIESEC International, but their own one (developed by a partner) and use it in the MC selection interviews.

@NL have no team or VP for Talent Management (TM) and no National Trainer Team (NTT). Most of the VP TM job is done by the LCP or the EB as they are working full time.

One clear weakness of @NL is that they have a very low rate of exchange (X) + leadership (L) experiences (10 X+L out of 385 Exchanges in 2009. Germany have 96 X+L out of 598 Xs). This issue could be easily improved by creating a task force to continue the work that we begun during NatCo II with Neil Walter in the Training "Promoting OGX Internally" and by creating a Coordinator or a VP for a Talent Management focused on exchange processes and trainee reintegration.


AIESEC Germany and AIESEC in the Netherlands are geographically near to each other and seems to be similar at the first sight but they aren't. We have different realities and a different understanding of how should AIESEC reach it's vision. Yes, we are different and there is no shame in it. Both of us know our weaknesses and the huge opportunities we have if we learn from each other. 

Our Leaders Betrayed Us - Copenhagen Failed

Copenhagen Failed! Do not let a political scam "Copenhagen Accord' fool you. It is just another self-saving swindle by the establishment and a self-serving act by the rich and powerful. The United Nations finally disclosed that they have no power in global democratic governance and allowed just five national leaders supported by a twenty other opportunists to decide on the world's future. Poor country leaders, their people, and civil society were shutout from one of the worst democracy killing acts ever on earth. Twenty thousand people from across the world, leaders from 119 nations, representatives from 193 countries did not come to Copenhagen to see just a handful of people making the decisions of our destiny. Now they with a world of people watching from home will never trust the United Nations processes to democratically make decisions for the world.

Copenhagen scam was engineered by a handful of people. Firstly the A NATO presidency holding Denmark had to save their shame and manipulated the process for this wicked deal to emerge. The urgency of Danish Prime Lars Lokke Rasmussen to resign the COP15 president Ms. Connie Hedegaard was the first sign of political frustration and panic. This is why South Africa's environment minister Buyelwa Sonjica and her two top climate change negotiators said recently that part of the blame rested with the way the host guided the conference. In their first media briefing since returning from talks in the Danish capital that ended Saturday, the trio described an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion that Denmark was plotting to force its own position on other nations. South African negotiator Joanne Yawitch said, the Danes unveiled a draft at the 11th hour that was "seriously problematic". Secondly, these manipulations lead USA President Barrack Obama towards joining a small group of schemers in delivering the killer punches on the international democratic deliberations mechanism at the United Nations. However, the main architects of this closed "Copenhagen Scam" would be four wise men of the BASIC group of nations invisibly lead by the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, along with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and South African President Jacob Zuma who were the main chefs who cooked-up the situation for this 'Copenhagen Accord' to evolve. By turning on the heat on the Western leaders, these emerging giants ensured that Mr. Obama responds and the rest jump into the soup to save themselves from a global shame.

USA President Barrack Obama should not have tried to save the Copenhagen Summit. As a leader who emerged with the promise to change the practices of establishment, he should have made his usually world assuring speech and left, therefore leaving the Climate Summit to fail. This could have helped the cause of the climate sustainability movement to evolve a true climate deal on earth. However, Mr. Obama had clearly demonstrated why he is the main man in global politics today. While the negotiators were playing "Age of the Stupid", Obama worked his usual charismatic charm and usual sharp mind to make common sense look genius. Walking into the newly power hungry BASIC – Brazil, South Africa, India and China – this one smart man saved the negotiating clowns of the COP15 circus an ultimate embarrassment. The Europeans were made to look really stupid in this game, as they had no option rather than to sit round the table and endorse the final verdict of the new power brokers! The Danish Presidency of COP15 simply avoided the greatest embarrassment of the history of his nation, and the United Nations only could hide behind its own shame.

It was clear in Copenhagen that India and China now together with Brazil and South Africa had very conveniently abandoned the most important developing country block G77 in search of their own excellence. They now feel that they are in the big league. Why not? China has beaten USA in the emissions race and India is not too far following. What can the balance of the 130 poor nation's offer them that USA, Europeans and Australia cannot offer in a new world balance? Well, definitely Sudan has very little attraction in this regard. That is why the leaders of Bolivia and Venezuela walked out in protest of the undemocratic process at COP15. It is also amusing that South Africa now after the summit has condemned the Copenhagen accord that they were part of creating. South Africa just recently announced that Copenhagen's failure to produce a legally binding climate change agreement was unacceptable. Well, a little too late to play friends of the developing countries game? Or is their time to save G77 power within the climate talks? Well India may hold the key to this question, at least during the next few months and years to come. But, should the poorer countries allow them to make those critical decisions any more? Obviously G77 needs new leadership and power brokering capacity building soon.

