Archive for the 'Social Justice' Category

Sep 17 2007

Raising Progressive Offspring

Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

peaceworld

By Emily Spence

9/17/07

One’s living in a proactively progressive family is not easy from a number of standpoints. Especially as a youngster, one can feel torn between wanting to fit in with contemporaries and standing up for an altogether different viewpoint and lifestyle — an alternative that could cause one to be ostracized and shunned by peers.

Relative to this, I well remember the day that Justin, the empathetic son of leftist friends, burst through his kitchen door and started to cry. His mother and I asked him about the reason and he replied that he couldn’t figure out the response that he should take in a heartrending situation. Therefore, he simply felt overwhelmed in frustration and anguish.

Then he went on to describe the situation that was causing him so much grief. It involved his wanting to be protective towards a neighborhood newcomer, a small Hispanic boy on whom children of other ethnic groups were mercilessly picking. However, he wasn’t sure of the way to effectively go about it.

Meanwhile, he, himself, didn’t want to be bullied, along with the new boy, for supporting him. All the same, he earnestly tried to include him in local group activities even though others ridiculed and rejected Justin’s choice to do so. Overall then, it just wasn’t working out for the Latino regardless of whatever Justin tried to do.

Then Justin went on to relate that he absolutely hated that the relatively lighter skinned children called the darker skinned ones the “N” word and called anyone else the “N” word when a person fumbled in the basketball games that transpired on his block. In short, he, as a deeply sensitive individual, simply couldn’t stand the gap between the ways that the other children treated each other and the way that he wanted to interrelate. He already knew about the degree of torment that pariahs can experience as his parents operate a shelter for homeless people.

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One response so far

Sep 11 2007

Forget The Color Purple: Oprah’s all about the Green

Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

oprah2

By Jason Miller

9/11/07

“The other kids were all into black power,” Oprah told the Tribune in the mid-1980s. But “I wasn’t a dashiki kind of woman … Excellence was the best deterrent to racism and that became my philosophy.”

Excellence indeed. Few would deny that Oprah Winfrey has achieved an extraordinary degree of THAT, at least by our society’s warped standards. Witty, articulate, attractive, beloved by tens of millions, and fabulously wealthy, she is the “I pulled myself up by my bootstraps” queen of a vast media empire. Oprah is a living embodiment of the American Dream. What is perhaps most inspiring to her genuflecting disciples is that Oprah rose to her stratospheric position of wealth and influence from an impoverished start in a socioeconomic hierarchy still largely dominated by white males.

Oprah Winfrey ostensibly possesses the mythical Midas Touch, a generous spirit, deep spiritual wisdom, and, in the eyes of those blinded by their adoration, the credentials of a saint. Yet despite appearing destined for canonization, Oprah injects heavy doses of infectious pus into the already deeply abscessed wound of the American psyche.

How could anyone who’s noted for having said, “Let your light shine. Shine within you so that it can shine on someone else. Let your light shine,” have such a pernicious effect on our culture?

Let’s “count the ways…with a passion put to use.”

To truly understand the depth of the damage Oprah inflicts on our society, we need to step outside of our bourgeois indoctrination and see her for what she truly represents. Manifesting the Horatio Alger Myth on steroids, Oprah is a wet dream come true for our criminal class of ruling elites sometimes referred to as the plutocracy. She provides them with “irrefutable” and ubiquitous anecdotal evidence which “proves” the idiotic delusion that America is a meritocracy where everyone has a realistic chance of getting rich, if they just work hard enough. The reality is that the richest 20% of US Americans own over 80% of the wealth and the long-term trend has been toward an ever increasing concentration of treasure into a smaller number of strong-boxes(1).

