Balkanization
Feb. 17th, 2008 02:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aggienaut Kosovo has declared its independence. As you know its had de facto independence from Serbia since 1999 NATO air strikes. 16,000 NATO troops are stationed in Kosovo to protect it from Serbia, which has declared the declaration of independence "illegal." Serbia has vowed to fight the independence by giving any state that recognizes Kosovo a diplomatic cold shoulder (oh noes!), and Serbian mobs stormed the Slovenian embassy (?!) where they burned Slovenian and EU flags. Russia has called for an emergency Security Council session and vowed to veto any UN recognition of Kosovo as a state.
On the subject of declaring independence, while researching Malaysia for the recent MUN conference I discovered that Singapore is the only state known ever to gain its independence against its own will -- it was expelled from the Malaysian Federation in 1965.
And as long as we're talking about politics, I'm actually going to tell you which US Presidential candidates I support!
In no particular order, Barack Obama and John McCain, for different reasons. As such, as Obamarama appears to currently be leading Clinton, I am very pleased with the current state of the race.
I really don't get why people are saying "he doesn't have experience" regarding Obama. Who DOES have experience as a US President? And considering how much of running things is surely done by the cabinet ministers and other advisors, to what degree does that matter? What you're voting for is the person's policy ideas, priorities and visions. Clinton may have spent more time listening in at the door to the Oval Office trying to figure out what exactly Bill was doing in there, but she still hates free trade and loves controls on all aspects of life.
And for that matter I think when people say "I don't think America is ready for a woman president" or "I don't think America is ready for a black president," I interpret that as nothing less than them saying "I think [I personally as a shallow and bigoted individual] am not ready for a [fill in the blank] president."