With the world's people and civil society being shut out of the process in Copenhagen, there is only one way ahead; that is to take our own destiny into our hands. It is time right is to tell the worlds leaders what we want in the future and how we want it. That is why the emerging call for a binding agreement on Climate Sustainability is becoming crucial. Climate and sustainability need to be addressed together, not decoupled. An Agreement on Climate Sustainability will be decisive in coming together as one world to reverse decades of irresponsible consumption, production, and trade patterns and to build an equitable, fair, and just world. Governments must demonstrate political will and vision by signing a binding 'Climate Sustainability Agreement' enforced through strong compliance mechanisms. Only this will empower people to live in harmony with all species in a healthy planet that ensures wellbeing and happiness to all.

Discovering a way to survive in a liveable world cannot and should not be the aspiration and determination of humankind. That is a compromise that we, as a generation, are trying to make on the lives of all future generations. While enjoying the offerings on earth today, we are planning a world of lesser enjoyment for the future humans. If we are only negotiating for a liveable world for our children and their children, then we are demonstrating intrinsically our selfish nature as a generation and it is simply fighting to get the best share for ourselves. If we are not planning a better world for our children, then we are planning their unhappiness.

Author: Uchita de Zoysa (uchita@sltnet.lk)

Sources: Greenpeace, tcktcktck and Climate Sustainability Platform

3, 2, 1, nicht Mainz

Last week the national executive board of AIESEC Germany (MC) decided to close LC Mainz/Wiesbaden for non- achieving the minimum criteria that every LC in Germany should reach.

I was wondering aren't we jugging LC efficiency systematically and forgetting the vision we want to achieve ?

I remember Aman (President of AIESEC International) saying in his election speech "Membership is our greatest strength... there are 1.1 billion young people in this world in the age of 16 to 24, only 25 000 of them are members in AIESEC... If there is an organisation that should be the voice of the youth witch know what to do with young people, it's AIESEC. And that's the opportunity in front of us, the opportunities of a bigger and a better AIESEC than ever before and that opportunities is now."

Fact is that LC Mainz/Wiesbaden had a direct contact to 50 000 students (This is more that the all global organisation have), and realised 13 exchanges (In and Out) last year.

Of course, the MC-team had some good reasons to close the committee (no companies to take traineeship nominees in 2010, unmotivated members, incomplete executive board, wrong image of AIESEC, weak finance etc.). But still, it's appropriate to question ourselves where are the limits and red lines of the system. I personally compare AIESEC Germany to a human body and the local committees to body parts. If one day your hand, feet or another body part become ill and inefficient you probably won't cut it off and wait hoping it will reappear again by it's own , don't you ?

If we really want to be "the first choice among young people" [quot from the AIESEC 2010 Statement] we have to define a number of committees and citys with a strategic importance to our presence and future growth and to intensively coach and direct support in weak performing committees with such a stratigic importance. What about the option of retrograding such local committee's status back to an initiative group (IG) or even freezing them for a moment instead of closing them completely and hope that in 10 or 20 years some students will come and begin building AIESEC there from zero ?

A lot of this perspective that I defend is included in the new Local Committee (LC) development model that was presented during the last winter summit in Augsburg. I'm excited to see how the newly elected MC Team will implement the process and how would AIESEC Germany looks like in 3 or 5 years.

Merry FC*ING Christmas

"On Christmas day I travel `round the world and say,

Taoists, Krishnas, Buddhists, and all you atheists too,

Merry Fuc*ing Christmas, To You!"

Google Aims To Push The Speed Of Light With Realtime Results. Seriously.

Today, at its Search Event in Mountain View, Google Fellow Amit Singhal took the stage to announce a big new feature for the search giant: Realtime. “It’s Google’s relevance technology meeting the realtime web,” is how Singhal described it.

As we’ve learned over the past several months with Twitter Search, relevancy is perhaps the key to making realtime search a pillar of the web. Google seems to believe it has cracked the code for this, and has been internally testing it for a while now. But starting today it’s going live for everyone.

Singhal showed off the new feature by doing a query for “Obama.” The results page shows results coming in in realtime. And yes, it works with Twitter. For example, Google’s Matt Cutts tweeted something from the audience, and in popped in the results immediately. This is the first time any search engine has integrated realtime results into a standard page, Google says. Obviously, this is huge.

Google will offer realtime trends (it will be interesting to see how these compare to Twitter trends), and Trends is officially leaving Google Labs today. This new realtime search will work on both Android devices and iPhones immediately. Google says there are over a billion realtime documents a day that it will be looking at. This includes tweets, blog posts, and also information from sources like MySpace and yes, even Facebook.

