Archive for the 'American Empire' Category

Aug 26 2007

Profit of Doom: Of Vampires, Parasites, and the Demise of Capitalism

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

death2

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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Aug 25 2007

Why We Are Against the India-US Nuclear Deal

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

bushsingh

By Sandeep Pandey, Aruna Roy & Medha Patkar

8/25/07

Much has been said and written about the India-US Nuclear Deal, beginning with the statement issued by many eminent nuclear scientists soon after the talks on the deal began between the India and US governments. Public fora and people’s organisations such as Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace called it anti-sovereignty. Today when it is seen as an issue of conflict between the UPA and its Left front allies, we as representatives of people’s movements must re-iterate our stand, which is that the deal is not just anti-democratic but against peace, and against environmentally sustainable energy generation and self-reliant economic development.

The Left front is questioning the fact that such an international deal with significant implications is imposed on the Indian people and Parliament with no public debate and consultation. While the US Congress took a year and a half to discuss the proposed change in US laws to permit nuclear commerce with India, the process in India has been totally undemocratic.

The deal is part of a successful attempt by the United States to build a strategic relationship with India. In confronting the rising capitalist challenge from China, India will be used as its client in the region. Directly or indirectly, the US will also enter the Indian sub-continent to manage intra-regional, inter-country relations. This whole process is likely to escalate the arms race between Pakistan and India, sabotaging the India-Pakistan peace process. How can we ignore the fact the US sells arms to both India and Pakistan?

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Aug 21 2007

Blueprint

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

dollar

By Vi Ransel

8/21/07

STOP!
buying
goods made
in China.

The U.S. Government,
so obsessed
with “homeland” security
cannot protect
you, your children,
not even your pets.

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Aug 20 2007

Iraq, the Unavoidable Global Trauma

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

bush%20laugh

“If that is our choice, just like humanity paid once the price for the ‘will’ of the Almighty Creator through the actions of Hitler, we are once again bound to pay the price for the ‘will’ of God through the actions of Bush.”

By Pablo Ouziel

8/20/07

Many decades ago in Mein Kampf Adolf Hitler stated the following; “I believe today that my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator.” By now we have all had a chance to evaluate the consequences of that “will”. In 2003 an article by the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, quoted a Palestinian leader claiming Bush said to him; “God told me to strike at Al-Qaeda. And I struck them. And then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did. And now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East.”

Studies conducted over the last few decades in regards to the impact of National Socialism on ordinary life in Germany during and after that period have catalogued a serious of civilian attitudes such as keeping silent, looking over one’s shoulder and feeling frightened, and have moved on to evaluate the aftermath of such attitudes and the results of accepting such extreme violence perpetrated on others. A lot of these studies have shown collective signs of guilt, depression and even collective post-traumatic stress disorder.

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Aug 14 2007

The Anti-Empire Report: Separation of oil and state

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

oil_war

BY WILLIAM BLUM \ DATELINE: August 10, 2007

Read this or George W. Bush will be president the rest of your life

Simulpost at author’s site: www.killinghope.org

On several occasions I’ve been presented with the argument that contrary to widespread opinion in the anti-war movement and on the left, oil was not really a factor in the the United States invasion and occupation of Iraq. The argument’s key, perhaps sole, point is that the oil companies did not push for the war.

Responding to only this particular point: firstly, the executives of multinational corporations are not in the habit of making public statements concerning vital issues of American foreign policy, either for or against. And we don’t know what the oil company executives said in private to high Washington officials, although we do know that such executives have a lot more access to such officials than you or I, like at Cheney’s secret gatherings. More importantly, we have to distinguish between oil as a fuel and oil as a political weapon.

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Aug 13 2007

A Disneyland of Militant Ignorance: The American Normalization of Mass Murder.

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

iraq bl

“…Unfortunately — while the political theatre of US politics is fake as well — in Iraq, the blood isn’t.”

by Phil Rockstroh

8/13/07

Given the nation’s tottering infrastructure, imperial overreach abroad and vandalized constitutional process by a lawless executive branch, what will it take to scare the general public, mainstream press and political classes into immediate action to bring about meaningful change? At this twilight hour of the American republic, there must come a paradigm shift of seismic proportions or else the republic will perish. I’m less than optimistic. Insomuch as, I suspect, that if, during a rare press conference, George W. Bush’s face were to suddenly shed its skin, right on camera, live on national television, on all channels, broadcast and cable, to reveal the countenance of a Gila Monster — the elitist beltway punditry would begin to catalog the merits of his reptilian single-mindedness. Then proceed to an interview with an “expert” from a right-wing funded, zoological think tank, “The American Institute for the Advancement of Predatory Policy,” who would assure us that: “…in an era when evil is as proliferate as flies around the stinking dumpster of the world, Americans will be kept safe by a lizard-faced leader who eats flies for breakfast.” And the general public would only be concerned because the broadcast happened to preempt the finals of American Idol.

To survive as a republic, a great many American idols will have to topple, and not only those inane, fame-obsessed clowns and crooners sharp-elbowing each other on the Fox Network’s televised exercises in Pop Stardom for Dummies. As far as idolatry goes, by far the most pervasive, ruinous, and in need of toppling is the position of unquestioning worship the US military holds in American life. One would think that after the Götterdämmerung of macho folly we’ve witnessed over the past half-decade that the country would have had its fill of self-proclaimed alpha male posturing and adolescent-minded, military hagiography.

The media is rife with right-wing fantasist nonsense about the “feminized” American male, when, in fact, the country has grown outright psychotic from testosterone-induced toxicity (TIT). In the 1960s, hippies were ridiculed for their naive assumptions that life on earth could be magically transformed into an egalitarian paradise of free love, good dope, waterbeds and Lava Lamps for all, if “the straights” could simply be induced to “raise their consciousness” by the engagement in and the utilization of the erotic acts, illicit substances and goofy, counterculture accouterment mentioned above. Accordingly, the current fantasy — that all US soldiers are good, righteous and brave, standing ever vigilant against all threats to the Homeland — could be regarded as a kind of Woodstock Militarism.

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Aug 08 2007

THE EMPIRE WITHOUT CLOTHES

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

usiraq

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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Aug 05 2007

ATAVISM

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

3brains

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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Aug 03 2007

US War On Terror And Muslim Response

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

keypic2

By Usman Khalid

8/3/07

The entire world was shocked beyond belief when the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon building were struck on 9/11 by US planes hijacked by Arab young men. There was sympathy for the victims and justifiable anger in America. But the US response in invading the already devastated country of Afghanistan was excessive. More important, the USA did not obtain the endorsement of the UN Security Council and the invasion violated International Law. A military attack is permissible only in response to an invasion or imminent aggression. The Afghans did not invade the US nor were capable of doing so. That the 9/11 attacks had been planned and executed by Arab mujahideen in Afghanistan, did call for action, perhaps even punishment, but not the wanton bombing that resulted in the death of over 40,000 mostly innocent non-combatants.

The invasion of Afghanistan set the stage for the “US war on terror” that is still going on. There is little point in quarrelling about this name which many consider misleading. What is important is that it is a new type of war, with new rules. When President Bush said, “You are either with us (the USA) or with the terrorist”, he propounded a new doctrine of war the chief features of which are: 1) strategic ‘pre-emption’ and 2) ‘unilateralism’. Both of these features constitute a violation of international law. America has assumed the right to invade or bomb any country which it accuses of providing refuge or assistance to terrorists. America makes demands to hand over to them persons it accuses of being terrorists. A country that refuses on the plea that it does not have an extradition treaty with America, or that legal procedures should be followed before extradition, or that they cannot hand over a person to be sent to a dubious jurisdiction like Guantanamo Bay, or that the accusation made by America does not constitute a crime in their country, earns the wrath of the USA. Most countries take the threats from America seriously and comply. Those countries that resist are demonised, isolated and sometimes even invaded. Three countries have been invaded since 9/11 - Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon – and thousands have been incarcerated in many countries without trial or handed over to America by their own governments because of dire American threats.

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Aug 01 2007

Reviewing Linda McQuaig’s “It’s the Crude, Dude”

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

iraq-explained

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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