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From the Archive: A decade ago, as U.S. troops gained control of Iraq, there were many false alarms about finding WMD, leading to President Bush declaring the discovery of mobile biological weapons labs. Robert Parry led the way in challenging that bogus claim in this analysis of America's false reality.
By Robert Parry (Originally published on June 2, 2003)
"The Matrix" movies offer a useful analogy for anyone trying to make sense of the chasm that has opened between what's real and what Americans perceive is real. Like the science-fiction world of those movies, a false reality has been pulled daily over people's eyes, often through what they see and hear on their TV screens. Facts have lost value. Logic rarely applies.
Some living in this "American Matrix" are like the everyday people in the movies, simply oblivious to what's going on beneath the surface, either too busy or too bored to find out. Others appear to know better but behave like Cipher, the character in the original movie who chooses the fake pleasures of the Matrix over what Morpheus calls "the desert of the real."
Many Americans so enjoyed the TV-driven nationalism of the Iraq War, for instance, that they didn't want it spoiled by reality. During the conflict, they objected to news outlets showing mangled bodies or wounded children or U.S. POWs. Presenting the ugly face of war was seen as unpatriotic or somehow disloyal to "the troops." Only positive images were welcome and dissent was deemed almost treasonous.
In June 2003, as U.S. forces in Iraq slid closer to the guerrilla-war quagmire that some skeptics predicted, Americans continued to say they trust George W. Bush to handle the situation. Yet, some military analysts close to the Bush administration began to feel differently. "We're hanging on by our fingernails," one told me.
But Americans still preferred to feel good about the war. They wanted to believe that the U.S. invasion was just, and that Saddam Hussein really was poised to use weapons of mass destruction. By large majorities, Americans either believed that these weapons had already been found or they didn't care that the Bush administration may have misled the world.
The Disputed Labs
For its part, the U.S. news media from Fox News to the New York Times repeatedly trumpeted supposed weapons discoveries, only to play down later stories showing that the original reports were bogus. The only evidence Bush cited as of June 2003 was the discovery of two mobile labs that the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency insisted could be used for producing biological weapons.
"Those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons are wrong," Bush declared, referring to the mobile labs. "We found them." [Washington Post, May 31, 2003]
Yet, the U.S. intelligence analysis of these labs was more a piece of the American Matrix than a dispassionate examination of the evidence. The May 28 CIA/DIA report read like one more example of selective intelligence, which spurned plausible alternatives if they didn't fit Bush's political needs. In this case, the Bush administration, which said for months that the Iraqi weapons secrets would be revealed once U.S. forces captured and questioned Iraq's top scientists, then didn't like what those scientists said. When questioned, the captured scientists said the labs were used to produce hydrogen for artillery weather balloons.
In the CIA-DIA report, U.S. analysts agreed that hydrogen production was a plausible explanation for the labs. "Some of the features of the trailer a gas collection system and the presence of a caustic are consistent with both bio-production and hydrogen production," the CIA-DIA report said. "The plant's design possibly could be used to produce hydrogen using a chemical reaction."
The report also noted that "preliminary sample analysis results are negative for five standard BW agents, including bacillus anthracis, and for growth media for those agents." Also missing were companion mobile labs that would be needed "to prepare and sterilize the media and to concentrate and possibly dry the agent, before the agent is ready for introduction into a delivery system, such as bulk-filled munitions," the CIA-DIA report said.
In other words, U.S. intelligence analysts found no evidence that these labs had been used to make biological weapons or that the two labs alone could produce weaponized BW agents. But that was obviously the wrong answer.
Arguing the Issue
So the CIA-DIA analysis veered off into an argumentative direction. The report asserted that the labs would be "inefficient" for producing hydrogen because their capacity was "larger than typical units for hydrogen production for weather balloons." Better systems are "commercially available," the CIA-DIA report said.
But the U.S. analysts didn't assess whether those more efficient systems would have been "commercially available" to Iraq, which had faced a decade of trade sanctions. What may be considered "inefficient" to U.S. scientists might be the best home-made option available to Iraqis.
Having made the inefficiency argument, the CIA-DIA analysis concluded that hydrogen production must be a "cover story" and that "BW agent production is the only consistent, logical purpose for these vehicles." In the American Matrix, pretty much any argument can work if the guys in charge want it to.
Tom Tomorrow's "This Modern World" captured this aspect of what he called "The Republican Matrix" in a cartoon that also used the analogy of "The Matrix" movies. In the cartoon's drawings, clueless Americans parroted back Bush administration messages as the cartoon asked, "What is the Republican Matrix? It is an illusion that engulfs us all a steady barrage of images which obscure reality. It is a world born anew each day in which there is nothing to be learned from the lessons of the past a world where logic holds no sway where up is down and black is white where reality itself is a malleable thing subject to constant revision. In short, it's their world."
The cartoon ends with a frame showing Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in sunglasses like those worn by the anti-human "agents" in "The Matrix."
"What should we do today, fellas?" Bush asked. "Any damn thing we want, George," answered Cheney.
Indeed, Bush and his advisers grasped that they faced few limits on how far they could push their political/media advantage. Protected by an army of media allies, who either shared a conservative ideology or saw financial gain in playing along, Bush had learned that he stood little risk no matter how over-the-top his imagery or assertions. Many Americans, too, seemed to enjoy the process of their own manipulation.
Top Gun
The administration was so confident about this control that Bush dared dress up in a Top Gun outfit for an unnecessary jet flight to a U.S. aircraft carrier on May 1 to declare victory over Iraq. The USS Abraham Lincoln, which had been at sea for 10 months, was within helicopter range but that didn't offer the exciting visuals of a carrier landing and Bush in a flight suit. So, the ship slowed its pace and circled idly in the Pacific Ocean to guarantee favorable camera angles while servicemen and women delayed their homecomings.
Though Bush's father made great fun of Democrat Michael Dukakis when he rode in a tank in 1988 and the national news media had a field day in 1993 when President Bill Clinton got a haircut while Air Force One waited at a Los Angeles airport, the tone was different when Bush pulled off his Top Gun performance.
"U.S. television coverage ranged from respectful to gushing," observed New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. "Nobody seemed bothered that Mr. Bush, who appears to have skipped more than a year of the National Guard service that kept him out of Vietnam, is now emphasizing his flying experience." [NYT, May 6, 2003]
Indeed, the likes of MSNBC's Chris Matthews used the occasion of Bush strutting about the carrier's deck to praise Bush's manliness in contrast to Democratic presidential candidates, including Sen. John Kerry who earned a Silver Star in Vietnam.
"Imagine Joe Lieberman in this costume, or even John Kerry," Matthews said on MSNBC on May 1. "Nobody looks right in the role Bush has set for the presidency-commander-in-chief, medium height, medium build, looks good in a jet pilot's costume or uniform, rather has a certain swagger, not too literary, certainly not too verbal, but a guy who speaks plainly and wins wars. I think that job definition is hard to match for the Dems."
On the same show, when Matthews was asked about the Boston Globe article in 2000 describing gaps in Bush's National Guard duty, Matthews swatted the question away without addressing its substance. "There's any chance that the Boston Globe city room will ever endorse George Bush for president?" Matthews laughed. "Great reporting. But is it going to cost him a single state? They're not going to get Massachusetts to start with."
What the political odds in Massachusetts had to do with the factual issue of whether Bush ducked out on his military service, possibly going AWOL and getting protected by his father's influence, was not explained. In the American Matrix after all, rational connections weren't necessary. Like facts, logic was routinely overwhelmed by image, tone and 'tude. [For more analysis on the news media's treatment of Bush's aircraft landing, see Bob Somerby's DailyHowler.]
Mount Rushmore
Bush got the images he wanted in his carrier landing while his aides mounted a mini-cover-up of the facts. In the days after the photo op, the White House first lied about the reasons for the jet flight, insisting that it was necessary because the ship was outside helicopter range. That story fell apart when it became clear that the ship was only 30 miles offshore and slowing up to give Bush an excuse to use the jet.
A later New York Times article revealed that Bush had personally collaborated on the jet landing idea and that the imagery was choreographed by a White House advance team led by communications specialist Scott Sforza, who arrived on the carrier days earlier. The carrier landing was just one scene in a deliberate pattern of images sought by the White House, the article said.
At a recent economic speech in Indianapolis, people sitting behind Bush were told to take off their ties so they'd look more like ordinary folks, WISH-TV reported. At a speech at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, cameramen were given a platform that offered up Bush's profile as if he were already carved into the mountain with Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. [NYT, May 16, 2003]
But the TV media and the American people shrugged off concerns about whether Bush had used the USS Abraham Lincoln and its crew as a political prop. When Democrats demanded a cost accounting, MSNBC posed its question-of-the-day this way: "President Bush's Flight Flap. Much Ado About Nothing?" [MSNBC, May 8, 2003] A New York Times/CBS News poll found 59 percent of the American people agreeing that use of the carrier was appropriate and saying that Bush was not seeking political gain.
