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“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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By Vi Ransel

8/23/07

While the game is rigged
in favor of the Rich,
they still depend
on us
to spend enough
to support them in the style
to which we’ve allowed them
to become accustomed.

When we turn around
and make a gift to them
of the wages
we slave so hard to make
by exchanging them
for mindless consumer fluff
we’re saying that it’s OK

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by Ivor Hughes

8/23/07

“Menezes was shot in the head seven times during the chase on to an underground train, which happened two weeks after the major terrorist suicide bombings in London on July 7, 2005, and an attempted repeat attack on July 21″.

Fit the evidence to the crime and close ranks .. this particular crime happened on Traitor Tony Blair’s watch …. he has been well rewarded for his perfidy .. we hear that he now has hobnobbed with the Pope, has a luxury home in Jerusalem and is the Middle East Peace Envoy .. ugh! pass the bucket I need to vomit.

The incident was quite clearly engineered by the British Security Apparatus.. The whole purpose of these engineered incidents is what the military used to call .. ‘putting the frighteners on’ .. Empire has beens and Empire would be’s are well versed in such tactics .. I know .. I have been part of it.

Trust us .. we are doing this to protect you .. nothing could be further from the truth.

It was done to send a message to the British Public .. in the same way the US and Israel sends messages to its Citizens .. Menezes was the Messenger .. the Lamb and also the Warning to the Public ..

We will kill you like a dog in the gutter .. and send the ashes to your loved ones in an urn .. you have been warned..

No ifs or buts .. we control the press .. we control the education system …. we control the justice system .. we control the economic system .. we will tell you what to think .. believe in the rule of law .. we will protect your sniveling shitty little lives and save you from the big black scary infinite.

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BY GARY CORSERI

8/23/07

There was a point we were drifting towards;
There was a place we were seeking.
We called it: The Home of Sublime Understanding,
The Quality of Differences Subtly Restored.

“After the War,” we assured one another:
The War to Make Living Safe for the Living;
The War we have been breathing since birth—and before.

But the War never ended.
Its sand filled our mouths with reproachable sorrows.
It was mother and father, sister and brother;
Priest and rabbi, preacher and imam.

The Causes lay under a quilt of stars.
And numerous corpses clawed the hard ground.

The politicians hallowed the ground.
The various preachers hallowed the ground.
Children placed wreaths on hallowed ground.
Great monuments were built on hallowed ground.
They gleamed in the sun.
Patterned, colored cloths, called flags, flapped
Over hallowed ground.
The band played anthems over hallowed ground.

And we forgot:
There was a point we were drifting towards;
There was a place we were seeking;
We called it: The Home of Sublime Understanding,
The Quality of Differences Subtly Restored.

Gary Corseri is a senior contributing editor of Cyrano’sJournalOnline. His work has appeared at ThomasPaine’sCorner, The New York Times, Village Voice, PBS-Atlanta, GlobalResearch, ThirdWorldTraveler, OpEdNews, MyLeftWing, WorldProutAssembly, PalestineChronicle, TeleSurTV, IslamOnline and over 200 other venues. His books include Manifestations (edited) and A Fine Excess. He can be contacted at .

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

Three men with the intestinal fortitude to defy a malevolent empire, despite its overwhelming economic and military power….Viva La Revolución!

By Fidel Castro

Originally published at Cuba News Agency

08/20/07

The history of Cuba during the last 140 years is one of struggle to preserve national identity and independence, and the history of the evolution of the American empire, its constant craving to appropriate Cuba and of the horrendous methods that it uses today to hold on to world domination.

Prominent Cuban historians have dealt in depth with these subjects in different periods and in various excellent books which deserve to be readily available to our compatriots. These reflections are addressed especially to the new generations with the aim of helping them learn about very important and decisive events in the destiny of our homeland.

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By Carolyn Baker

8/22/07

Originally published at Speaking Truth to Power

Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the making of action in spite of fear; the moving out against the resistance engendered by fear into the unknown and into the future.

~ M.Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled~

Yesterday’s news brought forth the not-surprising revelation that the use of pain medicine in the United States has nearly doubled in the last ten years. Various rationalizations abound-the baby boomers are aging, and there are more of us, and well-you know the song and dance that basically attributes the use of pain killers to the hoards of graying flower children who wish they were feeling groovy instead of arthritic. Not far behind is the rationalization that whereas physicians two decades ago used to inform patients that pain was part of the healing process, they are no longer doing so and are prescribing pain relievers instead. According to an Associated Press story on August 20, “Hydrocodone use increased 217 percent; morphine distribution went up 180 percent; even meperidine, most commonly sold as Demerol, jumped 20 percent” during the past decade.

