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By Emily Spence

9/13/07

What an enjoyable summer many Americans experienced! Living in their own small air conditioned bubbles, they confirmed that whatever happened in the outside environment could be of little concern. Detached from the natural world, they passed between various cool zones with relative ease and no discomfort.

So for many, did it matter, for instance, that it was the hottest July on record for Wyoming, Montana and Idaho according to the NOAA National Weather Service? Who cared that Boise, Idaho’s average high temperature, a blistering 98.6 degrees F (37 degrees C), was more than nine degrees F (five degrees C) above average so that July 2007 was Boise’s hottest month ever documented? What difference did it make that drought conditions worsened in parts of the northern Rockies, northern Plains, Midwest, and mid-Atlantic while more than 5 million parched acres burned in the contiguous U.S. by early August according to the National Interagency Fire Center? So what that August was even worse [1]? Likewise, so it goes relative to the floods, hurricanes, droughts and other weather related extremes being faced in Europe, Australia, Africa, and all other land masses. So what if countless species are slowly being destroyed in the process while a rapidly increasing amount of terrain is rendered unusable for any life [2]?

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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 Abdul Basit

8/29/07

As natural calamities like hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and droughts continue ceaselessly on one hand while endless and inconclusive debates about the reasons for Climate Change take place on the other, the time for firm action to counter Climate Change is getting shorter and the options for slowing the impact of Global Warming are getting fewer.

Expounding upon my article ‘Manifesto to counter global warming and climate change’, in which I stressed the importance of sustainable development, I would like to further address some of the challenges and hurdles that are slowing the implementation of policies and programs to counter Climate Change.

Sponsored Intellectuals

One of the main hindrances to Climate Change resolution is the frequent dissemination of specious reports by Climate Change deniers sponsored by certain oil corporations which are creating confusion among the general public. These sponsored intellectuals of the establishment and the corporatocracy are trying to find new reasons to prevent actions to counter Climate Change, seldom realizing that by their action they are endangering the very existence of mankind for meager monetary inducements. Some of the most common arguments of these sponsored intellectuals are that these natural disasters are part of the cyclical process and all measures to counter it are futile.

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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 Abdul Basit

8/17/07

The natural calamities due to global warming and climate change have ignited a total reassessment among the western thinkers about the western way of economic development and lifestyle. The recent articles by Mr. Eamon O’Hara and Mr. Matt Prescott in BBC green room provide hope and at the same time show the change of track in thinking about the concepts of development and lifestyle.

Further to their reflection, I would like to address some basic concepts and aims that has been the driving force of the modern civilization and to suggest solutions.

As we all know, the growth of modern civilization is due to its materialistic ideology, which is propelled by the motive for profits and for attainment of improved standard of living. As a result of economic growth and prosperity and new technology we attained during the last century that made our life more easy and comfortable, now we realize that these years of competitive growth and development was at the cost of the environment and the very existence of humanity as a whole.

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By Carolyn Baker

8/17/07

A friend for whom I have a great deal of respect and admiration recently challenged me on my incessant hope-bashing stance and gave me some food for thought which has caused me to reframe the concept of “hope” in my own mind in a way that I can live with. What I cannot live with is a definition of “hope” that externalizes it-that fosters denial and a false and naïve anticipation that government, religion, or to quote Lincoln, “the better angels of our nature” will somehow save humanity from slamming with lethal velocity into the brick walls of our own making-climate chaos, global energy catastrophe, planetary economic meltdown, population overshoot, species extinction and die-off–or nuclear holocaust.

The iconoclastic and cynical James Howard Kunstler is fond of mocking people who ask for “hope” and insists that any hope we have in the face of the end of the world as we know it (EOTWAWKI) must come from within. I’m not sure what that means to Kunstler, but I’m getting clearer about what it means to me.

Naïve hope takes myriad forms and from my perspective one example is the hope that impeachment of Cheney and Bush is even possible. And I must add that Bush has not lost his “brain” with the departure of Rove. Who needs a brain when Darth Vader is the real man behind the curtain and has more political and economic power in the United States government than the average American can even imagine? Another example of false hope is faith in the U.S. political system and the possibility that clean elections exist, not to mention the hope that one will even happen in 2008. Other “hopes” include: the hope that the Democrats will finally find their spine, that the economy will improve without the working and middle classes being eviscerated by a financial meltdown as catastrophic or worse than the Great Depression, that technology will solve the energy dilemma, that moving to another country guarantees personal safety and human liberty, that the human race can exist for another century without a nuclear exchange, that a global spiritual awakening will occur in time to transform the human race and avert catastrophe.

