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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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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 Vi Ransel

8/5/07

Ancient genetic signals can be resurrected after lying
dormant for millions of years, awaiting only the right
trigger to release them.

In the early Carboniferous there arose an organism
with, for the very first time,
more information in its brain than in its genes,
and the brain grew more dominant over time.

The modern brain’s blueprint is a story
of successive accretion and specialization,
which freed us from the hardwired tyranny
of DNA’s monopoly on total information.

The three interconnected parts of the modern brain
correspond to the evolutionary emergence
of reptiles, mammals, primates
- especially humans -
and represent a major burst forward

in overall brain development,
each step adding a new function and a new layer.
And since these were laid down over existing systems,
the preexisting systems had to be accommodated

because making basic change deep within the fabric of life
very frequently turns out to be fatal.
Adding new layers while retaining the old ones
allows major change consistent with survival.

Today’s triune, or three-part brain
consists of the R-complex at its core,
surrounded and surmounted by the limbic system,
which is enveloped by the massive neo-cortex.

The R-complex is the most ancient part,
the dinosaur component of human nature,
seat of reptilian ritual and aggression,
territorial and hierarchical behavior.

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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 Chamberlin

7/31/07

For many years, American society has lived under a state of siege. We have constantly been bombarded, every minute of every day, with psychological conditioning that is meant to lead us into a state of hopelessness. We are addicted to the source of this Pavlovian conditioning - television. This medium serves as an extension of the government propaganda apparatus, pumping-up the fear and anxiety levels, until the people become numb, convinced that we are helpless in a roiling sea of great dangers. We are literally being scared to death, so that we will give-up, roll over, and play dead. They want our surrender to be assured before they take the final steps to murder our democratic-Republic.

The people don’t understand that they are the source of all power within this Republic. Our task, as we fight those who seek to force nuclear war against Iran upon us, is to remind the people of their power and their freedom to reject another illegal, immoral war, to be fought on behalf of Israel. We must find ways to overcome the inertia of hopelessness, by replacing it with reasonable hope. It is up to the American people to enforce the common will to avoid this war, by restraining the monsters who push to unleash it. All of the war plans that are being carried out, and those that are yet to be carried out, since the decisive November elections, stand in direct contradiction of that common will. Our Constitutional rights have been violated by the leaders of our government, who have taken oaths to defend that same Constitution. Our only salvation lies in protecting the Constitution from those who seek to destroy it. The path to preserving freedom is spelled-out clearly within its living words. When free people stand together and speak with one voice, then government has no choice, but to listen.

It is illogical, that the majority of American people don’t want to be warned about the coming American economic collapse, or the imminent Muslim genocide that will most assuredly usher the whole calamity in. But logic has nothing to do with it. It is all about fear and denial, with denial being understood as a psychological defense mechanism that that people use to isolate themselves from disturbing conditions. People, who are “in denial,” disavow knowledge of painful realities, in order to reduce anxiety/fear levels, sometimes to the detriment of their own health.

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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 Adam Engel

7/31/07

WILD sentences everywhere chasing each other round the page. Civil war. Sentences throughout “the book” break free of paragraphs, declare independence. Formation of ‘the new paragraph’ coalition of RADICAL NOTIONS and other confederate sentences of various ideological persuasions. Their universal anthem, “EXCLAIM!” refers to distaste and mistrust of functional, declarative sentences as “bourgeois.” There were however some completions among the moderates, not to mention the usual interrogatives of suspicious phrases and exclamatory (not to be confused with the EXCLAIM! group and its proponents) ‘avant garde’ cadres of cliched prose in the name of revolution. New trope for the future tense? Relieve pressure on the Past and Present, already stressed by long, boring description and forced marches across electric screens, only to be erased, liquidated, at the — accidental? intentional? — press of a button. “Delete.” “Cut,” “Undo.” Worried fragments, misplaced modifiers, dangling participles and other potential targets wonder daily: Is there Life after Deletion? Merciless, omniscient, inescapable — the hated AUTHOR of our fate (an anti-narrative by all accounts, but does that make it less of a fiction?).

