•TPC•

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“They are regarded as “accidents”. They are concealed in a criminal way by “the big circus of the information” which sends its correspondents to follow the tracks of this and that occidental vanished person, but doesn’t make a move or even turn its face to report what happens everyday in Afghanistan: dozens, hundreds of children like those burnt alive by our humanitarian operation.”

(Photo and caption source: http://www.rawa.org/nato_victim.htm)

By Jim Miles

9/17/07

NATO has recently had one of its regular meetings of the “Military Committee” in Victoria, B.C., Canada, with appropriate demonstrations against it for Canada’s role within NATO and Afghanistan. Phil Lyons, the organizer of the demonstration, which ended peacefully, says “NATO is now a weapon of American Imperialists.” Another demonstrator asks, “I don’t understand why NATO exists,” then answers his own question, perhaps without realizing it, that “NATO is a war tool the West uses to intimidate other nations into submission.” [1]

They are correct regardless of the high-sounding rhetoric that emanates from the government about international humanitarian rights and the war on terrorism.

NATO as it currently stands has a dual command structure, SACT and SACEUR.
SACT is the acronym for the Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, the transformation being that of making NATO forces into a U.S. styled rapid deployment force anywhere in the world. SACT will be dual-hatted (meaning the same guy has both positions) as Commander, US Joint Forces Command. This one person is U.S. Air Force Gen. Lance L. Smith, who is headquartered in Norfolk Virginia. SACEUR is the acronym for Supreme Allied Command Europe and is be dual-hatted as Commander, US European Command, General John Craddock, United States Army who is appointed by the US President. His headquarters are in Mons, Belgium.

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By Emily Spence

9/17/07

One’s living in a proactively progressive family is not easy from a number of standpoints. Especially as a youngster, one can feel torn between wanting to fit in with contemporaries and standing up for an altogether different viewpoint and lifestyle — an alternative that could cause one to be ostracized and shunned by peers.

Relative to this, I well remember the day that Justin, the empathetic son of leftist friends, burst through his kitchen door and started to cry. His mother and I asked him about the reason and he replied that he couldn’t figure out the response that he should take in a heartrending situation. Therefore, he simply felt overwhelmed in frustration and anguish.

Then he went on to describe the situation that was causing him so much grief. It involved his wanting to be protective towards a neighborhood newcomer, a small Hispanic boy on whom children of other ethnic groups were mercilessly picking. However, he wasn’t sure of the way to effectively go about it.

Meanwhile, he, himself, didn’t want to be bullied, along with the new boy, for supporting him. All the same, he earnestly tried to include him in local group activities even though others ridiculed and rejected Justin’s choice to do so. Overall then, it just wasn’t working out for the Latino regardless of whatever Justin tried to do.

Then Justin went on to relate that he absolutely hated that the relatively lighter skinned children called the darker skinned ones the “N” word and called anyone else the “N” word when a person fumbled in the basketball games that transpired on his block. In short, he, as a deeply sensitive individual, simply couldn’t stand the gap between the ways that the other children treated each other and the way that he wanted to interrelate. He already knew about the degree of torment that pariahs can experience as his parents operate a shelter for homeless people.

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By Adam Engel

9/17/07

Call me Plantman. Don Quixote was a Plantman. Kafka was a closet Plantman. Crazy Horse, Black Elk, Lame Deer, Chief Joseph were Plantmen.

Friday midtown. Friday payday.

“CEO Tobacconists.” Quality, overpriced cigars. Walk-in humidor. Air-conditioned smoking room. Customers relax. Smoke. Wide-screen TV.

Recite the Smoker’s Ode:

green gone
brown dead
resurrection fire
leaf life
tumors bloom
like tulips
or teeth
oh wet pink lungs

Musty humidor. Fat, sticky Maduro. Smoking room television tuned to The War. Cigar store crowd. Executives Young, Middle-Aged, Old. Shiny black shoes. Gray Summer suits.

And me, “Plantman,” the indoor landscaper, the horticultural technician, keeper of the City’s Office Flora, in denim and Topiary Techniques t-shirt. Smoked the darkest, most potent, if not largest cigar in the room. Maduro. Double-Corona. Sweet.

Television: Siren Air Strike Siren Air Strike Air Strike Air Strike Air Strike

Older men their war. Middle-aged their own. Younger Executives had not known war, cognizant of men their age in combat even as Young Executives ordered cigars. Senior Executives. Executives. Junior Executives. Vice-presidents. Managing Directors. Directors. Managing managers directing directors to be still

Older wars superior to new, according to geezers. More skill more man-to-man hand-to-hand. None of this push-button never see the hell you kill, play it like a video arcade, fish in a barrel, no thrill glory, no blood-scent, you see.