So how did the American people reach this point where a majority didn't mind being manipulated no matter how obvious or absurd the trickery? Part of the answer, of course, related to the trauma of 9/11 when the nation felt victimized and concluded that "united we stand" was the right strategy even if that meant giving Bush a blank check to do whatever he wanted, no matter how reckless.
The Matrix's Origin
But a fuller explanation for this American Matrix goes back much farther and like the Matrix in the movie we know some but not all the facts. The American Matrix grew out of Republican anger in the 1970s. That anger followed the leaking of the Pentagon Papers which described the secret the history of the Vietnam War and the revelations about President Richard Nixon's political abuses known as Watergate. Those two disclosures helped force U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam and drove Nixon from office.
For leading Republicans, the trauma was extreme as the party was pummeled in congressional elections in 1974 and lost the White House in 1976. An influential core of wealthy conservatives decided that they needed to assert tighter control over what information reached and influenced the people.
Led by former Treasury Secretary Bill Simon and enlisting the likes of right-wing philanthropist Richard Mellon Scaife, these Republicans began pouring tens of millions of dollars into building a conservative media infrastructure to challenge the mainstream press, which the conservatives labeled "liberal." [For more background, see Consortiumnews.com's "Democrats' Dilemma."]
This political/media strategy gained momentum in the 1980s when President Ronald Reagan's image-savvy team worked closely with the emerging conservative media, such as Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times which Reagan called his "favorite" newspaper. Meanwhile, a host of conservative attack groups, such as Accuracy in Media, went after journalists who exposed embarrassing facts about Reagan's secret operations, such as the Iran-Contra scandal and drug-trafficking by the Nicaraguan Contras, Reagan's beloved "freedom fighters."
Conservative activists worked hand-in-glove with Reagan's "public diplomacy" apparatus, which borrowed psychological operations specialists from the U.S. military to conduct what was termed "perception management." Their goal was to manage the perceptions of the American people about key foreign-policy issues, such as Central America and the threat posed by the Soviet Union.
"The most critical special operations mission we have is to persuade the American people that the communists are out to get us," explained deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force, J. Michael Kelly, at a National Defense University conference.
In the 1980s, the Republicans were helped by news executives in mainstream publications who favored Reagan's hard-line foreign policy, including New York Times executive editor Abe Rosenthal. Some of these executives turned their news organizations away from the tough reporting that was needed to expose the foreign policy abuses that were occurring under Reagan.
That averting of eyes was one of the key reasons major newspapers, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, largely missed the Iran-Contra scandal and attacked the reporting of other journalists who uncovered foreign-policy crimes such as cocaine trafficking by Nicaraguan Contra forces. A false reality was being created that covered up the ugly side of U.S. foreign policy. [For details, see Robert Parry's Lost History.]
Clinton Wars
In the 1990s, the interests of the maturing conservative news media and the mainstream news media merged even more fully as both groups found common cause in exaggerating misconduct by President Bill Clinton. Mainstream journalists discovered that they could report sloppily about Clinton and gain the praise rather than the opprobrium of the well-financed conservative attack groups. [For details, see The Hunting of the President by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons, or Sidney Blumenthal's The Clinton Wars.]
Though many key facts about Clinton's Whitewater investments and other "scandals" were misrepresented by the national press, there were no punishments for the reporters involved, only rewards. By contrast, the few reporters who still had the audacity to dig up evidence of past crimes from the Reagan-Bush era found themselves under attack and their livelihoods threatened.
For instance, when San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb revived the Contra-drug story in the mid-1990s, he was denounced by the New York Times and other leading newspapers that had pooh-poohed the scandal when it was unfolding in the 1980s. Even when a 1998 CIA report verified that the Contras were implicated in the drug trade and that the Reagan-Bush administration had hidden the evidence, the major newspapers continued to concentrate their wrath on Webb, who was driven out of the profession. [For details, see Parry's Lost History.]
The same patterns carried over into the 2000 election in which Democrat Al Gore faced withering attacks on his credibility often from made-up or exaggerated examples of his supposed lying while Republican George W. Bush got pretty much a free pass. [For details, see the Consortiumnews.com's "Protecting Bush-Cheney."]
Again, the conservative and mainstream media outlets often worked in tandem, with the New York Times joining the Washington Times in misquoting Gore about "inventing" the Internet or claiming that "I was the one that started" the Love Canal toxic-waste cleanup. Again, there were no consequences for reporters who got the facts wrong. [For details, see the Consortiumnews.com's "Al Gore v. the Media."]
Terror Attacks
The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, only deepened these tendencies.
The following month, for instance, a group of news organizations completed a press recount of all legally cast votes in the pivotal presidential election in Florida. The original purpose of the recount had been simple: to determine which candidate the voters of Florida actually had picked for president based on votes considered legal under Florida law.
But the recount's outcome presented a challenge. Regardless of what standard was used for the famous chads whether perforated, hanging or fully punched through Al Gore was the winner by a narrow margin.
In other words, if the state of Florida had been allowed to count all its legally cast ballots, George W. Bush would not be president. That finding, however, would have certainly drawn the wrath of the administration and many Americans who were rallying around Bush in the wake of 9/11. The decision of the news executives was to simply misrepresent the results. For the leads of their stories, the New York Times, CNN and other news organizations arbitrarily ignored the legal Florida ballots in which voters both marked and wrote in their choice, the so-called "over-votes."
By claiming, incorrectly, that these ballots would not have been counted in the state-court-ordered recount, which was stopped by Bush's allies on the U.S. Supreme Court, the media outlets kept up the pretense that Bush was the legitimate winner of Florida and thus the White House. Though this manipulation of the vote tally was noted by a few publications at the time, including this Web site, the false reality of Bush's Florida victory has become part of the American Matrix. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com's "So Bush Did Steal the White House" or the book, Neck Deep.]
Iraq's WMD
The American Matrix grew, too, with the altering of U.S. intelligence to buttress the case for war against Iraq. As investigative reporter Seymour Hersh described, a small group of neo-conservative ideologues, calling themselves the Cabal and stationed at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, reworked U.S. intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to help justify a U.S. invasion.
The Cabal was organized by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, an architect of Bush's policy of pre-emptive attack against perceived American enemies, Hersh wrote in an article for The New Yorker. "Special Plans was created in order to find evidence of what Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, believed to be true that Saddam Hussein had close ties to al-Qaeda, and that Iraq had an enormous arsenal of chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear weapons that threatened the region and, potentially, the United States," Hersh wrote, citing a Pentagon adviser who supported the Cabal's work.
Hersh also quoted a former Bush administration intelligence official as saying he quit because "they were using the intelligence from the CIA and other agencies only when it fit their agenda. They didn't like the intelligence they were getting, and so they brought in people to write the stuff. They were so crazed and so far out and so difficult to reason with to the point of being bizarre. Dogmatic, as if they were on a mission from God."
Hersh found, too, that Wolfowitz and other key neo-conservatives at the Pentagon were disciples of the late political philosopher Leo Strauss, who believed that some deception of the population is necessary in statecraft. "The whole story is complicated by Strauss's idea actually Plato's that philosophers need to tell noble lies not only to the people at large but also to powerful politicians," said Stephen Holmes, a law professor at New York University. [See The New Yorker, May 12, 2003]
While the post-9/11 period was creating these new openings for the Pentagon's Straussians to manipulate the American people, it was also offering enticing opportunities for the U.S. cable news networks to "brand" themselves in red, white and blue. While unapologetic flag-waving journalism on cable news had been pioneered by Rupert Murdoch's conservative Fox News network, third-ranked MSNBC seized the new opportunity with the most obvious zeal. The network, a Microsoft-General Electric collaboration, dumped war critic Phil Donahue, adopted the administration's title for the war "Operation Iraqi Freedom" and emblazoned an American flag on the corner of its screens, just like Fox.
During the war, MSNBC flooded its programming with sentimental salutes to the troops, including mini-profiles of U.S. soldiers in a feature called "America's Bravest." The network also broadcast Madison Avenue-style promos of the war that featured images of heroic U.S. troops and happy Iraqis, without any blood-stained images of overflowing hospitals, terrified children or grieving mothers. The promos carried messages, such as "Home of the Brave" and "Let Freedom Ring."
Reporting about U.S. military reversals during the early days of the war also brought swift reprisals. When veteran war correspondent Peter Arnett observed accurately to an Iraqi TV interviewer that Iraqi military resistance was stiffer than U.S. military planners had expected, he was fired by NBC and kicked off its MSNBC affiliate.
Web sites, such as this one, were hit with angry e-mails from readers furious at any suggestion that the war was not a total success or that the Bush administration had colored its war-fighting scenarios with dangerous wishful thinking. Even taking note of obvious facts, such as the failure of the administration's initial "shock and awe" bombing strategy, was controversial.
