Ritual Reality

Teeth to Tail

June 05, 2006

In the June 2006 issue of The Atlantic, Fred Kaplan nails the following paragraph to the post:

Late in February, U.S. Army generals in Iraq started asking military historians and archivists to dig up official records from the 1970s involving the withdrawal of troops from Vietnam. The generals were especially interested in the nitty-gritty of pulling out procedures for disposing and transferring military property, for example, and the precise sequence of demobilization. The message was explicit: we’re going to be staging another withdrawal soon, from Iraq; once it begins, it could spin easily out of control; so we need a plan for an orderly exit now.

Given the article's title, "Hunkering Down: A guide to the U.S. military's future in Iraq", I confess I'm already confused. What's the story Kap, military hunkering or withdrawing?

Radio Sub Rosa

May 18, 2006

Our Canuck friend, Skewgee, sent us this remix... a while ago. Working from the intro we originally compiled after the '04 elections, Skewgee built a collage of fundamentalist schreeching, chomsky preaching, and zealotist blather... with rhythm.

Demon Talk - Skewgee Edit

We invite others to have a go: Demon Talk

Now that we've remembered how to type and how to run microphones and mixing boards, the Ritual Reality blog and Radio Sub Rosa pirate mindcasting are in full effect.

Update: Apparently, Skewgee is not a Canadian at all. (See Comments below.) I must have confused him with our other fan. However, this being the WorldWideWeb, I suspect that had I described him (or her) as a hyper-intelligent Shetland pony typing with prehensile ears, the response would have been, "Though it's true I'm a pony, I am not from Shet... Land."

Senseless Wreckage

July 21, 2005

The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in the insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.

- Justice Louis D. Brandeis

Everyone should pay heed to the words of Justice Brandeis. No one will, of course. At least not the people who matter; the people who issue orders from the Pentagon or those who declare murderous fatwas from the far-flung redoubts of the Baluchistan and the Hindu Kush. I'm sure almost everybody else understands these words. But we don't make the headlines. We're inconsequential. We die, but our opinions don't matter.

There's a troublesome phrase in the final clause of Brandeis's statement. "...well meaning but..."

Well meaning? Today a small cell of absolute maniacs attempted to detonate a series of bombs in London. The timing, placement and intent of those bombings was virtually identical to the bombings in London just two weeks ago. Both incidents mirror the bombings last year in Madrid and, if recent reports are accurate, forecast similar attacks in Italy. How can the phrase "well meaning" apply to anyone who would commit these acts?

Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition

July 09, 2005

We are in the grips of a dilemma here at RadioSubRosa headquarters. We've run into a wall. This is especially troublesome because, well, we don't have any walls. We dont't even have cubicles. RadioSubRosa exists entirely in dataspace. We leave it up to our readers and listeners to invoke the appropriate Newtonian rag doll physics and Looney Toons sound effects.

W's MD Part III: The War Before The War

June 09, 2005

The following is from an editorial in the June 9 edition of the Minneapolis StarTribune:

On the subject of when, why and how the United States decided to attack Iraq, American citizens' recent seeming lack of interest has been a puzzle to many in the rest of the world. As the Bush administration's stated reasons for war shifted, ebbed and flowed, many simply went with the flow, finding each succeeding reason -- well, reason enough.

American citizens' recent seeming lack of interest? I seem to recall being very interested in why the mainstream media seemed uninterested in challenging BushCo's stated reasons for war before the goddamn war. Yes, plenty of journalists and even some editors spoke out. But, by and large, while the evidence of a premeditated determination to invade Iraq had been around for some time, not many media outlets chose to dig too deeply or make much noise. In essence, American citizens were conditioned not to think about it while being simultaneously bombarded with savage and thoughtless warmongering from the likes of Judith Miller and Willaim Safire, to name but a pair. Whenever serious questions arise, the media rushes to allow equal time, what The Daily Show's Jon Stewart aptly described as "Well, that's the Left and the Right and we've had that discussion," noting that this isn't journalism, it's reporting.