CORAL SPRINGS, Fla. — A Goodyear blimp crashed last night in a Florida industrial park, authorities said.

The two people on board were not injured.

The Stars & Stripes blimp went down shortly after taking off from Pompano Beach Air Park, where it is based. Both people onboard were trapped briefly while electrical crews cleared the site, authorities said.

Bad weather may have forced the blimp down. There were thunderstorms in the area at the time, authorities said.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration was investigating.

"It went right over our building and was making really loud noises," said Maryann Clark, general manager of a nearby restaurant.

The blimp is one of three Goodyear blimps based in the United States. Goodyear leases about 12 hectares at the air park as a blimp base, the park's website said.

A 3.5 magnitude earthquake hit Sonoma County at 8:42 p.m. Friday night.

The quake hit 14 miles southwest of Fort Ross, 26 miles northwest of Bodega Bay.

There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

"I haven't received any calls," said Bodega Bay Deputy Sheriff Charlie Bone.

Californians have experienced a troubling cluster of earthquakes this week.

A 6.6-magnitude earthquake struck Thursday night off the coast of Northern California just days after a larger temblor in the region generated a tsunami warning that sent residents scrambling.

A magnitude-5.2 quake shook the Anza area of Riverside County in Southern California on Sunday. A temblor of magnitude 4.9 hit earlier Thursday near Yucaipa in San Bernardino County in Southern California.

SOFIA (bnn)- A moderate earthquake with epicenter in neighboring Romania rattled northernt Bulgaria on Saturday, the national seismological institute said.

It said the temblor measured 4.5 on the Richter scale in Bulgaria's border town of Ruse. No injuries or damages were reported.

The epicenter of the quake was located in the seismic Mount Vrancea in central Romania, some 400 kilometers (250 miles) northeast of Sofia, the report said.

Hurricanes are likely to get more extreme as a result of climate change, say scientists.

Computer models of the Earth's water cycle suggest that hurricanes will intensify as warmer temperatures draw more ocean water into the atmosphere.

The research follows a record number of hurricanes affecting Florida and typhoons striking Japan last year.

Kevin Trenberth, a researcher at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, who led the research, said warmer seas and increased atmospheric water vapour would add energy to the showers and thunderstorms that fuel hurricanes. "Computer models also suggest a shift ... toward extreme hurricanes," he said.

Most of the hurricanes that strike the US coastline are formed in the tropical north Atlantic, where sea-surface temperatures over the past decade have been the warmest on record.

"Over the 20th century, water vapour over the global oceans increased by 5% and that probably relates to about a 5% increase in intensity and probably a 5% increase in heavy rainfalls," says Dr Trenberth, whose research is published today in Science. "That relates directly to the flooding statistics."

Present models suggest a 7% increase in the moisture in the atmosphere for every degree celsius that the earth warms. As the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases and global temperatures rise, so the amount of water in the atmosphere goes up.

However, the effect of climate change on hurricane numbers and landfalls is uncertain, said Dr Trenberth.

Models disagreed on how global warming might affect the wind sheer that can either support or discourage hurricane formation.

The number of hurricanes and typhoons tends to hold steady from year to year. When activity increases in the Atlantic, it often decreases in the Pacific, and vice versa. So, it is hard to make long term predictions on the number of storms or how they will move.

"There is no sound theoretical basis for drawing any conclusions about how anthropogenic climate change affects hurricane numbers or tracks, and thus how many hit land," said Dr Trenberth.

GUIYANG, CHINA -- Here's some exciting medical news from the Chinese government: Smoking is great for your health.

Cigarettes, according to China's tobacco authorities, are an excellent way to prevent ulcers.

They also reduce the risk of Parkinson's disease, relieve schizophrenia, boost your brain cells, speed up your thinking, improve your reactions and increase your working efficiency.

And all those warnings about lung cancer? Nonsense.

You're more likely to get cancer from cooking smoke than from your cigarette habit.

Welcome to the bizarre parallel universe of China's state-owned tobacco monopoly, the world's most successful cigarette-marketing agency.

With annual sales of 1.8 trillion cigarettes, the Chinese monopoly is responsible for almost one-third of all cigarettes smoked on the planet today.

If you believe the official website of the tobacco monopoly, cigarettes are a kind of miracle drug: solving your health problems, helping your lifestyle, strengthening the equality of women, and even eliminating loneliness and depression.

"Smoking removes your troubles and worries," says a 37-year-old female magazine editor, quoted approvingly on the website. "Holding a cigarette is like having a walking stick in your hand, giving you support.

"Quitting smoking would bring you misery, shortening your life."

Such statements are widely believed in China. [...]

The purpose of this website is to assist you in writing a persuasive letter to a friend, a family member or a local legislator, a letter which will persuade that person to quit being an anti smoking health nazi.
This site will provide a wealth of facts, and ideas for presenting them in a persuasive manner.