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42 responses so far

Aug 15 2007

The Ugly Face of Capitalism: A Blight on the World

Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

homeless_man

By Emily Spence

8/15/07

In Massachusetts of late, there’s been a recurrent radio commercial. It goes something like this: There are some great deals on foreclosed homes — really GRRREAAT! Someone had a loss and that is sad, but YOU can greatly benefit by the wonderful opportunity. So, please call [telephone number]. You will be happy you did. Imagine how well YOU can make out and win BIG! Boy, do we have a bargain for you!

When I hear this, I’m repulsed and don’t think about how well I could gain off of other people’s tragedies. Instead, I think of the plot of “The House of Sand and Fog,” an account in which an incredible amount of pain and deaths result from, amongst other causes, decent people trying to take advantage of a system gone terribly wrong.

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2 responses so far

Aug 08 2007

THE EMPIRE WITHOUT CLOTHES

Cyrano’s Journal Online and its semi-autonomous subsections (Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop) would be delighted to periodically email you links to the most recent material and timeless classics available on our diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

usiraq

By Gary Corseri

8/8/07

“Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.”

–Martin Luther King

“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to my conscience, above all other liberties.”

–John Milton

“Ecraser l’infame!”

–Voltaire

The Romans had a saying: Mole ruit sua. It falls of its own bigness.

They knew a thing or two about Empire, over-extension abroad and decay at home.

Apparently, Americans are still learning. Hence, we’re shocked by a 9/11 event, the devastation wrought by Katrina, the collapse of a bridge over the Mississippi. We don’t understand how our health care system could have deteriorated into the “Sicko” joke of the developed world—and to be a lot less efficient and fair than systems in much poorer countries (Cuba, Venezuela, Costa Rica, for example). Within a few decades, how did we go from putting men on the moon to a nation whose cars can’t compete with Japan and Germany—nations less than half, and a little more than a quarter our size; nations we bombed to smithereens some 60 years ago?

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5 responses so far

Jul 26 2007

Of Marx, Christ, and the Persecution of Radicals: How Will Humanity Survive the Capitalist Threat?

Cyrano’s Journal Online, Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop are initiating a weekly email which will include links to the latest high quality content available on our very diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

54crucifixion

By Jason Miller

7/25/07

A few days ago, one of my closest friends hit me with a heavily loaded question.

“Are you a Communist?” she queried.

To which I replied:

I do not belong nor militate in any formal communist party in the U.S. Nor do I belong to any other political entity or party. Furthermore, I do not subscribe to a specific doctrine, ideology, or dogma. My allegiance is to my core principles and values, which are premised on honesty, justice, humanity, responsibility, critical thinking, open-mindedness, egalitarianism, compassion, a belief in a Higher Power of my understanding, and many of the teachings of Christ.

My personal beliefs aside, communism is an incredibly loaded word. Our infinitely mendacious educational, social, and media infrastructures begin inculcating reflexive rejection of “all things communist or socialist” into US Americans from the moment they draw their initial breath.

Why is the establishment so desperate to vaccinate us against the “disease” of communism?

Because at its hopelessly rotten core, capitalism, which is manifested most strongly in the United States, is about exploitation, hyper-competitiveness, “rugged individualism”, survival of the fittest, concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, profits above all, property over people, greed, and selfishness. Perhaps worst of all, this pyramid scheme masquerading as a “moral” economic system inevitably leads to wars fueled by its insatiable demands for new markets, more resources, and cheaper labor. Why else would 350 million out of 6.5 billion people spend a trillion dollars a year on a military that has the capacity to destroy our planet thousands of times over, dwarfs the combined firepower of the rest of the world, and plagues over 130 countries with its “benign” occupations? We in the United States maintain a carefully crafted façade as the “benevolent champions of democracy”, but will quickly install ruthless tyrants and commit mass murder (euphemistically labeling our victims as “collateral damage”) if sovereign nations dare to resist our economic rape and plunder.

