Saturday, July 26, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Balkan butchers and prime ministers
Radovan Karadžić was captured in Serbia and will be prosecuted in Den Haag for war crimes. Fair enough. Hashim Thaçi who committed similar crimes became a prime minister of "independent" Kosovo.
Carla Del Ponte, who stepped down in January as chief prosecutor at the Hague tribunal for crimes committed in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, reports horrible details about Serb prisoners that had their internal organs removed and sold by ethnic Albanians during the Kosovo war in her new book. Senior figures in the Kosovo Liberation Army were aware of the scheme, in which hundreds of young Serbs were allegedly taken by truck from Kosovo to northern Albania where their organs were removed. Miss Del Ponte provides grim details of the alleged organ harvesting, and of how some prisoners were sewn up after having kidneys removed. "The victims, deprived of a kidney, were then locked up again, inside the barracks, until the moment they were killed for other vital organs. In this way, the other prisoners were aware of the fate that awaited them, and according to the source, pleaded, terrified, to be killed immediately," Miss Del Ponte writes. More details here and here, some interesting information can be found in the dicussions, for instance about a camp Bondsteel, the AMBO pipeline, Halliburton etc. From all of the above, I can't get rid of a feeling that we (as Europeans) were fooled again by both the Kosovans and the US. I am not a fanatic supporter of either side but if we want justice then it must be justice for all.
P.S. Ramush Haradinaj, a former guerrilla leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army and former prime minister of Kosovo, charged of war crimes was acquitted on April 3rd, 2008, because of lack of convincing evidence.
Carla Del Ponte, who stepped down in January as chief prosecutor at the Hague tribunal for crimes committed in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, reports horrible details about Serb prisoners that had their internal organs removed and sold by ethnic Albanians during the Kosovo war in her new book. Senior figures in the Kosovo Liberation Army were aware of the scheme, in which hundreds of young Serbs were allegedly taken by truck from Kosovo to northern Albania where their organs were removed. Miss Del Ponte provides grim details of the alleged organ harvesting, and of how some prisoners were sewn up after having kidneys removed. "The victims, deprived of a kidney, were then locked up again, inside the barracks, until the moment they were killed for other vital organs. In this way, the other prisoners were aware of the fate that awaited them, and according to the source, pleaded, terrified, to be killed immediately," Miss Del Ponte writes. More details here and here, some interesting information can be found in the dicussions, for instance about a camp Bondsteel, the AMBO pipeline, Halliburton etc. From all of the above, I can't get rid of a feeling that we (as Europeans) were fooled again by both the Kosovans and the US. I am not a fanatic supporter of either side but if we want justice then it must be justice for all.
P.S. Ramush Haradinaj, a former guerrilla leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army and former prime minister of Kosovo, charged of war crimes was acquitted on April 3rd, 2008, because of lack of convincing evidence.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Alexandre Revisited
Can't wait to see him on a platform or a springboard in Beijing! The baby fat is all gone and he looks way hotter than before. Bravo Québec, well done!
Monday, July 14, 2008
Cobertura: 95% del territorio internacional
A Windows PC of my friend crashed last week and he lost some of his own precious movies. When I saw him yesterday, he was surprisingly stoic. Then it struck me. A Windows user always expects the worst, so when it happens it's not a shocking event. It's like a continuous vaccination. A Mac user, on the other hand, would be devastated. A conclusion? Nobody wants to be devastated and therefore, the Windows OS share is a stable 95%.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Revelation
Enrique takes his kids there. People often talk about that place. I have finally made it today. Love it. Matadero Madrid.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
The Usual Way
Tomorrow, the commuter train system in Madrid will experience a Big Bang. The second North-South tunnel will be opened and the line numbers and directions will change. I won't be able to catch a direct train to Cantoblanco anymore. It sucks big time. But what is the worst and the most shocking is that there was no information about it on the RENFE website until today. There was also no announcement in my station of Recoletos, which will be affected the most. Spain is truly different.
UPDATE after the first trip: The Recoletos station became a ghost town. Low frequency of trains, few confused people waiting for their usual trains. One woman was desperately calling her office to ask what was going on. On the other hand, Nuevos Ministerios is una locura de puta madre, filled with dust from the construction and thousands of disoriented people. While Qué! newspaper reports that 250,000 madrileños can sleep 10 minutes more, the reality was far from that. After the Nuevos Ministerios experience, I believe that number of people who transfer between trains must have increased. Advantages? The line to Cantoblanco is now serviced by the hypermodern Civia trains.
UPDATE 2 after the trip back: The Civia trains are the worst. They are much smaller than the "old" ones so they can't fit the thousands of people travelling from Alcobendas or Colmenar and I had to stand the whole ride.
Bad, bad RENFE.
UPDATE after the first trip: The Recoletos station became a ghost town. Low frequency of trains, few confused people waiting for their usual trains. One woman was desperately calling her office to ask what was going on. On the other hand, Nuevos Ministerios is una locura de puta madre, filled with dust from the construction and thousands of disoriented people. While Qué! newspaper reports that 250,000 madrileños can sleep 10 minutes more, the reality was far from that. After the Nuevos Ministerios experience, I believe that number of people who transfer between trains must have increased. Advantages? The line to Cantoblanco is now serviced by the hypermodern Civia trains.
UPDATE 2 after the trip back: The Civia trains are the worst. They are much smaller than the "old" ones so they can't fit the thousands of people travelling from Alcobendas or Colmenar and I had to stand the whole ride.
Bad, bad RENFE.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Saturday, July 5, 2008
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