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The West and the Islamic world clash not because of religion, but because a Darwinian current has taken hold in the West that reduces life to mere production and consumption, writes Abdel-Wahab Elmessiri

By Abdel-Wahab Elmessiri

10/7/07

In the opening years of this century, the world was presented with a historic confrontation between the West and Islamic and Arab worlds. This confrontation has been used in the pursuit of imperial agendas. American failure in Iraq has left underlying reasons exposed. Can the damage done be repaired?

Our relationship with the West began with Alexander the Great, the founder of the colonialist Ptolemaic Dynasty that ruled Egypt and the Levant for several hundred years. In that distant past there existed a form of parity; a certain give and take, an alternation of victory and defeat between the two sides. Even to today, however, it is possible to point to factors that can as easily form the basis of mutual understanding and cooperation between Islam and the West as they can trigger conflict. For example, we share with some Western nations the border of the Mediterranean, whose importance for trade and maritime wealth should compel neighbours on either side towards closer cooperation, especially in this age of the global village.

Yet that very proximity has also been the source of intense friction because of the lure of land and resources on the other side. In its height, Islamic civilisation expanded geographically at the expense of the West as defined by the ambit of Christian civilisation, and the reverse was also true: the expansion of the West took place at the expense of the Islamic world, and tensions reached a zenith when Western powers moved to partition that world amongst themselves. Conversely, the further removed societies and civilisations are from one another geographically, the lower the potential for conflict between them. At least before the rise of Western colonialism, which staked out the entire world as its field of enterprise, there existed no tension between the West and Thailand, for example, simply because land and resources were so far out of reach.

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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 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.

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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

“George W. Bush — the reigning mascot of this fantasyland of infantile omnipotence and instant gratification”

Addressing the origins of the “who’s is your daddy” nation

By Phil Rockstroh

“We must become the change we want to see.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“In any case, I hate all Iranians.” –Debra Cagan, Deputy Assistant Secretary to Defense Secretary, Robert Gates

How many times do we, the people of the US, have to go around on this queasy-making merry-go-round of propaganda and militarism before we shout — enough! — then shutdown the whole cut-rate carnival and run the scheming carnies who operate it out of town? It is imperative the nation’s citizens begin to apprehend the patterns present in this ceaseless cycle of official deceit and collective pathology. This republic, or any other, cannot survive, inhabited by a populace with such a slow learning curve.

Over the last three decades, the authoritarian right has risen to create the nation they have been longing for since their humbling by the Watergate scandal. After being subdued and humiliated by the mechanisms of a free republic, the right has turned the tables — and subdued and humiliated the republic. If the trend continues, all but unchallenged and unabated, we might as well replace the torch held aloft by Lady Liberty with a taser.

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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

Meanwhile, this week we learned (by the hand of an editorial in The Los Angeles Times) that, “the biggest beneficiary (of the business of war) has been Blackwater USA, a private security firm with powerful political and personnel ties to an administration that has awarded it more than $1 billion in contracts since 2002.”

By Pablo Ouziel

10/1/07

October 2nd will mark the birth anniversary of Human Rights Activist, Mahatma Gandhi and for the first time, the United Nations is officially proclaiming this day to be the International Day of Non-violence. Hopefully, on this day we can all spare a little of our time to reflect on how little we have all understood Mahatma Gandhi’s message; after all everyday we seem to plunge into a worse state of affairs and drift away farther from Gandhi’s respectable message; “I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”

I wonder what it means to have an International Non-violence day. Does it mean that American soldiers, UN ‘peacekeepers’, NATO Forces, the Israeli military and Blackwater USA will put down their weapons for the day and reflect on the horrors that they are committing in the vague name of an international war on ‘terror’? Does it mean that they will all continue killing as a few peaceful marchers around the world proclaim in total sanity, that the insanity that prevails is making it hard for peace-loving humans to coexist with this madness? Or does it mean that the United Nations will clamp down on the killings perpetrated by the permanent members of its own security council?

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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

But the blood is wasted, splattered on clothes, on walls, on streets, or seeping into sand. There’s so much sand there, all of it rich with iron. “To see hematocrit in a grain of sand, hold hemoglobin in the palm of your hand…”

By Adam Engel

9/23/07

I died for your sins—almost. I never quite died complete. But still. You didn’t notice either way. It’s been a year, more or less. You didn’t call my wife. You didn’t send a card.

I don’t know why I stay on. Something in me clings to this wretched place. I refuse to leave. Perhaps I feel I deserve something. I broke my back carrying the burden of America. They gave me painkillers (pills, not Marines). Oxycontin, oxycodone. Now I’m addicted and must pay and pay and pay for more. Lucky my wife works.

I can’t sleep, but I’m clear, clear in the head. I need blood. I read the articles on the Web. So many writing, nobody doing. I look at clips of children stained with blood, or jetting blood from severed limbs, and think: waste, waste, waste.

All that blood and none for me. Do you think it’s a coincidence, me being a vampire and all, with all this blood around, everywhere I turn, and not drop for me, unless I pay and pay and pay?

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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 Horace Coleman

9 Sep 07

Reason for conflict

Vietnam

∙ Did not want communism to spread in S.E. Asia. Proxy war between U.S. and Soviet Union; extension of Cold War. China has common border with N. Vietnam; did not want expanded Western involvement in S.E. Asia (their “backyard”). U.S. imperialistic ambitions; disregard for welfare of non Caucasians / non Christians.

Iraq / Afghanistan

∙ Revenge for 9/11 (although Iraq had nothing to do with 9 / 11, we emphasized subduing Iraq over stabilizing Afghanistan).

∙ Didn’t like Saddam Hussein (his Kuwait invasion threat to U.S. oil supplies).

∙ Reduce Iraq’s influence in region. Hussein claimed Kuwait was slant drilling into Iraqi oil fields. Afghanistan critical transportation route for oil.

∙ Depose Hussein.

∙ U.S. imperialistic ambitions (expand bases and presence in the Middle East.

∙ Disregard for welfare of non Caucasians / non Christians.

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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 Peter Beaumont and Joanna Walters in New York

Sunday September 16, 2007

The Observer | GUARDIAN Unlimited [U.K.]

The man once regarded as the world’s most powerful banker has bluntly declared that the Iraq war was ‘largely’ about oil.

Appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1987 and retired last year after serving four presidents, Alan Greenspan has been the leading Republican economist for a generation and his utterings instantly moved world markets.

In his long-awaited memoir - out tomorrow in the US - Greenspan, 81, who served as chairman of the US Federal Reserve for almost two decades, writes: ‘I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.’

In The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, he is also crystal clear on his opinion of his last two bosses, harshly criticising George W Bush for ‘abandoning fiscal constraint’ and praising Bill Clinton’s anti-deficit policies during the Nineties as ‘an act of political courage’. He also speaks of Clinton’s sharp and ‘curious’ mind, and ‘old-fashioned’ caution about the dangers of debt.

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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 Patrick Martin

World Socialist Website

9/15/07

As part of its campaign to justify a long-term US occupation of Iraq, the Bush administration has increasingly resorted to warning of chaos and even genocide in the wake of a withdrawal of American troops. But a new report suggests that something akin to genocide is already taking place, under American auspices.

The British polling agency ORB reported Thursday that the death toll in Iraq since the 2003 US invasion has passed the one million mark.

According to ORB, US-occupied Iraq, with an estimated 1.2 million violent deaths, has “a murder rate that now exceeds the Rwanda genocide from 1994 (800,000 murdered),” with another one million wounded and millions more driven from their homes into internal or external exile.

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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

An Open Letter to the New Generation of Military Officers Serving and Protecting Our Nation

By Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret., National Commander, The Patriots

9/14/07

“The Nuremberg Principles says that we in the military have not only the right, but also the DUTY to refuse an illegal order. It was on this basis that we executed Nazi officers who were ‘only carrying out their orders’… The Constitution which we are sworn to uphold says that treaties entered into by the United States are the ‘highest law of the land,’ equivalent to the Constitution itself. Accordingly, we in the military are sworn to uphold treaty law, including the United Nations charter and the Geneva Convention… Based on the above, I contend that should some civilian order you to initiate a nuclear attack on Iran (for example), you are duty-bound to refuse that order. I might also suggest that you should consider whether the circumstances demand that you arrest whoever gave the order as a war criminal.”

Dear Comrades in Arms,

You are facing challenges in 2007 that we of previous generations never dreamed of. I’m just an old fighter pilot (101 combat missions in Vietnam , F-4 Phantom, Phu Cat, 1969-1970) who’s now a disabled veteran with terminal cancer from Agent Orange. Our mailing list (over 22,000) includes veterans from all branches of the service, all political parties, and all parts of the political spectrum. We are Republicans and Democrats, Greens and Libertarians, Constitutionists and Reformers, and a good many Independents. What unites us is our desire for a government that (1) follows the Constitution, (2) honors the truth, and (3) serves the people.

We see our government going down the wrong path, all too often ignoring military advice, and heading us toward great danger. And we look to you who still serve as the best hope for protecting our nation from disaster.

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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 Ramzy Baroud

9/8/07

The decision made by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to halt his Mahdi Army’s attacks on occupation forces and Iraqi security is likely to be considered the single most promising breakthrough for the US military in Iraq. Although the move comes ahead of several reports to be presented to the US Congress later this month, the decision was ultimately an outcome of a long-brewing intersectarian conflict between Shiite Iraqis, which will further complicate the devastating American failure in Iraq,

Al-Sadr’s decision followed the widespread clashes at Karbala on August 26, during one of the holiest Shiite festivals. Despite various accusations of outside involvement, the clashes were apparently Shiite through and through, involving militant members of the Badr Brigade of the Islamic Supreme Council (led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a duel ally of the US and Iran) and al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army.

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