Border guards in Tajikistan report that they shot down a hang-glider carrying 20 kilogram of heroin being smuggled over the border from Afghanistan Aug. 23. Tajik officials said Afghan traffickers had been using the hang-glider for three years, and previous attempts to shoot it down had failed. Some reports said it was powered by a small engine. Officials said a manhunt was under way for the "pilot," who had escaped despite being injured on hitting the ground.

The incident took place in the Shuroobod area, which is said to be a major smuggling route. Lt. Gen. Saidamir Zukhurov, commander of the Tajik border troops, said the trafficker had "little chance to escape" because the area had been tightly secured.

Aug. 24 commentary in MarketWatch takes Goldman Sachs to task for exploiting the chaos—as well as government largesse—over the Ground Zero redevelopment effort in New York City:

For a Wall Street bank, Goldman Sachs plays the Main Street game of government extortion like a veteran.

In a sure sign that the anti-war movement is finally starting to have some effectiveness, protesters are now coming under violent attack. Over the weekend, police in Pittsburgh, PA, used dogs and tasers against a group picketing a recuitment center in the neighborhood of Oakland. From the Pittsburgh Independent Media Center, Aug. 21:

The new resident reactionary on the New York Times op-ed page, John Tierney, boasts in his Aug. 23 column, entitled "The $10,000 Question," that he has made a five-grand wager with Matthew Simmons, author of Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy, against the latter's predictions quoted in the Aug. 21 Sunday Times Magazine ("The Breaking Point" by Peter Maass) that oil prices will hit the triple digits by 2011.

Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control and publisher of IranWatch.org, has the lead op-ed in the Aug. 23 New York Times, "Don't Underestimate the Mullahs," warning that Iran could be much closer to having The Bomb than is commonly assumed:

Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson has given Hugo Chavez ample reason for his paranoia, calling for the US to assassinate the Venezuelan president, calling him "a terrific danger" bent on exporting Communism and Islamic extremism across the Americas. "If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it," Robertson told viewers on his "The 700 Club" show Aug. 21. "It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war." Robertson called Chavez "a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling huge pool of oil, that could hurt us badly."

Washington Post reported Aug. 21 that "US defense contractors are riding high these days, buoyed by rising Pentagon spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the high cost of homeland security in the US-declared war on terror.

The fiscal 2006 defense budget is set to climb to $441 billion, an increase of $21 billion over this year, with an additional $50 billion slated for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress looks set to approve $79 billion for weapons systems procurement and about $69 billion for military research and development.

Subcomandante Marcos, spokesman for the Zapatista rebels in Mexico's southern state of Chiapas, clarified that the group's new political proposal does not support any candidate for the presidency in the 2006 elections, but neither does it encourage abstention.

The masked leader spoke at the opening ceremony of the third of six meetings with Mexican social organizations the Zapatistas are hosting in their jungle territory, seeking to unite a broad left front. The meeting is being held in the community of Dolores Hidalgo, on lands that had been a finca (plantation) before the 1994 uprising, and are now in the hands of pro-Zapatista Tzeltal Maya Indians.