I love Halloween. It's one of my favorite times of the year. The garish lights, the swirling leaves, the kinetic sense of chaos that can only come with the changing of the seasons. It brings out the anarchist in me and Halloween is truly an anarchists holiday. On what other day of the year is pure, uncut mischief so unapologetically celebrated. Children roam the streets, unattended, after dark, dressed as monsters and killers (ideally), travelling from door to door, demanding junk food under the thinly veiled threat of petty vandalism. How could I not love it. The flickering jack-o-lanterns, the bite size candy bars, the smashed mailboxes and toilet paper strewn trees. I love all of it but my favorite part of Halloween is and always will be the horror movies.
I've been obsessed with the horror genre for as long as I can remember and over my years of self imposed isolation I've become something of a connoisseur. There is something so sinfully satisfying about watching other people get butchered in late October. I know, I know, I'm certifiable but who better to guide you through the wonderful world of cinematic blood-lust then a mad, anarchist, hermit. So without further ado, I bring you, dearest motherfuckers, ten of my all time favorite horror movies for your Halloween viewing pleasure. Most of these nightmares don't go down easy. I don't do pussy shit. Wes Craven can fucking suck it. But if your craving something truly sinister, try adding one of these motherfuckers to your Netflix cue.
THE SHINING (1980)- Stanley Kubrick's disorientingly claustrophobic masterpiece may not only be Kubrick's finest work but is quite possibly the greatest horror movie ever made. I honestly can't begin to comprehend what it all means. There's more theories on this then the JFK assassination but the mystery of the film itself, the enigma of Jack Torrance and the Overlook Hotel are precisely what makes The Shining so goddamn terrifying. There is nothing scarier then the unknown except for perhaps the lengths the human mind will go to make sense of it. Stanley Kubrick is truly one of the great mad genius' of cinema and Stephen King is a petty fool for denying his brilliance. The Shining is my favorite horror movie.
THE BABADOOK (2014)- A bedtime story from hell that brilliantly mixes the macabre whimsy of early Tim Burton with the nightmarish surrealism of late David Lynch. The story of a lonely widow struggling to raise a deeply troubled son while attempting desperately to move on from the tragic death of her husband, slain in a gruesome car crash on the way to the hospital to give birth to there only child. The mother and sons shared grief manifests itself into a diabolic children's book come to life and the two must come to terms with this demon, called the Babadook, in order to defeat it. Truly a modern day classic and one of the best horror films of the last year.
THE WICKER MAN (1973)- An eerie and picturesque mystery about a devout Christian detective searching for a missing girl on an isolated Scottish island populated by a strange Celtic cult of born again pagans. I won't give away the ending because it's one of the greatest twists in the history of cinema but trust me it's a shocker you wont see coming. Christopher Lee of Lord of the Rings and Star Wars fame gives a downright mesmerizing performance as the heathen Svengali, Lord Summerisle. The Academy remains cursed to this day for denying him. As does Nicholas Cage for that bastard remake for that matter.
INLAND EMPIRE (2006)- One of the strangest and most terrifying movies ever made from one the greatest directors alive today, a modern day Renaissance lunatic named David Lynch, and this grueling mindfuck-a-thon is the macabre maestro at his best and most unhinged. Not so much a horror movie as an abstract meditation on madness, Inland Empire plays like a kaleidoscope of nightmarish imagery giving the viewer the sensation that they are slowly losing there grip on sanity. Don't try to make fucking sense of it, as Hunter S. Thompson would say just "buy the ticket, take the ride". At three hours of untamed terror, Inland Empire is definitely not for everyone but if you manage to make it through the looking glass to the other end you'll find yourself begging for more. It's art house cinema at its bug-fuck finest.
IT FOLLOWS (2014)- The Babadook is undeniably amazing but this little blood spattered indie gem has to be my favorite horror flick of 2014. A terrifying story about a college girl infected by a strange, sexually transmitted curse that finds her stalked by a slow lumbering, shape-shifting entity that will continue to stalk her until she's either dead (quite literally fucked to death in fact) or has passed the curse on to someone else. A fascinating new take on the body horror genre that should make David Cronenberg proud. It will leave you looking over your shoulder for month.
LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (2008)- Fuck Twilight and forget that crass, soulless American remake, if your in the mood for blood and romance among the world of the living dead (and who isn't) you can do no finer then this beautifully macabre Swedish love story about a twelve year old outcast who falls in love with the girl next door only to discover she's a centuries old vampress. She gives him the courage to stand up to his bullies with naturally gruesome results and intern he gives her the strength to be human. Many found this film terrifying. God help me, I found it to be beautiful. A tale of two misfits capable of acts of merciless brutality and selfless humanity in defense of the shelter the have found in each others embrace. Like a Gothic Badlands or Kurt and Courtney cast as preteen Scandinavian ghouls, Let the Right One In is perfect for Halloween or Valentines Day, provided your a little sinister.
