PATRICE GREANVILLE is Editor in Chief of Cyrano's Journal Online, and founder of Cyrano's Journal, the first US radical media review. He has taught economics and political science in the US and Latin America. His writings have focused on economics, American culture, the US party system, and the consequences of corporate control over media, especially on US domestic and foreign policies. He maintains a lifelong involvement in the liberation of animals from speciesism and its companion problem, the still-thriving dominionist ethic toward nature. Recently he has been involved in the creation of a third-party option, the New Lincoln Movement (NLM).
THE REAL FACE OF WAR | By Patrice Greanville
War has been romanticized in innumerable books and movies, and made fortunes for those who exploited the subject well. (Clint Eastwood is still at it, among others, with his latest opus, Flags of Our Fathers). In most movies—at least until recently—soldiers died "beautifully"—no hideous wounds, no real gasping fear in their eyes, they even got to say a few noble words for posterity, proof of a charitable destiny that, despite assigning them death, did not deny them their fifteen seconds of centerstage.[READ MORE]
HE WHO SAYS SPECIESISM SAYS FASCISM —Forty-eight thousand million animals—yes, 48 billion creatures—are estimated to die each year as a result of human activities ranging from factory farming to hunting, the fur garment trades, commercial exploitation of various kinds, and biomedical research. That's more than 130 million creatures every single day, including birds, cows, and hogs, all of them highly sociable animals.
IT'S HIGH TIME THE GOP WAS CONFINED TO THE DUSTBIN OF HISTORY Far from an example of civic pulchritude, the GOP is the party that has staged two—count'em, two—coup attempts on the state during the last 35 years. One under Nixon and one under Ronnie Reagan—both sacred cows of the unreconstructed crypto-fascist imperialist Right, which is by all measures the real driving force inside the GOP.
REFLECTIONS ON GORE VIDAL'S LEGACY Vidal's output is impressive by any measure, but it's probably his "fictional meditations on the history of the United States"—Burr, 1876, Empire, and Lincoln—brimming with more mordant lucidity and accuracy in their pages than anything found in the volumes produced by most professional historians—that have simultaneously put him in the intellectual pantheon of American letters and stirred up the most hostility among the devious custodians of the established order.
DOES CAPITALISM EQUAL HUMAN NATURE? Does capitalism equal human nature? This is an old conservative propaganda chestnut that deserves to be exposed for the defamatory fraud that it is, but most reasonable people would be forgiven for thinking that indeed it does, that what goes coyly by the reassuring moniker of “free enterprise” is in fact the economic equivalent of human nature, the only system of social organization aligning itself effortlessly with the temperamental inclinations of most people.
FIRST (ABRIDGED) CATALOG OF U.S. MEDIA BIASES, DISTORTIONS AND SUPPRESSIONS Our "bias" catalog provides a model to start gauging media performance from a social and political perspective. The corporate system, says Greanville, has perfected a communications machinery ruled by powerful, widely accepted myths that not accidentally prop up the legitimacy of the system by hiding and whitewashing its antisocial flaws. This article does not claim that the system functions robotically and by internal fiat so as to rule out all deviations. The latter do crop up, but never with enough persistence to prevail against the ocean of distortions and banalities that drown out the most serious messages. This usually suffices to stifle meaningful political action. Ironically, these deviations are actually "tonics" to the media system, enhancing its credibility, for they tend to convince the casual observer that the media are indeed independent of government or ownership control.
If we accept the myth that capitalism is congruent with "human nature," argues the author, then we must also accept that capitalism is the most "natural" and "logical" form of social organization, as people will have a built-in tendency to observe its basic rules. Second, "human nature," as defined in bourgeois terms (which the press of course follows) is characterized by two significant traits: immutability and unrelenting egoism.
The first "fact" automatically discourages most efforts at seriously reforming, let alone revolutionizing, society. Why should anyone bother to undertake such a forbidding and eminently risky enterprise if in the end the stubborn intractability of human nature will render all schemes for change and improvement of social conditions worthless and utopian? It's evident that if sufficient numbers of people are made to believe that an eternal, immutable and invincible "human nature" will time and again scuttle the best-laid plans and the costliest sacrifices for change, then most threats to the status quo will be defused at the outset.
Publisher's Log : Foot in the mouth disease—occupational hazard of imperialist priests /Meet the jovial face of Christo-fascism For anyone with half a brain American televangelists are creatures well noted for their reactionary views and appalling hypocrisy. Their existence in our midst, indeed their very success in so many latitudes, attests to the stubborn stupidity of so many people. Now Pat Robertson's latest outburst—surely widely shared among conservatives despite their protestations to the contrary—provides further proof of what these kind, Christian folks are really all about.
Hannity (and a limping Colmes) Gallop In To Do Some Damage Control On the August 24 (2005) edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, co-host Sean Hannity stated that "Pat Robertson caused a bit of a media firestorm this week when he advocated, some say [sic], the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez." But what Hannity cast as a matter in dispute -- whether Robertson actually advocated the assassination of Chavez -- is not, in fact, in dispute. He did. Moreover, the "some" who say that Robertson did advocate Chavez's assassination includes Robertson himself, who on August 24 acknowledged that he had made those remarks, after initially denying it.
Wayne Simmons: When Criminal Stupidity Meets Terminal Ignorance In discussing Robertson's August 22 statements and the resulting controversy, guest and former CIA operative Wayne Simmons endorsed the assassination of not only Chavez but also Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and North Korean ruler Kim Jong Il. His sparring partner was the utterly malleable Alan Colmes, the program's "liberal." It's noteworthy that, as in many fixed fights where a real pugilist is paired with a "bum," Colmes found himself in the unusual position of almost accidentally knocking his opponent out—and only by using a bit of "pepper." Such was the ineptitude displayed by Simmons to defend his patriotic drivel.
ENDORSING KERRY IN 2004...WITH HUUUUGE RESERVATIONS [HTML version of our election analysis.] The "Anything But Bush" mental rot apparently prevailed in 2004, even among Cyrano's editors, since normally we support other options, such as Third Parties, and the deligitimation of the Republicrat monopoly and of bourgeois presidential elections through EXPLAINED non-participation.
CREATING VIRAL NETWORKS If we are to save democracy in America, argues Greanville, progressives must find ways to reform and circumvent the mainstream media.
THE PAST IS PROLOG--The Cyrano Story Wherein editor Greanville discusses the rationale for Cyrano's creation; where it stands in regard to fellow media and cultural monitors, and its plans for the near future.