Bush Admission
Ironically, while telling these truths real-time could bring reprisals, Bush himself acknowledged their accuracy later. "Shock and awe said to many people that all we've got to do is unleash some might and people will crumble," Bush said in an interview with NBC's Tom Brokaw. "And it turns out the fighters were a lot fiercer than we thought. The resistance for our troops moving south and north was significant resistance." [NBC Nightly News interview, released April 25, 2003]
As craven as the U.S. media's behavior may have been, flag-waving journalism worked where it counts in the ratings race. While MSNBC remained in third place among U.S. cable news outlets, it posted the highest ratings growth in the lead-up to war and during the actual fighting, up 124 percent compared with a year earlier. Fox News, the industry leader, racked up a 102 percent gain and No. 2 CNN rose 91 percent. [WSJ, April 21, 2003]
Though some Americans switched to BBC or CNN's international channels to find more objective war coverage, large numbers of Americans clearly wanted the "feel-good" nationalism of Fox News and MSNBC. Images of U.S. troops surrounded by smiling Iraqi children were more appealing than knowing the full truth.
The full story of the Iraq War demanded unsettling judgments about the slaughter of thousands of Iraqis and the maiming of children, like the 12-year-old boy who lost both his arms and his family to a U.S. bombing attack.
Balanced coverage would have recognized that many Iraqis reacted with coldness and hostility to U.S. forces, a harbinger of the Iraqi resistance that's now killing an average of one or two U.S. soldiers a day.
To some foreigners, the uniformity in the U.S. war coverage had the feel of a totalitarian state.
"There have been times, living in America of late, when it seemed I was back in the Communist Moscow I left a dozen years ago," wrote Rupert Cornwell in the London-based Independent. "Switch to cable TV and reporters breathlessly relay the latest wisdom from the usual unnamed 'senior administration officials,' keeping us on the straight and narrow. Everyone, it seems, is on-side and on-message. Just like it used to be when the hammer and sickle flew over the Kremlin."
Cornwell traced this lock-step U.S. coverage to the influence of Fox News, which "has taken its cue from George Bush's view of the universe post-11 September either you're with us or against us. Fox, most emphatically, is with him, and it's paid off at the box office. Not for Fox to dwell on uncomfortable realities like collateral damage, Iraqi casualties, or the failure of the U.S. troops to protect libraries and museums." [Independent, April 23, 2003]
Punishing Dissent
But the U.S. cable news networks and talk radio went beyond simply boosting the war. They often served as the Bush administration's public enforcers, seeking out and destroying Americans who disagreed with the war policy. Because one of the Dixie Chicks criticized Bush, the music group has faced an organized campaign to boycott their music and destroy their careers.
MSNBC offered up a program hosted by Republican commentator Joe Scarborough asking why actors Sean Penn and Tim Robbins, who criticized the war, are now whining about retaliation. "Sean Penn is fired from an acting job and finds out that actions bring about consequences. Whoa, dude!" chortled Scarborough.
As justification for depriving Penn of work, Scarborough cited a comment that Penn made while on a pre-war trip to Iraq. Penn said, "I cannot conceive of any reason why the American people and the world would not have shared with them the evidence that they claim to have of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq." [MSNBC transcript, May 18, 2003]
As it turned out, Penn's pre-war comments would be equally valid today, with the U.S. and Great Britain desperately seeking that WMD evidence.
In their defense, many news executives might argue that their jobs go beyond simply telling the American people the truth. They also are concerned about national unity, especially at a time of crisis. And they don't want to be accused of undercutting U.S. troops at war.
Yet, there is a grave danger to both troops and civilians when the news media sanitizes war. By keeping unpleasant images from the American people, the news media feeds the illusion that war is painless, even fun, something to be engaged in easily over slight or imagined provocation. This sort of lazy thinking gets people killed and can squander the wealth of the most powerful nations.
Truth Delayed
Among U.S. politicians, Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-West Virginia, has been the most forceful in addressing the dangers to democracy and to U.S. troops that comes from pervasive government lying.
"No matter to what lengths we humans may go to obfuscate facts or delude our fellows, truth has a way of squeezing out through the cracks, eventually," Byrd said on the Senate floor on May 21, 2003. "But the danger is that at some point it may no longer matter. The danger is that damage is done before the truth is widely realized. The reality is that, sometimes, it is easier to ignore uncomfortable facts and go along with whatever distortion is currently in vogue."
Byrd continued, "Regarding the situation in Iraq, it appears to this senator that the American people may have been lured into accepting the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, in violation of long-standing international law, under false pretenses. The run up to our invasion of Iraq featured the president and members of his Cabinet invoking every frightening image they could conjure, from mushroom clouds, to buried caches of germ warfare, to drones poised to deliver germ-laden death in our major cities.
"The tactic was guaranteed to provoke a sure reaction from a nation still suffering from a combination of post traumatic stress and justifiable anger after the attacks of 9-11. It was the exploitation of fear. It was a placebo for the anger. Presently our loyal military personnel continue their mission of diligently searching for WMD. They have so far turned up only fertilizer, vacuum cleaners, conventional weapons and the occasional buried swimming pool. They are misused on such a mission and they continue to be at grave risk," Byrd said.
"But the Bush team's extensive hype of WMD in Iraq as justification for a pre-emptive invasion has become more than embarrassing," the aging West Virginia senator continued. "It has raised serious questions about prevarication and the reckless use of power. Were our troops needlessly put at risk? Were countless Iraqi civilians killed and maimed when war was not really necessary? Was the American public deliberately misled? Was the world?"
Right now, a far more vigorous examination of these questions is underway in Europe, where leading politicians and journalists are questioning the pre-war claims of Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. "We were told that Saddam had weapons ready for use within 45 minutes," declared former British Foreign Minister Robin Cook, who resigned over Blair's pro-war policies. "It's now 45 days since the war has finished and we have still not found anything."
Paul Keetch, defense spokesman for a British opposition party, the Liberal Democrats, said, "No weapons means no threat. Without WMD, the case for war falls apart. It would seem either the intelligence was wrong and we should not rely on it, or the politicians overplayed the threat." [Independent, May 29, 2003]
BBC News quoted a senior British intelligence official as saying that a dossier that Blair's government compiled about Iraq's alleged WMD program was rewritten to make it "sexier," including the addition of a dubious claim that the Iraqis were prepared to launch a WMD strike within 45 minutes.
"It was included in the dossier against our wishes because it wasn't reliable," the official said. "Most things in the dossier were double source but that was single source and we believe the source was wrong." [BBC News, May 29, 2003]
The world's press also has pounced on admissions by senior U.S. officials conceding that the pre-war WMD claims may have been hyped. In a speech in New York, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said it is "possible that they [the Iraqis] decided that they would destroy them prior to a conflict and I don't know the answer." In an interview with Vanity Fair, Deputy Defense Secretary Wolfowitz said the WMD allegation was stressed "for bureaucratic reasons" because "it was the one reason everyone could agree on."
Lt. Gen. James Conway, who commanded the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, told reporters that "it remains a surprise to me that we have not uncovered (chemical) weapons in some of the forward dispersal areas" where U.S. intelligence claimed they were ready for use by Iraq's Republican Guards.
"We were simply wrong," Conway said.
Destroying the Matrix
As with the Matrix of the movies, the first step toward destroying this American Matrix would be for the people to get a fuller understanding of the truth, even if that truth is difficult and unpleasant. Why that first step has been so difficult, however, is that there exist too few U.S. news outlets that will challenge the powers-that-be.
Longer-term challenges to the American Matrix may come simply from the grinding logic of budgetary policies. In less than three years in office, Bush has dug a budget hole so deep that an expected $5.6 trillion surplus over a 10-year period from 2002 to 2011 has been transformed into a projected $3.6 trillion deficit, a $9 trillion reversal of black ink to red ink. [Washington Post, May 31, 2003] The U.S. budget surplus was expected to help pay retirement costs for the Baby Boom generation, but now a fiscal train wreck seems increasingly unavoidable.
The failure of Bush's policies to create new jobs may be another wake-up call to Americans. Since Bush took office, the U.S. economy has shed more than two million jobs, leaving about 9.2 million Americans out of work. "The U.S. is experiencing the most protracted job-market downturn since the Great Depression," wrote the Wall Street Journal. "It has left behind a remarkably broad swath of workers from young to old, and from high-school dropouts to the highly educated." [WSJ, May 29, 2003]
Those lucky enough to find new jobs often are forced to take steep pay cuts, as are many who manage to hold onto their old jobs, Time magazine reported.
"The net result of the various pressures on pay: in the first three months of 2003, median weekly earnings adjusted for inflation fell 1.5 percent, according to the U.S. Labor Department," Time wrote. "Wage erosion partly explains why the Federal Reserve Board openly frets about the threat of deflation, a downward spiral in prices that can cripple an economy." [Time, May 26, 2003]
If the American people are armed with more facts, they may be able to start seeing through the manipulative reality of feel-good war images. Possibly that change, if rapid enough, could spare the nation from the most devastating of political and economic consequences. Yet without a major investment of resources and talent in honest news media now, the American Matrix may remain the only reality that most Americans ever will know.