MARTYRS (2008)- Dearest motherfuckers be warned, this french shocker is NOT for beginners. This movie will scar you but if you can survive the experience you will be hard pressed not to agree that it may be the greatest horror film since The Shining. I don't want to tell you to much because the brutal twists are part of what gives this masterpiece it's gravity. All I'll say is that it's the story of a pair of orphan lovers who seek revenge against a mysterious couple who brutally tortured one of them as a child for unknown reasons. The two manage to get there revenge as well as far, far more then they bargained for. There are many possible interpretations into what this film is truly trying to say. My personal theory is that it's meant to be an allegory for the dangers of organized religion and the depths of inhumanity people are capable of in this life in the name of the possibility of the next one. Like I said, just a theory. Regardless, in spite of all the controversy regarding the films brutal subject matter, Martyrs stands apart from it's more nihilistic cousins in the splatter genre in that Martyrs is essentially a very Humanist horror movie, philosophically. Watch this film at your own risk but WATCH THIS FILM. It will break you but it will also make you stronger. It will make you a martyr.
THE EXORCIST (1973)- To this day this simple story of a young girl possessed by Satan and one tortured priest's suicidal attempt to save her is still the scariest movie I have ever seen and I'm still not completely sure why. Maybe its my Catholic upbringing or maybe I just happened to see this movie at a particularly raw period of my life but this remains the one movie aside from Martyrs that can break me. Being a virtually unbreakable horror junkie, that's fucking saying something. Mad respect, William Peter Blatty, mad respect.
AUDITION (1999)- The ultimate feminist horror movie by Japan's resident king of chaos Takashi Miike. A middle aged widower holds a fake film audition in order to snag a new squeeze. Naturally the conservative Japanese salary-man picks out a cute, shy, and proper Japanese young lady, half his age. What could possibly go wrong? Well, a fuck load of a lot with Miike behind the camera. The salary-man's adorable nymph turns out to be a total fucking psycho, more twisted and dangerous then any massive, lumbering male escaped mental patient and she doesn't appreciate being used. Micheal fucking Myers ain't got shit on this girl. The last half hour alone of this stomach churning, mind bender will go down in history as thirty of the most disturbing minutes ever captured on film. If this movie doesn't make you think twice about using women for your own self serving, chauvinistic designs then your probably Newt Gingrich and you deserve to have your fucking feet sawed off. (teet!-teet!-teet!-teet!-teet!)
THE EVIL DEAD (1981)- Last but definitely not least, a cult treasure and, in my humble opinion, hands down the best of the Evil Dead series. Filmed on a shoestring budget of less then 90 grand, Sam Raimi (yes, THAT Sam Raimi) managed to make the quintessential Halloween shock-fest. Blood thirty demons, sexy coeds, man eating trees, Bruce Campbell's glorious chin and the most fucked up cabin in the woods in horror history. This motherfucker's got em all, not to mention gallons of gore. It's the most fun screaming you'll have with your pants on. (that is, unless you take them off)
HONORABLE MENTION- Haven't had enough yet? Still thirsty for more? Well then congratulations, your officially as sick as I am. You might wanna give some of these a shot- VIDEODROME (1983), THIRST (2009), DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978), WOLF CREEK (2005), ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968), HIGH TENSION (2003), JACOB'S LADDER (1990), STOKER (2013), CALVAIRE (2004), THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991), INSIDE (2007), EDEN LAKE (2008), THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE (2009).
Happy Halloween, dearest motherfuckers! Stay sinister.
Monday, October 26, 2015
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
Kunduz: Portrait of an American War Crime
In the blood spattered pantheon of American intervention episodes of tragic and often gruesome error are sadly common place. Wedding parties get pulverized by airstrikes, drones cut down innocent children only to later proclaim them enemy combatants and elderly peasants get crushed beneath the gears of colossal armored vehicles. Yes, in modern day war zones accidents do happen, all just part of the daily grind when you live in hell. But last weeks bombing of a Doctors Without Borders operated hospital in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz was no fucking accident. It was a callously calculated crime against humanity, a war crime and it needs to be addressed.
The "official" story fed to us by the Pentagon and repeated verbatim by there loyal echo chamber in the mass media has changed repeatedly. First the Afghans called in the attack, then it was the US Army. First it was a logistical mistake, now its collateral damage in an assault against the resurgent Taliban, firing on soldiers from the compound. All of this, of coarse, is total bullshit, all of it.
The US military was well aware of the hospitals location. Doctors Without Borders had provided them with precise and accurate GPS coordinates on multiple occasions, the latest had been provided in late September. Not that they were even necessary. The complex was a massive, well established landmark, the largest building for miles around with a distinctive T shape clearly visible to satellites, let alone aircraft. It was the only free trauma hospital in Northern Afghanistan, adorned with a massive nine foot flag upon its roof identifying it as such. None of this stopped a low flying AC-130 gunship from unleashing hell upon an internationally revered institution protected by the Geneva Convention.
What ensued was a brutal, merciless onslaught of searing hot steel launched from a vehicle that's only express purpose is to murder as many human beings in as short a period of time as possible. The first rampage raged through the hospital for fifteen minutes straight. Drilling massive holes through unsuspecting staff like Swiss cheese, killing some where they stand and leaving others to drown in there own blood. Helpless, incapacitated patients were lit up like Christmas trees, burned alive in there beds leaving little but smoldering bones where they once rived. Once the initial assault finally ceased, the surviving staff immediately called local American forces to inform them that they had just attacked a hospital with zero signs of a Taliban presence in the area. This message, which the Pentagon has recently confirmed was received, did nothing to deter the Military from launching four more identical fifteen minute barrages in just over an hour. By the time the smoke had finally cleared twenty-two lay dead including twelve DWB staff members and three children. Another thirty-seven were left badly maimed. The deed was done. There was nothing left to do but offer hollow apologies and destroy the evidence.