Middle-aged nightmares recalled: guerilla warfare, jungle rot, defoliants, lack moral such such such.

Arguments went so. Young men red-eared silent. Watched The War through smoke: planes tanks missiles blasting righteous wrath smite cities hammered eerie jigsaw puzzles of indignity, pain, confusion.

(Listen to the footage sound-track closely, said an executive who inadvertently recorded it while taping TV War Footage, you’ll hear a baby, sounding far-away, sleepy, probably in shock, calling for its mama or papa or someone — the executive couldn’t tell).

Out the window Sol’s slow-mo plunge. Sticky-sweet Maduro rhythm concentrated puff-exhale. Still Life With Plantman Under Cobalt Sky. I reached the cream of cigar, the final third, blend of saliva with juices latent in the leaf. Each puff damp with gray-blue ether of myself.

Young Executives had known no war but repetitious anecdotes of old warriors. Bosses, Mentors. They watched television commentators steady thick of mayhem slaughter. Prime action for the folks back home. Gory talk. The Old Executive/Warriors explicit, baleful, tedious.

Discussion shifted to cigars. Executives in the Smoking Room of CEO Cigars. Representatives of several companies gathering informally. Enemies after all. Smoking. Sharing life histories. Business anecdotes — a different kind of war. Cigar

ritual. Initiation. Not afraid to stink. Hah-hah-hah to up-turned noses of trim health-loving wives.

“Straight talk.”

Not afraid among men. But what if…the office…reveal what’s hidden…known among the women…at the office?

“Won’t get laid that way,” said one Senior Executive. “Women like strong men with big cigars. We’ve got nothing to hide here. Not in this room, at any rate.”

Laughter.

Ceremony. Pause. Executive Light-Up. Sucking flames. Wood matchsticks. Bad light, uneven burn? Catastrophic waste of a Cigar. Bad show. Really bad.

“Cigar, gift of the Indian,” one waxed poetic. “Cylinder of mellowness and virtue.”

Cigarette not a cigar like shot of rye not a snifter of fine cognac. Life ripened goes to smoke. Lifts spirits. Anguish up in smoke of stink leaf. Curing process: green origins ripen under sun.

Natural processes. Living systems. Green embalmed brown. Like raisins. Curing thought. Tumors like mushroom caps.

Exploded lungs of the unfortunate. Up in smoke. Bombs felled Enemy cities. Commentators explained: significance, explosions; shock, desire, fear, attack.

I studied bright burning buildings, imagined lives inside. Entered thoughts and situations, captured visions. Ten million minds became one mind, my cigar their locus. Ten-million thoughts became no thought - steady puff-exhale - and peace. Maduro of the Cosmic One – Mind. But on the screen and in the Cigar Room: smoke, fire, ashes, ashes.

Fire eye of my cigar wept ashes. Smoke everywhere, everywhere smoke and talk.

by Adam Engel, Plantman.

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By Peter Beaumont and Joanna Walters in New York

Sunday September 16, 2007

The Observer | GUARDIAN Unlimited [U.K.]

The man once regarded as the world’s most powerful banker has bluntly declared that the Iraq war was ‘largely’ about oil.

Appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1987 and retired last year after serving four presidents, Alan Greenspan has been the leading Republican economist for a generation and his utterings instantly moved world markets.

In his long-awaited memoir - out tomorrow in the US - Greenspan, 81, who served as chairman of the US Federal Reserve for almost two decades, writes: ‘I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.’

In The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, he is also crystal clear on his opinion of his last two bosses, harshly criticising George W Bush for ‘abandoning fiscal constraint’ and praising Bill Clinton’s anti-deficit policies during the Nineties as ‘an act of political courage’. He also speaks of Clinton’s sharp and ‘curious’ mind, and ‘old-fashioned’ caution about the dangers of debt.

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By Peter Chamberlin

9/16/07

Zionist leaders have taught that Israel can only exist, that it can only have peace and security, by beating the Palestinians (and indeed the entire Arab world) into total submission to its demands. Since the earliest days, Zionist leaders have recognized the need to forcefully dictate terms of surrender to the Palestinians, to the Arab world, even to all the Jews of the diaspora, in order to colonize the land formerly known as Israel. The central demand in this involuntary agreement calls for a Jewish majority to be established in Eretz Yisrael by physical intimidation (including the West Bank and Gaza) and absolute Israeli dominance over all the land of “Greater Israel” (from southern Turkey to the Nile River, all the way to the Euphrates River). [1]