[For a limited time, you can purchase Robert Parry's trilogy on the Bush family for only $34. For details, click here.]
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America's Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).


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Renishaw opens new Indian training and demonstration centre
New engineering training centre opened in Pune, India
Renishaw recently opened its first dedicated demonstration and training centre for the Indian market at its main office in Pune. The new 200 square metre facility houses CNC machine tools and co-ordinate measuring machines (CMMs) from local Indian manufacturers, which together with supporting seminar rooms, will allow Renishaw to meet the increasing need for training and support being generated by its rapidly expanding customer base within India.
Formally opening the new facility, Ben Taylor, Renishaw's Assistant Chief Executive, said, "This investment marks a further chapter in Renishaw's ongoing commitment to the Indian market. We have been trading in India for more than 25 years, and in 2000 created Renishaw Metrology Private Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary based in Bangalore. Today, I am proud to see the contribution we are making to the growth of Indian manufacturing, assisting companies to raise quality standards and productivity levels."
The new demonstration and training centre will offer technical support to both OEM customers and end-users for Renishaw's wide range of market leading metrology products, including CMM probe systems, touch probes and laser tool setters for CNC machine tools, linear and rotary encoders for position feedback, calibration systems for machine performance analysis, and Raman spectroscopy systems for spectral analysis.
In recognition of Renishaw's vast experience within India, the UK Government's Trade & Investment organisation (UKTI) invited the company to speak about its experiences of India at the Advanced Engineering Summit which took place in New Delhi in January. At this event, Ben Taylor outlined Renishaw's history of investments in India including the creation of the wholly owned trading company, and the company's recent investment in a 100% Export Orientated Unit (EOU), located at the same site as the demonstration centre in Pune. The latter manufactures a limited range of components that were previously procured, and products where assembly costs are critical to competitiveness.
Within India, Renishaw has also set up a procurement operation to directly source high quality components from Indian vendors, whilst a development team specialising in metrology software has also been formed. The sales and marketing operation for India is focused in Bangalore, with regional offices in Delhi (Gurgaon) and Pune, supported by resident sales engineers in other important industrial centres. Total employee numbers within India now exceed 100.
The Renishaw Group currently has operations in 30 countries, with total employee numbers now over 2,100. For the year-ended June 2007, worldwide sales totalled £180.9 million (US$360 million).
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Renishaw opens new Indian training and demonstration centre
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World leading measurement company Renishaw, opened its first dedicated demonstration and training centre for the Indian market at its main office in Pune on January 17th 2008.[137kB]
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text:
It's a year-round best seller and by all rights has never been better, but Ben Sin, writing for Kill Screen Daily, says NBA 2K13's competitive balance—online anyway—is completely thrown out of whack by the superteams that make the real league such a compelling story for basketball fans.
"Whereas the Chicago Bulls, despite having only one all star for most of the past 28 months, were able to become a top team with hard-nosed defense and grit, the digital Bulls are simply overmatched anytime they play against a team with a cache of stars, like, say the Knicks," Sin writes.
He has a point, even if the tendency to pick the league's best team in multiplayer is hardly peculiar to NBA 2K13. The NBA, with five players on the floor and a total of 12 on the bench, has the smallest personnel size of the major team sports, making superstars' acquisition a lot more impactful than in sports with 9 or 11 on a side, especially one with specialized positions.
But any football team with a talented quarterback, running back, and receiver or tight end will be favored in online multiplayer regardless of the quality of the offensive line or the defense. The difference is that those positions are largely confined to a few interactions. Tom Brady throws the ball, Adrian Peterson runs the ball and sometimes catches it, Calvin Johnson catches it and then runs with it. Furthermore, in video games, their success is much more dependent on teammates' execution than in basketball, especially considering how frequently isolation plays are run in online hoops.
There are more ways for a superstar to beat you in basketball, and a team with three of them has a huge advantage, especially in online multiplayer, which rarely looks like the sport it simulates. Even simulation quality games give a tremendous weight to offense, probably because that's where the most fun comes in playing a video game.
I'm not sure I go along with his final recommendation for fixing the imbalance, but Sin's correct in pointing out that NBA 2K13's multiplayer—almost through no fault of its own—is made very routine by the same thing that makes the real league so exciting. My recommendation: Start up a franchise in MyTeam, whose online multiplayer does a decent job of matching you to teams of similar strength. But give the essay a read, it makes a valid point that developers should consider more.
Lebron James didn't kill the NBA, but he did kill NBA videogames [Kill Screen Daily]


text:
On The Flip Side...
Well, after the week I have had...I thought to be fair, it was time to come up with thirteen reasons to hate snow. I think this will be easier than my thirteen reasons to love it...let's see...
1) It's cold
2) It gets really dirty
3) So hard to push a stroller through the snow
4) Dangerous to drive in
5) Shoveling snow is just plain no fun
6) Scraping it off the car...plllllttt!
7) It's wet
8) It's slippery (I took a fall running last year in it)
9) Other people drive like morons in it
10) It falls off the high rises and that's so dangerous
11) Traps you in the house
12) Makes the sidewalks impossible to walk on
13) Seriously, what's the point if I can't ski on it???
That was way to easy.......
68 comments
Makes me glad I don't live somewhere snowy anymore!ReplyDelete
All true, but still I'd love to see some snow over here!ReplyDelete
My TT wishes you "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year" in 13 European languages.
- AnonymousDecember 12, 2007 at 4:29 PM
It never snows here, but it did on Christmas Day, 2004. We loved it, but that's because it only lasted one day. : )ReplyDelete
I hate snow. Hate, hate, hate it! We have the possibility of getting some this weekend...when I'm supposed to be on a four hour drive north. Super.ReplyDelete
Happy TT!
Skiing is the only good reason to me. I don't live in snow country and don't want to. Great list. Have a wonderful TT. :)ReplyDelete
I love the first snow of the season. After that, I'm finished until the next year.ReplyDelete
You got my vote on all of them!ReplyDelete
The Pink Flamingo
I am so sorry for your pain! :)ReplyDelete
I cannot and will not drive in snow, ice or anything resembling it so that type of weather holds me captive...
Now...how can I say I can hate snow when we don't have that here. So maybe if and whenever we have snow, I wouldn't hate but most likely welcome it.ReplyDelete
I totally agree! That white stuff is completely overrated!ReplyDelete
We don't get much snow here either.ReplyDelete
Happy TT!
I love snow but I hate it also... It's a weird relationship!!!!ReplyDelete
I love snow on christmas eve and christmas day and whenever I'm not stuck trying to walk in it...
Happy TT!!!
I still love it and I'm the one that has to shovel it!ReplyDelete
Happy TT
I live in MI, so I can relate to all of your reasons. The one thing that amazes me is that people who should be used to it still do not know how to drive in the snow.ReplyDelete
By the way, I like your new header... it's really sharp.
I love snow. I guess I am the minority. I love the stillness when it falls. It is way better than ice.ReplyDelete
A valid list, to say the least. The dirty part drives my husband nuts. I tell him to think of it as the crumbs on a coffee cake. He is a diplomat; he makes no comment!ReplyDelete
Great list. Will you be back to loving it next week? Too much fun...
Writing in Faith
Oh gosh me too! Except we've been able to cross country ski here... I hope it clears soon!ReplyDelete
Happy TT.
My TT is up A little kindness
Yeah I am with you on this one. I so hate snow and ice. I could totally live in a warmer climate. Keep warm!ReplyDelete
Nice reversal this week!ReplyDelete
I guess you are right about all those reasons - but I sure love the snow (cuz I never get to see it often enough). Take care. KellanReplyDelete
No, no, no, way too early for this list. What are you going to do in January and February? LOL, see I can now like the stuff b/c I have a kid nordic skiing this year. I see where that would make a difference from a baby in a stroller!ReplyDelete
BTW- read your blog below, good for you for saying something to that guy about your husband.
How about it eventually melts? :-)ReplyDelete
Happy TT!
My Thursday Thirteen: 13 of the sexiest and/or most romantic love scene clips on film
snow sucks...no two ways about it! winter sucks. clouds suck. cold air sucks. slush sucks. icicles suck. black ice sucks. slipping and sliding sucks. anything that isn't warm...it sucks.ReplyDelete
enough negativity for ya! i don't heart winter!
I'll agree with pushing the stroller through it, but I plan on using it for exercise this year! (and next year, etc) if we'd just get enough all at once and I'd remember my promise to myself to use it as exercise. Plus, I always look at it like coloring the lines (vaccuming too).ReplyDelete
Come visit - 13 things about my hubby, T!