1) Comprehensive anti-smoking campaigns were invented by the Nazi Party of Germany:
Yes, THAT Nazi Party - the one responsible for World War Two, the one that was responsible for the murders of as many as 6 million Jews and possibly 10 million other innocents. The one that systematically murdered persons with deformities and other physical or mental disabilities, within their own country's population.
This fact was first made public by Professor Robert Proctor's "The anti-tobacco campaign of the Nazis: a little known aspect of public health in Germany, 1933-45". Proctor reveals that members of the medical profession in Nazi Germany were instigators, enablers and purveyors of all manner of horrific and murderous schemes - and were also fanatical anti-smoking campaigners;

"Medical historians in recent years have done a great deal to enlarge our understanding of medicine and public health in Nazi Germany. We know that about half of all doctors joined the Nazi party and that doctors played a major part in designing and administering the Nazi programmes of forcible sterilisation, "euthanasia," and the industrial scale murder of Jews and gypsies."

"Germany had the world's strongest antismoking movement in the 1930s and early 1940s, supported by Nazi medical and military leaders worried that tobacco might prove a hazard to the race. Many Nazi leaders were vocal opponents of smoking. Anti-tobacco activists pointed out that whereas Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt were all fond of tobacco, the three major fascist leaders of Europe--Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco--were all non-smokers."

2) Anti smoking health nazis twist, distort and betray the noble principles upon which the medical sciences are founded:
Those principles have always held that the treatment of sick and injured persons is the sole focus of a physician's work. The original Hippocratic Oath specifically forbids medical professionals from concerning themselves with their patient's personal affairs or revealing such matters to others.

By contrast, anti smoking health nazis are intrusive busy-bodies and gossips, self-appointed managers of other people's personal affairs. Rather than treating the sick, health nazis advocate "preventing illness" and "promoting wellness" by inventing ways to force people - who are not even ill - to live their lives in ways health nazis claim will be least likely to result in illness.

Anti smoking health nazis perversion of the centuries-old approach to medicine - helping the patient live his life in the manner that suits him best by treating whatever illness might arise from the patient's choices - into a doctrine of controlling potential patients and sabotaging their ability to live their lives by their own free choices, twists the noble medical caduceus into this;

3) Anti smoking health nazis STINK!:
Health nazis give off a foul reek of self-righteousness. The stench of their arrogant claims to know better than you do, what is best for you in your life - and the putrid odor of their hypocrisy in claiming to care about the wellbeing of people that they are doing everything they can, to tax into bankruptcy, to alienate from their friends and family, to turn into social outcasts and ban from public view entirely - this stink not only guarantees health nazis will be the last ones asked to dance at a party, but also clings to anyone they associate with.

4) Anyone who believes that forcing their friends and loved ones to give up freely chosen behaviors will "save their lives", is hopelessly deluded:
You can't save someone's life unless they are in immediate danger of dying! Paramedics sometimes save lives, as do surgeons, police officers and firemen. Busy-bodies who harass people they know to quit smoking, lose weight, exercise more often, eat this thing, don't eat that thing, etc. have never and will never "save someone's life". Anti smoking health nazis' pathetic attempts to leech off some of the glory that is rightly due to those who really do save lives, demonstrates they must understand - deep down inside themselves - that they are nothing but annoying little non-entities with no life, and so desperate to be 'important' that they would debase the acheivements of true heroes in our society by falsely claiming to "save lives" themselves.

5) Health nazis always come to a bad end:
History demonstrates that anti smoking health nazis end up suffering all the financial loss, pain, public humiliation, and social ostracism that they attempt to inflict on others.

The crazed fanatics who devised and ran Nazi Germany's anti-smoking campaigns all got what was coming to them, in the end. Robert Proctor says;

"Karl Astel, head of Jena's Institute for Tobacco Hazards Research (and rector of the University of Jena and an officer in the SS), committed suicide in his office on the night of 3-4 April 1945.
Reich Health Fuhrer Leonardo Conti, another anti-tobacco activist, committed suicide on 6 October 1945 in an allied prison while awaiting prosecution for his role in the euthanasia programme.

Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel, the guiding light behind Thuringia's antismoking campaign and the man who drafted the grant application for Astel's anti-tobacco institute, was executed on 1 October 1946 for crimes against humanity."

6) Anti smoking health nazis CAN QUIT!
It is true that sticking your nose in other people's business, trying to run their lives for them, and fascist impulses to force others to conform to your personal ideals about "healthy living" are all as addictive as heroin or cocaine use.

There is hope, however! You don't have to go on being a pointless pain in the backside to everyone you care about. You really can quit being a health nazi.

Overcoming the addiction to these anti-social and self-destructive behaviors is actually quite simple, but requires committment and perseverance. Here are some things you can do to become a normal person once again;

- Stop making rationalisations for interfering in other people's lives. Recognise that there is no rational justification for your health nazi behaviors, and that these behaviors are driven by deep-seated feelings of your own worthlessness.

- Stop trying to make yourself look and feel important by riding on the coat-tails of genuine health heroes. Confront the delusion that health nazi behaviors can "save people's lives" and accept that you can be a person of value and worth without ripping off glory that doesn't belong to you. Stop telling yourself and others that your health nazi behaviors have anything to do with saving people's lives.

- Get a life! Find genuinely worthwhile, fulfilling and socially positive activities to occupy your time. Volunteer with community agencies, but - tut,tut,tut! - remember your addictions and stay away from anything self-described as "health promotion" or "wellness promotion".

A Palestinian medical source in Bethlehem reported that a 70-year-old died on Gilo checkpoint, near the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

The source stated that Zahra Issa Zboun, 70, from al-Azza refugee camp in Bethlehem, died after the Israeli soldiers barred her from crossing into Jerusalem to conduct Friday prayers at al-Aqsa mosque, in Jerusalem.

Zboun was waiting under the sun for several hours, which increased the level of her blood pressure, especially amidst the extremely hot weather in the area.

Soldiers forced Zboun, along with hundreds of residents to wait under the son for longs periods without allowing them to cross into Jerusalem.

Soldiers, and since early morning hours closed several roadblocks and crossings in the Palestinian territories barring the residents from moving between the Palestinian area, in addition to closing the Rafah border crossing leading to Egypt, and the Eretz crossing which leads to the industrial zone in the Gaza Strip, and to Israel.

(ANTIWAR.COM) - What is the first picture the term "occupation" raises in our mind? Probably some kind of extreme violence among civilians: lethal fire in the middle of town, terrified kids in pajamas watching heavily armed soldiers searching a house, a helicopter firing a missile in the midst of Gaza. All these violent scenes do happen, but they do not give an adequate picture of what the occupation really looks like.

Very few people realize that Israel has turned life in the occupied territories (Israeli settlers excluded) into complete misery without any need to fire a single bullet. A unique, invaluable glance into the mechanisms that constitute this "quiet" occupation, usually hidden behind the literal smokescreen of violence, is given by the first annual report of the Israeli human rights group Machsom Watch, presented in a press conference in Tel Aviv last week.

West Bank Checkpoints: The Basics

Machsom – "roadblock" in Hebrew – stands for a whole arsenal of obstacles spread throughout the occupied territories: temporary or permanent roadblocks, manned checkpoints or roads closed off by heavy cement blocks, gates in the Wall, earth mounds, trenches, observation towers. The least known but most significant fact about these various physical obstacles is that almost all of them are NOT "border checkpoints" located between Israel and the occupied territories; almost all of them are placed WITHIN the occupied territories, hampering the movement from one Palestinian town or village to another.

Within the last four years – signs were clear enough in early 2002 – Israel made every movement of every Palestinian dependent on Israeli permit. Incredible, but true: a Palestinian wishing to get out of (or reenter) his or her immediate surrounding – a town, a village, a neighborhood, or just an arbitrarily cut-off part of a village – has to get a permit from Israel in advance and show it at every Israeli-manned checkpoint. You cannot just go to work, to do some shopping or business, to school, to visit family or friends, to a hospital – you have to go through one or several Israeli checkpoints first.

The numbers are horrifying. The UN's Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs (OCHA) counted in November 2004 not less than 719 (!) physical obstacles throughout the West Bank. Machsom Watch reports that less than 70 of them were removed in the recent "calm" period, some only to be replaced by the rapidly progressing Wall. An army general reported that the 25 central checkpoints under his command required 1,000 soldiers, and up to 5,000 soldiers are employed on special alerts (Ha'aretz, July 22, 2003); no wonder the checkpoints are consistently undermanned, resulting in endless queues.

None of the more than 2 million Palestinians in the West Bank thus live more than a couple of miles away from a roadblock or checkpoint. A short route through the West Bank would inevitably take you through several Israeli checkpoints, some of them five minutes' ride from each other. Lucky to have gone through one checkpoint? The next one is just a few minutes ahead, where you'll have to start all over again.

Checkpoints are closed on Israeli, Jewish, Muslim, and other holidays and public occasions, paralyzing Palestinian economic and social life. Machsom Watch reports that

"From March to May [2004], a closure was imposed that included full encirclement in many areas of the West Bank. The closure started for the Passover holiday, continued uninterrupted until Israeli Independence Day (several weeks later) and from then to the Likud party's referendum, and it was finally lifted after the Final Four playoff games."