“The importance of relevance has gone through the roof as the amount of information out there is growing. Relevance has become the critical factor,” Singhal noted. He went on to note that a lot goes on behind the scenes to make sure the relevancy remains intact — including Google apparently developing “dozens” of new technologies. Language is a key aspect to this (and on that front, realtime results will be available in English first, but should come to the rest of the web in Q1 2010). Another key is determining if things like tweets were sent automatically or manually by someone.

When this goes live (update, it is live now), you will see a new “Latest” option in the “Show options” sidebar of Google Search. There is also a way to filter results just to status updates from Twitter and the like.

“Light can travel around the world in 1/10th of a second, and we won’t rest until the speed of light is the only barrier to getting good search results to you,” Singhal noted. Quite a goal.--

Source: techcrunch.com

The Gesa Effect

The group of candidates for the national executive board (MC) of AIESEC Germany in 2011 was announced few hours ago and the first think I said after opening the application folder was: "Holy moly!, waaaaw...".

- "Waw" because there was 13 applicants with one international ! (8 in the last year's first round).

- "Waw" because the people how applied are absolute high potentials and "la créme de la créme" of the 2500 members we have in AIESEC Germany.

- "Waw" because I realise that the next Member Committee President (MCP) will have the difficult task to chose only 6 people in his team!

Honestly speaking, I had the fear that there will be less applications than needed for this year because of the special term length (1,5 years instead of 1 year because of internal calendar changes).

The facts that there are as much high qualified applicants simply prove that the current MC team did a fabulous work so far by being a role model for others so they applied to do the same job and beginning to leach undiscovered power of the organisation that makes the MC position such an attractive job even during these uncertain and foggy socio-economic times.

I'm also convinced that Gesa (MCP) strongly contributed to this situation by spreading such an inspiration and energy what ever she do, where ever she goes but also by well managing her team and their talents.

I couldn't cluster her character and extraordinary characteristics in normal adjectives so I called it the "Gesa Effect" wich is basically the fact of being (as she described herself one year ago): purpose-oriented and simple in actions, clear in communication and enthusiast at work + the mysterious "g factor" that is still unknown and subject of my next researches :P

It's too early to say thank you for anybody, but it's time to say good luck and may the force be with all candidates :)

Google Wave redefines web communication

Google is certainly a phenomenon like no other when it comes to the internet. But with ‘Google Wave’ they plan to release a tsunami across the world and take it over in one big wave.

What the hell is Google Wave?

• Wave is a personal communication and collaboration tool announced by Google. It will integrate wiki, blogging and email in a seamless way. It is based on HTML5.
• It is being classified as a Web Application and Protocol and plans to allow it to be tested by over a 100,000 developers in a sandbox version for feedback in October 2009.
• Google Wave will be open-source and this is being done as Google wants ‘Wave Protocol’ to replace Email protocol in the future!
• 3rd party developers will be able to use Wave and customize the APIs they will need for their websites.

What is so special about Google Wave ?

Email and chat communication at present works by allowing 2 users to exchange information directly using email ids.

For example I am chatting with a friend and after 20 minutes a common friend is online and I add the 3rd person to the chat. The 3rd person cannot access any of the correspondence in the first 20 minutes when he was not part of the conference.

Email communication today…

Now with Google Wave if I am chatting with my friend and add a 3rd person to the conversation, not only will the 3rd person know what we had conversed before he will also automatically have access to any files exchanges over as attachments.

This is done by using Wave Server which updates and stores information of every communication and allows the sharing of this communication in its entirety at any point of time !

Email Communication with Google Wave

So, what would be most impacted with Google Wave?

• For obvious reasons the way we use Email will change drastically.
• Blogging will change dramatically. With a combination of wiki and blogger Google Wave will allow you to edit and alter your blogs online from your email in real time.
• The way we chat online. No more looking at the screen which reads “XYZ is typing”. Every single character which is being typed will be transmitted in real time.

Screenshot of Google Wave

Also read "10 reasons why Google just reinvented online communication" by vanelsas.

Sources: googlewavedev.blogspot.com and devilsworkshop.org

Facebook launches a new hub for world peace

Facebook has just launched a new portal at peace.facebook.com that highlights the site’s desire to promote “peace by building technology that helps people better understand each other”. The site appears to be part of a larger Peace dot movement that’s launching tonight, with the participation of some “impressive organizations” (we’re not sure who else besides Facebook is involved quite yet).