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19 responses so far

Jul 07 2007

Follow the Lemmings

Cyrano’s Journal Online, Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop are initiating a weekly email which will include links to both the most recent offerings and to timeless classics available on our very diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to

lemmings

By Sylvain Lamoureux

7/7/07

In many comments and previous posts on Thomas Paine’s Corner, I may have referred to the masses as being easily hypnotized by the status power of shiny gadgets. After viewing the following link, I had to re-think that statement:

I have determined that it is not the mere “wow factor” that influences consumers, but a variety of factors, all of which are equally ridiculous. Let’s take the two examples of Microsoft and Apple.

Microsoft. A trusted name? Not likely. If not a trusted name, then what? Ask “why Microsoft?” and most people will reply “because everyone else uses it.” When presented with superior (and free) options like Linux or OpenOffice, they are suspicious, fearful and dismissive. This leads me to conclude that because “everyone else” uses MS Windoze, consumers will not even consider another product. Is this the way that they go through life? Stampeding with the herd?

Apple - a trusted name? More so than Microsoft. Yet it is not as much about “trust” as it is about “cool.” Apple products are cool: iPods, iPhones, i-yi-yi. They are the latest craze and they are expensive, more so than their counterparts. People line up for days to get these things. How did marketing gain such control? Quite simply. Bernays’ disciples, Madison Avenue, and the corporate media assault us constantly with an array of psychological manipulations. And they work!

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24 responses so far

Jul 06 2007

The Devil and Daniel Berrigan

Cyrano’s Journal Online, Thomas Paine’s Corner, The Greanville Journal, CJO Avenger, and VoxPop are initiating a weekly email which will include links to the latest high quality content available on our very diverse and comprehensive site. If you would like to subscribe, type “CJO subscription” in the subject line and send your email to
berriganbig

“Sometime in your life, hope that you might see one starved man, the look on his face when the bread finally arrives. Hope that you might have baked it or bought or even kneaded it yourself. For that look on his face, for your meeting his eyes across a piece of bread, you might be willing to lose a lot, or suffer a lot, or die a little, even.”

— Daniel Berrigan

“Daniel Berrigan was born in Virginia, Minnesota, a Midwestern working class town. His father, Thomas Berrigan, was a second-generation Irish-Catholic and proud union man. Tom left the Catholic Church, but Berrigan remained attracted to the Church throughout his youth. He joined the Jesuits directly out of high school in 1939 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1952….

“Berrigan, his brother Philip, and the famed Trappist monk Thomas Merton founded an interfaith coalition against the Vietnam War, and wrote letters to major newspapers arguing for an end to the war….

“In 1968, he was interviewed in the anti-Vietnam War documentary film In the Year of the Pig, and later that year became involved in radical violent protest. He manufactured home-made napalm and, with eight other Catholic protesters, used it to destroy 378 draft files from the Catonsville, Maryland draft board. This group, later known as the Catonsville Nine, blamed American Christians and Jews for showing “[…] cowardice in the face of […]” the U.S. government, and for their racism “[…] and hostil[ity] to the poor.”….

“Berrigan was promptly arrested and sentenced to three years in prison, but went into hiding with the help of fellow radicals prior to imprisonment. While on the run, Berrigan was interviewed for Lee Lockwood’s documentary “The Holy Outlaw.” Soon thereafter, the FBI apprehended him, sent him to prison, and released him in 1972….

“Berrigan later spent time in France meeting with Thich Nhat Hanh, the exiled Buddhist monk peace activist from Vietnam….

“On September 9, 1980, Berrigan, his brother Philip, and six others (the “Plowshares Eight”) began the Plowshares Movement. They illegally trespassed onto the General Electric Nuclear Missile facility in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, where they damaged nuclear warhead nose cones and poured blood onto documents and files. They were arrested and charged with over ten different felony and misdemeanor counts. On April 10, 1990, after ten years of appeals, Barrigan’s group was re-sentenced and paroled for up to 23 and 1/2 months in consideration of time already served in prison. Their legal battle was re-created in Emile de Antonio’s 1982 film In The King of Prussia, which starred Martin Sheen and featured appearances by the Plowshares Eight as themselves.”