Obomba called up the DWB to offer his sincerest condolences for butchering there comrades but the DWB was in no mood. They didn't want a fucking apology. They wanted answers. Why? Why launch a brutal, kill em all style massacre on a known hospital? Why kill a building load of injured civilians and the tireless servants who failed, honorably, to save them? Why lie about it four times in four days? No, the DWB didn't want a fucking apology. They wanted an independent investigation into the bloodbath by the International Humanitarian Fact Finding Commission but Obomba, in his infinite wisdom, refused to even consider the totally reasonable inquiry, offering instead to conduct his own investigation into his own war crime.
And as if that wasn't bad enough, twelve days after the attacks, the US Army drove right through the wreckage with a goddamn tank, all but obliterating what little evidence remained at the scene of the crime. US forces made the asinine claim that the armored assault vehicle was carrying investigators but somehow didn't see fit to call the DWB first for permission. They didn't even bother fucking knocking first to see if anyone was home. There's no evidence that they even bothered stepping out of the goddamn vehicle. They just rammed right through like a rampaging elephant in heat, leaving all of us, once again, to ask collectively why? What are they so desperate to cover up.
A possible answer came from the usually pro-military Associated Press who, upon further examination, learned from American soldiers in the area that not only did they call in the airstrike on what they admittedly knew was a hospital but that the Pentagon had assigned them to do surveillance on the building in order to ascertain whether or not a mysterious Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence spy was among the patients healing inside. These soldiers, for still unknown reasons, came to the conclusion that the hospital was indeed the unwitting host of there query and called in the attack, claiming this unnamed agent to be among the twenty-two dead.
Doctors Without Borders have declared these allegations to be bullshit, professing that there were zero people of Pakistani descent present at the hospital that day. Could this be true? Was the Kunduz airstrike a calculated hit gone wrong? Or did they successfully slay there target along with twenty-one civilians. Either way this qualifies as a war crime worthy of the Hague. Who was/is this Pakistani mystery man? Why were the military willing to slaughter a building full of innocents and risk an international incident just to kill him? What did/does he know and why couldn't/can't he be aloud to survive? Let us not forget that Pakistan is allegedly our allie and the ISI is the same intelligence force fingered by Seymour Hersh for secretly imprisoning Bin Laden then helping us to execute the beast in cold blood. Could this somehow be connected or have I just seen to many Oliver Stone flicks?
Perhaps an even more important question to ask is what the hell are we even still doing in that god forsaken country, propping up an obviously failed state? Its been four goddamn years since we whacked Bin Laden, allegedly our whole reason for being in Afghanistan, in a carefully choreographed hit that took place in fucking Pakistan. Its been fourteen years since we started our longest war which seems to grow longer by the second with the withdrawal date always just out of reach. In that time we've lost 2,350 US soldiers, over a trillion US dollars and murdered an undetermined number of Afghani civilians that reaches deep into the thousands even by the most conservative estimates. In that time we have solved absolutely nothing. The Taliban and al-Qaeda are more powerful, popular and dangerous then ever. The people are still impoverished. Most girls are still born into what essentially amounts to lifelong sexual slavery. The opium trade is fucking booming and what passes for a central government in Kabul gives corruption a bad name.
Why the fuck did we even invade this hellhole in the first place, The Taliban weren't any worse then those baby raping pigs in the Northern Alliance. We know for a fact that they were apposed to al-Qaeda's 911 plot from the beginning and they were growing increasingly tired of dealing with Bin Laden's bullshit. We could have and should have made them a fucking deal that would have aloud the Taliban government to hand over al-Qaeda and still save face among the faithful. Every one of those sheep shagging jihadi pricks would be rotting in Florence Super-max right now, Bin Laden included, and over two thousand American families wouldn't be facing the ugly prospect of another lonely holiday season without there husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters.
And why in the name of Christ, Marx and Mohammed couldn't we just leave the 1978 revolution of the Peoples Democratic Party be? They came closer to fixing Afghanistan's colossal shit-load of problems then anyone else has. But we had to fucking blow it up and for what?! Just to hasten the Soviet Unions already inevitable economic demise? Was it really fucking worth it!?! Was any of this shit?!!! Why do our leaders continue to insist on proving the terrorists right by behaving just like them? Giving them a dozen new recruits with every bomb they drop. Why can't we just mind our own fucking business?
If your among the handful of dearest motherfuckers bored enough to tune into my rants then I'm sure you've already figured out that these questions are rhetorical and the answer to most of them is an ugly six letter word called E-M-P-I-R-E and there's no easy cure for this national affliction. Our country has become hopelessly addicted to war and Afghanistan is the speedball of imperialism. Every super power that's tried this fix has died an ugly death but there's always another in line that thinks there the one that can handle the high. Kunduz is sadly just the latest in an endless procession of bloody binges and unless the people of this country call a fucking intervention it won't be the last.
The "official" story fed to us by the Pentagon and repeated verbatim by there loyal echo chamber in the mass media has changed repeatedly. First the Afghans called in the attack, then it was the US Army. First it was a logistical mistake, now its collateral damage in an assault against the resurgent Taliban, firing on soldiers from the compound. All of this, of coarse, is total bullshit, all of it.
