My hanami last week started grimly. One participant, when asked why he looked so glum on such a happy occasion, explained that he was thinking of the Kosovo refugees. He had once been in the hills where they have fled, and even though he was prepared for it, he still remembers the cold and the discomfort. He wondered how badly they were suffering.
A glance at the front pages of just about any newspaper or the TV news is all you need to get an idea of their pain. Ironically, however, it sometimes seems as if the real suffering is in Belgrade. At times, there is more anguishing about the anguish in Yugoslavia than there is about the plight of the refugees. Call me old-fashioned, but I believe the emphasis belongs on ethnic cleansing and what looks like genocide, rather than Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's consolidation of power.
This strange development is only one of the many ironies of the Kosovo conflict. And, like the others discussed below, it is a product of the Internet.