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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 Jason Miller

9/11/07

“The other kids were all into black power,” Oprah told the Tribune in the mid-1980s. But “I wasn’t a dashiki kind of woman … Excellence was the best deterrent to racism and that became my philosophy.”

Excellence indeed. Few would deny that Oprah Winfrey has achieved an extraordinary degree of THAT, at least by our society’s warped standards. Witty, articulate, attractive, beloved by tens of millions, and fabulously wealthy, she is the “I pulled myself up by my bootstraps” queen of a vast media empire. Oprah is a living embodiment of the American Dream. What is perhaps most inspiring to her genuflecting disciples is that Oprah rose to her stratospheric position of wealth and influence from an impoverished start in a socioeconomic hierarchy still largely dominated by white males.

Oprah Winfrey ostensibly possesses the mythical Midas Touch, a generous spirit, deep spiritual wisdom, and, in the eyes of those blinded by their adoration, the credentials of a saint. Yet despite appearing destined for canonization, Oprah injects heavy doses of infectious pus into the already deeply abscessed wound of the American psyche.

How could anyone who’s noted for having said, “Let your light shine. Shine within you so that it can shine on someone else. Let your light shine,” have such a pernicious effect on our culture?

Let’s “count the ways…with a passion put to use.”

To truly understand the depth of the damage Oprah inflicts on our society, we need to step outside of our bourgeois indoctrination and see her for what she truly represents. Manifesting the Horatio Alger Myth on steroids, Oprah is a wet dream come true for our criminal class of ruling elites sometimes referred to as the plutocracy. She provides them with “irrefutable” and ubiquitous anecdotal evidence which “proves” the idiotic delusion that America is a meritocracy where everyone has a realistic chance of getting rich, if they just work hard enough. The reality is that the richest 20% of US Americans own over 80% of the wealth and the long-term trend has been toward an ever increasing concentration of treasure into a smaller number of strong-boxes(1).

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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

9/8/07

Despite the vast research and debates about solutions to global warming and climate change, most of these solutions are confined to science and scientific research. The recent developments in the field of bio-fuels, solar energy, wind energy, Geo Engineering and other fields have indeed provided solutions in reducing the carbon emission. But we have to go beyond the greenhouse carbon emissions and address the environmental issues in totality. Over the past few years, we have come across many new vocabularies due to climate change like Ozone hole depletion, Global warming, CO 2 Emission, acid rain, tsunamis, bush fires, soil erosion and others, most of which were unheard of to the generations prior to that of ours.

Science only deals with the immediate issues and does not see the whole picture. Here we have to take into account the possible natural and man made tipping points and the chain reactions that will follow. So only addressing greenhouse gas emissions without taking into account the total environmental crisis will complicate problems further and will only add new terms to the ever increasing vocabulary of environmental problems.

So the important question is whether the search for solutions should be confined only to science or is a concern beyond the realm of science alone.

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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

The debate about whether Americans should stay or leave Iraq after four years of brutal occupation is surreal because it continues to be underwritten by enormous lies. Plain and simple, the US elites invaded Iraq to rob that nation at gunpoint of its major resource, oil, and all the current foot-dragging is simply to accommodate stateside politics to the ensuing debacle, while clinging to some “solution” that might provide a fig leaf for an indefinite US military presence in that region. The essay we reproduce below is an excellent dissection of the principal lies feeding the confusion, as usual with ample complicity on the part of the corporate media, which through shoddy work, or cynical collaboration, effectively prolongs the agony of Iraq. The evidence that the mass media are not doing their job is everywhere. Just consider for a moment the following astonishing facts—astonishing in their sheer obscenity when put in the context of so much want and misery in the world, and that most Americans never heard of them— collected by Doug Henwood for one of his remarkable essays, and published back in 2003:

“LIGHTNESS”

In the early days of the war, when things weren’t going so well for the “coalition,” it was said that the force was too light. But after the sandstorm cleared and the snipers were mowed down, that alleged lightness became a widely praised virtue. But that force was light only by American standards: 300,000 troops; an endless rain of Tomahawks, JDAMs, and MOABs; thousands of vehicles, from Humvees to Abrams tanks; hundreds of aircraft, from Apaches to B-1s; several flotillas of naval support - and enormous quantities of expensive petroleum products. It takes five gallons of fuel just to start an Abrams tank, and after that it gets a mile per gallon. And filling one up is no bargain. Though the military buys fuel at a wholesale price of 84¢ a gallon, after all the expenses of getting it to the front lines are added in, the final cost is about $150 a gallon. That’s a steal compared to Afghanistan, where fuel is helicoptered in, pushing the cost to $600/gallon. Rummy’s “lightness” is of the sort that only a $10 trillion economy can afford.