The US military was well aware of the hospitals location. Doctors Without Borders had provided them with precise and accurate GPS coordinates on multiple occasions, the latest had been provided in late September. Not that they were even necessary. The complex was a massive, well established landmark, the largest building for miles around with a distinctive T shape clearly visible to satellites, let alone aircraft. It was the only free trauma hospital in Northern Afghanistan, adorned with a massive nine foot flag upon its roof identifying it as such. None of this stopped a low flying AC-130 gunship from unleashing hell upon an internationally revered institution protected by the Geneva Convention.
What ensued was a brutal, merciless onslaught of searing hot steel launched from a vehicle that's only express purpose is to murder as many human beings in as short a period of time as possible. The first rampage raged through the hospital for fifteen minutes straight. Drilling massive holes through unsuspecting staff like Swiss cheese, killing some where they stand and leaving others to drown in there own blood. Helpless, incapacitated patients were lit up like Christmas trees, burned alive in there beds leaving little but smoldering bones where they once rived. Once the initial assault finally ceased, the surviving staff immediately called local American forces to inform them that they had just attacked a hospital with zero signs of a Taliban presence in the area. This message, which the Pentagon has recently confirmed was received, did nothing to deter the Military from launching four more identical fifteen minute barrages in just over an hour. By the time the smoke had finally cleared twenty-two lay dead including twelve DWB staff members and three children. Another thirty-seven were left badly maimed. The deed was done. There was nothing left to do but offer hollow apologies and destroy the evidence.
Obomba called up the DWB to offer his sincerest condolences for butchering there comrades but the DWB was in no mood. They didn't want a fucking apology. They wanted answers. Why? Why launch a brutal, kill em all style massacre on a known hospital? Why kill a building load of injured civilians and the tireless servants who failed, honorably, to save them? Why lie about it four times in four days? No, the DWB didn't want a fucking apology. They wanted an independent investigation into the bloodbath by the International Humanitarian Fact Finding Commission but Obomba, in his infinite wisdom, refused to even consider the totally reasonable inquiry, offering instead to conduct his own investigation into his own war crime.
And as if that wasn't bad enough, twelve days after the attacks, the US Army drove right through the wreckage with a goddamn tank, all but obliterating what little evidence remained at the scene of the crime. US forces made the asinine claim that the armored assault vehicle was carrying investigators but somehow didn't see fit to call the DWB first for permission. They didn't even bother fucking knocking first to see if anyone was home. There's no evidence that they even bothered stepping out of the goddamn vehicle. They just rammed right through like a rampaging elephant in heat, leaving all of us, once again, to ask collectively why? What are they so desperate to cover up.
A possible answer came from the usually pro-military Associated Press who, upon further examination, learned from American soldiers in the area that not only did they call in the airstrike on what they admittedly knew was a hospital but that the Pentagon had assigned them to do surveillance on the building in order to ascertain whether or not a mysterious Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence spy was among the patients healing inside. These soldiers, for still unknown reasons, came to the conclusion that the hospital was indeed the unwitting host of there query and called in the attack, claiming this unnamed agent to be among the twenty-two dead.
Doctors Without Borders have declared these allegations to be bullshit, professing that there were zero people of Pakistani descent present at the hospital that day. Could this be true? Was the Kunduz airstrike a calculated hit gone wrong? Or did they successfully slay there target along with twenty-one civilians. Either way this qualifies as a war crime worthy of the Hague. Who was/is this Pakistani mystery man? Why were the military willing to slaughter a building full of innocents and risk an international incident just to kill him? What did/does he know and why couldn't/can't he be aloud to survive? Let us not forget that Pakistan is allegedly our allie and the ISI is the same intelligence force fingered by Seymour Hersh for secretly imprisoning Bin Laden then helping us to execute the beast in cold blood. Could this somehow be connected or have I just seen to many Oliver Stone flicks?
Perhaps an even more important question to ask is what the hell are we even still doing in that god forsaken country, propping up an obviously failed state? Its been four goddamn years since we whacked Bin Laden, allegedly our whole reason for being in Afghanistan, in a carefully choreographed hit that took place in fucking Pakistan. Its been fourteen years since we started our longest war which seems to grow longer by the second with the withdrawal date always just out of reach. In that time we've lost 2,350 US soldiers, over a trillion US dollars and murdered an undetermined number of Afghani civilians that reaches deep into the thousands even by the most conservative estimates. In that time we have solved absolutely nothing. The Taliban and al-Qaeda are more powerful, popular and dangerous then ever. The people are still impoverished. Most girls are still born into what essentially amounts to lifelong sexual slavery. The opium trade is fucking booming and what passes for a central government in Kabul gives corruption a bad name.
Why the fuck did we even invade this hellhole in the first place, The Taliban weren't any worse then those baby raping pigs in the Northern Alliance. We know for a fact that they were apposed to al-Qaeda's 911 plot from the beginning and they were growing increasingly tired of dealing with Bin Laden's bullshit. We could have and should have made them a fucking deal that would have aloud the Taliban government to hand over al-Qaeda and still save face among the faithful. Every one of those sheep shagging jihadi pricks would be rotting in Florence Super-max right now, Bin Laden included, and over two thousand American families wouldn't be facing the ugly prospect of another lonely holiday season without there husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters.
And why in the name of Christ, Marx and Mohammed couldn't we just leave the 1978 revolution of the Peoples Democratic Party be? They came closer to fixing Afghanistan's colossal shit-load of problems then anyone else has. But we had to fucking blow it up and for what?! Just to hasten the Soviet Unions already inevitable economic demise? Was it really fucking worth it!?! Was any of this shit?!!! Why do our leaders continue to insist on proving the terrorists right by behaving just like them? Giving them a dozen new recruits with every bomb they drop. Why can't we just mind our own fucking business?
If your among the handful of dearest motherfuckers bored enough to tune into my rants then I'm sure you've already figured out that these questions are rhetorical and the answer to most of them is an ugly six letter word called E-M-P-I-R-E and there's no easy cure for this national affliction. Our country has become hopelessly addicted to war and Afghanistan is the speedball of imperialism. Every super power that's tried this fix has died an ugly death but there's always another in line that thinks there the one that can handle the high. Kunduz is sadly just the latest in an endless procession of bloody binges and unless the people of this country call a fucking intervention it won't be the last.
Tuesday, October 6, 2015
Let Putin Take Out the Trash
I generally consider myself to be a stalwart anti-interventionist. I believe that war should be the absolute last resort, when all other options are fully exhausted and even then only when the threat to a nations citizenry is direct and inescapable. All and all, I believe the world works best when countries mind there own fucking business and fight there own fucking wars. But every rule has its exceptions and I strongly believe that Russia's decision to intervene in Syria is one of those exceptions.
I spent the better half of my last post detailing how the United States and its rump states in the Gulf (+Turkey) manufactured the so called Syrian Civil War in a cruel conspiracy to transform yet another secular Arab nation into another defenseless cripple state, ripe for imperial rape.
Now the putrid ISIS virus, concocted by these gods of war in the toxic laboratory of post-Saddam Iraq, has unsurprisingly escaped there masters control, just like al-Qaeda before it, and developed into the self-sustaining, genocidal terror factory known as the Islamic State. But the US still doesn't seem to fucking care. Sure they talk a big deal about there dedication to reigning in there rapidly expanding bastard frankenstate but they continue to devote themselves, first and foremost, to the overthrow of the only government capable of keeping Syria from becoming another fucking Libya. As they halfheartedly drop bombs on targets that do as much harm to Syria's faulty infrastructure as they do to the Islamic State, they continue to willfully undermine the fight they claim to lead. Hobbling Iran's Quds Force, arming so called moderates with direct ties to al-Qaeda and turning a blind eye to client states like Turkey and Saudi Arabia who directly support the Islamic State. In fact America's coalition to fight these motherfuckers is quite literally stacked with the despots who support them.
It has become abundantly clear to any sane, reasonably educated citizen of the world that the American Empire is more then willing to let the Islamic State win its war against humanity as long as it takes Assad out in the process. This recklessly nihilistic strategy puts the entire world at risk but few nations have as much reason to lose sleep as Russia, who has long been the real target of America's jihad against peace in the Middle East.
Not only does Russia have its only Mediterranean naval base in the coastal city of Tartus, it also, by last count, has over two thousand of its own Muslim citizens fighting under the flags of ISIS and al-Nusra, undoubtedly sharpening there skills and boning up there armories for future wars in Russia's already unstable Caucus region. All in perfect sink with the Brzezinski plot to disintegrate the Federation in a bubbling vat of religious zealotry and Balkanesque nationalism.
Meanwhile, the real foes of Wahhabist extremism in the Middle East; Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and Kurdistan all remain shackled by America's strategic hijacking of the war effort and the world stands by, paralyzed with fear, as the Empire of chaos sinks its fangs into another hapless victim. Everyone, that is, but the single leader capable of stopping this gruesome spectacle, Vladimir Putin.
Putin had an impossible decision to make, allow another of his nations allies to go the way of Yugoslavia and watch America's jihadist wildfire grow ever closer to his backyard or get involved and embolden the few forces willing and capable of rooting the Islamic State at the expense of his already tattered standing with the so called international community. Putin bravely chose to stand with the people of Syria, Lebanon, Kurdistan, Iraq and Iran. Putin chose to stand up to the American Empire in what may go down in history as the worlds first and hopefully last anti-interventionist intervention and I believe Putin chose right.
Not only did Putin choose the right war but he chose the right way to wage it. Where as Obama launched his campaign of terror on Syria without the consent of Congress or the Syrian government, thus committing yet another American war crime. Putin, on the other hand, received the full support of the Duma and Syria thus fully complying with international law. He even slyly offered Obama the opportunity to join the real war on terror. Naturally, the Nobel Peace Prize winner refused, showing his true colors to his supposed allies in Iraq who joined Putin's coalition even after being threatened with losing support from there good old Uncle Sam. Check mate, Putin.
As a stubborn Marxist and semi-lapsed anarchist, my feelings towards old Vlad have always been a bit conflicted. On the one hand I'm somewhat sickened by his dedication to post-Soviet crony capitalism and gross executive power. On the other hand he has consistently proven himself to be a tireless crusader against imperialism. Using his nearly unparalleled strength to protect the innocent and defenseless in Abkhazia, Ossetia, Crimea, Donetsk and now Syria from Western backed slaughter and standing up defiantly against the American war machine, in a way unseen since the untimely demise of my hero, Hugo Chavez.