Peace.facebook.com is fairly simple at this point, with a handful of graphs and a widget that lets Facebook users share what they think of the site. The most compelling portion offers a series of graphs depicting “Friendships of Facebook”, which shows how many members of historically hostile groups are becoming friends on Facebook. These graphs include stats from Geographic, Religious, and Political pairings. There’s also a graph that shows the results of a daily poll conducted by Facebook on whether or not World Peace is possible in the next 50 years (over 35% of Columbians think so, but only 7% of users in the US are optimistic).

Saw on techcrunch.com

New NewsFeed: A Big Shot Fired in War Against Information Overload

Facebook just made one of the biggest changes to the site's user experience since the introduction of the News Feed three years ago. News Feed was the place in the very center of the site where all the activities of a user's friends were displayed in reverse chronological order. That feature is now called the Live Feed and the News Feed has become a filtered display of activity highlights instead.

In September 2006 the News Feed was a radical idea; thousands of Facebook users revolted against the idea that all their friends would be shown every photo they uploaded, when their relationship status changed and other information as soon as it was available. Today we live in a different world. Almost everything is social and the new challenge is tackling information overload. That's what Facebook just did today and it's going to be very important for the future.

The real-time flow of social activity data is very exciting, but many people have cautioned that it will be a net-negative for users' experience of the web as we're flooded with an overwhelming quantity of low-quality information. Confronting this issue is an obvious next step for social software.

Everyone's trying to solve this problem. There are inbox filtering services like ReMail, Threadsy and the experimental new Mozilla Raindrop. There are column filters in stream readers like Tweetdeck and Seesmic. Google Reader yesterday introduced a "magic" filter view for the most popular items across the whole network. FriendFeed, a small but innovative social aggregator started by one of the creators of GMail and acquired by Facebook for $50 million this summer, offers a "best of day" view of any stream of updates you're looking at.

That FriendFeed view is the closest thing to the new Facebook News Feed, but a Facebook spokesperson told us that the two products are unrelated.

Everyone's trying to tackle information overload. Step one, get more people sharing information. Step two, figure out how to create a personalized, high-value view of all that information by surfacing the most important updates for each user. Step three, profit!

How It Works

The new News Feed view is based on an algorithm that scores every update coming in through what's now called the Live Feed. That scoring is based on the number of "likes" and comments an item has received and how much you personally have interacted with the update's author in the past.

A related algorithm was used in the past to create the "highlights" section on the right-hand side of the Facebook home page. That section was getting too little interaction and didn't include things like important status updates, the company says. If your sister posted a status update saying that she's pregnant, a Facebook spokesperson told us today, that wouldn't show up in the old highlights view. It should show up in your News Feed now.

So three big changes: 1. The new Live Feed is linked-to at the top of the page and shows a number of new items since your last visit. 2. Highlights plus hot status updates are now the default, the new News Feed. 3. Birthdays and other important events have taken the place of the old Highlights section; they are of particular interest to users and will now be easier to see.

What It Means

Facebook says that after viewing your new News Feed, you can go check out the raw Live Stream of all the most recent updates from your contacts. That's the opposite of the way FriendFeed did it and neither strategy should be taken for granted. Decisions like this impact a major method of communication for hundreds of millions of people around the world.

By showing the News Feed highlights as the default view, Facebook will probably encourage users to pay more attention to, interact with more and grow closer to the people they already have a history of interacting with and the events that are already popular. Weak social connections and your personal long-tail of content are less prioritized in this view.

The inclusion of a user's past behavior as a criteria for hotness is key, though. It's not just a popularity contest. Your News Feed is your little universe and popularity is defined in relative terms.

That, again, is a particular strategy. The new Google Reader Popular View, for example, appears to evaluate popularity across all users in total.

What It Could Mean In the Future

Someday social networking is going to be like the telephone. Today you can't send messages from Facebook to people on MySpace or LinkedIn but that isn't going to last forever. Just as you can call someone who uses T-Mobile from your Sprint phone, someday sharing and messaging between online social networks will be a given.

How will social networks retain users then? Why stick with Facebook when some smaller service offers a decentralized social networking service outside of Facebook's control but still tied into your friends on Facebook and elsewhere?

These services will someday have to compete on user experience, when they no longer have your social connections locked-in. The service that does the best job filtering up the most important information you have coming your way will likely be the service you stick with. That's going to be a key area of competition between social networks.

How well will Facebook do at filtering the Live Stream of content? We're about to find out and it's going to make a big difference in how we experience the web. That will only be more true as more and more people begin publishing content.

There's been a lot of emphasis on the live stream of real-time web content, but Facebook now joins many other services in recognizing that the best value is sometimes built by combining real time and slower assets.

Source: Marshall Kirkpatrick on readwriteweb.com