TwitterIn – Twitter joins forces with LinkedIn

TwitterIn (image via Connectsocialnetworks.com)

It was yesterday announced that LinkedIn, termed by some as the ‘professional version’ of facebook, has teamed up with Twitter – allowing users of both social networks to cross-post their status updates.

Both companies argue this is a good thing, as you can see in the video below, but is it? Personally, when facebook introduced its ‘stream’ for instance it really turned into an information overload platform.

The solution to make sense of all the tweets/feeds/streams is perhaps better real-time search. Come on Google, chop chop…

- Emil

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1984 – Only the birds fly from East to West Berlin

The Berlin Wall (image via Wikipedia)

As the World is commemorating the fall of the Berlin wall, the Lobby would like to share with you the English translation of a Dutch song called “Over de Muur” from Klein Orkest. The song came out in 1984 when the wall still was a hard reality. It criticises the situation in East Berlin and at the same time questions some of the values freedom has brought to the West.

East Berlin, Unter den Linden
People walking by flags and banners
Where Lenin and Marx still stand on a pedestal
And everyone works, hammers and sickles
As the guards are changing in parade step
Forty years of socialism, and much has been achieved

But what does utopia mean with walls surrounding it
If you’re afraid and have to say things cautiously
Oh, what is utopia, tell me: what is it worth?
When someone different is declared mad

And only the birds fly from East to West Berlin
Don’t be whistled back, nor shot down
Over the wall, over the Iron Curtain
Because sometimes they like to be in the West, and sometimes in the East

West Berlin, the Kurfürstendamm
People walking by porn- and peepshows
Where Mercedes and Cola still stand on a pedestal
And the neon ads, they’re glittering and luring
Come dance, come eat, come drink, come gamble!
Forty years of freedom, and much has been achieved

But what does freedom mean, without a home, without a job?
So many Turks in Kreuzberg who can hardly survive
Okay, you can demonstrate, but with your back against the wall
And only if you have money, can you be free

The birds fly from West to East Berlin
Don’t get whistled back, neither shot down
Over the wall, over the Iron Curtain
Because sometimes they like to be in the East, and sometimes in the West

Because there is bread lying sometimes near the Gedächtniskirche
And sometimes at the Alexanderplatz

- Lieneke

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Telecometry

Telecometry (image via kenyee on flickr)

‘Twas the night before Wednesday, post discussions galore,

When Council and EP had quarrels no more.

The telecoms package adopted became.

And thus ended a saga with notorious fame.

Ok this is not a Haiku but as poetry is seemingly the order of the day, The Lobby humbly attempts to follow in the footsteps of Belgium’s Prime Minister Herman Van Rompuy…

- Bilyana

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Why I will not be running for President of the EU

Not the future EU President

Before continuing with this blog-post I would like to clarify one thing, once and for all.

I will not be announcing my candidacy for the new role of EU President.

Some of you may be surprised that I was in the running at all.  In fact, I never formally announced my candidacy, but one night in Stoumelings I understand that my name was banded around (did you now? – ed) – perhaps half in irony, who knows? – but nonetheless, Brussels is a small place and such talk can spread like wildfire.  Sooner or later my name could have been mentioned in the company of Tony Blair, Herman Van Rompuy, and Jan Peter Balkenende.

I cannot deny that I considered it for a fleeting moment, but in the end I have taken the decision that if the Swedish Presidency were to come to me and say that there had been consensus on my appointment in the Council I would have turned it down.  Why?

Because – and let’s be honest here – I cannot, in the words of UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband, “stop the traffic in Beijing,” even if I wanted to.  Furthermore, if the job is merely that of a glorified Chairman (as now seems to be its destiny), intent on finding muddy compromises between the EU-27, I don’t feel that this is the role I want the President of Europe to have.  I would be going against my own principles.

The President of the EU! Population 500 million.  The largest trading bloc in the world.  Yet the economic giant will remain a political pygmy if its President is reduced to the role of a non-descript fonctionnaire.

Many Europeans cannot name a single MEP, let alone the President of the Commission, but it would be nice if they knew who the President of the EU was.  After all, he or she will de-facto be representing their interests in the halls of the White House and on the roundabouts (so it would appear) of Beijing.

So unless the new President’s role is wide-ranging, attention-grabbing, and media-attracting, I hereby rule myself out of the running.

- Rob

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Pirate (finally) becomes youngest MEP

Amelia Andersotter in action (image via cybriks on flickr)

As already mentioned by The Lobby in June (see Pirates could secure two seats in new European Parliament) the Swedish Pirate Party has secured another seat in the European Parliament following the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty.

Amelia Andersdotter, 22, is on her way to Brussels, thanks to the Lisbon Treaty, perhaps ironically, a Treaty she is personally not in favour of. But as she says herself in an interview with Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, “if it now has to enter into force, it’s good that the Pirate Party gains another seat…[as] two people can perform double the amount of work” (free translation).

