Oct 05 2007
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
By Anwaar Hussain
10/6/07
Kālā Pānī, literally ‘Black water’ in Urdu/Hindi languages, a term for the deep sea and hence exile, was the name of a notorious cellular jail situated in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (India). The prison was known to house many notable Indian activists during the struggle for India’s independence. In March 1868, 238 prisoners tried to escape. By April they were all caught. One committed suicide and of the remainder, British Superintendent Walker ordered 87 to be hanged.
On the U.S. mainland, the Blackwater River of Florida is a 58-mile long river arising in southern Alabama and flowing through the Florida Panhandle to the Gulf of Mexico. The river enters Florida in Okaloosa County and flows through Santa Rosa County to Blackwater Bay, an arm of Pensacola Bay. The river passes through Blackwater River State Park.
There is yet another blackwater river in North Carolina that goes by the name of White Oak River. The White Oak River is located in North Carolina’s outer coastal plain province in Carteret, Jones, and Onslow Counties.
Continue Reading »
Aug 07 2007
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
By Peter Chamberlin
8/7/7
It should be clear to America, by this point in the “war president’s” reign, that American foreign policy has always been to create its own enemies. Like all of Bush’s predecessors, his “mistakes” in foreign policy have usually strengthened those we are fighting, or those whom we are about to fight. The enormous arms packages that Bush has proposed for Israel and every Sunni state in the Middle East region (except for Shiite Iran) are meant to be used in a planned regional expansion of the war in Iraq. Congress has basically authorized a massive expansion of the war that the People want to be terminated, with the recent votes against Iran that read like the Iraq war resolution. The creation of covert forces to be used inside of Iran and the torrent of weaponry that is now flowing to the Sinoura government in Lebanon are leading elements of the strategy to make war against Iran and all of its allies, even those in Iraq.
The most sinister part of the new strategy to use proxy Sunni forces to fight Iran can be found in the much ballyhooed co-opting of Sunni insurgents as “security contractors” in Iraq. This is a blatant effort by our government to empower the people who are responsible for killing the most Americans and Iraqis. This effort is strengthening the Sunni hand, while it undermines the legitimate democratic Maliki government. The policy of buying off our enemies in Iraq, in order to buy Petraeus a little more time, is still a policy of aiding our own enemies to fight our other enemies. It is the sinister policy of our economic “overlords,” actually playing-out on the battlefield, using American troops as guinea pigs and shock troops to create a state of permanent war in the world – the ultimate marketplace for the “Lords of war.”
As Americans and the puppet Congress bicker over a great drama called, “ending the war,” the real governing powers are giving form to the “terrorist haven” in Anbar Province (that they have been warning us about), which will justify continuing the war there forever. Instead of dealing with both Iran and Saudi Arabia in a search for order inside of Iraq, the government has sided with Saudi Arabia (the birthplace of Al Qaida) in aiding the real enemy in Iraq, to wage an even bigger war against the friends of Iran there. They chose to make Iraq a central front in the ever-changing, politically useful, war on “terrorism,” without regard for the Iraqis who would be caught in the middle. Do we even care if any of them will survive the planned escalation that is coming to their neighborhoods very soon?
Continue Reading »