A New York Times business section story Aug. 14, "The Oil Price to Be Scared Of," notes that the current price shock has significantly lowered the bar for what constitutes a crisis:

Once upon a time, not too long ago, the prospect of crude-oil futures hitting $50 a barrel sent waves of anxiety over consumers, business executives and politicians, evoking the specter of gasoline rationing, not to mention a global recession and general economic mayhem.

In the last intallment of a series on the looming disaster in Nepal, Newsday's courageous reporter Matthew McAllester Aug. 17 highlights a little-noted ethnic dimesion to the conflict, which is usually portrayed soley in terms of fanatical Maoist guerillas versus an autocratic monarchy. The story, entitled "Local militias add to Nepal's deadly mix," notes the emergence of paramilitary vigilante groups to fight the guerillas, backed by the army and big land-owners. The Royal Nepalese Army has denied creating the "village counterforces," as the militias call themselves. But militia leaders boasted to McAllester of receiving training and official ID badges from the army, prompting Brig. Gen. Dipak Gurung to admit the army's involvement--and the risk it entails. "Once you train them, you have to take responsibility for them... I hope it doesn't come to a situation where we have to disarm them. You never know."

The Gaza disengagement is being completed, without the armed resistance from settlers that had been feared. Reports AP: "Israeli troops dragged sobbing Jewish settlers out of homes, synagogues and even a nursery school Wednesday and hauled them onto buses in a massive evacuation, fulfilling Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's promise to withdraw from the Gaza Strip after a 38-year occupation." In one apparent effort to derail the disengagement by sparking a general conflagration, a Jewish settler shot dead three Palestinians in the West Bank. The assailant was reportedly a driver who had taken Palestinian workers to jobs in the Jewish settlement of Shiloh. Once there, he snatched a security guard's gun and turned it on his passengers. He was arrested, and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called the attack a "Jewish terror act." Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas branded it "a terrorist incident." Both leaders agreed it was intended to disrupt the pullout from Gaza, home to 1.4 million Palestinians. (AP, Reuters, Aug. 17)

Cindy Sheehan, the California mother of a young man killed in Iraq, has now been camped out for ten days in a ditch down the road from George Bush's ranch in Crawford, TX, demanding the president meet with her to explain why her son Casey had to die. She pledges she will not leave until she gets a face-to-face meeting, and will follow him back to Washington when his vacation ends if need be. Her encampment has swelled into a tent city as supporters from around the nation have converged on Crawford. On Friday Aug. 12, Bush passed right by in his motorcade on the way to a GOP fundraiser. The NY Daily News reported that Sheehan's sign read: "Why do you make time for donors and not for me?" Bush's black Chevrolet SUV has tinted windows, so it was not clear if he looked at her, or the growing ranks of demonstrators, or the hundreds of plain white crosses, painted with the names of the dead, they have planted.

As the paramilitaries in Mexico's southern state of Chiapas are re-asserting their reign of terror, their Zapatista enemies, in contrast, are disavowing a return to arms and trying to draw support for their national political mobilization, announced last month. At an Aug. 6 meeting with Mexican left organizations at the jungle settlement of San Rafael, Subcommander Marcos announced what he called the "Other Campaign," implying an end to armed struggle and a call for dialogue on a national program.

The US company Epi Security & Investigation says it has hired some 1,000 Colombian military and police veterans to work as mercenaries for the US occupation in Iraq. Epi is operating from a house near a US air base in the Ecuadoran city of Manta. The Bogota daily El Tiempo reported on Aug. 12 that the Colombian mercenaries receive salaries of between $2,500 and $5,000 a month—less than half the salary charged by their US counterparts. Most of the mercenaries are retired military officers or police agents who were trained by the US military and are accustomed to working with US troops.

The Jerusalem Post reports Aug. 15 that New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind is among the many infiltrators to have snuck into the Gaza Strip through the IDF roadblocks. "It was very easy to get in," Hikind told the Post as he stood outside the Neveh Dekalim synagogue, saying that he came to bear witness to the "human tragedy" of the removal of the Jewish settlements. Hikind, who represents a heavily Jewish district in Brooklyn, told Newsday columnist Dennis Dugan by telephone from the Strip Aug. 15, "We shouldn't even be calling these places settlements. They are like small villages of the kind you see in Brooklyn and Queens."

President Bush refuses to rule out military action in response to Iran's renewed nuclear operations. "As I say, all options are on the table. The use of force is the last option for any president and you know, we've used force in the recent past to secure our country," he told Israel's Channel One TV from his ranch in Crawford, TX, Aug. 13. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder immediately responded at an election rally in Hanover that same day that the threat of force was not acceptable. "Let's take the military option off the table," Schroeder said. "We have seen it doesn't work." (Reuters, Aug. 13, via TruthOut)