A Personal Aside

When I was 18, I had my basic training with an Israeli infantry unit notorious for its ferocity. The most difficult aspect of the 100 days I spent there, in early 1983, was not the physical hardship: it was bad enough, but a piece of cake compared to the permanent stress caused by the intentional, systematic policy of keeping the new recruits under complete uncertainty. We had no idea what might happen a few minutes later – would we be taken to a lecture, a physical exercise, a meal, or moved to a remote base? We were sent to bed late at night only to be awakened half an hour later; a weekend off at home would be announced and withdrawn several times till Friday afternoon; and individual soldiers would be punished for no clear reason. As my officer later told us, the idea was to "break us down as civilians in order to rebuild us as soldiers." At least the first part was accomplished successfully: The unbearable stress caused many of us severe mental damage, like shock, identification with the aggressor, or post-traumatic syndromes.

Through the Checkpoint

Machsom Watch activists say they have seen the idea behind the checkpoints policy actually written in a military document: Keeping the Palestinian population under permanent uncertainty. Precisely the same principle, then, used to "break down" recruits during basic training, is applied to an entire population, children and adults, women and men, sick and elderly. The checkpoints are at the heart of this policy.

The moment you start a journey through the West Bank, you are no longer master of your time. You do not know whether you'll be able to make it at all, nor even roughly how long it will take. Due to "surprise checkpoints" and checkpoints manned only during certain hours, you cannot even tell how many checkpoints you'll have to go through. Any checkpoint can be closed at any time, without prior notice nor any indication whether and when it will reopen. You can pass three checkpoints on your way, only to be stopped at the fourth. Crossing a checkpoint can take minutes or hours, due to unpredictable queues. The army may also suddenly impose the notorious "Stop All Life Procedure" – a total freeze on movement that lasts for hours at a time.

Detention

Even when a checkpoint is open, individuals are exposed to extreme arbitrariness and uncertainty. Having a permit is a necessary condition to pass through the checkpoint, but not a sufficient one. With a hardly noticeable gesture of his or her finger, a 19-year-old soldier may decide your document needs "inspection" and detain you. Such a detention can take 20 minutes; but it can also take several hours, during which you have to wait in the unroofed Jora ("hole" in Arabic, "sewage hole" in Hebrew), where you may be ordered to remain standing, or to sit on the ground facing the wall. If you are a bus driver, all your passengers will have to wait with you. Your document may be sent for inspection immediately; but it may have to wait until 20 or 30 other documents are accumulated and sent together. When it returns with an OK, you may proceed; but some documents often get lost in the process.

Who is detained? Here are some answers Machsom Watch activists got from checkpoint soldiers: "Anyone who looks stressed" (under these circumstances, who wouldn't?); "Every ninth man"; "Everyone called Mohammed"; "Everyone who wants to go through my checkpoint." Arbitrariness incarnate. Many soldiers refer to detention at checkpoints as a kind of punishment or "educational measure," and even order those in charge: "Detain this guy for a long time."

English Weather

Behind this system are myriads of human beings with sometimes heartbreaking stories – the arrested kidney patient, the beaten student. Some of these stories clearly fall under abuse. Israel's efficiency in turning Palestinian life into hell disappears when complaints are to be processed: out of 100 complaints sent by Machsom Watch in 2004 to several state and army offices, 87 percent were ignored or insufficiently answered. Two years ago, the army admitted that out of 1,200 "inquiries" into checkpoint complaints, only 18 had led to military police investigations; the rest – 98.5 percent – had been shelved (Ha'aretz, July 22, 2003).

But it is important not to let the cases of abuse distract from the "normal" routine: Palestinian daily life is unbearable even on what Machsom Watch activists call "an English weather," i.e., a usual day without any exceptional event. If the roots of Palestinian frustration, despair, and violence – "terrorism," if you like – are to be sought, the checkpoint system is an excellent place to start.

JERUSALEM - Israel is to build an underwater security barrier on its coastal border with the Gaza Strip in a bid to prevent infiltrations from the sea by would-be Palestinian attackers, security sources said Friday.

The navy-built barrier is expected to stretch nearly one kilometre (about half a mile) out into the Mediterranean Sea.

The first 150 metres will be a concrete wall with its foundations buried into the seabed near the northern Gaza Strip. A floating metal fence will then stretch for another 800 metres, according to a report in the English-language Jerusalem Post.

The barrier "consists of elements that are above and below the water level," a security source told AFP.

"In order to provide protection for the Israeli homefront and in order to prevent infiltrations of terrorists via the sea, the navy is establishing a security system which will help stop such infiltrations and alert the security forces," the source said.

When the Israeli military pulls out of the Gaza Strip later this month, it will lose a naval base in southern Gaza, which is home to a vast surveillance system. Some have speculated that the impending base loss provided the impetus for Israel to announce the underwater fence project.

