A very interesting story today cites poll results on American versus Japanese attitudes about the likelihood of a new world war, even if random guy-on-the-street quotes are by definition never presented objectively. It is certainly very telling that Americans are more afraid of North Korean aggression than the Japanese, who are far more likely to be its targets. Also telling that these results come on the heels of a wave of anti-Japan protests in China. Japan is an island nation with a limited armed forces, no nuclear weapons and a constitutional prohibition on war; it faces at least two hostile powers—one by actual policy; the other by tradition—to its immediate east, the latter of which is the most populous nation on earth by far, with a vast territory, a nuclear arsenal and an armed forces of over 2 million active trooops. The US is a continent-spanning super-power (generally held to be the only remaining super-power), isolated by vast oceans from any hostile powers, real or potential; its far-flung military bases and control of the seas and global airspace have no remote parallel in all world history, and it has the planet's biggest and most state-of-the-art nuclear arsenal by far. Yet Americans are more afraid of a new world war. Maybe this is because Americans realize that this new world war is likely to be "asymmetrical," and the United States is likely to be its target precisely because it is the global superpower—and, in fact, this war has already been underway since (at least) Sept. 11, 2001. This, however, raises a question (which this blog/zine has always been obsessed with): if this is a new world war, which number will historians assign it? We, of course, argue Four.

Via TruthOut:

White House Aims to Block Legislation on Detainees
By Josh White and R. Jeffrey Smith
The Washington Post

Saturday 23 July 2005

The Bush administration in recent days has been lobbying to block legislation supported by Republican senators that would bar the US military from engaging in "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of detainees, from hiding prisoners from the Red Cross, and from using interrogation methods not authorized by a new Army field manual.

As Condoleezza Rice arrived in Israel yesterday, a series of simultaenous explosions, including four car bombs, ripped through luxury hotels and shops in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik in the Sinai Peninsula, killing at least 83. The attack, Egypt's deadliest ever, targeted a resort popular with Israelis and Europeans. Two Britons, two Germans and an Italian are among the dead. Claiming responsibility on an Islamist web site are the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, also known as "al-Qaeda in Syria and Egypt," which had also claimed responsibility for October bombings at the Egyptian resorts of Taba and Ras Shitan that killed 34. The group also claimed responsbility for a Cairo bombing in late April. (AP, July 23)

You'd think right on the heels of the Live 8 hype, the world would be doing something about this, no? The response to the crisis, which was building throughout the Edinburgh hoopla, appears to be dramatically too little and too late. And people wonder why there is popular discontent fueling Islamic extremism in this part of the world. Via TruthOut:

From the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), via Progressive Newswire:

Guantánamo Prisoners Planned Hunger Strike

NEW YORK - July 21 - The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) confirmed today that in late June, prisoners planned to begin a hunger strike the Guantánamo Bay Naval Station's Camp 5 facility. Attorneys representing the detainees received word of the strike from currently held detainees who are frustrated by their indefinite detention and the inhuman conditions at Guantánamo, specifically at Camp 5. News of the hunger strike has been corroborated by recently released detainees and statements today by the Department of Defense.

Signals continue to be mixed on Sudan's tentative return to Washington's good graces. On an official visit to the country, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice stopped at Darfur's Abu Shouk refugee camp, which houses some 55,000 displaced people, and demanded "action not words" to stop the violence in the war-torn region. Rice earlier met Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir and John Garang, the former rebel leader who is the new vice-president under the recent peace deal whch ended the war in Sudan's south. She next flew on to Israel, to hold talks on the planned Gaza Strip withdrawal. (BBC, July 21) The Sudan stop was marred by overt tension—Rice demanded and received an apology after officials and press accompanying her were "manhandled" by security staff at President al-Bashir's residence. (AFP, July 21) Darfur's principal rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), immediately issued a communique expressing "shock and disbelief about the humiliation and insult meted out by the Khartoum regime on her Excellency Condeleza Rice the US Secretary of state and her entourage during her visit to Khartoum." The SLA may be uncertain on the spelling of Her Excellency's first name, but not on whose side they're on in this heavily symbolism-laden "manhandling."

Note that the imposition of the usual neoliberal economic model is sparking the unrest. Yet it is Islamic fundamentalists—not leftists, as in Bolivia—that are best poised to exploit the backlash. From the Guardian:

Yemen Riots Over Subsidy Cut Leave 16 Dead

Thursday July 21, 2005 8:46 PM

By AHMED AL-HAJ

Associated Press Writer

SANA, Yemen (AP) - Rioters enraged by subsidy cuts clashed with security forces for a second day Thursday across Yemen, burning cars and buildings and leaving 16 people dead in the country's worst civil strife in more than a decade.

The New York Times today notes the growing cult of Zheng He in China, the 15th-century mariner who led gigantic fleets across the Pacific and Indian oceans in the Ming Dynasty's brief but impressive expansion of naval prowess. Statues are going up of the eunuch admiral (who happened to be a Muslim—a fact presumably not emphasized by China's rulers), and a group of young Kenyans who claim Chinese ancestry due to an apocryphal Ming-era shipwreck on the East African coast have been invited to Beijing for ceremonies. The Times is quick to point out the obvious contemporary political context for this new personality cult: