> Observer (London) - May 9, 1999
> 'End the bombing calls after embassy fiasco'
> Chinese protests erupt after four die in Nato's 'tragic mistake'
>
> The bombing on Friday night - described by Nato as a tragic mistake -
> provoked mass protests against Britain and the United States in several
> Chinese cities, and furious criticism from Russia.
At the height of the Pax Americana, neoimperialism worked as follows: what began with rice handouts invariably escalated into napalm strikes. Leave it to neoliberalism to find a way to cut costs: nowadays metropoles start with IMF austerity packages and then finish up the job with off-the-rack cluster bombs.
I find it interesting, though, that China is beginning to carry the political weight which Japan has, for various reasons, refused to exert (politics, too, is outsourced in the bizarre world of multinational capitalism). This suggests, if nothing else, that East Asia is finally gearing up for the codominum with the EU.
-- Dennis