[Excerpted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Berrigan]

Essay by Mike Palecek

7/6/07

I owe my life to Dan Berrigan.

For good or for bad.

I think for good.

I drove from a smallish, conservative town in northeast Nebraska in January 1979 to begin seminary at the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.

In February or March, Berrigan was speaking at Macalaster College, up Summit Avenue a few blocks at a Vietnam Symposium, whatever that means, along with Eugene McCarthy and a journalist named Gloria Emerson.

Anyway, I went, and I heard, and I walked up to him afterward to introduce myself and ask a stupid question.

A couple of us ended up driving Dan around town that night, to a church to hear John Trudell speak about the FBI burning his family in their home, then over to a TV station where Daniel Schorr was hosting a discussion between Berrigan and some guy from the Kennedy administration. I think it was Ted Sorenson.

All’s I know is they let me into this one room and pointed at a table full of food. I could graze as long as we were there. Have at it church boy.

Berrigan also came over to the seminary and spoke to us, about Vietnam, prison, the United States, the Catholic Church.

I was enthralled. I had never heard this stuff before, and likely would not have ever heard it in my seminary instruction.

Well, on a home visit I asked the parish priest who had hooked me up with the seminary, Fr. Walter Nabity.

I asked him about Berrigan and protesting and nuclear weapons and war and all that.

Fr. Nabity told me to forget about the protests, stick to my studies, stay away from the likes of Berrigan.

Well, I was confused.

I told Berrigan what Nabity had said. Dan wrote back to me. [Below]

Over Easter vacation, on Berrigan’s invitation, two of us took a train to Washington, D.C. for a Holy Week retreat and protest. We stayed at the Church of St. Stephen in northwest D.C.

There were lots of “famous” folks from the peace movement there that week, that I only found out were famous, within the peace movement, over the following years: Richard McSorley, Sr. Elizabeth Montgomery, Art Laffin, Elizabeth McAlister, Fr. Carl Kabat.

And of course, Phil Berrigan. I remember going up to Phil and asking him a stupid question. He was wearing this army coat. He took me to the middle of the church and sat with me. He listened to my questions.

“What’s a nuke?”

And we talked about the Catholic Church, celibacy, marriage, prison, the United States, the military, Thou Shall Not Kill. Lots of stuff. And he took the time to talk to me.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget that, unless I eat way too many Ho-Ho’s … again.

It was pretty cool. We planned these protests at the White House — Jimmy Carter’s administration — and the Pentagon, and some people went to the Department of Energy, too, I think.

We boarded the bus in small groups so that it would not appear to be a big group, I guess.

We went through the White House visitor tour line in those small groups and inside we looked at tables and tablecloths and silverware, and I tried to not look like someone who needed to be apprehended and sent back to Nebraska — or even worse.

The tour exited out onto a porch, a portico? And then those who were doing the protest took out banners from their purses or coats and held them out.

Fr. Carl Kabat poured blood on the pillars and was put into a headlock and hauled away. I got a good picture of that.

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Jun 30 2007

Race(ing) Backwards With Boost From SCOTUS

NOTICE TO OUR READERS: The editors will be most grateful for your attention at the end of this feature. Thank you.

“Are the images of who was left to drown or starve during Hurricane Katrina so easily forgotten? At that time racial disparity stood clearly in front of the eyes of every person who turned on a television.”

By Rowan Wolf

CJO’s Avenger

6/30/07

Well, SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) has dealt yet another “conservative” blow to the nation. This time by essentially overturning Brown vs the Board of Education. Schools are still expected to achieve racial “diversity.” However, accomplishing racial integration is very difficult if it is unconstitutional to use race as a criteria. Justice Roberts argument was:

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” (NY Times, 6/28/07)

Roberts’ statement is a tautological argument that is based on a false premise - that race would not be an issue if we did not attempt struggle against institutionalized racism. His quote is reflective of the bumper sticker political analysis which has become all too familiar. However, the assumption of a color blind society, which is enforcing discrimination through attempts at racial integration, is faulty to the point of criminality.

