well, the war in yugoslavia drags on and brings us ever closer to global calamity. not only has the clinton administration been appalling lax in transfering nuclear technology to the chinese over the course of its term, but the us was inept enough to bomb the chinese embassy in belgrade. needless to say, rabid anti-us sentiment is brewing in the last major communist power, who currently have at least 16 nuclear missiles pointed at us cities.
don't worry, the chinese aren't the only ones pissed off by NATO's strategic incompetence. russia has also taken issue with the mostly futile $13 billion dollar air war, and now the IMF has pulled its offer of financial assistance to the ailing newborn democracy, because they placed warships in the mediterranean ocean to observe the proceedings in kosovo.
whether yeltsin's threat will hold true when the "peace keeping" troops land in kosovo is something noone can say for certain, but what with the anger brewing in greece, the outrage in bulgaria, switzerland, and sweden over misguided "smart bombs", the world political stage is beginning to look pretty ugly.
thanks to the reckless use of force by clinton we have an extremely tense, defensive and divided planet, with the balkans at ground zero. NATO held off on defending the kosovars for more than 6 months-- how long until somebody decides to stand up for yugoslavia? we're at 2 months of air strikes, and counting.
about the only good news coming out of this disaster is that slobodan milosevic has finally been indicted for war crimes by the ICTY. not that there has been much of a track record for nailing war criminals-- 84 individuals have been charged with war crimes for their involvement in the recent wars in yugoslavia, but only 1 of them has actually been brought to trial.
and in other news, the Forest Action Network staged successful protests of the sale of ancient rainforest lumber at home depot outlets across canada and the us. i was involved in the protest at regina's home depot, and although there was rather abysmal turn out (there were as many journalists as there were activists), the event went off peacefully, and we successfully raised the profile of environmental abuse in our city.
-chris { 5.28.99 }