Sep 12 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
Read this or George W. Bush will be president the rest of your life
September 11, 2007
by William Blum
www.killinghope.org
The world is very weary of all this and wants to laugh again
Okay, Bush ain’t gonna get out of Iraq no matter what anyone says or does short of a)impeachment, b)a lobotomy, or c)one of his daughters setting herself afire in the Oval Office as a war protest. A few days ago, upon arriving in Australia, “in a chipper mood”, he was asked by the Deputy Prime Minister about his stopover in Iraq. “We’re kicking ass,” replied the idiot king.[1] Another epigram for his tombstone.
And the Democrats ain’t gonna end the war. Ninety-nine percent of the American people protesting on the same day ain’t gonna do it either, in this democracy. (No, I’m sorry to say that I don’t think the Vietnam protesters ended the war. There were nine years of protest — 1964 to 1973 — before the US military left Vietnam. It’s a stretch to ascribe a cause and effect to that. The United States, after all, had to leave sometime.)
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Jul 13 2007
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
By Peter Chamberlin
7/13/07
Bill Clinton seems to get blamed by this Neocon administration for many things, but most of all for “losing bin Laden.” The ugly truth is that, in this case, they are probably right. Clinton’s team probably had good information on Osama’s whereabouts most of the time, since they were playing on the same team for most of Clinton’s two terms. It is becoming clear from the accumulating evidence that Bill Clinton resurrected Ronald Reagan’s Afghan strategy of using Islamist guerillas as his own covert foreign policy in Europe and other intransigent hot spots that seemed to be immune to normal diplomacy. Clinton’s foolish toying with Islamist killers is probably the spark that ignited the international jihad against America.
Those of us who are diehard “Bush haters,” like to blame Bush senior for creating Al Qaida, when he abandoned Afghanistan. The problem is, even though Bush did abandon the Afghans, it fell to the next misled president to breathe life into Al Qaida. According to Gen. Hameed Gul (former head of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence-ISI- during the war against the Soviets), when Vice President George H. W. Bush became president in 1989, he threatened to “clip ISI’s wings.” (Gul now serves as an adviser to Pakistan’s extremist religious political parties. He may also be the source of the Al Qaida rumors that it was the Israeli Mossad, not bin Laden, that carried-out the 9/11 attacks, as well as the idea of creating an Islamic Caliphate, beginning with Afghanistan and the Central Asian Republics.) After the withdrawal of the Soviets on February 15, 1989, Bush began to make good on that threat. According to author George Crile, in Charlie’s War, on September 30, 1991, the end of the fiscal year, the flow officially stopped (except for $200 million [matched by the Saudis] hidden within the defense authorizations bill for 1992). After the US abandoned Afghanistan, to attack Saddam Hussein, the ISI was left alone to manage the Afghan tribal bloodbath and civil war. Soon after the liberation of Kabul, their man, Hezb-i-Islami leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar (long the main recipient of CIA weaponry) started the civil war, by firing rockets at Kabul. (The ISI later created the Taliban regime and installed them in power in 1996.)
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Jun 23 2007
By Stephen Lendman
6/23/07
Michel Chossudovsky is a noted academic, author, activist and relentless researcher concentrating on America’s imperial crusade to control planet earth for its markets, resources and cheap exploitable labor. He’s a Canadian economist by profession having taught at the University of Ottawa as well as at academic institutions in Western Europe, Latin America and Southeast Asia. In addition, he’s been an economic adviser to developing countries’ governments and a consultant for many international organizations, including the UN Development Programme (UNDP), UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, International Labour Organization (ILO), and World Health Organization (WHO). He’s also the editor of the Centre for Research on Globalization and its web site, Global Research.ca.
“America’s War on Terrorism” - An Overview
Chossudovsky’s book is a greatly expanded version of his 2002 book titled, “War and Globalization: The Truth behind September 11.” The current newly titled 2005 edition (post-9/11 and the 2003 Iraq invasion and occupation) includes 12 new chapters with those in the original edition updated. The author states the book’s purpose is “to refute the official narrative and reveal - using detailed evidence and documentation (not speculation based on opinion alone)” - the true nature of America’s “war on terrorism,” that’s as relevant now as when the book was first published.
Chossudovsky calls it a complete fabrication “based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden (from a cave in Afghanistan and hospital bed in Pakistan) outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus.” He calls it, instead, what, in fact, it is - a pretext for permanent “New World Order” wars of conquest serving the interests of Wall Street and the financial community, the US military-industrial complex, Big Oil, and all other corporate interests profiting hugely from a massive scheme harming the public interest, in the name of protecting it, and potentially all humanity unless it’s stopped in time.
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Jun 18 2007
By Carolyn Baker
6/18/07
Originally published at Speaking Truth to Power
In the seventh year of the current presidential administration which has eviscerated more aspects of the Bill of Rights and U.S. Constitution than any previous administration in American history, I recently had the opportunity of viewing a new documentary “Uncivil Liberties: What Lies Between Liberty & Security”, written and directed by Thomas Mercer. I am pleased to offer my review of the film; however, it is not possible for me to authentically review this work of art or any other pertaining to civil liberties without attaching to it my own addendum of the history of attacks on the well being of its citizens by the United States government.
Unlike Robert Greenwald’s “Unconstitutional” or Aaron Russo’s “America: From Freedom To Fascism”, Mercer’s film is not a documentary but fiction, closer in purpose to the genre of “Star Wars”, “Farenheit 451”, or “Brazil.” It is intentionally murky in its message, filled with purposeful ambiguity, devoid of stark contrasts between good guys and bad guys, with everything in shades of gray. Every character has his/her faults—like life.
Mercer’s DVD jacket states that “Political intrigue abounds in a complex upside down world as militia assassin, Mike Wilson, secretly decides to renounce the violence his job demands, and Homeland Security Official, Cynthia Porter, purposely sabotages a government spying operation. Consequently, both must now face paying the price for betraying the organizations they had faithfully served.”
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Jun 10 2007
By Joe Kay
6/10/07
A report released Friday by the Council of Europe confirms that the CIA has used interrogation centers in Europe, including in Romania and Poland, to secretly hold and torture prisoners captured in Afghanistan, Iraq and other parts of the globe.
The report is the most detailed description of a secret program initiated by the US government, with the collaboration of Europe. In addition to Poland and Romania, many European and other powers have taken part in the program, including Germany, Italy, Britain and Canada. An earlier report from the council released in June 2006 provided some information on the program, and singled out 14 European governments for complicity.
The report was prepared by Dick Marty, a rapporteur for the council, which is tasked with monitoring human rights in Europe. It was issued the same day as a trial began in Italy against CIA agents suspected of involvement in capturing one of the prison network’s victims (see today’s article on CIA trial in Italy).
“What was previously just a set of allegations is now proven,” the report began. Providing a portrait of lawlessness on an international scale, it noted, “Large numbers of people have been abducted from various locations across the world and transferred to countries where they have been persecuted and where it is known that torture is common practice. Others have been held in arbitrary detention, without any precise charges leveled against them and without any judicial oversight—denied the possibility of defending themselves. Still others have simply disappeared for indefinite periods and have been held in secret prisons, including in member states of the Council of Europe, the existence and operations of which have been concealed ever since.”
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