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By Anwaar Hussain

10/6/07

Kālā Pānī, literally ‘Black water’ in Urdu/Hindi languages, a term for the deep sea and hence exile, was the name of a notorious cellular jail situated in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (India). The prison was known to house many notable Indian activists during the struggle for India’s independence. In March 1868, 238 prisoners tried to escape. By April they were all caught. One committed suicide and of the remainder, British Superintendent Walker ordered 87 to be hanged.

On the U.S. mainland, the Blackwater River of Florida is a 58-mile long river arising in southern Alabama and flowing through the Florida Panhandle to the Gulf of Mexico. The river enters Florida in Okaloosa County and flows through Santa Rosa County to Blackwater Bay, an arm of Pensacola Bay. The river passes through Blackwater River State Park.

There is yet another blackwater river in North Carolina that goes by the name of White Oak River. The White Oak River is located in North Carolina’s outer coastal plain province in Carteret, Jones, and Onslow Counties.

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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 Tom Nielsen

10/6/07

I had an “aha” moment the other day. I was reading an interview of a couple with an organic farm who use draft horses instead of tractors. They were asked what other alternative energy sources they use. Their initial response was that they’ve been waiting for that question. Their real answer was: gasoline. When I read that I realized how I have been looking at energy in terms of what is most abundant and most readily available for use instead of looking at natural energy like solar and wind as resources that are even more readily usable and available.

I hope I can offer you a similar “aha” moment by telling you about my journey into sustainability, and through the telling, help you see how to start becoming more sustainable yourself. This journey is not one I took alone. My partner, Phil, was with me for the ride, so it’s really our journey, and it began around 1997. Both of us have always been environmentally conscious, but in no way were we activists. We didn’t belong to Greenpeace or the Green Party. We aren’t hikers (despite the large forested park directly behind our apartment building), nor are we tree huggers, or vegetarians. In fact, at that time we were somewhat oblivious to environmental concerns. We shopped at the local super-giant grocery store: bought their well-traveled, mass- produced and minimally- flavored tomatoes and strawberries, and satisfied our various food cravings: Mine was Pop-Tarts, and Phil’s was chocolate-stripe cookies. We would leave, like everyone else, with everything double-bagged.

Even at home we were clueless about some of our major purchases. When we remodeled our kitchen we bought a new refrigerator, microwave, and dishwasher. They were all Energy Star appliances, but we weren’t impressed by that. We bought them because their black and steel design matched the counter tops and cabinets we’d chosen (we also were more stereotypically gay, then too). So the point I’m making is that we didn’t always live sustainably. However, we did make an effort. Phil has always been a stickler for recycling, going so far as to keep a special 9 x 12 inch box handy for letter-size waste paper, which will be bound neatly with twine and set out with the rest of the recycling.

Click HERE to read the article in its entirety….

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

“Decades ago, in order to field test the economic theories that were formulated by the right wing think tanks at The Chicago School, Friedman and his disciples descended like locusts upon Latin America. The results were devastating: Democratically elected governments were systematically overthrown and brutal dictators friendly to US business interests were installed in their place—all of which were subsidized by US tax dollars with the complicity of the CIA.”

By Charles Sullivan

10/03/07

One can no longer understand US governmental policy on the basis of conventional language or traditional wisdom. Language itself and its long-established meanings were long ago twisted and distorted in order to deceive the people. Now war is peace and terror and occupation is liberation. In order to make sense of what is happening, it is important to understand everything within the context of a specific economic philosophy, and the distorted capitalist system that spawned it.

That ideology was crafted by a diminutive economist named Milton Friedman, at the University of Chicago some five decades ago. The holy trinity of Friedman’s version of capitalism—privatization of the public domain, corporate deregulation, and deep cuts in social spending—has resulted in enormous societal inequity and socio-economic classes. It has given us the haves and the have-nots, the haves and the have-mores.