What the Bush administration, “conservatives,” and now Bush’s Court, are attempting is the elimination of civil rights and affirmative action advancements over the last 50 years. Why? Is it because they do not want a society with increasing levels of equality and participation? Do they want a society of peasants and patricians? Do they oppose a representative democracy, but support a feudal government run by a moneyed (white) elite?

Roberts’ trite argument plays well to the mythology of race and privilege in the United States. The rhetoric - particularly now - is that everyone in the U.S. is equal, and there is no structured inequality. Race is a non-issue which we dealt with long ago. Race-based policies and considerations are not “fair” to whites, and place whites at a disadvantage. This is sometimes ridiculously referred to as “reverse” discrimination. Of course there is no acknowledgment that without the body of legislation and policy under the umbrella of “affirmative action,” whites could not argue they had been discriminated against. The legislation refers to “race” - not as confined to people of color, but also to whites.

The often posed solution is to use socioeconomic status, rather than race, as a basis for social policy and integration. The argument is that class is the only real divider after all. Unfortunately, that is a false argument.

There is no proxy for race in the United States. Race is its own system of inequality, though it is certainly reinforced by social class. That reinforcement is not accidental - but structured into social policy. Social policy is, after all, a form of social engineering.

The United States started out with the restriction of citizenship to whites. At that time citizenship carried with it the right to own property, to testify in court, to access public education and public services - and eventually - the right to vote. These privileges of citizenship were granted largely on the basis of race - not social class. However, they certainly had (and continue to have) social class implications. These policies gave whites a social class advantage which was passed down from generation to generation. It facilitated an opportunity path for whites that did not exist (or was significantly restricted) for those who were deemed “not white.”

The institutionalization of race, and race separate policies, continued for more than two centuries, and they continue today. Unimaginably, we are still fighting voting rights and gerrymandering based on race in 2007 (among a myriad of other race-based disparate impacts). Are the images of who was left to drown or starve during Hurricane Katrina so easily forgotten? At that time racial disparity stood clearly in front of the eyes of every person who turned on a television. Also remember, that very quickly the interpretation was put forward that this was not about “race,” but social class. The dominant white population is much more comfortable talking about social class (which is largely perceived as an “individual” issue) than about race - where we must examine the costs of racial privilege.

Race and social class intertwine, they are not the same. While there are more poor who are white than any other racial group, whites are disproportionately under represented in the ranks of the poor. Whites are also dramatically over represented in the ranks of the middle class, and even more so in the upper class. This is largely due to race based policies that subsidized the accumulation of wealth (most significantly with home ownership) for whites, while denying that access to those who were not white.

So what does all of this have to do with the Supreme Court ruling regarding education? Education is strongly related to people’s ability to participate and advance in the social class environment in the US (though this is changing). Without equal access to education the doors of social class mobility once more start to close. Brown vs Board of Education ruled that there was no legality or validity to “separate but equal.” The decision to desegregate public education was not to make a more “diverse” environment, but to equalize the playing field for social class participation.

There has been a terrible transformation in education systems’ arguments about the importance of racial and cultural diversity to education. While those arguments are valid, it is not why we integrated schools. Diversity in education (race, culture, age, class, sex, sexual orientation, religion, etc) is tremendously valuable for all kinds of reasons, Brown was not about the value of diversity. It was about addressing institutionalized inequality based on race.

That fundamental inequality based on race has not been resolved. Look at test scores, high school completion rates, college entrance and graduation rates or even the status and reputation of different school districts. All show there are significant racial divides. Racial integration is not a relic of some bygone day. In our schools; in our neighborhoods; in our health and infant mortality; in the work force; race still stands as hugely significant to social and personal outcomes.