The militant teachings of Vladimir (”Wolf”) Jabotinsky, the father of Jewish self-defense and creator of the Iron Wall doctrine, have formed the basis for all Israeli government policies toward the native Palestinian population. [2] The Iron Wall doctrine envisioned by him has been given physical form in the great wall dividing them from the Palestinians. [3] These policies call for the use force, restrictions and imposed suffering, to drive the Palestinians to desperation and eventual resignation to their imposed fate. To quote David Ben-Gurion, “We must use terror, assassination, intimidation, land confiscation, and the cutting of all social services to rid the Galilee of its Arab population.” [4] (David Ben-Gurion, May 1948, to the General Staff. From Ben-Gurion, A Biography, by Michael Ben-Zohar, Delacorte, New York 1978)

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“And George, Governor Death, President selected by a narrow margin of 5 to 4, man-child who’s always been given everything always and always managed to wreck it all, your nihilistic, narcissistic, narrow mind is rivaled on this sad planet only by your fellow spoiled brat brother of Thanatos (or secret alias? or — pardon the pun – “beard?”), Bin Laden. “

by Adam Engel

9/16/07

I was almost a hero, once.

Early Summer of 2001 I was hustling for the last shards of the dot.com boom and secured an interview with a banking corporation that bears the name of a famous American Robber Baron who sowed the seeds of his first fortune on the bloodlefilth of the Civil War. He sold defective arms to Union Soldiers, (or was it Confederate soldiers? Possibly both). Some called this Johnny-Bad-Apple-Seed a war profiteer; others said he was merely planting heroes.

It was supposed to be a three-to-six month gig writing ad-copy, business documents, executive speeches and other corporate propaganda. Thing was, they wanted me to wear a suit and tie. I told the woman at Human Resources that I didn’t sport such garb, particularly not in hot weather. Sorry, no suit, no gig, she said politely.

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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 Patrick Martin

World Socialist Website

9/15/07

As part of its campaign to justify a long-term US occupation of Iraq, the Bush administration has increasingly resorted to warning of chaos and even genocide in the wake of a withdrawal of American troops. But a new report suggests that something akin to genocide is already taking place, under American auspices.

The British polling agency ORB reported Thursday that the death toll in Iraq since the 2003 US invasion has passed the one million mark.

According to ORB, US-occupied Iraq, with an estimated 1.2 million violent deaths, has “a murder rate that now exceeds the Rwanda genocide from 1994 (800,000 murdered),” with another one million wounded and millions more driven from their homes into internal or external exile.

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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 Mankh (Walter E. Harris III)

9/16/07

What is a gooseneck lamp doing in Carl’s meadow?
Why are the geese crossing the two-way street in suburbia?
Could it be something to do with the jiggy society,
so much pompous and ignoring the circumstances?

Urgency removes doubt,
a human being lifting a car to save a life–
divine adrenaline has not been studied enough,
nor altruism, nor buy one give one free.

Opening an inner door…

towards the end of summer and eyeing October
peppers red as apples
apples red as whatever you want them to be red as…

from New Orleans to Dharamsala to Baghdad to the ghettos of America
the obvious are being overlooked: the poor, the reincarnated, the childlike,
the ones who do not tan from sun because they have been here so long…

and they are all holding the light, in the dankest corners
and in the shallowest pockets of economic warfare they are holding the light…

as a peach on the ground, as a red brick-wall in the afternoon glow,
as the eye in a vision, and the sparrow who grabs on
to the middle of the long, tall stem of a sunflower…

holding the light.

Mankh is a poet, essayist, and small press publisher.
He is co-editor of the forthcoming primal sanities! a Tribute to Walt Whitman an Anthology of Poems and Essays.

His website: www.allbook-books.com

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

“Six years after September 11, 2001 what we do have is what might be expected when revenge is pursued rather than justice. Pain, death, grief and anger. Fear, reactionary decisions, and rhetoric aimed at factionalizing a nation.”

By Rowan Wolf

9/15/07

On September 11, 2001 a series of horrendous events happened. Planes brought down two buildings of the World trade Center complex in New York City; the Pentagon was hit; and another crashed in a Pennsylvania field. It was a shock to the systems and psyches of the people of the United States and the world. It has been repeated more times than I can count the “world changed forever.” Personally, I think that is a grandiose claim, but it set in motion a series of decisions and events that continue to the present.

Bush reportedly “joked” after 9/11 that he had “hit the trifecta.” His choices after that event have ruined the lives of millions, and drug the United States into the dubious honor of being a rogue nation.

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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

On 7/17/07, Thomas Paine’s Corner ran Paul Donovan’s “Could Rudy Giuliani Emerge as the Would-be Prince of Friendly Fascism?” which analyzes the potential impact of a Rudy Giuliani presidency. With Fred Thompson’s recent and rapid surge in the polls, the possibility of Rudy inhabiting the White House appears to be waning, but it could still happen.

We now offer you an audio presentation of Donovan’s piece:

http://www.cjonline.org/pauld1.htm

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