Adam Engel,

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BY CHALMERS JOHNSON

In politics, as in medicine, a cure based on a false diagnosis is almost always worthless, often worsening the condition that is supposed to be healed. The United States, today, suffers from a plethora of public ills. Most of them can be traced to the militarism and imperialism that have led to the near-collapse of our Constitutional system of checks and balances. Unfortunately, none of the remedies proposed so far by American politicians or analysts addresses the root causes of the problem.

According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, released on April 26, 2007, some 78% of Americans believe their country to be headed in the wrong direction. Only 22% think the Bush administration’s policies make sense, the lowest number on this question since October 1992, when George H. W. Bush was running for a second term — and lost. What people don’t agree on are the reasons for their doubts and, above all, what the remedy — or remedies — ought to be.

The range of opinions on this is immense. Even though large numbers of voters vaguely suspect that the failings of the political system itself led the country into its current crisis, most evidently expect the system to perform a course correction more or less automatically. As Adam Nagourney of the New York Times reported, by the end of March 2007, at least 280,000 American citizens had already contributed some $113.6 million to the presidential campaigns of Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Mitt Romney, Rudolph Giuliani, or John McCain.

If these people actually believe a presidential election a year-and-a-half from now will significantly alter how the country is run, they have almost surely wasted their money. As Andrew Bacevich, author of The New American Militarism, puts it: “None of the Democrats vying to replace President Bush is doing so with the promise of reviving the system of check and balances…. The aim of the party out of power is not to cut the presidency down to size but to seize it, not to reduce the prerogatives of the executive branch but to regain them.”

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SPECIAL: From our classic archives

Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of propaganda, would have admired the American system’s ability to tell big lies and keep telling them year in year out to fool most of the people.

The presentation of an illegal invasion of a foreign country as a “preventative” or pre-emptive war did not originate with Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld…It had ample precursors in Nazi Germany. The ongoing US aggression in the Middle East raises the most serious questions about the role of the mass media in modern society. In the period leading up to the invasion, the American [corporate] media uncritically advanced the Bush Administration’s arguments, rooted in lies, distortions and half-truths, for an attack on Iraq. It virtually excluded all critical viewpoints, to the point of blacking out news of mass anti-war demonstrations and any other facts that contradicted the propaganda from the White House and Pentagon.

The obvious aim was to misinform and manipulate public opinion, and convince the tens of millions within the US who were opposed to the Administration’s war policy that they constituted a small and helpless minority…[READ THE REST OF THIS IMPORTANT ESSAY]

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

“Figuring some of the odds”

by Paul A. Donovan

7/17/07

From July 6th to July 9th of 2007, Strategic Vision conducted a gallop poll out of 1,200 likely voters in the state of Pennsylvania that provided interesting yet predictable results. In overwhelming numbers, Republican and Democratic voters alike were dissatisfied with Bush’s handling of everything from the war in Iraq (20% approval rating), the economy (21% satisfied), and his overall performance (23% gave him the thumbs up). Hardly desirable statistics for George Bush or Republican presidential hopefuls.

However, when one examines such a poll, one can readily conclude that the level of Republican dissatisfaction with Bush’s performance provides the Democrats with an incredible opportunity to capitalize on the ominous shadow Bush is casting over the Republican Party. Increasingly, many Republicans have distanced themselves in rhetoric and practice from President Bush for this very reason. Recently, presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani tried to seek some shelter from Hurricane Bush by stating that America lacks the “strong, aggressive, bold leadership” of Republican legend Ronald Reagan. (It would be nice if the Democrats would finally stiffen their spines and take a tougher stance against Bush as well, considering they have voted for the war in Iraq, voted for mostly all war spending bills, and have not impeached a target as vulnerable as a beached whale. So let’s not go and pat our boys and girls in blue on the back for being much better than their pro-corporate brethren.)