She effectively becomes the European Parliament’s youngest MEP.

Well done, say we at The Lobby!

- Emil

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Ice cold hotel turns 20

Sub-zero party time (image via sylweczka on flickr)

With only 2 months left of the Swedish EU Presidency and winter already closing in on Sweden, The Lobby thought it would be fitting to mark the coming 20^th anniversary of the world’s largest ice hotel – the Jukkasjärvi Ice Hotel.

Many have heard about it, few have been and the place actually only exists for about five months a year. But if you happen to be in Sweden in late December to mid April, pop up to the Jukkasjärvi Ice Hotel, it’s just above the arctic circle. Check-in to an ice-room, have a drink in the ice-bar, watch the sky at night in the hope of enjoying the Northern Lights (It’s amazing! –ed (though better in Finland – Ed ed)), and discover what darkness actually means. What’s more, the Ice Hotel has taken the carbon footprint concept to the extreme since they plan to be CO2 negative (!) by 2015.

If that’s not cool enough, wait another year or two. Ice Hotel Travel, the travel agency that’s linked to the Ice Hotel, has teamed up with Virgin Galactic, and space tourism is set to take off from Space Port Sweden starting in 2012, courtesy of Richard Branson.

You see, there is actually more to Sweden than meatballs and IKEA.

- Emil

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Kosovo – The young Europeans

The Lobby is honoured to present you with the “Kosovo Nation Branding Campaign” – currently available on YouTube (see video inset at the end of this post) and soon to be broadcast on television portraying a new image of this still heavily disputed new nation, which is after all, just round the corner from many of us.

The campaign shows the Kosovo Government’s brave attempts to break with the negative image the world has of this Balkan country, especially given how fresh the war in Kosovo still is in many people’s minds.

The video portrays an image of a young and vibrant, beautiful nation, against the backdrop of a tune gently reminding us that “it is time to start over”…

As presented in the clip, the country’s new slogan is ‘Kosovo, the young Europeans’, as they are the youngest European state. Nonetheless, the bright new nation is yet to be recognised as such by the majority of countries across the globe. Although the US and many EU member states have recognised the country since its unilateral declaration of independence of Serbia in early 2008, other world powers such as China and Russia have not.

For what it is worth, the video is definitely inspiring.

- Lieneke

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A wall of “justice”

Wall of "justice" in Slovakia (image via the Slovak Spektator)

Human rights take another beating this week in the village of Ostrovany, in the Eastern region of Slovakia.

In order to prevent the town’s Roma inhabitants from stealing fruits and vegetables from Slovak villagers’ gardens, a large wall has been built around the entire Roma community. The wall cost €13,000, is 150-metre-long, and is intended to isolate the Roma community from the Slovak population of the village. The Slovak inhabitants have welcomed this form of “protection” from their neighbours, although it seems to the Lobby to be a fairly ineffective way of preventing theft.

This is not the first instance of such a discriminatory act between Slovaks and Roma in Eastern Slovakia. The equivalent would not go unnoticed in France or the UK, but no EU media has picked up on the story yet. Media aside, the EU itself has made no statement to acknowledge the new wall.

These types of conflicts have been going on for years in Slovakia, and without recognition from the EU, the Lobby deplorably believes that they will continue to do so for the forseeable future.

-Victoria

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The Great Pyramids of Egypt, online, in Arabic

The Great Pyramids of Egypt

Egypt’s official language is Arabic†. China’s official language is Chinese*. OK fine, we knew that. But isn’t it a bit ironic that more than half of the world’s 1.6 billion internet users speak languages with non-Latin scripts, yet all internet domain names are written in Latin characters?

This is about to change, and it is already being hailed as the biggest change in the 40-year history of the internet. ICANN (see ‘Yes we can, says ICANN: new top-level domains coming in 2010‘) the body that regulates the internet, has announced plans to allow for so-called Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs) by changing the internet’s Domain Name System (DNS) in order to allow for website names to be written with non-Latin scripts such as Chinese, Cyrillic, and Arabic.

The Lobby thinks this sounds great – the more the merrier, but some have warned that this will only lead to fragmentation of the net…

The new IDNs will be introduced some time in 2010.

- Emil


† Standard Arabic

* Standard Mandarin (spoken) & simplified Chinese (written)

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Results of The Lobby poll on Lisbon

The Lobby poll on the Irish referendum closed on Sunday, and you may (or may not be) pleased to know that our results were almost identical to that of the actual poll on the emerald isle.

For The Lobby poll, 66% voted yes to the Treaty, 31% no, and 3% would have spoilt their ballot paper.

In the official referendum, 67% said yes and 33% said no (presumably the other 1% spoilt their ballot paper – we cannot be sure).

Either way, if the Treaty needed any further bolstering it can look to our poll as representing an alternative voice of the people.  Now what do you have to say about that Mr Klaus?

- Rob

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