In spite of his many faults, I believe Vladimir Putin to be an authentic anti-imperialist and in that fight he has my full and unapologetic support. If Putin Wants to take out the trash in Syria, I say hand me a can Vlad, it's about goddamn time.
I spent the better half of my last post detailing how the United States and its rump states in the Gulf (+Turkey) manufactured the so called Syrian Civil War in a cruel conspiracy to transform yet another secular Arab nation into another defenseless cripple state, ripe for imperial rape.
Now the putrid ISIS virus, concocted by these gods of war in the toxic laboratory of post-Saddam Iraq, has unsurprisingly escaped there masters control, just like al-Qaeda before it, and developed into the self-sustaining, genocidal terror factory known as the Islamic State. But the US still doesn't seem to fucking care. Sure they talk a big deal about there dedication to reigning in there rapidly expanding bastard frankenstate but they continue to devote themselves, first and foremost, to the overthrow of the only government capable of keeping Syria from becoming another fucking Libya. As they halfheartedly drop bombs on targets that do as much harm to Syria's faulty infrastructure as they do to the Islamic State, they continue to willfully undermine the fight they claim to lead. Hobbling Iran's Quds Force, arming so called moderates with direct ties to al-Qaeda and turning a blind eye to client states like Turkey and Saudi Arabia who directly support the Islamic State. In fact America's coalition to fight these motherfuckers is quite literally stacked with the despots who support them.
It has become abundantly clear to any sane, reasonably educated citizen of the world that the American Empire is more then willing to let the Islamic State win its war against humanity as long as it takes Assad out in the process. This recklessly nihilistic strategy puts the entire world at risk but few nations have as much reason to lose sleep as Russia, who has long been the real target of America's jihad against peace in the Middle East.
Not only does Russia have its only Mediterranean naval base in the coastal city of Tartus, it also, by last count, has over two thousand of its own Muslim citizens fighting under the flags of ISIS and al-Nusra, undoubtedly sharpening there skills and boning up there armories for future wars in Russia's already unstable Caucus region. All in perfect sink with the Brzezinski plot to disintegrate the Federation in a bubbling vat of religious zealotry and Balkanesque nationalism.
Meanwhile, the real foes of Wahhabist extremism in the Middle East; Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and Kurdistan all remain shackled by America's strategic hijacking of the war effort and the world stands by, paralyzed with fear, as the Empire of chaos sinks its fangs into another hapless victim. Everyone, that is, but the single leader capable of stopping this gruesome spectacle, Vladimir Putin.
Putin had an impossible decision to make, allow another of his nations allies to go the way of Yugoslavia and watch America's jihadist wildfire grow ever closer to his backyard or get involved and embolden the few forces willing and capable of rooting the Islamic State at the expense of his already tattered standing with the so called international community. Putin bravely chose to stand with the people of Syria, Lebanon, Kurdistan, Iraq and Iran. Putin chose to stand up to the American Empire in what may go down in history as the worlds first and hopefully last anti-interventionist intervention and I believe Putin chose right.
Not only did Putin choose the right war but he chose the right way to wage it. Where as Obama launched his campaign of terror on Syria without the consent of Congress or the Syrian government, thus committing yet another American war crime. Putin, on the other hand, received the full support of the Duma and Syria thus fully complying with international law. He even slyly offered Obama the opportunity to join the real war on terror. Naturally, the Nobel Peace Prize winner refused, showing his true colors to his supposed allies in Iraq who joined Putin's coalition even after being threatened with losing support from there good old Uncle Sam. Check mate, Putin.
As a stubborn Marxist and semi-lapsed anarchist, my feelings towards old Vlad have always been a bit conflicted. On the one hand I'm somewhat sickened by his dedication to post-Soviet crony capitalism and gross executive power. On the other hand he has consistently proven himself to be a tireless crusader against imperialism. Using his nearly unparalleled strength to protect the innocent and defenseless in Abkhazia, Ossetia, Crimea, Donetsk and now Syria from Western backed slaughter and standing up defiantly against the American war machine, in a way unseen since the untimely demise of my hero, Hugo Chavez.
In spite of his many faults, I believe Vladimir Putin to be an authentic anti-imperialist and in that fight he has my full and unapologetic support. If Putin Wants to take out the trash in Syria, I say hand me a can Vlad, it's about goddamn time.
Friday, October 2, 2015
Who Will Save The Orphans Of Empire?
There has been a great deal of talk about exiles in the media sphere lately. Not the nervous, agoraphobic kind such as myself but the real refugee kind. Desperate, frightened people, fleeing there home countries in what is all to often a hopeless search for safety, elsewhere. Weather we're talking about the Middle Easterners and Africans risking there lives to reach the picturesque and unwelcoming shores of Southern Europe or the Latin Americans currently being demonized by the racial opportunists in the GOP for the unforgivable crime of taking America at its word as being a beacon of hope, freedom and opportunity. Everywhere you look the all knowing, all seeing western media has its unblinking eye fixed squarely on the plight of the dispossessed. But as usual our chosen masters of corporate propaganda have completely missed the fucking point.