Contrary to the rhetorical argument put forward by Roberts, the promoter of discrimination is not efforts to have schools that mirror the racial demographics of their districts and population. The discrimination happens at virtually every level of social interaction and organization. It is reinforced by racial segregation which fosters the mythology of stereotypes, and the reality of disparate economic opportunity. Education (and not simply K-12 education) is an important component of social maintenance and change. Race and social class inequality are principal among the systems being maintained or changed.

The most common example of past in present discrimination is: segregated neighborhoods lead to segregated schools lead to segregated job opportunities. We have done a rather pathetic job of changing housing segregation (both in terms of race and class) which is why integration in education becomes monumentally important.

The 5-4 decision by the Roberts court reversed the decisions of two appellate courts. It has also virtually reversed Brown vs the Board of Education -one of the most important court decisions impacting racial equality in the United States.

One might wonder what happened to both Roberts’ and Alito’s highly touted respect for stare decisis - legal precedent (see end notes). Justice Breyer issued a stinging rebuke which is pertinent and hopefully not prophetic: “It is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much.” In regard to the importance of precedent, he stated: ““It is my firm conviction that no member of the court that I joined in 1975 would have agreed with today’s decision.” This pretty much rules out any confusion over the context and intent of Brown v. Board of Education.

END NOTES
Supreme Court Cases involved: Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association v. Brentwood Academy and Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 et al.

donttrust

A SPECIAL MESSAGE TO OUR READERS.

For over two years now, Thomas Paine’s Corner has been a powerful and unwavering voice for a courageous and badly needed agenda for change. We have consistently delivered hard-hitting and insightful commentary, polemics, and analysis in our persistent efforts to persuade, educate, and inspire, and serve as a discriminating but generous platform for voices from many points of view with one thing in common: their spiritual honesty and quality of thinking.

Aside from the caliber of its content, Thomas Paine’s Corner’s strength is that there are no advertisers or corporations to exercise de facto censorship or orchestrate our agenda. We aim to keep it that way and we need your help!

As a semi-autonomous section of the multi-faceted, thoroughly comprehensive, and highly prestigious Cyrano’s Journal Online, we share Cyrano’s passion for winning the battle of communications against systemic lies, an act which is essential to attaining social and environmental justice. To help us achieve that goal, Cyrano’s Journal, besides its regular editorial pages, intends to begin producing editorial videos to expose the lack of proper context, ahistoricalism, excessive over-emphasis on inane events, and outright lies the corporate media, and in particular television, present to you and your family as a steady diet of pernicious intellectual junk food. This will be an expensive under-taking and there will be no grants forthcoming from the likes of the American Enterprise Institute, the Coors or Heritage Foundation. You can be sure of that!

As Greek mythology has it, the powerful are frequently defeated by their own hubris, and that’s precisely what we are witnessing today. Our rotten-to-the-core, usurping plutocracy has become so overtly and arrogantly corrupt that our patience has now reached its generous limit, and the membrane of America’s collective consciousness is about to burst. This will result in a significant restructuring of our socioeconomic and political environments, we hope (and must make sure) for the better. Considering what is at stake in the world today, Cyrano’s Journal and Thomas Paine’s Corner want to accelerate the arrival of that new day, and its promise of a new, truly well organized, kind, and honest civilization.

Assisting us in our cause is as simple as clicking on the PayPal button below and exercising the power of your wallet. No matter how large or how small, we thank you in advance for your donation! If you are serious about our struggle for a new society, please don’t put it off. Let us hear from you today.

Jason Miller
Associate Editor, Cyrano’s Journal Online, and Editorial Director, Thomas Paine’s Corner.
Patrice Greanville, Editor in Chief, Cyrano’s Journal Online

4 responses so far

Jun 26 2007

Soylent Greed

NOTICE TO OUR READERS: The editors will be most grateful for your attention at the end of this feature. Thank you.

By Vi Ransel

6/26/07

I stand

with the “Little Man”

upon whose back

the balance

of America stands,

whose blood, sweat, tears

and humiliation

are the raw materials used

to create the Wealth of Nations.