Friedman and his disciples, collectively known as ‘The Chicago School’ do not believe in a minimum wage—much less a living wage, unions, worker rights, environmental protections, worker safety, or any other kind of restraint imposed upon corporations. In Friedman’s view, the market should rule and profitability should be the guiding principle, the end results always justifying the means.

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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

“…..maze of cubicles where artists, copywriters, and concept men work day and night to define the products of The Nation.”

By Adam Engel

10/2/07

Awakened midnight nobody home. Alone against the music of the Angry Young.
Kid outside screamed poems into a mike. Squat amp dragged behind him on a wagon. Surrounding friends clapped stomped cacophonous. Launched his dithyrambs against The City. Cannonades of sing-song bass.

Josh razed Jericho with song.

“Turn off the NOISE and tune in The VOICE of The Nation.”

That ad from somewhere I remember. Subway maybe. Turned on the stereo. Fight noise with noise. Lonely like I’ve never. Unbearable rip. Inside. Alone me in the middle of the night.

Tried to reach The VOICE myself. Dialed, the line was jammed. WSOS after midnight. The VOICE beseeched by the Sleepless of The 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

“George W. Bush — the reigning mascot of this fantasyland of infantile omnipotence and instant gratification”

Addressing the origins of the “who’s is your daddy” nation

By Phil Rockstroh

“We must become the change we want to see.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“In any case, I hate all Iranians.” –Debra Cagan, Deputy Assistant Secretary to Defense Secretary, Robert Gates

How many times do we, the people of the US, have to go around on this queasy-making merry-go-round of propaganda and militarism before we shout — enough! — then shutdown the whole cut-rate carnival and run the scheming carnies who operate it out of town? It is imperative the nation’s citizens begin to apprehend the patterns present in this ceaseless cycle of official deceit and collective pathology. This republic, or any other, cannot survive, inhabited by a populace with such a slow learning curve.

Over the last three decades, the authoritarian right has risen to create the nation they have been longing for since their humbling by the Watergate scandal. After being subdued and humiliated by the mechanisms of a free republic, the right has turned the tables — and subdued and humiliated the republic. If the trend continues, all but unchallenged and unabated, we might as well replace the torch held aloft by Lady Liberty with a taser.

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

October 1, 2007

by William Blum

www.killinghope.org

If not now, when? If not here, where? If not you, who?

I used to give thought to what historical time and place I would like to have lived in. Europe in the 1930s was usually my first choice. As the war clouds darkened, I’d be surrounded by intrigue, spies omnipresent, matters of life and death pressing down, the opportunity to be courageous and principled. I pictured myself helping desperate people escape to America. It was real Hollywood stuff; think “Casablanca”. And when the Spanish Republic fell to Franco and his fascist forces, aided by the German and Italian fascists (while the United States and Britain stood aside, when not actually aiding the fascists), everything in my imaginary scenario would have heightened — the fate of Europe hung in the balance. Then the Nazis marched into Austria, then Czechoslovakia, then Poland … one could have devoted one’s life to working against all this, trying to hold back the fascist tide; what could be more thrilling, more noble?

Miracle of miracles, miracle of time machines, I’m actually living in this imagined period, watching as the Bush fascists march into Afghanistan, bombing it into a “failed state”; then Iraq: death, destruction, and utterly ruined lives for 24 million human beings; threatening more of the same endless night of hell for the people of Iran; overthrowing Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti; bombing helpless refugees in Somalia; relentless attempts to destabilize and punish Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Gaza, and other non-believers in the empire’s god-given mission. Sadly, my most common reaction to this real-life scenario, daily in fact, is less heroic and more feeling scared or depressed; not for myself personally but for our one and only world. The news every day, which I consume in large portions, slashes away at my joie de vivre; it’s not just the horror stories of American military power run amok abroad and the injustices of the ever-expanding police state at home, but all the lies and stupidity which drive me up the wall. I’m constantly changing stations, turning the TV or radio off, turning the newspaper page, to escape the words of the King of Lies and the King of Stupidity — those two twisted creatures who happen to occupy the same humanoid body — and a hundred minions.

