From the BBC:
Human Rights Watch has called for an investigation into claims that ethnic Albanians in Kosovo abducted and killed Serbs and may have sold their organs.
The claims, relating to 1999, had been set out in a book by former UN war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte.
Human Rights Watch said it had new evidence to back up the allegations.
Looks like some balance might be entering into discussions about Kosovo. The ugly truth is that the KLA, darlings of the West, were an armed mafia militia. They not only slaughtered Serbs, Gorani and Roma but Albanians too.
These claims definitely need to be investigated, but I will reserve judgement on the veracity until such a time as better evidence emerges.
BBC NEWS | Europe | Kosovo ‘organs sale’ probe urged
Tom Merchant, founder of award winning travel company Black Tomato, praises Belgrade lavishly in Canada’s Metro newspaper:
War-torn Belgrade may sound like an unlikely holiday destination, but the Serbian capital has been busy winning over European travellers who find it’s one of the hottest city-break spots on the continent.
Belgrade is a city moving out of its darker past and into its buzzing, vibrant present. It is no longer just synonymous with war-driven devastation, and is now regarded as one of the hippest cities in Europe.
The locals’ appetite for a good night out has generated a stir that is attracting the chicest social sets from countries all over the world.
But it’s the combination of its incredible cultural past (long before the wars changed people’s perception) with the emerging arts and social scene that makes it so alluring to me.
Great nightlife can be found the world over. But when it’s interwoven with beguiling architecture that often hugs the banks of one of the world’s great rivers — the mighty Danube and its tributary, the Sava —well, then you have something pretty special.
It’s hard to describe the potential of such an exciting city in so few words, so here are a few tips on how to get under the skin of the place through one of my favourite methods — finding music and the best bars.
[From Metro - Hip Belgrade deserves all the buzz]
This is an absolutely brilliant presentation given by Clay Shirky (author of the new smash hit on organizing Without organizations called “Here Comes Everybody“) on the topic of “Where do they find the time”. You hear this phrase, usually in response to some report of silly activity or massively time consuming hobby. We Clay knows and soon you will too. It turns out that even a fraction of the time we devote to passive entertainment (e.g. Television) can, when applied to productive activity, equate to massive collaborative projects (e.g. Wikipedia).
I will let Clay explain. Do not miss this.
The transcript is here.
Incidentally, he mentions a Brazilian professor who has set up WikiCrimes, a wiki google maps mash-up that allows users to plot crimes on a Google map with descriptions and other information. I wanted to do exactly the same thing back in 1998, when I lived in Clapham in London. I even went so far as to register a domain and researched how one requested crime data from police. In those days it was simply too hard to do it alone. I would have needed serious developers. There were no web mash-ups and the Semantic Web was mostly theory.
Other ideas I had at the time, like a civil volunteers to take care of neighbourhood old people were also impractical because of technology limitations and legal threats. I think I may just have to crack open that old Someday maybe list and see what might be more doable now in the Web 2.0 era.
Gin, Television, and Social Surplus - Here Comes Everybody
A fantastic map website Radical Cartography has some real gems:
From the artist’s website:
“My illustration Simple Living is an idea inspired by the medias constant cover of completely meaningless things.
My thought was: Since doing nothing but wearing designer bags and small ugly dogs apparently is enough to get you on a magazine cover, maybe it is worth a try for people who actually deserves and needs attention.
When we’re presented with the same images in the media over and over again, we might start to believe that they’re important.
As I was reading the book ”Not on our watch” by Don Cheadle and John Prendergast this summer, I felt horrified by the fact that even with the genocide and other ongoing atrocities in Darfur, Paris Hilton was the one getting all the attention. Is it possible that show business have outruled common sense?
If you can’t beat them, join them. This is why I have chosen to mix the cruel reality with showbiz elements in my drawing.
When you look at ways to help Darfur on the website: www.savedarfur.org, amongst other things it says: Raise awareness. Raise funds. So that is what I am trying to do.
100% of the profits from the Simple Living t-shirt and poster are donated to Divest for Darfur
“Divestment offers a powerful way to exert economic pressure on the Sudanese government to cooperate with international peacekeeping efforts. Your gift will help fund the Divest for Darfur campaign and other crucial awareness and advocacy programs that play a critical role in building the political and economic pressure needed to end the crisis in Darfur.”