And of course, the pain is not just physical. One in ten women takes an antidepressant, and the use of psychiatric drugs among children has soared to unprecedented heights. Juxtaposed with the ever-new potpourri of such drugs available to us, is a decrease in the availability of mental health coverage in employee health benefit packages. If such coverage exists, it is most likely limited to a paltry twelve sessions per year with multiple “engraved invitations” from insurance companies and employers to not use or cease using those benefits.

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“Pageantry like some ridiculous game show churns along stronger than ever, where the likes of Mitt Romney spend $1000 per vote in straw polls.”

By Rand Clifford

8/22/07

“Never smarten up a chump, and never give a sucker an even break.”

—W.C. Fields

Government of, by and for corporations (CorpoGov) is closing the noose, while recourse for The People in post 9-11 America lie eviscerated to the point of simple dissent becoming a crime. So how might we temper CorpoGov’s assault on our Constitution, us, the world’s people—even the natural systems that support life on Earth? Have we any chance of nudging CorpoGov toward a revolution in clean alternative energies and away from obsession with controlling most of the world’s remaining fossil energy? Could any example of CorpoGov’s character shout louder than all the murder and destruction to dominate a resource that is destroying us?

“If our nation is ever taken over, it will be taken over from within.”

—President James Madison

Might we vote our way back to reason? Astonishingly, a majority of Americans still imagine their vote has influence on the federal level—an illusion vast resources are squandered to maintain. Pageantry like some ridiculous game show churns along stronger than ever, where the likes of Mitt Romney spend $1000 per vote in straw polls. But when the lying and posturing, spending and manipulation recede for some deep breaths of AIPAC before the next election show, those same elite responsible for handing occupation of the White House to another of the Bush Crime Family for two terms will have long before made our choice. Voters clearly rejected W, twice, but look at what has happened.

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“Their main goal, in fact, may be no different than other resistance groups - to drive out a repressive occupier (the British in the South in their case) and reclaim their sovereignty. Afterwards they can sort out how to run their country.”

By Stephen Lendman

8/21/07

The Bush administration is required to submit three progress reports on Iraq to Congress in September after it returns from its August recess. The US Comptroller General will issue one around September 1 on how well so-called congressional benchmarks have been met. Near the end of the month, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) conservative think tank will report on “The readiness of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) to assume responsibility for maintaining the territorial integrity of Iraq, denying international terrorists a safe haven, bringing greater security to Iraq’s 18 provinces in the next 12 to 18 months, and bringing an end to sectarian violence to achieve national reconciliation.”

Then, on or about September 15, General David Petraeus, US “Multi-National Force” - Iraq (MNF-I) commander will submit his assessment of progress before multi-billions more funding are released for a war the Pentagon and most others in Washington know is unwinnable and lost. No matter, his report (and the others) will state progress has been made and the “surge” is working even though details will be sketchy in what’s expected to be a vaguely worded deceptive snapshot of contrived positive trends. It’ll fool no one, but Congress will be asked to accept it (and the others) on faith that more time, money, sustained troop levels and patience are needed.

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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

Stephen Harper, the George Bush of the “Great White North”, fervently supports the SPP and its ostensible beneficence to “the people.”

By Si Contino

8/20/07

Free Trade was an idea that was born at the close of the Second World War. It continued to gain momentum within elite circles during the 1960’s; and by 1986 was codified into global law when the World Trade Organization was founded.

With the birth of the North American Free Trade Agreement under the Clinton Administration, global regulations began being deeply integrated, furtively, into every aspect of law within the United States, Canada and Mexico. This process was accelerated in 2005 under the auspices of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America; a plan to facilitate the free movement of goods, services and people throughout our continent.

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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

8/21/07

Dying in a dying Empire on a dying Planet the Terror! It started out like — I mean, I did well in
school, college and I didn’t I didn’t know it was either grad school or the Corporate cubicle so the
cubicle until almost mad returned to grad school.

Afterwards, the cubicle, only this time despite scholarships stipends I owed money so
HAD to be cubicle but didn’t if only I’d the courage to — I mean I was young, strong
could have lived anywhere done anything — the rat-hole — absentee landlord — but home
expensive studio-cube 600 dollars then $1850/month this on 10th and B, where Ginsberg
lived and Charlie Parker.

Then the Condition. Transfusion every year or so alright. Then every two months, then one
month, now two weeks.

Disability. But even with my wife’s job insurance and living with relatives not
enough so supplement free-lancing for Corporate PR selling (ha, ha) “Green”
products to clueless “environmentally conscious consumers.”

Work at home — careful: don’t make more than the $1200 Disability allows — my laptop
propped on pillows.

My cubicle my deathbed.

Adam Engel can be reached at

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