Where I live, we rarely get snow so everyone has to drive to it. I like to play in it for about 15 minutes and then Im good:) Driving in it really sucks. The people in Cali dont know how to drive in any other weather besides sunny. Happy TT and thanks for stopping by.ReplyDelete
So true! I miss it... but not so much.
I remember why it's a PITA when I read things like this!
You're so fun!!
- AnonymousDecember 12, 2007 at 11:08 PM
I'll never have to deal with it. Then again, I'll never get the fun part of it either. I wanna make a snowman!ReplyDelete
(my TT is at yummydown.com)
Amen! Except the skiing part. Skiing and I don't go together. Now sledding, that one I get behind.ReplyDelete
You are dead on with all of these! I tried to push my stroller through poorly plowed sidewalks today and it sucked!! Great list! LOLReplyDelete
Too funny. I like thaT YOU HAVE PRESENTED BOTH SIDES VERY FAIR OF YOU!
Damn caps lock and laziness
Where I live it's either wet or dry. Would love to have the chance to know if I'll hate or love snow. :o)ReplyDelete
Amen to all of that...I freaking hate the cold white stuff!!!!!ReplyDelete
My T13 post is up, come check it out if you get a chance. :)
I agree with you on all of those even though I've never had to push a stroller through snow I hate snow with a passion blame it on growing up on the East coast lol Happy TT & Happy HolidaysReplyDelete
Man. I don't miss the snow. I hope it goes away before Christmas! No politics this week; I felt like a break from it all. The Flatland Almanack --DamozelReplyDelete
- AnonymousDecember 13, 2007 at 2:52 AM
I'm in the Midwest where the ice storm hit so between snow and ice, snow is my favorite thing right about now.ReplyDelete
But I understand your list all the same. :)
Oh, sister, I am feeling you. Very pretty to look at but after about a day, I feel the crap needs to GO AWAY!ReplyDelete
They are all true, especially #9. I wish it would snow one day, then melted the next. I could enjoy that.ReplyDelete
Oh, #9 is SO true. I grew up in central Michigan, and that's one thing I do miss about living there--people knew how to drive in snow.ReplyDelete
HAHAH! I hate cold, therefore snow. I agree. It's only pretty for two minutes...then all this happens. Happy TT.ReplyDelete
we have just been having horrid rain and fog here in southern indiana, i am kind of wishing for snow.ReplyDelete
Nothing you can say will change my mind about snow :)ReplyDelete
Send me your snow!!!
But it is so much fun to drive your tractor in while pushing snow around.ReplyDelete
Probably not a recreation for any in the urban or subburbs, but definitely for the farmers!!
I would love to see snow here - neevr going to happen ...* boo hoo*ReplyDelete
How about it blocks the street til the snow plows can get to you - a day or two? I think you named every other crappy thing about snow!ReplyDelete
I had to come back and say Don't think I missed "Thursday Thirteen" backwards - Great!ReplyDelete
Get yourself some snow shoes.....LOLReplyDelete
I like the snow, I just hate the freezing cold temps we get along with it.
My TT is finally up too.
I miss snow ... for about three seconds then remember the reasons you have listed! Still a little of the white stuff at Christmas is nice.ReplyDelete
#9 - Don't I know it. People are so busy concentrating on the snow flakes that they cause the accidents themselves.ReplyDelete
Check me out if you get a chance. Happy TT!
I'll take the rain any day. At least you don't have to shovel it.ReplyDelete
Oh yes, by about the middle of January, I've had quite enough of snow for the year. Unfortunately we still get another couple of months of it after that... :(ReplyDelete
I live in Florida so the only snow I have seen this year is fake snow. Once at our town park when they made snow for kids to slide on during the Lighting of the Lights Festival, and the fake snow during the Osborne Lights in MGM at Disney. (and THAT was soap).ReplyDelete
So, I do miss snow. But I remember how much I didn't LIKE it when I lived in NH...
Happy TT-13!
- AnonymousDecember 13, 2007 at 1:50 PM
OMG I LOVE YOU!ReplyDelete
I hate snow, and one day I'll move away from it.
As I sit here in the middle of a snowstorm.
Happy TT! xoxo
Way too funny! It does brighten up the skanky greys and browns of a Midwestern winter, though and it's prettier than rain.ReplyDelete
Happy Thursday!
I agree with #9 wholeheartedly!! And, I live in a place where it snows every winter. Do you think these people would get a clue?ReplyDelete
Happy TT!
Yep, but it's pretty for a bit. I just bought myself YakTrax so I have added traction this year; slipping pushes me WAY too close to major knee reconstruction. And I mean major.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousDecember 13, 2007 at 5:38 PM
The fact that it is wet really does it for me. It's the same reason I don't like it to rain (though I love storm)...I hate having the ground all wet.ReplyDelete
I love the way snow LOOKS while it is snowing or before it has been stepped in, but after that...I wish it would just melt away.
Happy TT!
Easier Said Than Done
Great list! Really, what is the point if you can't ski on it?ReplyDelete
we got about 10 inches today...i'm NOT looking forward to shoveling out the cars tomorrow!ReplyDelete
I concur :)ReplyDelete
The Egel Nest
Amen! We lived in tropical weather all our lives, and recently moved to Massachusetts. I must say... not a fan of the snow.ReplyDelete
You're so right. Strollering through it is a nightmare!
OK, you make some good points. It's gotta be nice to have seasons though, isn't it?!?ReplyDelete
Too hot for snow in Melbourne. BY the way, if you're wondering why I haven't visited for a couple of days, I'm in Singapore at the moment.ReplyDelete
However, I'm still posting on my blog every day!
I admit, I did like our occassional trip up to Big Bear for snowboard and ski.ReplyDelete
too far to find anywhere here.
we get frozen fog . . no snow.
- AnonymousDecember 14, 2007 at 6:29 AM
We would be happy with some rain here in Atlanta. But in the extremely rare event that we ever get a flake of snow, everything closes and everyone buys milk and bread for some reason. Go figure.ReplyDelete
Suzanne in Atlanta
You could just combine #7 and #8 and say "It's just like Bon Jovi".ReplyDelete
I added a reason winter and snow are cool to my photo blog.ReplyDelete
Check it out! Big news!
- AnonymousDecember 15, 2007 at 11:49 PM
i love snow...from the warmth of my house looking at it through the window! ah...Canadian winters...:)ReplyDelete
Hailing from C-AReplyDelete
I have nothing to say
Pity you today
Yup, us Californians don't know much about *living* in the snow, only visiting it.


text:
Time-wasting Nerd Fun
I haven't got much done these last few days. I've been too busy watching the Nasa TV live feed from the Hubble servicing mission.
The problems they have on a mission like this are so wonderfully groan-in-sympathy familiar: stuck bolts. Like working on old plumbing, with the same issues. They're too professional to say it, but if I was in the control room there'd be a lot of, "Watch out! Don't strip that thing. Omigod. You stripped it." And so on.
Yesterday, Mike Massimino had to get at a failed power card inside the telescope. It wasn't designed for removal, so the access plate was held down with over a hundred screws of a bunch of different sizes, which was itself behind a great big steel bar of a handhold on the surface of the telescope. The steel bar had a stuck bolt. It would not come off.
They have mockups on the ground of the same setup. Some smart tech figured out you could break the whole thing off. They showed video. The thing snapped with a bang like a rifle and shot across the room.
I love the language they use in the astronaut business. When they were going back and forth about this maneuver with Massimino on the telescope — a maneuver that could shred his suit and the telescope if it went wrong — ground Control said, "We're a bit concerned about the stored energy in the handhold."
One of the striking things, watching the astronauts work, is how slowly everything goes. They move slowly, slowly, slowly, like fish in glycerin. They can barely bend their hands to grasp tools because of all the pressure keeping them alive inside their suits. But when I was watching Massimino on that one space walk, everything seemed way speeded up. At first I thought they were running file footage at double speed. Then I learned he's from New York.
And now, folks, sorry, but I have things to do. Got to watch them putting the new thermal insulation "blankets" around all that great new equipment they've successfully put in. As Jack Horkheimer says, "Keep looking up!" There'll be great new Hubble pics coming out of this.


text:
How to choose which OS to use
1059 points · 61 comments
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text:
FAAN Teen Summit, 2012
A FAAN conference is one of the rare opportunities for parents and children alike to be with other people that truly get it. For parents, I thought: "There is no better time to practice having difficult conversations about food allergies then when we are all together." So, that's exactly what we did.
I put the parents in unfamiliar pairs, and then asked them to role-play about what a food allergy emergency means to their child. Even before we started the exercise, from the dais, I could see parent pairs connecting immediately. I saw a lot of agreement and head nods and heard outbreaks of laughter – always the best signs that connections are happening. The comments after we completed the exercise were insightful and helpful to the whole group. One food allergy mother recognized that even in this practice session she felt stressed about talking about food allergy emergencies. This stress in a low stress moment highlighted how much she felt she needed to practice emergency situations before they happen. Great! Another parent shared how her practice partner models certain situations, like dining out at a restaurant for her child, letting her 13 year old listen in on a phone call to that restaurant. This gives him a chance to hear how she does it before he will start doing the call himself. Yes! Another parent pair discussed how her child doesn't yet understand that label reading means not just one time but every time because labels change and foods are recalled. Nods all around.
With the two kids' sessions (middle school and high school/college), they came up with one-two minute skits related to what they learned or felt during the conference thus far. Some of the concepts they created and enacted were a game show, a talk show, a narrated true story that was mimed, a song, a commercial and a cautionary tale. I was deeply impressed by their creativity, cooperation and engagement in the process. And they all wanted to perform their creations for the group so much so that we ran out of time! They made each other laugh, bonded and most importantly, played.
Play is how children learn. Play can be how adults learn, too, which is why I brought these improvisational exercises to the FAAN's Teen Summit this year: to learn, to connect and be healed together.
I was honored to be a part of the FAAN's Teen Summit 2012 speaker line-up. Thank you FAAN's Teen Summit and thank you FAAN's Teen Summit conferencees for taking a leap with me – we all reaped the rich rewards!


text:
Gay Pubs
Americans may not understand humour, only humor. Canadians and Australians may not understand anything at all. Don't change a thing to remedy this.
"It was packed to the rafters down at the Oiled Donkey the other night. As I sat at the bar sipping a pink gin, a muscle-bound young chap en route to the lavatories asked if he might push in my stool a little. Much hilarity - and bumming - ensued."
Oh, my dear boy! How utterly charming to see you here on my little page! One can only assume that you've dropped by to learn about that wonderful English tradition, the Gay Pub. Now, let me assure you that this is a subject with which I am exceedingly familiar, having been a patron of such establishments for many years, and I have an extensive knowledge of those hostelries throughout our fair land where chaps such as you and I can unwind and be ourselves far away from the prying and judgemental eyes of Society. You are as I am, one presumes? One of those that were, at school, referred to as Some Other Boys? A Friend of Dorothy? Oh, of course you are - were you anything but, you could surely not be so delightfully comely as you are. Well, let it be said that I shall find it an absolute pleasure to instruct you in the Ways of the Gay Pub - in fact, mon cherie, think of me as your dear old Uncle Noël from hereon in.
The History of English Gay Pubs
Gay pubs have been around for a good deal longer than most people imagine; in fact, there's a veritable wealth of intriguing evidence to suggest they've existed for as long as gays and pubs have, which is since at least 1876, moreover historians have turned up tantalising clues to suggest they may have been around even before that. Back in those days they were more usually known as "the love that dares not speak its name pubs", of course, which is a bit of a misnomer as the majority of gay pub clientele are more interested in no-ties homosexual fucking and run a mile at the briefest suggestion of love. Like my, ahem, friend Ned Rorem - I'll scratch his eyes out if I ever see him again, the little bitch.
One possible early literary reference to a gay pub comes to us from the Bard himself - he earned the title after he was barred from all the pubs in Stratford-on-Avon for wearing chaps with nothing underneath, did you know that, sweetness? - and is to be found in The Merchant of Venice; the eponymous Merchant being the sort of man who engaged in a spot of rough trade from time to time, if you follow my meaning. In the play we hear the sad tale of Antonio and Bassanio, two men who were forced to hide the love they shared due to Bassanio's indecision over his own sexuality:
ANTONIO: Commend me to your honourable wife:
Tell her the process of Antonio's end,
Say how I lov'd you, speak me fair in death;
And, when the tale is told, bid her be judge
Whether Bassanio had not once a love.
BASSANIO: But life itself, my wife, and all the world
Are not with me esteemed above thy life;
I would lose all, ay, sacrifice them all
Now, how about giving me a quick handjob before you die, you old queen?
Recently, my dear, scholars at Oxford having been attempting to prove Shakespearian authorship of an absolutely remarkable document believed to be a lost section of the play and titled Antonio Getteth His Wicked Waye Wytth Bassanio After Getting Hymme Ratte-Ars'd Downe Ye Saracen's Fystte, which, they believe, is a reference to a gay pub in 16th Century Venice[1].
The first overtly gay pub in England was the Sailor's Arms, which opened for business in 1887 on the docks down at Millwall - an establishment condemned to infamy by the roughness of its patrons and yet frequented by those with an interest in the exotic crew of ships from mysterious and far-away lands, such as the exquisitely spicy seamen of the Far East. Sailors from Africa too were often well-endowed with all manner of delights, and on a busy day the pub was alive with the sound of salty foreign craft docking in welcoming English harbours. This made it really quite the place to be for adventurous young men about town such as ourselves. Of course, the Sailor's Arms is long gone now, replaced by apartments that sell for £500,000 per square foot to hedge fund managers and investment bankers. Still, those are distinctly stressful occupations and an enterprising youth can make a good living down that way, offering executive relief. You'd be wise to consider such a trade yourself, young fellow-me-lad, with your pretty face and delicious pertness.
How Does One Know That One Is In A Gay Pub?
In England, those gentlemen who are not as we and whom seek out opportunity to consume beer in convivial surroundings commonly make the mistake of assuming any pub referred to as a gay pub is a public house known for the jollity and friendliness of its clientele. Entering such an establishment has proved to be an effective opener of both eyes and other orifices in many instances which, oftimes, has been the source of some complaint, such as was the case with one chap - a High Court judge if my memory serves me correctly - who took issue with the fact that he had been roughly buggered by as many as twelve individuals on each and every of his many visits to the Neon Poodle in Islington, a pub he had frequented almost daily for some forty-five years. For this reason, gay pubs have evolved a number of unmistakable ways in which they are able to distinguish themselves from non-gay pubs; a fact that serves gentlemen such as ourselves every bit as admirably as it does those of a more orthodox mindset, for in doing so they allow us to easily locate a hostelry that will serve our discerning tastes. Now, I'm rather a familiar face here at the Raving Queen and there's no doubt whatsoever that it's a gay pub, but it'll serve our needs well in exhibiting all those signs for which one should look out should one wish to find a similar establishment elsewhere.
First, take note of the music being played. If you have walked into a non-gay pub, you will invariably hear either Brothers in Arms by Dire Straits or Thin Lizzy's The Boys Are Back In Town[1]. Gay pubs are very different - for a start, the music will be many, many times louder than in a non-gay pub and will be either Abba or some sort of pounding Euro-House. Of course, being a gentleman, Euro-House is perhaps not really to my taste, but it serves most admirably as a high-BPM metronome if one wishes to keep rhythm while banging away on the tightly-stretched parchment of a teenager's quivering buttocks. But piffle, enough of that for now, let us look at other signs affording one surety that one is in a gay pub.
Look too at the decor, my fine boy - no broken windows as one might expect to find in a non-gay pub here. The dress code is, after all, a little - hmm - shall we say exotically sparse in here, so cold draughts gusting through the bar would be most unwelcome. Note too, if you will, the soft furnishings; the curtains are of fine and luxuriant crimson velvet, the seating is soft and plush - yet do not assume that bottoms are afforded gentle treatment here, for they may expect a rougher treatment than they might in other pubs, and the deep padding is there so as to offer comfort to those who otherwise might be unable to sit. Some of them are even equipped with the very latest soothing refrigeration devices, so that the aficionados of Tuesday's S&M Night can be likewise relieved.
The Clientele
The tall, muscular, bearded chap wearing denim and steel-toed boots standing over by the bar has caught your eye, eh? I'd exercise a degree or two of caution there if I were you, my lovely - that's Radclyffe. She runs the door on a Saturday night and if a man was to make a pass at her he's more likely to find the old plums caught in a grip of steel than anything else. You'll find the men on the dancefloor. Yes dear, that's them - the ones in the unfeasibly tight spandex shorts. Oh, Lord help us - there's that frightful Irish ruffian Oscar Wilde, what has he come dressed as? Leather jeans are so 1883, don't you agree? Thank heavens you came to your Uncle Noël, my darling boy, had you have asked Oscar to be your guide to England's gay pubs he'd have got you tipsy, spiked your beaujolais with a roofie or two and committed all manner of beastly, wicked acts upon your rather lovely personage, the cad. Such uncouth vulgarity! Come, come - let us take our drinkies over to the couch in that darkened corner, from whence we can observe the patrons at our leisure.
That thespian-looking fellow over there with the Babycham? Why, that's young Johnny Gielgud - been making quite a name for himself or so I hear. I taught him all he knows, of course. He was in my Star Chamber while it did the rounds up in Manchester, you know, and performed the role most satisfactorily. No idea who that lissome colt he's chatting to might be. An actor too, do you think? He's just what I had in mind to fill the hole Johnny left once he moved on to other things.