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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

“If we can’t see a little of George Bush looking back at our reflection, we should look again…”

By Jean-Louis Robert Turcot and Emily Spence

8/11/07

The attempt to stop and possibly reverse Global Warming reminds of the aims of Helen Caldicott with respect to the dangers of a nuclear war. As much her goals were admirable with her tireless effort to inform, and to warn us about the possibility of a nuclear holocaust, we have not been able to change one single iota from that possibility.

At the same time, the Beyond War group used the bucket-of-shotgun-pellets method to demonstrate that one single pellet represented all of the firepower of the entire Second World War, while the entire bucket represented the nuclear weapon potential to make war… Again, even though the representation was graphic and dramatic, it did not change anything whatsoever relative to the nuclear menace. Indeed, our nuclear capacity is only becoming more pronounced over time.

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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

“Do we have a sufficient supply of self-control and compassion toward our unknown descendants to curb our boundless desire for ever more merchandise, petrol, electricity and offspring? Can we find some modicum of happiness within deliberately self-proscribed limits?”

By Emily Spence

8/8/07

Until fairly recently, anthropologists and geologists were greatly puzzled by an unusual finding. Their perplexity concerned the almost total disappearance of humankind many years ago. Finally, they were able to put together the various factors related to this happening and came up with the following scenario.

Over much of the Earth, crude stone tools have been found at the geological layer roughly corresponding to 74,000 years ago. Based on the various rock types used, their rate of wear and the number of implements uncovered in each setting, the population could be estimated for many regions of the globe. In addition, migration patterns could be charted based on similarities in tool designs combined with their varying quantities in assorted locales. As the seasons changed and the animal location shifted — so did the hunter-gatherers. The related movement could be mapped for several clans.

Then suddenly, signs of all tools, abruptly and completely, vanished across nearly the entire globe. The disappearance was almost completely universal except, for the most part, in one small region of Eastern Africa. At the same time, there existed, instead of the tools elsewhere, layer upon layer of volcanic ash corresponding to a time period many years in duration.

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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  

“For me, the most riveting and wrenching footage in the film was the destruction by the Los Angeles police of South Central L.A.’s community gardens in 2006.”

By Carolyn Baker

8/4/07

The 2004 documentary, “End Of Suburbia”, produced and edited by Barry Silverthorn and written and directed by Greg Greene, was a stunning and chilling cinematic landmark which placed the issue of Peak Oil and its consequences squarely on the world stage and connected the dots between the unsustainable suburban lifestyle and perilous issues of the twenty-first century such as food production, population die-off, and economic meltdown. Recently, Greene and producer, Dara Rowland, have released the sequel, “Escape From Suburbia” which examines the journeys of several individuals who have fled or are in the process of fleeing from civilization. It highlights how they are building new lives and new subcultures which offer the possibilities of deepened humanity and sustainability. Unlike “End Of Suburbia”, “Escape” spends less time interviewing the usual Peak Oil experts and follows the escape routes of ordinary people who are passionate about removing themselves from a culture of over-consumption and extinction.

After a brief explanation of Peak Oil, the film opens with the departure of a baby-boomer man and woman from their suburban home in Portland to an ecovillage in Canada, then moves into focusing on two gay men from New York City, Philip and Tom, who are eagerly planning their escape from the Big Apple to a venue where they can utilize the plethora of farming and permaculture skills they have intentionally acquired over the past few years. Juxtaposing these “escapees” is Kate from Toronto who strongly believes that her calling is not to escape but remain in suburbia and dig in to green it and make it truly sustainable. Interwoven with the various vignettes is Philip’s personal experiences with the 2005 Petrocollapse conference in New York and the 2006 Local Solutions To The Energy Dilemma conference in that city which he helped produce, Philip adamantly insisting that New York and cities like it are not only unsustainable but are self-destructing before his eyes. On the opposite coast in Willits, California, the film highlights a number of its residents engaged in creating a relocalized, sustainable town of 13,000 people who are energy self-sufficient and passionately involved in community building.

Click here for the article in its entirety.

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

“YOU, ANIMALS, AND THE EARTH WILL SURVIVE VERY WELL”

“It’s great news that so many people are going veggie!” says Viva! Campaigns manager, Justin Kerswell. “Almost a billion animals are still killed for meat each year in the UK, most of them living appallingly short lives in squalid conditions and facing a terrifying death so we clearly have a long way to go but we are winning. Concerns about animal cruelty, health and the state of the planet are growing daily and vegetarianism provides a solution to all of them. It’s needed like never before.”

BY ARTHUR POLETTI

8/1/07

HUMANS MUST STOP USING THEIR STOMACHS AS A GRAVEYARD FOR THE DEAD FLESH FROM THE CORPSES OF TORTURED AND MURDERED ANIMALS.

“WAKE UP” BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!!

PARTICIPATING IN AND SUPPORTING THE LIVESTOCK INDUSTRY IS LIKE PLAYING A DEADLY “NO WAY TO WIN” GAME OF RUSSIAN ROULETTE WITH NATURE.

EVEN THOUGH THE INSIDIOUS DEMAND TO EAT DEAD ANIMAL FLESH IS THE DRIVING FORCE THAT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE NUMBER ONE CAUSE OF GLOBAL WARMING, INCREDIBLY IT DOES NOT SEEM TO CURB THE INSATIABLE, AND UNQUENCHABLE EATING HABITS OF BILLIONS OF PEOPLE THROUGHOUT THE WORLD.

INCLUDING WELL KNOWN “SO CALLED”GLOBAL WARMING EXPERTS THAT PROFESS TO KNOW THE MAJOR CAUSES AND THE SOLUTIONS.

NATURE’S BRUTAL EXPRESSIONS OF VENGEANCE ARE BEING UNLEASHED THROUGHOUT THE WORLD IN THE FORM OF SOME OF THE MOST POWERFUL AND DESTRUCTIVE FORCES TO HUMANITY IMAGINABLE AS RETRIBUTION FOR THE WORST POSSIBLE CRIMES HUMANS HAVE COMMITTED TO GOD’S CREATURES AND NATURE.

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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 Stephen Lendman

8/1/07

Linda McQuaig is a prominent, admired, and award-winning Canadian journalist writing about vital issues of concern to everyone. She was a national reporter for the Toronto Globe and Mail before joining the Toronto Star where she now covers Canadian politics with her trademark combination of solid research, keen analysis, irreverence, passion and wit. She’s easy to read, never boring, and fearless. The National Post called her “Canada’s Michael Moore.”

McQuaig is also a prolific author with a well-deserved reputation for taking on the establishment. In her previous seven books, she challenged Canada’s deficit reduction scheme to gut essential social services. She explained how the rich used the country’s tax system to get richer the way it’s worked in the US since Ronald Reagan and then exploded under George Bush. She exposed the fraud of “free trade” (never called fair because it isn’t) empowering giant corporations over sovereign states while exploiting working people everywhere.

She also showed how successive Canadian governments waged war on equality since the 1980s, and in her latest book, “Holding the Bully’s Coat - Canada and the US Empire,” she takes aim at the conservative Stephen Harper administration’s allying with George Bush’s belligerent lawlessness and phony “war on terrorism.” Canada chose not to be part of Washington’s concocted “coalition of the willing” in Iraq but partnered in its war of aggression and illegal occupation of Afghanistan.

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By Pablo Ouziel

7/8/07

On the 23 of June, I had the opportunity to attend the Friends of Trees Conference in Barcelona. It has taken me a few weeks to digest all the information, which I, together with about 900 other people managed to inhale: The fumes of change, the organic revolution, the climate crisis, the need for solidarity and action. It was a most overwhelming task: and Al Gore’s redundant joke of: “I used to be the next president of the United States,” has hardly helped ease the intensity of the situation.

The crowds clapped at every comment made by the speakers, who endlessly praised each other for their wonderful efforts in shaping the future of our environment. Yet my impressions of the entire event were so off-putting, that is until I listened to a most articulate and powerful Indian woman with a soothing voice and right hook dialogue, called Vandana Shiva. Her genuine commitment to the preservation of the planet, her emotional personal descriptions of the non-violent Chipko movement during the 1970s in the Uttarakhand region of India, her open dialogue about corrupt multinationals and unjust wars, and her inspiring leadership abilities should serve as an example to the rest of the world.

‘Saving the environment’ has become the latest trend in western societies, the new toy of the rich and privileged; this is something I would certainly not object to, if the consequences were not so devastating for those who have fought for environmental values for decades with the social stigma of being labeled with all kind of degrading labels, tree huggers and the likes. I am not a ‘tree hugger’ myself, however over the years I have spent a lot of time with many who are, people who have that characteristic innate in their nature, in their love for humanity, the environment; frankly, Al Gore hardly qualifies as one.

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