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By Vi Ransel

10/1/07

How many pounds of plastic are you dragging around in your wallet? How heavy is the debt monkey you’re carrying on your back? And why, pray tell, are you doing this?

“Credit.” My Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary lists the following synonyms: belief, faith, trust, confidence, favor, influence, name, character, reputation and honor. In fact, belief, faith, confidence and trust are all included in the number one definition of “credit”. Number two? Credible or trustworthy. Do you feel confident and influential when you open your credit card bills? Do you consider the companies sending the bills to be trustworthy and honorable? How does it affect your reputation when they call you at work? Just what is this “credit” you have so much faith in?

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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 Ramzy Baroud

10/1/07

The assassination of Lebanese politician Antoine Ghanem on September 19 is likely to be used, predictably, to further US and Israeli interests in the region. Most Western and some Arab media have industriously argued that Syria is the greatest beneficiary from the death of Ghanem, a member of the Phalange party responsible for much of Lebanon’s bloodshed during the civil war years between 1975 and 1990. The reasoning provided is that Syria needs to maintain a measure of political control over Lebanon after being pressured to withdraw its troops. This political clout could only be maintained through the purging of anti-Syrian critics in Lebanon, and by ensuring a Lebanese parliament friendly to Syria. And indeed, with the elimination of Ghanem, the anti-Syrian coalition at the fractious Lebanese parliament is now left with an even slimmer majority - 68 MPs in a 128-member assembly.

Case solved.

Or is it?

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Meanwhile, this week we learned (by the hand of an editorial in The Los Angeles Times) that, “the biggest beneficiary (of the business of war) has been Blackwater USA, a private security firm with powerful political and personnel ties to an administration that has awarded it more than $1 billion in contracts since 2002.”

By Pablo Ouziel

10/1/07

October 2nd will mark the birth anniversary of Human Rights Activist, Mahatma Gandhi and for the first time, the United Nations is officially proclaiming this day to be the International Day of Non-violence. Hopefully, on this day we can all spare a little of our time to reflect on how little we have all understood Mahatma Gandhi’s message; after all everyday we seem to plunge into a worse state of affairs and drift away farther from Gandhi’s respectable message; “I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”

I wonder what it means to have an International Non-violence day. Does it mean that American soldiers, UN ‘peacekeepers’, NATO Forces, the Israeli military and Blackwater USA will put down their weapons for the day and reflect on the horrors that they are committing in the vague name of an international war on ‘terror’? Does it mean that they will all continue killing as a few peaceful marchers around the world proclaim in total sanity, that the insanity that prevails is making it hard for peace-loving humans to coexist with this madness? Or does it mean that the United Nations will clamp down on the killings perpetrated by the permanent members of its own security council?

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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

10/1/07

Imagine…YOU are the legend, William Randolph Hearst. You unleash an old Mexican slang term—an alien, scary and macabre-sounding word, then hype it relentlessly in your national chain of newspapers…creating a monster to threaten civilization with plagues of rape and murder, mass insanity and boundless violence! Domestic terrorism…you must kill competition, protect pretty profits standing in your vast acreage of Mexican timber, pulp the trees into paper with the new environmentally-obscene sulfuric acid process patented by DuPont. His tentacles diddle the very heart of American politics….

Your campaign of sensational disinformation—featuring hysteria spiced with racism—works so amazingly well that generations later, history’s King of crops remains exiled from the most influential nation on Earth. One might say you “ran the table” with your invasion of “marijuana” and “Reefer Madness”. You certainly made out like a bandit from the prohibition of cannabis hemp…wealthy industrialists still make out like bandits from the prohibition. You and DuPont blindsided The People, but did you ever really imagine the majority of Americans over seventy years later, when hearing the term “hemp”, thinking typically and simply of rope, and dope?

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