From Scientific American, Aug. 4:

In the spring of 2002, a large chunk of the Larsen B ice shelf (LIS-B) on the Antarctic Peninsula broke off and tumbled into the Weddell Sea. A new analysis published today in the journal Nature suggests that the more than 3,200 square kilometer area that collapsed signifies an unprecedented loss in the past 10,000 years and can be attributed to accelerated climate warming in the region.

From AP, Aug. 3:

2 NY Officials Back Terror Check Profiling
Middle Easterners should be targeted for searches on city subways, two elected officials said, contending that police have been wasting time with random checks in efforts to prevent terrorism in the transit system.

The UN is pledging to lead an investigation into the helicopter crash that claimed the life of Sudan's newly-installed vice president John Garang, longtime leader of the southern guerillas. (UPI, Aug. 3) Violence since his death has already left at least 84 dead. Garang's position, both as vice president and leader of the SPLA guerillas, is to be assumed by his second-in-command Salva Kiir Mayardit, described by the New York Times as "a fierce fighter with traditional Dinka tribal scarring on his forehead" who has "fought shoulder to shoulder and occassionaly face to face wth Mr. Garang for two decades." (IHT) This commentary by Julie Flint in Lebanon's Daily Star (excerpts below) makes clear the multiple challenges Kiir Mayardit faces—first, to hold together his own SPLA organization, which unites several southern peoples. Not included in the recent peace agreement are the conflicts in Darfur in Sudan's west and the much less-known Beja region in the east. We hope Garang's contentious air crash will not be remembered in the same light as that of Rwanda's President Juvenal Habyarimana in 1994.

Hundreds have taken to the streets of Mauritania's capital, Nouakchott, shouting and honking car horns in celebration after the army announced it had seized power and ousted long-ruling President Moawiya Ould Tayeh. Convoys of vehicles with people hanging out the sides shouting "Praise Be to God" and making victory signs paraded down one of Nouakchott's main avenues. (Reuters, Aug. 3)

In the Gaza Strip, reality parodies Monty Python.

Avid surfers from several Gush Katif communities are threatening to take their boards out to sea on evacuation day and commit mass suicide by drowning. Settlement secretariats, psychologists and social workers have known about the plans of these young men, aged 16-21, for several weeks.

In the belly of the beast, the Business section of the NYT, appeared today an unbelievably nice article about the Venezuelan socialist revolution underway.

The articles describes Chavez' push to transform both public and private enterprises into worker-managed and worker-owned businesses.

While worker-managed businesses have been the dream of the world's socialists, in Venezuela they may become a reality. Using tottering companies as the entry point, Venezuela is offering financial incentives in exchange for carrying out "co-management," in which workers are decision makers, in some cases even owners, of businesses across the country. The plan essentially casts the state in the role of rescuer. Four state-owned companies - another aluminum plant besides Alcasa, a coal plant and a power plant - have begun the programs. But incentives like cheap credit and debt write-downs from the government have also enticed more than 100 private, small and medium-size companies to adopt worker management models. Twenty-three of those have agreed to hand over between 10 percent and 49 percent of their shares to employees.

The New York Times, as usual, gives op-ed space to right wing "free market" fundamentalists.

In The Price Is Right, August 3, 2005 Pankaj Ghemawat, a professor of business administration at Harvard and Ken A. Mark, a business consultant in Toronto, argue that Wal-Mart is good for workers.

Wow, the more things change the more they stay the same. This is exactly the issue which led to Saddam Hussein's world-changing invasion of Kuwait in 1990 (see WW4 REPORT #70). Is it ever going to be embarrassing for the White House if two of its Persian Gulf client states go to war with each other! Via TruthOut:

Iraqis Accuse Kuwait of Stealing Oil
The Associated Press

Tuesday 02 August 2005

Baghdad - Iraqi legislators accused Kuwait of stealing their oil as well as chipping away at their national territory on the border - allegations similar to those used by Saddam Hussein to justify his invasion of Kuwait that began 15 years ago Tuesday.

An Iraqi delegation was scheduled to head to Kuwait on Wednesday discuss the incidents along the Kuwaiti border

"There have been violations such as digging horizontal oil wells to pump Iraq oil," legislator Jawad al-Maliki, chairman of the parliament's Security and Defense Committee, told the National Assembly on Tuesday.