These two tragedies of human displacement are not unconnected. They share a common source. All of these aforementioned refugees are the latest orphans of the American empire and as such they are all our responsibility.
The lion share of the refugees pouring across the European continent like a flood of impoverishment are Syrians fleeing the havoc of the Islamic State. A rapidly expanding menace made possible by a civil war manufactured by the United States and it's Arabian and Turkish Quislings.
Like disturbingly similar events in Libya (read "Ready for Killary" below) The Syrian uprising was a violent Islamist insurrection from the beginning, conjured up by a cabal of western trained and funded Jihadists with connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. This prefab chicken shit upheaval, which hardly resembled a goddamn civil war, was all but squashed by the Assad regime inside of a year with the brutal sacking of Homs. That's when Uncle Sam and his Gulf state whores called out the big guns and began covertly arming, training, and sending in Wahhabist holy warriors from around the Muslim world, many fresh from our last little bloodbath in Killary liberated Libya. America played stupid while it's puppets in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar took most of the flak for re-introducing al-Qaeda to the region. But this wasn't the American Empires first foray into the thunderdome of proxy Jihad. It quickly became painfully obvious to history nerds like myself that our dear old republic was staging another reenactment of our famed Mujaheddin horror show in Afghanistan. (read "Forget Radical Islam, Fight Wahhabism!" below)
This was all prerequisite, of coarse, for another grand American invasion which Obama the pacifist set up with his infamous red line. Warning Assad that the US would only become involved directly if chemical weapons were used. Of coarse, Obama knew full well that Assad wasn't the only one with these weapons of mass destruction. According to our own intelligence, al-Nusra (AKA al-Qaeda) did as well, thanks to there friends and ours in the Turkish military but al-Nusra, with there asses pinned up against the wall by the Syrian Army, were the only ones who had motive to use them. Al-Nusra got the message and sure enough chemical weapons were deployed. Obama automatically blamed Assad without producing a lick of evidence and prepared to invade Syria. The only thing that stopped him from carrying out his plans was the unlikely collaboration of Vladimir Putin, who brilliantly cock blocked Obeezy with a camera friendly peace deal, and everyday american anti-interventionists, who clogged phone lines at the capitol building, demanding there representatives represent them for a change and prevent another bloody quagmire in the Middle East. With his support both at home and abroad dashed to bits Obama was forced to abandon his plans for direct intervention and fall back on his proxy war strategy. He was down but not out. After all Assad had to go, right?
America had more than a few reasons to risk another international catastrophe with its latest proxy war in Syria. The Assad regime had been a mainstay on our shitlist for years. If they weren't giving refuge to the (wrong) Kurds, they were cuddling up to the Russians and the Iranians. When they weren't busy defying our perverted notion of global, free market hegemony with there vulgar sense of Arab nationalism, they were defending there Shiite brothers in Lebanon from Israeli sanctioned Falangist genocide. But Assad and his father's biggest crime, in the eyes of the American Empire, was that they were the worst kind of dictators. The kind not under our payroll. Not to mention the fact that the Baathist regime sat smack dab on the intersection of every major oil pipeline linking Asia to Europe. (probably should've started with that)
So, once again, America called out the wild dogs of holy war and when al-Nusrah and the magic red line weren't enough to overthrow the Syrian government, we poured gas on the fire by introducing our latest Iraqi Frankenstiens in ISIS to the embattled country. All while maintaining our public support for the "moderates" of the Free Syrian Army, which largely served as a kind of minor leagues for the Jihadist pro's. As soon as any "moderate" proved himself on the battlefield he got picked up by the big boys in ISIS or al-Nusrah, often taking heaps of American military hardware with them. You can choose to believe this inevitable chain of events is all just one big coincidence if you wan't but it keeps fucking happening and we keep fucking funding it and we keep fucking funding the known Wahhabist snake pits of Ankara, Doha and Riyadh, The powers at be are all to aware of whats going down and I'm not convinced that it's not exactly what they wanted. As I said before, it wouldn't be the first time, just ask those pedophiles in the Northern Alliance if you don't believe me.
Just like Afghanistan and Libya before it, Syria has been reduced to a living hell. Multiple genocides now loom over the shattered state like cobra's waiting to strike. The Alawites, Christians, Kurds, and Druze are all at risk of being wiped off the map by America's latest monsters and like him or not, embattled strongman Bashar al-Assad is the only thing standing in the way of this tragedy in the making and his position grows weaker day by day, giving these minorities and the Sunnis who refuse to take part in there slaughter little choice but to flee there rapidly approaching demise in what has become the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War.
Some western nations, like Germany, have stepped up to the plate and offered generous refuge to these desperate souls but America, the nation more responsible for this crisis the any other, is not one of them. Since starting this despicable fucking war, The US has only accepted a poultry 1,500 of its refugees. (compared to Germany's pledged million) Lifelong war criminal John Kerry has offered to increase that number by as much as 30,000 but with over four million Syrians and growing seeking shelter from our latest war, that hardly amounts to jack shit.
We see a similar example of imperial callousness a little closer to home on our own southern border with more millions risking there lives in the desert to escape another hellish American experiment in war profiteering.
