Talk about your great moments in bad timing. Will we hit the much-feared $100 per barrel before the year is out? From Bloomberg, Aug. 8 (links and emphasis added):

Oil traded near a three-week high in New York on concern BP Plc's pipeline closure in Alaska will cut off supplies from the largest oil field in the U.S. for months.

It certainly is comforting to remember that global warming is just a myth. Not rational, mind you, but definitely comforting. From the Washington Post via Newsday, Aug. 7:

WASHINGTON - Heat waves like those that have scorched Europe and the United States in recent weeks are becoming more frequent because of global warming, say scientists who have studied decades of weather records and computer models of past, present and future climate.

A note of irony. From IMEC News, July 31:

In an official report, the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Israeli soldiers took 600 Palestinian residents prisoners since the abduction of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from a military post in the southern Gaza Strip last month.

A glimmer of hope. From The Observer, Aug. 6 (emphasis added):

Israeli pilots 'deliberately miss' targets
Fliers admit aborting raids on civilian targets as concern grows over the reliability of intelligence
At least two Israeli fighter pilots have deliberately missed civilian targets in Lebanon as disquiet grows in the military about flawed intelligence, The Observer has learnt. Sources say the pilots were worried that targets had been wrongly identified as Hizbollah facilities.

The parade of denial goes on. US Central Command chief Gen. Abizaid makes headlines by speaking the obvious—his dramatic understatement treated like a splash of cold water, so deep is the degree of self-delusion:

"I believe that the sectarian violence is probably as bad as I've seen it, in Baghdad in particular, and that if not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move towards civil war," Abizaid told the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday.

This Aug. 7 clip from the London-based Arabic daily al-Hayat was sent by our correspondent Gilbert Achcar, who writes: "There is little chance that you could find something like the news below reported in any language but Arabic. I couldn't resist sharing it with you, and translated it therefore. It needs no comment!"

Shortly after 9:30pm on July 31, after more than two years of detention, Muslim community leader Abdel Jabbar Hamdan walked out of the Terminal Island federal detention center in San Pedro, California, and returned to his Buena Park home with his wife and six US-born children.

With all eyes elsewhere, it seems authorities in Mexico's southern state of Chiapas, scene of the ongoing Zapatista rebellion, are taking the opportunity to repossess lands occupied the rebels. Recognition of the "agrarian reform" carried out by adherents of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) has been essential to keeping the peace (however precariously) in the 12 years since the rebellion began. This Aug. 3 communique from one of the Good Government Juntas or caracoles, the Zapatistas' regional coordinating bodies, comes to us via Chiapas95: