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By Steve Jonas

7/31/07

Peggy Noonan was perhaps the paramount hagiographer of Ronald Reagan, perhaps the most influential creator of the Reagan Myth. Peggy Noonan is currently a Contributing Editor for The Wall Street Journal. In a column entitled “American Grit” posted on the OpinionJournal.com on Friday, July 13, 2007 (that tells you something), Noonan had this to say, in part, about George Bush: “I found myself Thursday watching President Bush’s news conference and thinking about what it is about him, real or perceived, that makes people who used to smile at the mention of his name now grit their teeth. . . . I received an email before the news conference from as rock-ribbed a Republican as you can find, a Georgia woman (middle-aged, entrepreneurial) who’d previously supported him. She said she’d had it . . . . Americans have always been somewhat romantic about the meaning of our country . . . . But they like the president to be the cool-eyed realist, the tough customer who understands harsh realities. With Mr. Bush it is the people who are forced to be cool-eyed and realistic. He’s the one who goes off on the toots.”

He’s the one who goes off on the toots?!? This is Peggy Noonan speaking, folks. He must be deranged or delusional, according to her. That’s the only possible explanation of what Noonan describes as his “seemingly effortless high spirits. . . . [His] certain steely good cheer. . . .” Isn’t it? But hold on. We’ve got the alternative view of The New York Times columnist David Brooks, who seems to be vying for the position of paramount hagiographer of George W. Bush. In his column of July 17, 2007, “Heroes and History,” he tells us that in an interview at the White House “Bush was assertive and good-humored. . . . His self-confidence is the most remarkable feature of his presidency. . . . [Far from being delusional, he has an] unconquerable faith in the rightness of his Big Idea. Bush is convinced that history is moving in the direction of democracy, or as he said Friday: ‘I do believe there is an Almighty, and I believe a gift of that Almighty to all is freedom. And I will tell you that is a principle that no one can convince me that doesn’t exist.’ [And so], Bush remains energized by the power of the presidency.”

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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]

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By Jason Miller

7/25/07

A few days ago, one of my closest friends hit me with a heavily loaded question.

“Are you a Communist?” she queried.

To which I replied:

I do not belong nor militate in any formal communist party in the U.S. Nor do I belong to any other political entity or party. Furthermore, I do not subscribe to a specific doctrine, ideology, or dogma. My allegiance is to my core principles and values, which are premised on honesty, justice, humanity, responsibility, critical thinking, open-mindedness, egalitarianism, compassion, a belief in a Higher Power of my understanding, and many of the teachings of Christ.

My personal beliefs aside, communism is an incredibly loaded word. Our infinitely mendacious educational, social, and media infrastructures begin inculcating reflexive rejection of “all things communist or socialist” into US Americans from the moment they draw their initial breath.

Why is the establishment so desperate to vaccinate us against the “disease” of communism?

Because at its hopelessly rotten core, capitalism, which is manifested most strongly in the United States, is about exploitation, hyper-competitiveness, “rugged individualism”, survival of the fittest, concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, profits above all, property over people, greed, and selfishness. Perhaps worst of all, this pyramid scheme masquerading as a “moral” economic system inevitably leads to wars fueled by its insatiable demands for new markets, more resources, and cheaper labor. Why else would 350 million out of 6.5 billion people spend a trillion dollars a year on a military that has the capacity to destroy our planet thousands of times over, dwarfs the combined firepower of the rest of the world, and plagues over 130 countries with its “benign” occupations? We in the United States maintain a carefully crafted façade as the “benevolent champions of democracy”, but will quickly install ruthless tyrants and commit mass murder (euphemistically labeling our victims as “collateral damage”) if sovereign nations dare to resist our economic rape and plunder.

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“I was doing a very good job. I was meticulous,” Eichmann conceded.

By Phil Rockstroh

7/25/07

“All we can do is what folks (a minority) have always done … exile or resistance. In my opinion, both are honorable. The other options are varying degrees of “little Eichmann[ism]” – Ward Churchill’s much scorned, career purge-inducing – but never-the-less accurate phrase…”

In this summer of angst and grim foreboding about what further assaults against common sense and common decency the Bush Administration might inflict upon the people of the world, how many times during the day do those of us — still possessed of mind, heart and conscience — take pause, hoping we’ve seen the worst of it, then, fearing we haven’t yet, attempt to push down the dread rising within us, so that we might simply make it through the day and be able to rest at night? Accordingly, those who have been paying attention are aware that the outward mechanisms of martial law are in place. We shudder knowing that Bush has issued an executive decree that grants him dictatorial power in the event of some nebulously defined national emergency. In addition, the knowledge nettles us that a vast network of internment camps bristle across the length of the U.S., standing at wait for those who might raise objections to the fascistic fury unloosed by the American empire’s version of the Reichstag fire.

Moreover, a closer look would reveal that the inner processes by which an individual begins the act of acceptance of authoritarian excess — the mixture of chronic passivity, boredom, low grade anxiety and unfocused rage inherent in the citizens/consumers of the corporate state that primes an individual for fascism — have been in place for quite some time within the psyches of the American populace, both elites and hoi polloi alike. Although, don’t look for torch-lit processions thronging the nation’s streets and boulevards; rather, look for a Nuremberg Rally of couch-bound brownshirts. Instead of ogling the serried ranks of jut-jawed, SS soldiers, a contemporary Leni Riefenstahl would be forced to film chubby clusters of double-chinned consumers, saluting the new order with their TV remotes. In the contemporary United States, the elation induced by the immersion of one’s individual will to the mindless intoxication of the mob might only be possible, if Bush seized dictatorial control of the state while simultaneously sending out to all citizens gift certificates to Ikea.

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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

“BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq - The airplane is the size of a jet fighter, powered by a turboprop engine, able to fly at 300 mph and reach 50,000 feet. It’s outfitted with infrared, laser and radar targeting, and with a ton and a half of guided bombs and missiles.

The Reaper is loaded, but there’s no one on board. Its pilot, as it bombs targets in Iraq, will sit at a video console 7,000 miles away in Nevada.

The arrival of these outsize U.S. “hunter-killer” drones, in aviation history’s first robot attack squadron, will be a watershed moment even in an Iraq that has seen too many innovative ways to hunt and kill.” — Associated Press, July 16, 2007.

(http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,142437,00.html?ESRC=dod.nl)

By Adam Engel

7/25/07

So BushCo solved the PR problem that might possibly have grown into a credible anti-war movement by alleging to guarantee less American casualties which, let’s face it, is all Americans really care about anyway. Otherwise, we would have protested the massacre of the first “Gulf War” in which Iraqi soldiers and civilians were slaughtered in their cars while trying to escape Baghdad. Forget all that “military honor” nonsense. What kind of monsters fire on retreating troops AND fleeing civilians? Despite all the movies and TV shows referring to “American casualties” in 1991, including that movie with Meg Ryan, only about 200 Americans died in that war as opposed to 150,000+ Iraqis, mostly civilian. The movie, JARHEAD, unique among Gulf I movies, depicts burnt corpses on a highway crammed with cars and trucks bombed fleeing American air power and “smart bombs.”

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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 Rand Clifford

7/20/07

The tired old color-coded terror warnings that blare whenever justice sniffs at the heels of our leadership are primarily meant to divert attention. Of course ambient American fear must not be allowed to cool below a certain control threshold, and Americans have a very low attention span. But when the garish colors, bar graphs and pie charts are marched out to remind us that evil people want to hurt the righteous, and we need to be especially diligent, it’s time to look closer at the latest political scandal rather than watch for shadows of maniacal brown people fighting to deprive us of our oil. In this age of continuous and absolute lies, one thing Americans can rely on: If the government cries wolf, the sheep are relatively safe.

It’s when they try to be subtle that we should be most wary. Pseudo subtlety means trouble as sure as that knife at your back. America’s leaders are about as subtle as a rattlesnake bite, nothing subtle about flaming yellow and orange and red flourishes of Terror Danger! But on Thursday, July 12, headlines around the country announced: Al-Qaida regains strength, and you can be sure it has nothing to do with hyper over-hyped Jihadists, that we created, gaining strength, and everything to do with government knives and dead sheep. Other headlines: Group returns to 2001 levels. Whoa, now…real evil in the 2001 zone, especially riveting for those condemned to believe what they see instead of what professional liars say. So with this subtle new stratagem—subtle for them at least—we are being softened up for more terror, 9-11 false-flag style, our sentiments plumbed.

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Originally published by The Rec Report / Citizens for Legitimate Government

By Michael D. Rectenwald, Ph.D.

7/19/07

Only a small minority in the United States maintains an unwavering faith in the administration of George W. Bush. Most of the country has finally discovered Bush and his ilk are liars, thieves, incompetent hacks, and mercenary madmen. Only a few true believers remain. These few are reflected in the unwavering statistical minority of 30%-33%, who still support Bush, and apparently will support Bush, no matter what he does. This remnant, or as Steven Colbert called them, “the backwash,” will never sway. Like the Christian martyrs of old, they will go to their deaths swearing allegiance to their master. One might wonder who this faithful remnant is, and just where its members might be found. Well, a narrow and vociferous margin can be found screeching on Freerepublic.com. There, they are apparently alive, but judging from what they hold to be ‘reality,’ not so well.

On Freerepublic.com, we find those who still believe in the Bush agenda: the war, the insurgency, the domestic agenda, and yes, even in the reliability of the Bush propaganda machine. Here we find the few who find no irony in the language of the Bush regime. They see nothing ironic about the fact that the original name for the war in Iraq was Operation Iraqi Liberation, the acronym for which is O.I.L.–that is, before it was changed to cover up the inauspicious and inadvertent revelation of its true purpose. They see no irony in the idea of liberating a country from a dictator, and then using his former prisons to torture its citizens. They see no irony in calling the ‘enemy’ ruthless killers, even as they have bombed and ruthlessly killed many times more people than the enemy. They see no irony in trumpeting a war against terrorism, even as their state terrorism has precipitated a bloody civil war that has drastically added to terrorism’s ranks. They see no irony in the fact that they no longer know who the enemy is, and instead hope to secure the enemy from the enemy’s enemy. They see no irony in the administration’s demands that Iran not “interfere” in the affairs of Iraq. They see no tragedy in the report that over 2 million former Iraqis are now refugees in nearby countries and another 2 million are now homeless inside Iraq. They see no irony in the fact that Bush now claims a need to stay in Iraq, lest it become the safe-haven for terrorism that he claimed it was before he attacked, but which it has only become since he attacked. They see no irony in decrying the supposedly undemocratic regimes in Venezuela and elsewhere, even as their own elections have been notoriously and egregiously flawed, indeed probably rigged, so much so that human rights watch groups would refuse to monitor them. They see no irony in their “pro-life” agenda, even as they kill tens of thousands of innocent, walking and talking children and adults. They see no irony in the fact that the latest media spokesman for the regime is named “Tony Snow,” as if an admission that the message delivered will be part of a “Snow job.”

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By Ed Ciaccio

7/14/07

“This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper”

—-“The Hollow Men” - T.S. Eliot

“Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and machinery of violence; thanks to its peculiar ideology and the role assigned to it in this apparatus of coercion, totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within.”

–Hannah Arendt

“At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to state this or that or the other, but it is ‘not done.’ Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.”

–George Orwell

‘We face a dire reality. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue with no end in sight. A nuclear strike on Iran may occur at any moment, based on a “false flag” terrorist attack to be blamed on Iran, as noted by Brzezinski and others. The neoconservative mania of the White House breeds war and hatred abroad. Secret prisons and torture have become routine.”

–Cindy Sheehan, July 4, 2007

Among the many rare species endangered by the Cheney/Bush regime over the last six years, too often with the complicity not only of Congressional Republicans, but many Democrats as well, is one which too many of us take for granted: our Constitutional system.

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By Rand Clifford

7/16/07

Who are we? We’re the winners—America loves a winner. In America there are winners, and everybody else. Remember that old saying, “It’s not if you win or lose, it’s how you play the game”? Turns out that’s the motto for suckers, for losers. Winning is all that matters. Imagine if instead of glorifying lottery winners, the media paid homage to the losers? Be even more tedious than celebrity hijinks, eh, takes millions of losers to support one winner. Maybe that “how you play the game” motto is one reason you’ve lost your country, something to do with, perhaps, considering government a spectator sport. Remember the price of liberty being eternal vigilance? We know, that’s so history. One might think Americans are real history buffs; after all, the standard defense for having hundreds of moronic television channels remains: “There are good things, like the History Channel.” Well, for all of you spectators that actually watch the History Channel, instead of merely crowing about it, we’ve peppered it with propaganda, so the joke’s on you. Something else you might’ve snoozed away is the crucial truth: “He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future.” (George Orwell, from 1984)

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