We do get the occasional straight chappy in here from time to time. I fondly recall the summer of 1923, when a mob of drunken football fans came in following a match and started trying to chat up some of the, erm, ladies. Now that I've told you that there's really no need for me to explain the uneveness of the patio in the pub garden. Oh, and that fellow over at the table across the dancefloor, the one in the transparent fuschia shirt with the velvet hot-pants; he's straight too. He's a travelling salesman from up North somewhere, likes to pop in when he's away from his good lady wife for a few days - I suppose it relieves the loneliness. He doesn't know his way about town too well, so one or two of the younger regulars usually walk him back to his hotel room - we're a friendly bunch like that in here.
Another Drinky-poo, My Dear Lad?
Oh, I see you've finished your tipple - you must have gulped that down. Quite a talent in my estimation, the ability to swallow quite like that. Time for another, one rather thinks. You can see the bar from here, just make your choice and it'll be my treat. As you can no doubt see, there's not much to choose from in the way of ales, bitters and stouts but they do offer a couple of super-strength lagers for the ladies. One thing you'll notice is that several of the more popular cocktails are available ready-mixed from the pumps, in order to save time - they have all the classics: Margarita, Bloody Mary, Aqua Velva and what have you. Some of the newer styles too - the names can be somewhat uncouth, but I must admit I'm not averse to a stiff Chocolate Soldier followed by a long Screaming Orgasm.
There's an impressive range of food too, should you desire more solid repast. Non-gay pubs tend to favour chips, pies, steak and the like but we're a little more discerning here, my dear. Do try to avoid asking the chef how large his sausage is, though, it'd only upset the poor chap; there's a reason we call him Pee-Wee, you know. I can confirm his Cumberland ring is a hearty dish that will satisfy any appetite, however, and his sauce is exceedingly piquant. What's that? You fancy something with a dash of brandy? Ah yes - a Savoy Affair. I was rather hoping you might. I keep a suite there, lovely boy, just to ensure readiness for this sort of thing.
Oh, How Simply Super - A Lock-In!
I rather fancy a couple of Black Russians, don't you? Pity there aren't any in here tonight - they tend to congregate at the Ex-Soviet Ethnic Minorities Social Club across town since it opened. Oh well, I'll just have to settle for an Americano and a Quick Fuck instead. But - damn and blast! - I'm rather afraid that time has quite run away with us, dear boy, midnight approaches and the pub will be closing at any moment. How awfully beastly of it. Hmm - do give me a moment though, I'll just have word with the barman...
...Well, my dear, it seems we're in luck. They're going to have a lock-in tonight - that means that the pub's doors will be locked and nobody will be allowed to come in, but those of us already here can stay on as private guests of the licensee. That has two advantages: firstly, we can have some more cocktails and secondly - as the pub will, post-midnight, be officially a private house rather than a public house, all manner of exciting entertainments will become available that would otherwise see the place shut down quicker than you can say "make mine a large one." Oh, such joy! Here we go - it's a minute past midnight and I notice they've just opened the dark room. I imagine that being a stranger in the world of gay pubs, you'll not have come across dark rooms before. They're not places for the faint-hearted but, well, if you'd care to experience one just jump right in and take whatever comes. You've had a few drinks now, so you should be suitably relaxed - still, perhaps you'd better have a little snifter of this amyl nitrite just to be on the safe side.
Oh - is that who I think it is over there? Why yes, it's our local Liberal Democrat member of Parliament. Do forgive me, dear boy, I'll just have to pop across the room and have a little chat with him about the gents lavatories in Regents Park - oh, it's just a shared interest we have, you know, a philanthropic concern for public facilities and all that - I shan't be long. Why don't you go and see if you can get that rather large chap standing by the bar to buy you another drink? He's been watching you all night and your old Uncle Noël has been playing the game for long enough to recognise a chickenhawk when he sets eyes on one. Go on, throw caution to the wind and tell him you're in the mood for a Bit of a Bully and an Anal Entrée in the dark room - I'm sure you'll enjoy it every bit as much as I would.
See Also
- Noël Coward
- Oscar Wilde - but only if you're truly desperate, darling
- Rough Pubs


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Jose Canseco says Mark McGwire is still lying about his use of steroids and his former manager Tony La Russa isn't telling the truth either.
McGwire admitted Monday that he used steroids for a decade, including when he hit 70 homers in 1998, but denied Canseco's claims that he injected himself and McGwire with steroids in bathroom stalls.
"I've defended Mark, I know a lot of good things about him," Canseco told ESPN 1000 radio in Chicago on Tuesday. "I can't believe he just called me a a liar. Umm, there's something very strange going on here.
"I even polygraphed that I injected him, and I passed it completely. So I want to challenge him on national TV to a polygraph examination. I want to see him call me a liar under a polygraph examination."
In Canseco's 2005 book, "Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big," Canseco claimed he introduced McGwire and other stars to steroids and performance-enhancing drugs. He wrote about injecting himself and McGwire in bathroom stalls, and how the effects of the drugs were the reason he hit 462 career home runs.
Canseco and McGwire helped lead the Athletics to a World Series sweep in 1989.
"Jose is out there doing what he's doing, but I'm not going to stoop down to his level," McGwire told ESPN on Tuesday. "None of that stuff happened. He knows it. I know it. I'm not going to stoop down to that level."
La Russa was McGwire's manager for nearly all of his 16-year career in both Oakland and St. Louis. He was also his fiercest defender, especially after The Associated Press reported McGwire used androstenedione during his record-breaking season in '98. Andro, as it was known, was made a controlled substance until 2004, when it also was banned by baseball.
The manager said he didn't know until Monday that McGwire used steroids.
"That's a blatant lie," Canseco said. "There are some things here that are so ridiculous, and so disrespectful for the public and the media to believe. I just can't believe it. I'm in total shock. These guys remind me of politicians that go up and just lie to the public and expect to get elected."
McGwire, who retired in 2001, had been widely ridiculed since he evaded questions before a congressional committee five years ago, repeatedly saying he wasn't there to address his past. His confession was sparked by the Cardinals' decision in October to hire him as hitting coach.
Canseco has said he is considering filing a class-action lawsuit against Major League Baseball and the players' association. He says he's been ostracized for going public with tales of steroids use in the sport.
"I've proved it. I'm 100 percent accurate," he told the radio station. "I never exaggerate, I told it the way it actually happened. I'm the only one who told it the way it actually happened."
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This, according to the software, is one of the hard blocks. I didn't find it particularly hard, except for the fact that the little sections are very small.
Accurate foundation piecing solved that problem.
Print or trace the block diagram onto foundation paper, number, and cut out as in the photo.
Foundation piece all the numbered sections. Trim the seam allowances to ¼". Cut out the non-numbered sections leaving a ¼" seam allowance.
Sew a small pieced triangle to opposite sides of the pieced center square.
Sew the other two pieced triangle to the other two sides of the square.
Sew the two non-triangle sections to opposite sides of the resulting pieced square.
Sew the two triangle sections to the other two sides of the block.
So cute! I love the blocks with the tiny pieces the most.
Monday, January 26, 2009
6 comments:
Wow! This is one of the most beautiful ones... :) I find it perfect!ReplyDelete
You're providing a lot of inspiration for me to use the foundation piecing technique.ReplyDelete
I'm fighting it, but it's so obvious that many of the blocks that are so tricky by hand really benefit from this technique.
Best regards and your blocks are beautiful.
that is perfect!ReplyDelete
OK, this was fun for me to make, too. Some of the others are definitely difficult - that I need to do over - but not this one.ReplyDelete
Such a pretty little block - I love it!ReplyDelete
Cute, very cute!!ReplyDelete
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Sale Date Ended
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The Chopras are organizing The Global Education Interact in Jan 2017. It is fair, but with a difference. The Global Education fair has always proved to be an idyllic platform for both the students & parents and university experts coming from all across the world to gather and discuss study overseas opportunities with serious students.
Top global universities and colleges from around 9 countries such as US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Dubai, Canada, Singapore, Switzerland, and Ireland will be assembled by the great efforts of The Chopras' staff who will also be there to:
Discuss Opportunities in these countries
Organize Seminars to inform students
Teach about the admission and scholarship processes
Guide for the visa application and availability of education loans to the students
This year, the first in the series of Global education fair will be held in Mumbai. The event details are:
Event Details –
Date: 29th Jan 2017
Time: 11 AM to 5 PM
Venue: St. Regis (Palladium) Hotel
Location- 462, Senapati Bapat Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai, 400013
Free Entry for all, so register now!!
For more information, visit http://www.thechopras.com/GEI
For more information, kindly click here- http://www.thechopras.com/discover/events-and-university-visits/global-education-fairs.html


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Limbaugh: Press 'harassing' Romney
The traveling press corps is "harassing" Mitt Romney to "create gaffes" that benefit President Barack Obama and distract from the candidate's "home run" of a trip, Rush Limbaugh said Tuesday.