Wrap your mind around those little facts before you read the rest of the indictment.—Eds.

BY JOHN TIRMAN, AlterNet

Originally Posted on November 28, 2006

The escalating violence in Iraq’s civil war is now earning considerable attention as we pass yet another milestone — U.S. occupation there, in two weeks, will exceed the length of the Second World War for America. While the news media have finally started to grapple with the colossal amount of killing, a number of misunderstandings persist. Some are willful deceptions. Let’s look at a few of them:

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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

9/5/07

Capitalism
is an economic system
consisting
of predators and prey,
in large part dependent
on the predator’s ability
to convince victims
inferiority
is their fate.

The predators
proclaim themselves
the Darwinian pinnacle
of a self-created, pyramid-like “food chain”,
but the predators
are dependent on the product
and the profit
produced only by those
designated prey.

And since
plutocratic predators
refuse to produce,
they are actually
the weakest link in the chain.
But as long as the prey
can be convinced
of the opposite
predators can perpetrate
their economic
rape.

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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 Carolyn Baker

9/3/07

Originally published at Speaking Truth to Power

“We have only begun to see the reverberations of the mortgage meltdown. They will be as sweeping and mindboggling as global warming or an earthquake measuring 10 on the Richter scale.”

I’m an historian, not an economist, so anything about economics-macro, micro-whatever, has been as foreign to me for most of my adult life as soil samples from Mars. But several years ago I had an epiphany that shattered my then-left-liberal/progressive world. I awakened from decades of delusion that I could adequately grasp world and national events without understanding the essential nature of how money works in the capitalist economy in which I live. I realized that until I acquired that understanding, all of the other subjects I preferred to talk about-war, social justice, race, gender, environment, energy depletion, civil liberties, globalization, and many more were inextricably connected with the financial machinations of the imperial beast within whose belly I reside. Today, I do not claim for one moment to be an authority on economic issues, but I have studied the works of some folks who are, such as Catherine Austin Fitts, Michael Panzner, Michael Hudson, John Crudele, Paul Grignon, and Hazel Henderson.

From them I have learned to more skillfully read the tea leaves of the current economic upheaval that is brewing within the United States and is now rippling into the global financial markets. Furthermore, I have realized that my government and the economy of the United States is being run as a criminal syndicate, and that the most useful way to understand the subprime mortgage meltdown and its implications was to familiarize myself with the economics of Tony Soprano, that infamous main character of the HBO TV series “The Sopranos”, Mr. King of New Jersey “waste management” and proprietor of the Bada Bing.

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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

9/1/07

It’s an ancient tradition derived
from the scapegoat of Leviticus
whereby the wrongs of others
are transferred to an innocent

who’s then sent out alone to die
symbolically bearing others’ sins,
absolving from greed, lust, pride and hate
the community that condemned him.

A corpse is laid out, sin eater employed
to eat bread and salt from its belly
thereby absorbing the corpse’s sins
for the wages of just a few pennies.

Relegated to the wrong side of the tracks
in housing fallen to disrepair
destitute even of hope
a place one stumbles only in error.

The poor clean the toilets, wait the tables,
kill the meat and mow the lawns,
raise the children of the “Upper” Class,
walk their pampered dogs and park their cars.

They assemble the latest electronics,
sew our blue jeans and our wedding gowns.
When we buy cheap Chinese goods at Wal-mart
they’re the “associates” who check us out.

The poor care for other people’s parents
left alone and sad in nursing homes.
They’re the receptionists in upscale spas,
the charming girls in nail salons.

They’re dishwashers who scrape half-full plates
left by those who can afford to go out to eat.
They stock store shelves and work in warehouses
where corporations ship and receive.

They empty bed pans and wipe up vomit.
They’re janitors and maintainence men.
And a lot of them help to build the jails
they’re disproportionately incarcerated in.

The people they serve hardly speak to them
though they provide indispensible services
because they’re living proof of a “lower” calss,
which makes most Americans nervous.

The fact that they exist at all is a slap
in the face of the American polity,
so they’re treated like a shameful excresence
on the ass of American society.

But like the ghetto homelands of South Africa,
America has embarrassing pockets of poverty.
And the economic apartheid we practice,
makes the poor exiles in their own country.

And when the poor are all used up, having been
consumed by predatory corporations,
they’re discarded like so much garbage
for being too old, too sick or disabled.

These castoffs through no fault of their own
are condemned by the corporate supremacists
who looted their pensions and 401Ks
to eke out a long and miserable existence.

It’s gone on so long it seems normal,
and corporate-owned media report it that way.
It’s as if poverty were invsible
and America’s conscience had been mislaid.

So the sin eaters continue to scramble
for scraps from the CORPSE-porations’ table,
bearing the burden of unpardonable sin,
our homegrown, American scapegoats.

And treating the poor as if this is their fault
hides the fact that it is America’s decision
to absolve the criminal perpetrator
and blame the sin-eating victim.

So you’ll never see a T-shirt that says
“Poor and Proud in the U.S.A.”
because in the United States of America
the P.I.A. are M.I.A.

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

8/30/07

The Earth
is neither our enabler
nor our bitch
with which
we can do as we please
with impunity.

It may appear to us
that she doesn’t mind
or is unable to resist
our abusive advances.
But her conception of time
is infinite
and the brief minute
of our existence
is just that,
an infinitesimal blip
on her millennial radar screen.

And should we cross the line
we are unaware she has drawn

… gone …

like dinosaurs
stumbling over the tripwire
of evolution’s Claymore mine.

And our Mother
will merely turn the page
and write an alternate story line.

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 Jason Miller

8/27/07

“It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck. Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it’s more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody’s blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, the capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker. It’s only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely.”

–Malcolm X

Striving with the unwavering dedication of true believers and slaves to the grind, those of us who exist within the geographic, social, cultural, economic, and political boundaries of the United States are collectively destroying the Earth.

With dutiful efforts, heavily sedated consciences, and sweet obliviousness to the depth of our depravity, we toil away at our chosen or assigned tasks. After all, predatory plutocrats like “Mitt” Romney would be impotent without his minions—the hundreds of millions of wage slaves exercising their “right to work” (for as small a wage as they desire) while obediently manning the bulwarks of a system so putrid that were it possible to feed it to a pig, our porcine friend would wretch his guts out.

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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

“While there is a lower class I am in it; while there is a criminal element I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free”

–Eugene Debs, American Socialist

By Paul A. Donovan

8/23/07

“The only thing most American know about socialism is they don’t like it. They have been led to believe that socialism is something to be either ridiculed as impractical, or feared as an instrument of the devil.”

–Leo Huberman

It is in fact difficult to shed light on what a socialist United States will look like, mostly because many think socialism, or other forms of publicly owned, and democratically controlled economies is an impossible goal to achieve in our country, mostly due to the hyper capitalist mentality of our nation, the strength of our ruling classes, and the overwhelmingly successful propaganda apparatus of the corporate system, which comprises the media, educational system, and many other venues, including the religious and political pulpit, and is reflected in the apathy, alarming confusion, and at times, indifference of our nation’s citizens, many of whom simply don’t know, don’t want to know, or don’t care where this country is headed (for a terrific insight into this puzzling and exasperating mindset I strongly recommend Deer Hunting with Jesus, by Joe Bageant, who also happens to be one of Cyrano’s senior contributing editors).

However, the capitalist systems own irrepressible dynamics and “make up”—which easily translate into a bill of indictment—are bringing about yet another wave of global repulsion and re-awakenings. In this framework, when I speak of this dynamic I am referring not so much to the more technical aspects of this phenomenon, but to its mass-perceived aspects, such as the following (in no particular order):

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