Israel is currently building a massive barrier across the West Bank in what it also says is a bid to stop attacks. The barrier has been hugely contentious because it often juts into Palestinian territory, leading to accusations that its real intent is to pre-empt the final borders of the Palestinians' promised future state.

Last night, cspan2 ran the coverage of the meeting/hearing held by John Conyers in a basement room in the House on Thursday, June 16, 2005 at 2:30pm.

This "hearing" was held to determine whether or not there is enough within the Downing Street Memo to begin impeachment proceedings against Bush et al. Joe Wilson, the career state department pro whose wife was outed as a CIA Agent by the Bushies; Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq and who is the head of Gold Star Families for Peace; Paul Bonifaz, lawyer who is head of AfterDowningStreet.org, who is spearheading the legal end of the impeachment efforts, and Ray McGovern, ex Cia analyst and head of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, (and who seems to be reading the SOTT page) were on the panel. Many Democrat Congressmen and women were also in attendance.

All commented on how the Republican leadership of the Judiciary Committee would not let them have a regular meeting room and relegated them to the aforementioned basement room which was small, cramped and apparently warm. Also, they all mentioned how over 11 votes were scheduled for the same time the hearings were on, which was cited as a ploy to disrupt the meeting/hearing. More than one congressperson directly said the republicans are engaging in a cover up of the Downing Street Memo.

Now, what I came away with after watching the three hour meeting is that these people are very strongly convinced that they have a smoking gun in the form of the Downing Street Memo(s), and that they are not going to be sidetracked or stopped in their pursuit of Bush and the fact that he lied to Congress and the American people to get the war with Iraq underway. They are hell bent on pursuing impeachment. After the meeting they were to head to the White house to hand deliver Conyers letter to Bush with the by now 122 signatures of congressmen and over 500,000 signatures of citizens, as discussed on yesterdays' SOTT page.

The Bush administration's refusal to respond to these developments, and the very developments surrounding the Downing Street Memo(s), lead me to think only one thing: this whole episode is destined to shortly be overtaken by events. What the events will be is open to speculation, another large scale attack? Who knows, but it just seems like Conyers is putting Bush in a corner, and thus, who knows what will happen. If anything untoward is going to happen, it seems it might be sooner rather than later.

Senior Democrats are calling for a full investigation into a memo that appears to accuse U.S. President George W. Bush of misleading Americans into backing the war with Iraq.

Bush has always maintained that "the use of force has been and remains our last resort."

But the memo, called the Downing Street Memo, could be the first documentary proof that Bush deceived the American people.

During a forum organized by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee held to investigate the implications of the memo, Rep. John Conyers said the document "means that more than 1,600 brave Americans and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis would have have lost their lives for a lie."

"Quite frankly, the evidence that appears to be building up points to whether or not the president has deliberately misled Congress to make the most important decision a president has to make, going to war," said Rep. Charles Rangel.

The memo is based on a briefing given to British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top security advisers in July 2002, eight months before the war.

Labelled "top secret," the memo summarizes a report from Richard Dearlove, the head of British intelligence, who had just met senior Bush officials in Washington.

The memo says: "Military action was now seen as inevitable."

That "Terrorism and WMD [weapons of mass destruction]" would be used to justify the war.

But, the memo says, "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Neither Bush nor Blair has challenged the authenticity of the Downing Street Memo. But earlier this month both said it is wrong.

"The facts were not being fixed in any shape or form," said Blair.

"Somebody said we had made up our mind to use military force to deal with Saddam [Hussein]," said Bush. "There is nothing further from the truth. My conversation with the prime minister was how we can do this peacefully."

A separate document says Blair pressured Bush to take his case to the United Nations to give a legal justification for the war.

Michael Smith, the reporter for the Sunday Times who obtained the leaked memos, said that was a brilliant case of misdirection.

"The whole business about going to the UN is not to avert war, but actually to get an excuse to carry out war. And I think that's the killer document for me."

At the hearing, Democrats called for a congressional investigation and some witnesses said Bush may have to be impeached.

"It is a high crime to engage in a conspiracy to deceive and mislead the American people about the basis for taking the nation to war," said constitutional lawyer John Bonifaz.

The U.S. media have given scant coverage to the Downing Street Memo, so it may not have much of an impact in Washington.

On Thursday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan dismissed the allegation in the Downing Street Memo. He said the Democrats were "simply trying to rehash old debates that have already been addressed. And our focus is not on the past. It's on the future and working to make sure we succeed in Iraq."

But what is having an impact is the surging number of American soldiers killed or wounded in Iraq. New poll numbers now show that most Americans feel the war wasn't worth fighting.

The story by political correspondent Dana Milbank drips with a sarcasm that would never be allowed for a report on, say, a conservative gathering or on a topic involving any part of the American political spectrum other than the Left.