"Now the reporters are harassing Romney," Limbaugh said, referring to a Tuesday morning incident where a Romney press aide told journalists to "shove it." "They're trying to create gaffes. They're working on behalf of Barack Obama. They are attempting to carry forth the meme that Romney's foreign trip is a disaster, that it's one gaffe after another. They're trying to do this in the mainstream. And the fact of the matter is Romney is having a home run of a trip."
Romney was criticized by London politicians and newspapers for calling the city's challenges prior to the Olympics "disconcerting." In the Middle East, Romney's remarks on the differences between the Palestinian and Israeli economies at a fundraiser were condemned as "racist" by Palestinian leaders.
The Poland stop started better — Romney was endorsed by anti-Communist hero Lech Walsea — but the confrontation between reporters and the Romney campaign has dominated the news cycle.
Despite these gaffes, Limbaugh said comments from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad proved Romney was having success overseas and claimed the authoritarian had endorsed President Barack Obama.
"He is doing such a good job that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad actually came out, and for all intents and purposes, endorsed Obama yesterday," Limbaugh said, according to a transcript.
In remarks reported by the Associated Press, Ahmadinejad never mentions the incumbent president but criticizes Romney for "kissing the foot" of the Jewish state and asks if the presumptive GOP nominee made concessions to "get some pennies for [his] campaign."


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MIAMI, Jan. 7 (UPI) -- LeBron James poured in 32 points for Miami Tuesday and the Heat overcame a slow start to surge past New Orleans 107-88.
Dwyane Wade registered 22 points, eight rebounds and eight assists for Miami, which trailed by six points at halftime but then caught fire, outscoring the Pelicans 64-39 down the stretch.
Chris Andersen came off the bench to hit all seven of his shots en route to 15 points as the Heat won despite the injury absences of starters Mario Chalmers (Achilles) and Shane Battier (strained quadricep).
New Orleans was paced by Anthony Davis with 22 points and 12 rebounds.


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MESOP : DARK DAYS – Peshmerga forces, Islamic State clash near Kurdistan's capital city, Erbil / MAKHMUR
August 7, 2014 – ERBIL – Kurdish forces attacked Islamic State fighters near the Kurdish regional capital of Erbil in northern Iraq on Wednesday in a change of tactics supported by the Iraqi central government to try to break the Islamists' momentum.
The attack 40 km (25 miles) southwest of Erbil came after the Sunni militants inflicted a humiliating defeat on the Kurds on Sunday with a rapid advance through three towns, prompting Iraq's prime minister to order his air force for the first time to back the Kurdish forces. "We have changed our tactics from being defensive to being offensive. Now we are clashing with the Islamic State in Makhmur," said Jabbar Yawar, secretary-general of the ministry in charge of the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters.
The location of the clashes puts the Islamic State fighters closer than they have ever been to the Kurdish semi-autonomous region since they swept through northern Iraq almost unopposed in June. Shortly after that lightning advance, thousands of U.S.-trained Iraqi soldiers fled. Kurdish fighters, who boast of their battles against Saddam Hussein's forces, stepped in as did Iranian-trained Shi'ite militias. But the Islamic State gunmen's defeat of the Peshmerga, whose name means "those who confront death", has called into question their reputation as fearsome warriors.
The Islamic State poses the biggest threat to Iraq's security since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. The group, which believes Shi'ites are infidels who deserve to be killed, has won the support of some Sunnis who don't agree with their ideology but share a fierce determination to topple Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Maliki, a Shi'ite, is seen as an authoritarian figure with a sectarian agenda whose alienation of Sunnis is destabilising.
Iraq, an OPEC member, has returned to the dark days of 2006-2007 when a civil war peaked. Bombings, kidnappings and executions have again become part of daily life.
On Wednesday, 60 people were killed by an Iraqi government air strike on a Sharia court set up by Islamic State militants in a juvenile prison in Mosul, the office of Maliki's military spokesman said.The Islamic State judge who ran the court, which routinely orders beheadings, was among those killed in the northern Iraqi city, the spokesman said.Hospital officials and witnesses said earlier the strike killed 50 people in a prison set up by the Islamic State, making no mention of the court.In Baghdad, car bombs exploded in crowded markets in several Shi'ite districts, killing 47 people, police said.A roadside bomb killed three Shi'ites who volunteered to fight the Islamic State on a road between the town of Samarra and Mosul, a police official said.In Taji, 20 km (12 miles) north of Baghdad, authorities found the bodies of six people who had been handcuffed and shot in the head and chest execution-style, medical sources said.
The Islamic State has declared a 'caliphate' in swathes of Iraq and Syria that it controls and threatens to march on Baghdad. Islamic State fighters and their Sunni militant and tribal allies also hold parts of western Iraq. Maliki has ordered his air force to help the Kurds in their fight against the Islamic State, which seized an array of weapons including tanks and anti-aircraft guns from the Iraqi soldiers who fled in June. Maliki was at odds with the Kurds over oil, budgets and land, but both sides put their differences aside, alarmed by the Islamic State's latest gains – a fifth oilfield and three more towns in the north. The group also reached Iraq's biggest dam.Yawar confirmed the Kurds had re-established military cooperation with Baghdad."The Peshmerga ministry sent a message to the Iraqi defence ministry requesting the convening of an urgent meeting on military cooperation. The joint committees have been reactivated," Yawar said by telephone.
Maliki, who has been serving in a caretaker capacity since an inconclusive election in April, has rejected calls by Kurds, Sunnis, some fellow Shi'ites and even regional power-broker Iran to step aside and make room for a less polarising figure.
In his weekly televised address to the nation on Wednesday, he warned that any unconstitutional attempt to form a new government would open "the gates of hell" in Iraq. Maliki rejected any outside interference in the process, an apparent reference to Tehran, which Iranian officials have said believes Maliki can no longer hold Iraq together.Iran is now backing calls by Iraq's top cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani for Maliki to go and is looking for an alternative leader to combat the Sunni Islamist insurgency, the Iranian officials said.The United States, which was a key backer of Maliki when he first came to office as an unknown in 2006, has urged Iraqi politicians to form a more inclusive government that can unify Iraqis and take on the Islamic State.
The Islamic State has put Iraq's survival as a unified state in jeopardy.The capture of one of the towns, Sinjar, home to many of Iraq's Kurdish Yazidi minority sect in a weekend offensive could lead to a humanitarian crisis.
Yazidis, ethnic Kurds who follow an ancient religion derived from Zoroastrianism, are at high risk of being executed because the Islamic State militants view them as devil worshippers.Yawar said 50,000 Yazidis now hiding on a mountain risked starving to death if they were not rescued within 24 hours. "Urgent international action is needed to save them. Many of them, mainly the elderly, children and pregnant women, have (already) died," he said."We can't stop the Islamic State from attacking the people on the mountain because there is one paved road leading up to the mountain and it can be used by them. They (Islamic State fighters) are trying to get to that road."


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Pain comes in all shapes and sizes. Whether it arises in the chronic form of arthritis or the sudden squeeze of cardiac arrest, pain is the main motivator for a visit to the hospital.
Doctors may now have to note the eye color of their patients before choosing a procedure to treat them. New research has shown that women with dark brown and hazel eyes respond differently to pain than those with light blue and green eyes.
During the 2014 annual meeting of the American Pain Society, Inna Belfer, M.D., Ph.D., an associate professor of anesthesiology at the University of Pittsburgh, presented a study possibly linking eye color to variations in pain tolerance.
The study sample consisted of 58 healthy pregnant women at Magee-Womens Hospital of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Twenty-four women were placed in the dark group, and the remaining 34 were placed in the light group. Dr. Belfer and her team measured responses to pain before and after giving birth through a variety of quantitative standard testing, questionnaires and surveys.
The results indicated that women in the dark group experienced more dramatic response to pain with increases in anxiety and sleep disturbances than those in the light group.
"This was a small pilot study to start off," said Dr. Belfer. "All we know now is super limited a hypothesis about why there is a difference at this point would be too optimistic but this could be a next step in finding a genetic background of pain."
Identifying eye color as a genetic biomarker for pain thresholds will be advantageous for the medical community.
"Right now we don't know who is going to feel more severe pain after standard surgery or develop chronic pain," said Dr. Belfer, "This is a problem for both patients who are suffering and society."
Determining a visible indicator of a genetic signature that predicts pain tolerance will "help to identify those targeted patients, and the earlier you can identify them, you will be in better shape for the future."
This is not the first research that has related phenotypic differences and pain. Multiple studies have correlated red hair to resistance to pain blockers and requirements for higher doses of anesthesia. Dr. Belfer and her team also discovered three studies that link eye color to physiological activity.
Dr. Belfer plans to continue the research on this topic by expanding to studies including men, children and larger, more comprehensive distinctions between groups.
(c)2014 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
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Pain comes in all shapes and sizes. Whether it arises in the chronic form of arthritis or the sudden squeeze of cardiac arrest, pain is the main motivator for a visit to the hospital.