Mexican federal agents and Chiapas state police evicted several families Aug. 19 from the predios (collective farms) of Nuevo Salvador Allende and El Buen Samaritano, in the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve. Six family heads were detained, accused of environmental crimes and property damage; another 39 were taken to a shelter in the town of La Trinitaria. The relocation was undertaken after the residents of the predios—Tzeltal and mestizo peasants—refused to negotiate with the Agrarian Reform Secretariat, asserting that they had been living in the zone for 30 years. (La Jornada, Aug. 19) The following day, two other small communities were similarly evicted from the reserve. (La Jornada, Aug. 20)

The LA Times reports Aug. 25:

U.S. forces firing from helicopters Friday pursued militiamen loyal to a radical anti-U.S. Shiite cleric into a west Baghdad district, killing at least 18 people, reportedly including some civilians...

The New York Times reports Aug. 25: "The number of detainees held by the American-led military forces in Iraq has swelled by 50 percent under the troop increase ordered by President Bush, with the inmate population growing to 24,500 today from 16,000 in February, according to American military officers in Iraq." A smaller AP story published the same day stated: "The number of Iraqis who have fled their homes under threat of sectarian violence has more than doubled since the start of the year, despite the increase in American troops that began in February, a humanitarian aid organization said Saturday. The number of displaced Iraqis has shot upward from 447,337 on Jan. 1 to 1.14 million on July 31, according to the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization."

A car bomb exploded outside a Guardia Civil barracks in the town of Durango in the Basque region of northern Spain Aug. 24, wounding two officers and causing considerable damage to the building and vehicles. Authorities said the attack was likely carried out by the separatist group ETA, which ended a ceasefire in June. The blast came days after Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba warned that an ETA attack was imminent. Recent weeks have seen the arrests of a number of ETA suspects, mainly in France, with 400 kilos of explosives seized.

Way to go, guys. From The Guardian, Aug. 25:

Three British troops killed by US jet
An urgent investigation was under way last night into why a US fighter plane killed three British soldiers, and seriously injured two others, after it was called in to support UK troops engaged in a fierce battle with Taliban fighters in southern Afghanistan.

Reports The Guardian, Aug. 24:

An American military commander in Iraq today said a senior Republican senator's call for a troop withdrawal would represent "a giant step backwards" in one of the country's most precarious regions.

The sad—and frightening—thing is that Americans generally have such a poor sense of history that many will get taken in by Bush's warped Vietnam analogies, delivered to applause at a National Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention in Kansas City Aug. 22. The Washington Post offers some quotes:

From Newsday, Aug. 23:

Drunk driver kills Good Samaritan
On the day he planned to go house-hunting with his family, an immigrant livery driver from Azerbaijan was killed in Brooklyn while trying to assist a colleague with a stalled car -- mowed down by a vehicle whose driver was drunk, police said.