“In the Capitol basement yesterday, long-suffering House Democrats took a trip to the land of make-believe,” Milbank wrote. “They pretended a small conference room was the Judiciary Committee hearing room, draping white linens over folding tables to make them look like witness tables and bringing in cardboard name tags and extra flags to make the whole think look official.”

And the insults – especially aimed at Rep. Conyers – just kept on coming. The Michigan Democrat “banged a large wooden gavel and got the other lawmakers to call him ‘Mr. Chairman,’” the snide article said. [For the full flavor, see the Washington Post’s “Democrats Play House To Rally Against the War,” June 17, 2005]

Washington Post editors – having already dismissed the leaked British government documents about the Iraq War as boring, irrelevant news – are now turning to the tried-and-true tactic for silencing any remaining dissent, consigning those who won’t go along to the political loony bin.

Those of us who have covered Washington for years have seen the pattern before. A group without sufficient inside-the-Beltway clout tries to draw attention to a scandal that the Post and other prestigious news arbiters have missed or gotten wrong. After ignoring the grievances for a while – and sensing that the complainers have no real muscle – the news arbiters start heaping on the abuse.

Contra-Cocaine

A previous example is the way the major newspapers reacted to Gary Webb’s San Jose Mercury-News series in 1996, which alleged links between the CIA, the Nicaraguan contra rebels and cocaine traffickers in the 1980s.

At first, the big papers were silent about this upstart challenge to their long-standing dismissal of the contra-cocaine issue as a “conspiracy theory.” But when the story spread on the Internet and was taken up by the African-American community, the major newspapers lost their patience. They attacked the stories as nonsensical, called blacks “conspiracy prone,” and destroyed Webb’s career.

Rather than reexamining the contra-cocaine evidence seriously, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times simply cast the issue outside the realm of rational discourse.

Even when the CIA’s inspector general issued reports in 1998 stating that the contra-cocaine connection actually was worse than had been known – and admitting that the CIA had protected some drug traffickers – the major media made only slight adjustments to the contemptuous tone that had long surrounded the issue.

Hounded out of journalism and running out of money, Webb committed suicide last December, an event that prompted hostile obituaries from the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “America’s Debt to Journalist Gary Webb” or Robert Parry’s Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press and Project Truth.]

Right’s Reaction

The Right’s experience has been different. After Richard Nixon’s resignation over the Watergate scandal in 1974, conservatives recognized the political danger that came from the media’s power to set the parameters of permissible debate.

So, over the past three decades, the conservative movement has invested billions of dollars to build a protective wall around itself and its issues through the creation of its own media infrastructure. [For details, see Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.]

Now, the conservative media has the power to inflict as much – or more pain – on the mainstream media as the mainstream media can on conservatives. In other words, between the Mainstream and the Right in Washington, there is now a balance of fear.

Indeed, Dana Milbank, as the Post’s White House correspondent, has drawn conservative ire from time to time for not showing sufficient respect for George W. Bush. But if Milbank were tempted to write an over-the-top attack on Bush – like he did on Conyers and the Downing Street Memo hearing – he would pay a high price from retaliating conservatives who would accuse him of bias and flood his editors with complaints.

Almost certainly, Milbank would have second thoughts about such an article or his editors would for him. Without doubt, the story would not have appeared in the openly insulting form that it did when Democrats and liberals were the target.

Though no one wants to say it, everyone in mainstream journalism knows intuitively that there is no real risk in ripping liberals. Most often, it’s a win-win. Not only can you write almost whatever you want, but it buys the journalist a measure of protection from conservatives, who have a long record of costing reporters their jobs.

Milbank, for instance, must know that his putdown of the Downing Street Memo hearing means he can wave the article in front of Bush supporters the next time they criticize something he’s written about the president.

Dynamic

The reason for that part of the dynamic is largely that funders on the Left – unlike their counterparts on the Right – have chosen over the past three decades to divert money away from media into other priorities, such as “grassroots organizing” or direct-action projects, such as feeding the poor or buying up endangered wetlands.

Sometimes this refusal by wealthy liberals to “do media” seems so extreme that one has to wonder whether – except perhaps for some indigenous tribes in the jungles of Borneo – any group on the planet has less a grasp of the importance of information and media than American liberals do.

Even the Arabs – not usually known as information pioneers – have learned how investments in media, such as the satellite news channel al-Jazeera, can change the political dynamic of an entire region.

Though there have been a few positive developments in liberal media – particularly the growth of AM progressive talk radio at Air America and Democracy Radio – Left funders still show few signs of understanding how valuable media could be to a liberal political renaissance.

The latest trend in liberal grant-giving has been for “media reform,” such as trying to “save PBS” even as it adds more and more conservative programs. But the Left funders still shy away from the construction of media outlets and the creation of independent journalistic content.

