Thousands of protesters formed a human chain May 13 in Okinawa, Japan, to protest the US military presence. The human chain symbolically encircled the 17-kilometer perimeter of the Kadena Air Base. Banners demanded a withdrawal of the 22,000 US troops stationed there, reported NHK public television. The protest was organized by local labor unions and pacifist organizations. It took place two days before the 35th anniversary of the return of the Okinawa archipelago to Japan after it was occupied at the end of World War II, remaining in US hands until 1972. (Periodico26, Cuba, May 14)

A farmer in southwest China killed a village leader in a suicide bombing that also seriously injured nine other local officials following a land dispute April 15. Yue Xiaobao detonated explosives strapped to his body as he approached officials from Lishan village, Yunnan province, the Beijing Times reported. The attack came after village leaders had destroyed Yue's crop of sweet potatoes and tobacco, a leading cash crop in the region. Yue carried out the attack while officials were on an inspection tour of local farmlands. Yue and Lishan village leader Ren Xuecai were killed immediately.

China's Premier Wen Jiabao opened the annual session of the country's parliament March 5 with a call for economic growth to be balanced with environmental protection and efforts to tackle a growing urban-rural wealth gap. "Protect social equity and justice, and let all the people together enjoy the fruits of reform and development," he told the National People's Congress in Beijing. (The Guardian, March 5) This won some global headlines, but the context for it was generally overlooked—the growing threat of rural unrest as peasants are increasingly expropriated of their lands in China's breakneck and largely lawless drive for "development." China has heretofore been using the proverbial iron first against rebel peasants, but the past few months have seen an effort on the part of the central government to address the roots of the problem by reining in illegal land sales by local authorities—as the below Sept. 6, 2006 story from the state news agency Xinhua indicates. The fact that such measures are even necessary should end once and for all the illusion that the People's Republic is "communist" in anything other than name.

US military officials and Japanese police have confirmed an explosion near the Camp Zama base outside Tokyo, adding no one was hurt and there was no damage from the blast. A similar incident was reported near Camp Zama in 2002, when police found a metal projectile after two blasts were heard in the area. (Bloomberg, Feb. 13) Global Security informs us that Camp Zama is home to the US Army Japan/9th Theater Army Area Command. In addition to the usual speculation about al-Qaeda, reports are raising the possibility of Japanese left-wing radicals.

From the China Daily, Jan. 18:

An online campaign initiated by a television host to drive Starbucks out of the Forbidden City has won the backing of more than half a million netizens, who see the presence of the coffee chain in the heart of Beijing as an insult to Chinese culture.

Another step closer to global catastrophe. From Kuwait News Agency, Jan. 9 (emphasis added):

TOKYO -- Japan on Tuesday upgraded the Defense Agency to a full-fledged ministry for the first time since World War II, when the US stripped Japan of its right to a military.

Now that it has pretty much been confirmed that North Korea did explode a nuclear bomb, if a very small one, comes the news that it may be ready to repeat the feat on short order. Yes, this is deeply disturbing, but Selig Harrison (who has a penchant for saying things the Washington elite doesn't want to hear) warned weeks before the blast that it was coming, and that it would be a tactic by Pyongyang to press Washington for direct negotiations—another possibility we have noted before. If this is true, Bush's intransigence essentially prompted North Korea to cross the nuclear threshold. From AlJazeera, Sept. 23:

As of this writing, some 12 hours after North Korea announced its first test of a nuclear weapon, at an underground site in North Hamgyong province, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has still not moved the hands of the famous Doomsday Clock, which last moved forward in February 2002 and now stands at seven to midnight—just as it did at its unveiling in 1947. Has North Korea indeed now joined the elite "nuclear club," heretofore consisting of the US, Russia, UK, France, China, India, Pakistan and Israel?