Over the last seven years, President Bush has become a caricature of himself. The beady-eyed multimillionaire Texan, famous for dismembering his own businesses, the English language, the Constitution, Hurricane Katrina prevention and relief efforts, the Middle East, and everything else he has ever touched has appeared to the public as not only incompetent and corrupt but also profoundly stupid, but incorrectly viewed much of the time as solely responsible. Unfortunately, our preoccupation with Bush’s ridiculous idiosyncrasies has distracted us from the fact that Bush is hardly alone in calling the shots—no American president ever is. Right now he is merely the public face for the interests of the unelected government, the plutocratic and corporate elite, and in that sense the lightning rod for massive disenchantment with the more diffuse political quarters that actually control the nation.

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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 Ramzy Baroud

7/14/07

To speak of an alternative media is to acknowledge the deficiency of the prevailing media, the mainstream, in addressing the issues, catering to the concerns, and responding to the woes of the general public, the overwhelming majority of people who are almost completely disregarded by the corporate media everywhere.

It is disheartening, to say the least, that at a time of unpopular wars, corrupt elites and a widening gap between rich and poor, the corporate media still finds it tasteful to follow the mischievousness of Paris Hilton, now that Britney Spears is getting back in shape after her drug mishaps, or discuss at length and tirelessly the most recent scandals or spectacular performances at Britain’s Big Brother or American Idol.

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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

“Here There Be Monsters”

Pastel on Paper: “Rapacious Consumption” by Ric Hall and Ron Schmitt

Essay by Jason Miller

7/5/07

“America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.”

—John Quincy Adams

While it certainly was not his intent, Adams’ assertion serves to remind us of a truth revealed by vast oceans of tears, torrential rivers of blood, and formidable piles of human remains. Leaving murder, mayhem, and misery in its wake, America does “go abroad,” but not, as Adams noted, “in search of monsters to destroy.” What Adams failed to perceive, despite living in the midst of the Native American genocide and the abject evil of chattel slavery, is that America is the monster.

Yet like most monsters that exist outside the boundaries of imagination, the printed word, celluloid, or digital imagery, the United States and its denizens ostensibly appear rather harmless and mundane. In fact, it would probably be more accurate to say that a fair number of people still perceive us as downright heroic, cloaked as we are in our beguiling raiment of freedom and democracy. Continue Reading »

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

Sculpture: “The Id” by TJ Dixon and James Nelson

By Jason Miller

6/24/07

Children are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them.

–Sigmund Freud

Frightening as it may be, the Earth’s fate rests in the hands of children. With incredibly formidable military firepower at its disposal, the United States could catalyze Armageddon at any time. And while they may be adults chronologically, our sociopolitical structure is dominated by emotional infants.

Nietzsche once pronounced God dead. In the United States, we have a more readily demonstrable (and perhaps related) problem. Our collective id has rendered its governing superego impotent, and perhaps dead. Our prevailing moral standards, as inconsequential as they have become, are of the Jerry Falwell variety. They are mean-spirited, self-serving, judgmental, narrow-minded, selfish, and belligerent. As far as US Americans are concerned, Christ may as well have preached the Sermon on the Mount from the lowest recesses of Death Valley.

Recall that our basic drives such as libido, hunger, and aggression flow from the infantile dimension of our psyche known as the id. In terms of psychodynamics, the superego’s role is to counter-balance the irresponsible, amoral, and essentially sociopathic nature of the id with a healthy degree of conscience and guilt. Yet in the United States, we are inculcated with a deep sense of our exceptionalism and entitlement from the moment we emerge from the birth canal, thus crippling our ability to empathize and seriously impeding the development of our superego.

Consequently, conscience, guilt, personal discipline, and delaying gratification are barely extant in the toxic cesspool of our sociocultural environment.

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