Without that strong media, liberals can do little more than gnash their teeth when the Washington Post and other mainstream news outlets banish issues like the Iraq War deceptions beyond the bounds of Washington debate. [For more on the Post’s treatment of this issue, see Consortiumnews.com’s “LMSM – the ‘Lying Mainstream Media.”]

Certainly, any thoughts about impeaching Bush are little more than pipedreams given the reality of today’s national media. In that sense, the Post’s attacks on the Downing Street Memo hearing should serve as a splash of cold water in the face of the American Left.

While Web sites and progressive talk radio have helped puncture the image of Bush’s invulnerability, a much broader media infrastructure would be needed if issues, such as the Iraq deceptions, are to be forced consistently into the national debate.

I was a soldier for most of the time between 1970 and 1996. I signed out on my retirement from 3rd Special Forces in Ft. Bragg. I had also served in 7th Special Forces, on three Ranger assignments, with Delta for almost four years, as a Cavalry Scout for a while, and in the 82nd Airborne Division as an infantryman. I started my career in Vietnam with the 173rd Airborne Brigade.

I thugged around in eight different places in East Asia, Latin America, and Africa, where I pointed guns at people. Like you, I was an instrument of American foreign policies ­ policies controlled, then as now, by the rich.

In the course of that career, I heard everything you have heard and felt everything you have felt about "loyalty."

Tricky thing, loyalty.

Nowadays, when I talk with some of you, or when I hear conversations recorded with you, I hear many who have very serious reservations about these wars of occupation. I had more than reservations from the get-go about Iraq and Afghanistan, and I opposed them as hard as I could, and so did millions of other people around the world. [...]

And in these conversations that many of you have with me and thousands of other people, we hear you say ­ more and more often now ­ that you know this war is wrong, but that you have to "do your job," because you are loyal to your buddies; because you feel that you have to back them up; and because if you don't go, someone else will have to. And I respect that sentiment.

But I have to challenge this loyalty thing, and I do it out of respect for you, and because I care about you, and because my own son is back there for his second go-around.

A young friend of mine, Patrick Resta, who recently returned from Iraq, and who is now a member of an organization called Iraq Veterans Against the War, recently told me, "My platoon sergeant tried to get us to violate the Geneva Convention, and when we resisted, he threatened us with punishment. He told us that 'the Geneva Convention doesn't exist in Iraq, and that is in writing at the Brigade level.'" [...]

One of the ways they will get you to do things that you will not want to live with for the rest of your lives is to impose that group-think on you. If one of us is guilty, we are all guilty. And "what happens in Iraq stays in Iraq." This is one of the many ways they take that buddy-to-buddy loyalty and twist it into a way to control you, even when they are trying to get you to violate the law and not only the formal law, but to violate what you know is right, to violate your own conscience and jeopardize your own peace of mind for the rest of your life.

And I'm telling you that you do not owe them or anyone else that kind of loyalty.

They know that many of you know that you were sent to do this thing for a pack of lies about weapons of mass destruction and mushroom clouds over New York City and phony al Qaeda connections (and then when that fell apart, you were there to deliver democracy at gunpoint). So they know that many of you can't stay committed to this violent occupation out of loyalty to that gang of thugs in Washington DC, who are busy every day at home undermi ning the same Constitution you swore to protect (from all enemies foreign and DOMESTIC).

They know that you know that plenty of the officers are out there trying to get new fruit salad medals on their Class-A uniforms, and bucking for promotion, by risking your asses on pointless glory patrols. So they know t hat they can't rely on the loyalty of many of you to the chain of command any more either.

Where do they have to go with this, then, after all? What do they tell you?

"You get out there on that Humvee, and face those IEDs ­ together, as loyal buddies."

"You get out there and ransack people's houses in the middle of the night, and make their babies cry ­ together, as buddies."

"You get out there and set up a road block without Arabic signs or interpreters and get put into that situation where you are tense and don't know, and you shoot up that car and kill parents in front of their children, an d you have to live with that for the rest of your lives ­ together, because you are loyal buddies."

"You get out there and lose life, limb, or eyesight face mental and physical ailments for the rest of your lives together, as an act of loyalty to your buddies."

That's the pressure you have on you today. Cover your buddies, and for some of you, go to Iraq so someone else doesn't take your place.

But let's look at the bigger picture here, and for that I'll take you back to Vietnam, before many of you were born. We heard this same bullsh*t then. Almost verbatim. And do you know what one of the main contributing fac tors was for getting us out of that war?

We quit being good soldiers.

The United States military got to the point where it was no longer an effective fighting force, because US soldiers quit taking orders. It got to the point where an officer who was using his men's bodies to chase medals might find himself on the wrong end of a Claymore mine. Now I'm not advocating that again, and I hope we can stop this before it goes that far. [...]

A US Army sergeant has been charged with murdering two officers in the first alleged case of 'fragging' since the start of the Iraq war.

