Word: last
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Last week President Jiang Zemin made a grab for imperial status by inking a World Trade Organization deal with the U.S. that will open China to free international trade for the first time in history. Along the way, 73-year-old Jiang had to move mountains of conservative opposition at home, change the atmospherics between Beijing and Washington, and, yes, deal with 100 million tangled telephone lines. By any measure, it was a monumental deal for China. But for Jiang it was even more--a bid to boost his reputation from that of polished technocrat to the more mythical status...
...Geneva-based WTO is both traffic cop and top court of the global economy. And as shown by China's bid for admission last week, the organization seems about to extend its gospel of no-pain, no-gain capitalism across the planet. The WTO's 36,000 pages of regulations reach into far-flung crannies of human existence. Can Malaysian fishermen export their shrimp to the U.S. even if their nets lack escape hatches for endangered turtles? Yes. Can Massachusetts refuse to buy products from companies that do business in Myanmar? No. Do American corporations get an illegal export subsidy...
...antiglobalist message resonates across a broad swath of ideology, from the isolationist Buchananite right to a kaleidoscope of left-wing groups. "The WTO has brought about a harmonic convergence," said John Sellers, director of the Ruckus Society, as he trained a group of Berkeley students for civil disobedience last month. Forest activists, who have polished their skills blocking the logging of redwoods, will target U.S. efforts to slash worldwide tariffs on paper and pulp products...
Still hedging their bets on that last question were the crowds at the Preparedness Expo at the Denver Merchandise Mart earlier this month, where several thousand attendants watched merchants demonstrate how to load a blowgun, use dryer lint to start a fire and cook an egg on a stick. Even survivalist stalwarts at the event were beginning to downplay fears that the Y2K computer bug will cause chaos come Jan. 1. "I don't think that the world is coming to a screeching halt," says renowned survivalist Bo Gritz. But in Paonia, Colo., Joy MacNulty, 69, isn't taking chances...
Like so many other aspects of this enigmatic end of the millennium--enticing and sinister, like a ticking package wrapped with a golden ribbon--the size and scope of the world's party refuses to resolve itself before the last minute. There's ample time for a backlash against the backlash as M-day draws closer and people start feeling millennial peer pressure to make impressive plans. (Even Wyatt is now thinking about adding a "big boom" to her family retreat in Texas.) But if more of us than expected end up passing the moment quietly, toasting our family...