March 11th, a sad day for Spain
25/12/2004 20:29 | Categories: News | 0 Comments
Yesterday 192 person died and over 1400 were wounded in a set of deadly blasts in Madrid. The evens happened in the early rush-hour, between 7:00 and 7:30 in the morning when 3 different trains were blown up, some of them more than once. The trains were coming from the outskirts of Madrid towards one of the biggest stations of the city, Atocha. It is believed that the target was to get two of those trains to get to Atocha and the same time, and make them blow up there so that the roof of the station would collapse and the number of the dead people would be even higher. But they missed because one of the trains was late...First investigations pointed to ETA as the culprint, for they had already tried three times to strike a major blow in the last few months. All those attemps were timely stopped by the police (they even stopped a van loaded with 500kg of explosives when it was being driven to Madrid in December, since they were planning to blow it up during Christmas Eve last year) But in a twist of events, late yesterday Al-Qaeda submitted a letter to a London-based arabic newspaper acknowledging themselves as the authors of such brutal massacre. The letter states that they had successfully infiltrated the infidel Europe and directly ask Spanish president, Mr. Aznar, where the United States are now and how they are going to protect Spain.
However, president Aznar has stated again -even after this letter became known- that this is a maneuver to intoxicate the media and distract people, and that the government still holds ETA as guilty of the blasts.
There has been a lot of coverage in all internaltional media so far so I need no say more:
Scores killed in Spanish railway attacks (AlJazeera.net)
'Al-Qaida letter' claims Spain bombings (AlJazeera.net)
Investigation of Bombings in Madrid Yields Conflicting Clues (NY Times)
Another Silent Noon in Madrid (NY Times, by Javier MarÌas, Spanish writer and NYT collaborator)
Madrid Blasts: Who is to blame? (BBC News)
In pictures: Madrid blasts (BBC News)
Commuters describe Madrid blast chaos (BBC News)
Probe into Spain attack widens; at least 192 killed (USA Today)
After blasts, panicked passengers ran everywhere, including darkened tunnels (USA Today)
Al-Qaeda tactics may have inspired bombers (Financial Times)
A new - and bloody - style of attack (Guardian UK)
And many more (Google News)
I, robot - Trailer
25/12/2004 20:29 | Categories: Movies | 0 Comments
There's a new high quality trailer (Quicktime format) of the movie "I, robot", based on the work of Isaac Asimov. The movie looks cool even though in my opinion it doesn't really have much of the atmosphere that Asimov gave to his writings. Don't know why, perhaps because of the spectacular car chase scenes, or the fact that Will Smith is the leading actor playing the role of the police investigating the mudered for which the only suspect is a robot. The fact is that the director is the same person who directed "Dark City" and "The Crow" but the movie has a much more 'Hollywoodian' feeling to it... or again, perhaps it's just Smith playing his stupid jokes 
(watch the trailer) Let's see when the movie comes out, but I have to say that I wasn't very impressed by the trailer. We'll have to wait until July to know more about it!
The choice of a country
25/12/2004 20:29 | Categories: General | 0 Comments
One could feel that the country was tired. Tired of the abuse, tired of being ignored when 90% of the country was against of the war, tired of the contempt for the regional nationalisms in Spain (catalan, basque), tired of the political and electoral use given to something as bloody as the 11-M blasts and tired of information being hidden from us. And yesterday, Mr. Aznar's former governing party (PP, Partido Popular - Popular Party) collected the fruits that they had been growing during the last four years: they lost the government.People decided that it was the right time for a change, a change which involves a turn to the left personalized in the socialist party and their leader, Mr. Zapatero. That is not to say that they're going to be any better than what we had so far -time will tell- but at least we hope they will bring new ideas and they will at least listen to what the country has to say.
In a way, it's not that PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero EspaÒol - Spanish Socialist Working Party) won the elections. They merely watched as PP lost them, specially due to the way in which for example, they dealt with the recent bombings, hiding information and by thinking that voters are stupid. Also, Mr. Aznar's successor, Mr. Rajoy didn't have as much charisma as Mr. Aznar had (well, at least he was charismatic amongst his voters) but the left-side offer wasn't much better as Mr. Zapatero has been at times qualified as dull and boring. This is to prove that people didn't choose a name this time, but a complete change.
As an example that Mr. Aznar's political strategy of abuse didn't work at all, a sample. In the catalan elections held last February (if I recall correctly), it was agreed that the three left wing parties there would join and rule for the next 4 years. One of those parties is a left wing party (ERC, Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya - Republican Left-side of Catalonia) and the major "selling points" of their program have always been the independence of Catalonia and turning spain into a republic, without a king. You can guess that they are not liked very much in many of the most traditionally Spanish places and they have always been demonized by the fascist hosts of Mr. Aznar and his buddies, because it goes against the "Una, Grande y Libre" ("One, Great and Free" ) motto of theirs. But one would say that this was their political choice and long as they use legal methods, they have the right to defend them. But apparently Mr. Aznar believes that he has to abide by no law... The leader of this catalan left wing party secretly held a meeting with some ETA leader shortly after they started governing in Catalonia. The intention was good, though, but the outcome wasn't. Mr. Aznar decided to use the Spanish secret services to spy on them and received information about the meeting. Unsurprisingly, he decided to leak that information to some of the media which are closer to the government. Of course the media wrote what the government wanted and put ERC at the same level as ETA, not to mention that an anti-nationalist campaign started, driven from Madrid and primarily targetted at destroying the newly-formed catalan government (in which for a change, catalan section of PP had been badly left out) They were even called "terrorists" and "assassins" by some of the ministers... Things got really out of hand there because of this.
After the background, this proves the point: ERC had only achieved enough votes in the 2000 elections to get 1 member of the parliarment. Yesterday, they got 7 and became the fourth political Spanish party! People weren't only unhappy with the last 4 years of PP ruling, but also made them pay for it.
But this is just the beginning so let's see how it fares for the new Spanish government for the next four years...
UPDATE: A couple of articles in foreign media about this:
†"New PM promises realignment in Europe" (Guardian UK)
"Anger Over Attack Put Spain's Socialists in Power" (Reuters)
"Spanish government admits defeat" (BBC News)
"Socialists Declare Victory in Spanish Elections" (FOXNews)
"Spain: Poll triumph for Socialists" (CNN.com)
Exploiting Internet Explorer
25/12/2004 20:29 | Categories: Privacy | 0 Comments
If I were you I would be very careful when using Internet Explorer to browse the net. Even better, I would ditch it complately and go for a standards-compliant, fast and reliable browser such as Mozilla Firefox. Enough said
The RetroPod
25/12/2004 20:29 | Categories: Fun | 2 Comments
Via Engadget: the Retropod. It's a cool case for your iPod, isn't it? For more information, click here.Congratulations, Greece!
25/12/2004 20:29 | Categories: News | 1 Comments
If you want accurate information about the European Championship, look elsewhere It was funny that during the match, the only thing that went into the Greek's goal was a guy carrying a F.C. Barcelona flag and wearing a typical Catalan hat. The funniest thing of all is that he threw the BarÁa flag to Figo... For me and for many Barcelona supporters, probably the best moment of the championships Not only that bastard called Figo was completely unable to do anything agains the Greek defence but he also got a "friendly" reminder that we haven't forgotten yet (More)