Alberto Martinez, 37, is being held in a military jail in Kuwait after being charged with the premeditated killing of Cpt Phillip Esposito and Lt Louis Allen. The three men served with the 42nd Infantry Division, a reserve unit drawn from the New York National Guard.

A statement issued by the Pentagon said the officers were killed by a blast in Tikrit, the birthplace of Saddam Hussein, on 7 June. Initial inquiries suggested an enemy mortar blast was responsible, but further investigations found circumstances "inconsistent with a mortar attack". The Pentagon has declined to provide further details.

The case is the first of its kind involving US troops in Iraq, although in April another army sergeant was convicted of fragging (military slang for killing a senior officer). Hasan Akbar killed two officers in March 2003 by rolling grenades into their tent on the Kuwait border as they prepared for the invasion. He has been sentenced to death, the first US soldier convicted of murdering a colleague in war since Vietnam.

A neighbour of Sgt Martinez in Troy, New York, said he had just lost his home to a fire and moved to his childhood home. His mother had died in recent years, the neighbour said.

The bodies of the two dead men have been returned to their families. Lt Allen was buried in Milford, Pennsylvania, where he lived. Denis Petrilak, head teacher at the George Baker High School, where the officer had taught science for the past five years, said: "Today we're just focused on Lieutenant Allen."

Cpt Esposito's mother said her son's wife, Siobhan, and 18-month-old daughter, Madeline, deserved to know the details of his death. He had wanted to be a soldier since he was a boy, she said.

A family friend, Barry Lennihan, said he was a "very, very solid individual". He said Cpt Esposito had attended space camp as a boy and might have been an astronaut if not for imperfect eyesight.

I still have my notes from a man who knew all about torture, a Druze friend in the 1980s, during the Lebanese war, pleased with himself because he'd just caught two Christian militiamen trying to plant a car bomb on the Beirut seafront. "I saw two Phalangists over there. I knew who they were. They had a bomb in their car. I called the PSP [Walid Jumblatt's Progressive Socialist Party] and they took them off for questioning." What happened to them? "Well, they knew what would happen to them; they knew there was no hope. They were questioned here for a couple of days and then they were taken up to Beit Eddin."

Ah, Beit Eddin, one of the prettiest villages in Lebanon, the palace of the Emir Bashir, site of one of the country’s finest music festivals – run by Jumblatt’s glamourous wife Nora. But Eddin was different in the 1980s. “The guys are always told that they are going to die, that there’s no point in suffering – because they are going to be killed when they talk,” my Druze friend told me. “There’s a centre. They don’t survive. There are people there who just press them until they talk. They put things in a man’s anus until he screams. Boiling eggs, that sort of thing. They kill them all in the end. It’s only a few days and it’s all over. I don’t really like that sort of thing. I really don’t. But what can I do?

It’s a good question again now. What can we do? What can we do when an American president dispatches “suspects” to third world countries where they will be stripped, wired up, electrocuted, ripped open and tortured until they wish they had never be born? What can we do with a prime minister – ours – who believes that information from tortured victims may be of use to us and may be collected by us? How can we clean our hands when we know that men are being subject to “rendition” through our own airports? Doesn’t a policeman have the right to go aboard these CIA contract jets that touch down in Britain and take a look at the victims inside and – if he believes the man may be tortured – take him off the plane?

I started thinking about this in the beautiful little town of Listowel in Co Kerry – not far by chance, from Shannon airport – where I went to give a talk at the recent writers festival. I was handed a flyer by a bearded man in the audience. “Who was on board the CIA-chartered plane Reg No N313P that landed at Shannon on December 2003 en route from Iraq?” it asks.

Now, a little fast checking suggest that the Tralee anti-war group got the details right. And planes have also gone in the other direction – to Uzbekistan and Egypt and other countries where the Geneva Conventions – already disregarded by the lads and lassies in charge of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib – are used as lavatory paper. In Uzbekistan they boil “suspects” in fat. They take out their nails. In Egypt, they whip prisoners and sometimes sodomise them. In one Egyptian prison complex a local human rights group found that guards forced prisoners to rape each other. But no friendly Garda walks up to find out who’s aboard at Shannon. The Irish government will not investigate these sinister flights. Outside, Irish eyes may be smiling. But they won’t be allowed a peek into these revolting aircraft.

It’s not difficult to trace our journey to this perdition. First, we had Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara, who in November 2003 was ranting away at a joint press conference with George Bush, “in the face of terror there must be no holding back, no compromise, no hesitation in confronting this menace”. In tandem with this drivel, we had writers such as David Brooks at the New York Times perniciously asking readers what would happen to “the national mood” when “the news programmes start broadcasting images of brutal measures our own troops will (sic) have to adopt… The president will have to remind us that we live in a fallen world, that we have to take morally hazardous action…”