Money cannot

plant or reap,

drive steel, make cars,

sew clothes, kill meat.

Products

do not assemble

themselves at the whim

of those with the means

to invest in them.

Vast fortunes

cannot be amassed

by any single man.

Workers are the engine

that generate the profit,

that one, alone, never can.

But the engine of industry

operates by consuming

human “resources” -

people -

the collateral damage

of unregulated capitalism

and is considered a necessary evil

by those who feed on their fellow man

via gluttonous economic cannibalism

yet have the nerve to proclaim themselves

shining examples of American entrepreneurism.

“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital.

Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never

have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor

is superior to capital, and deserves much the

higher consideration.” - Abraham Lincoln

________________________________________________

donttrust

A SPECIAL MESSAGE TO OUR READERS.

For over two years now, Thomas Paine’s Corner has been a powerful and unwavering voice for a courageous and badly needed agenda for change. We have consistently delivered hard-hitting and insightful commentary, polemics, and analysis in our persistent efforts to persuade, educate, and inspire, and serve as a discriminating but generous platform for voices from many points of view with one thing in common: their spiritual honesty and quality of thinking.

Aside from the caliber of its content, Thomas Paine’s Corner’s strength is that there are no advertisers or corporations to exercise de facto censorship or orchestrate our agenda. We aim to keep it that way and we need your help!

As a semi-autonomous section of the multi-faceted, thoroughly comprehensive, and highly prestigious Cyrano’s Journal Online, we share Cyrano’s passion for winning the battle of communications against systemic lies, an act which is essential to attaining social and environmental justice. To help us achieve that goal, Cyrano’s Journal, besides its regular editorial pages, intends to begin producing editorial videos to expose the lack of proper context, ahistoricalism, excessive over-emphasis on inane events, and outright lies the corporate media, and in particular television, present to you and your family as a steady diet of pernicious intellectual junk food. This will be an expensive under-taking and there will be no grants forthcoming from the likes of the American Enterprise Institute, the Coors or Heritage Foundation. You can be sure of that!

As Greek mythology has it, the powerful are frequently defeated by their own hubris, and that’s precisely what we are witnessing today. Our rotten-to-the-core, usurping plutocracy has become so overtly and arrogantly corrupt that our patience has now reached its generous limit, and the membrane of America’s collective consciousness is about to burst. This will result in a significant restructuring of our socioeconomic and political environments, we hope (and must make sure) for the better. Considering what is at stake in the world today, Cyrano’s Journal and Thomas Paine’s Corner want to accelerate the arrival of that new day, and its promise of a new, truly well organized, kind, and honest civilization.

Assisting us in our cause is as simple as clicking on the PayPal button below and exercising the power of your wallet. No matter how large or how small, we thank you in advance for your donation! If you are serious about our struggle for a new society, please don’t put it off. Let us hear from you today.

Jason Miller
Associate Editor, Cyrano’s Journal Online, and Editorial Director, Thomas Paine’s Corner.
Patrice Greanville, Editor in Chief, Cyrano’s Journal Online

One response so far

Jun 20 2007

Northern Light

Tony Sutton of ColdType interviewed

by Jason Miller

6/20/07

Nearly asphyxiated by the fetid stench wafting from the mendacious corporate media pundits I’ve been profiling, I decided to ascend from the intellectual sewer into which I had crawled in order to observe them in their natural habitat. At last some detoxified air! It was an incredible boost to my faltering faith in humanity when I recently had the privilege to conduct a cyber-interview with Tony Sutton, the editor and publisher of ColdType, an online journal which presents “Writing Worth

Reading from around the World.”

As you will discover, Tony and his marvelous publication are two of the best kept secrets we political educators and agitators for social justice have in our arsenal. Domiciled in the Great White North, Tony publishes one of the finest radical journals in existence.

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5 responses so far