General jailed for Sarajevo siege

BBC NEWS | Europe | General jailed for Sarajevo siege

Another bit of justice - albeit delayed - was served today when a former Bosnian Serb general was sentenced to 33 years in prison by the Hague tribunal for his role in directing the siege of Sarajevo. Granted, it comes 12 years after the siege ended. And the two top Bosnian Serb officials responsible for the siege and the genocide in general - political leader Radovan Karadzic and military leader Ratko Mladic - remain at large. Justice delayed is still justice denied.

Unfortunately, the justice at the Hague has not deterred todays war criminals, including those in Sudan responsible for the Darfur genocide. And, like in Bosnia until political pressure forced Bill Clinton to abandon his policy of complicity, the U.S. and its allies refuse to intervene to stop the Darfur slaughter.

"Never again" truly has become "Again and again and again and again and..."

The People We Have Been Waiting For - New York Times

The People We Have Been Waiting For - New York Times

Another article from Friedman on global warming, but this one sounds a note of hope. Friedman shares recent initiatives led by Google and college and grad students at MIT and elsewhere to develop new sources of energy.

My favorite line, of course, is the last, which is a quote from a student website: "We are the people we have been waiting for." If we are to conquer this challenge - and the closely related one of peak oil - we must be the people we have been waiting for. We all must be willing to sacrifice and invest in order to create the future for ourselves and our children that we want and deserve. But we must act now and we must believe that it is urgent, important, and possible. I'm sick and tired of people giving this cause lip service and then going out and buying an SUV or putting enough Christmas lights on their house and front lawn that they can be seen from space...

U.S. Finds Iran Halted Its Nuclear Arms Effort in 2003 - New York Times

U.S. Finds Iran Halted Its Nuclear Arms Effort in 2003 - New York Times

Well this was a bit of a bombshell... Nice to see the Intelligence Community has more integrity and guts than it did 5 years ago with Iraq. Let's hope they have really good intel on which to base the assessment that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program years ago. Getting that wrong could be just as costly - or even more so - as overestimating Iran's program.

And it is difficult, as the White House suggests, to really understand the intentions of a regime like Iran's.

Of course, this is a new opening for some creative and focused diplomacy that could constrain Iran's program for some time to come. Unfortunately, given the Bush/Cheney rhetoric on Iran and the new initiative on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, we are unlikely to see anything resembling creative and focused diplomacy on Iran in the coming weeks or months...