Since 1971, the United States has waged total war against drugs or at least some drugs. A war that has proven to be as brutal as it is senseless. Over a period of over forty years, tens of trillions of dollars have been dumped into the bottomless coffers of the military and prison industrial complexes with zero discernible effect on the rate of drug abuse in this country or any other but with a catastrophic effect on the rate of violent crime across the globe, creating an entire industry of organized thuggery, devoted entirely to the growth, processing, trafficking and distribution of common plants, used and abused for centuries, free from this level of chaos until it was unleashed by the beasts of prohibition.
These two industries, the industry of selling narcotics and the industry of prohibiting them, are really one. Like professional wrestlers battling each other in a steel cage, there relationship is completely symbiotic. One opponent cannot exert strength without another opponent to willingly receive it and vice versa. They appear to be battling but in reality it is simply a carefully choreographed dance.So it should come as little surprise that the faces of the American Empire have a long and storied history of sharing a bed with the very heels they have pledged to destroy. From the Hmong tribesmen of Indochina to the opium lords of Afghanistan to the Contra death squads of Nicaragua. Much like the War on Terror, the War on Drugs has become such a booming industry that the US has gotten into the business of creating monsters just so they can charge hardworking tax payers a fee to destroy them. The result of this bloody shell game, aside from piles of money, is piles of bodies.
In few places have these piles grown taller or more grotesque then in the failed narco state of Mexico. America spends tens of billions of dollars every year to prop up a government our own intelligence readily admits is thoroughly infested with the cartels there supposedly at war with. We send literally tons of weapons. Rifles, grenades, machine guns, armored vehicles, much of which inevitably ends up in the hands of the gangsters. So we send even more guns to destroy those gangsters (sound familiar) and so it goes, with the war profiteers who lobby Washington for this shit making a mint and the innocent people of Mexico caught in the crossfire of a shit storm that they have done nothing to deserve.
While the thugs in Sinaloa and Washington count there money, the Mexican people count decapitated heads in there streets and pray they don't stumble across one belonging to someone they love. Is it any wonder they flee in the billions to the relative safety of the United States? Wouldn't you?
Like the now stateless orphans of Syria, these people are refugees, not Illegals, not even migrants but refugees, fleeing a seemingly endless tragedy that we created and continue to perpetuate. And what do these refugees do? Do they beg and demand the restitution they so richly deserve from the American Empire that screwed them? No. They work. They work there fucking asses off, building our houses, cooking our food, tending to our lawns and making our cushy, lily white lives better and easier, one back breaking, thankless chore at a time. And how do we fucking thank them? By harassing, humiliating and belittling them. By rounding them up like loose cattle, taring apart there families and sending them straight back to the hell holes we created for them.
And I'm not just talking about the Republicans either. The Democrats are even worse. Selling the Latino community false promises, building stunning electoral victories on there shoulders and then deporting them in higher numbers then any Republican regime ever has. If the GOP wasn't so goddamned racist there would be no Latino Democrats. Put that on a fucking hat, Trump!
The point I'm attempting to make with this latest rant, dearest motherfuckers, is that both of these refugee crises are the same in that both of them were made possible by our dear old empires unquenchable thirst for conquest and greed at the expense of the worlds poor. We destroyed Syria and we corrupted mexico, leaving legions of stateless orphans in our wake.
Any American with half a soul needs to realize that all of these refugees are our fucking responsibility. The very least we can do for them is give them a place to crash for proverbial weekend. That and attempt to ween ourselves off of the addiction to international violence that left them homeless in the first place.
America should match Germany's one million refugees and fucking double it, for starters. The Syrian people are smart, tough, educated and industrious, we could use a little of all that in this country. We should also do right by giving full amnesty to our displaced neighbors from south of the border if there still willing to forgive us and join this crazy fucking country. I for one would be proud to call them Americans.
I know what your gonna say, "How the hell do we pay for this, Nick?", glad you asked, that parts simple. End the fruitless trillion dollar boondoggles we call the War on Terror and the War on Drugs and try waging peace for a fucking change. It's surprisingly affordable and no one has to get there head blown off.
It's not fucking rocket science, dearest motherfuckers. It's just called doing the right thing. give it a shot. Only we can save the orphans of empire.
These two tragedies of human displacement are not unconnected. They share a common source. All of these aforementioned refugees are the latest orphans of the American empire and as such they are all our responsibility.
The lion share of the refugees pouring across the European continent like a flood of impoverishment are Syrians fleeing the havoc of the Islamic State. A rapidly expanding menace made possible by a civil war manufactured by the United States and it's Arabian and Turkish Quislings.
Like disturbingly similar events in Libya (read "Ready for Killary" below) The Syrian uprising was a violent Islamist insurrection from the beginning, conjured up by a cabal of western trained and funded Jihadists with connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. This prefab chicken shit upheaval, which hardly resembled a goddamn civil war, was all but squashed by the Assad regime inside of a year with the brutal sacking of Homs. That's when Uncle Sam and his Gulf state whores called out the big guns and began covertly arming, training, and sending in Wahhabist holy warriors from around the Muslim world, many fresh from our last little bloodbath in Killary liberated Libya. America played stupid while it's puppets in Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar took most of the flak for re-introducing al-Qaeda to the region. But this wasn't the American Empires first foray into the thunderdome of proxy Jihad. It quickly became painfully obvious to history nerds like myself that our dear old republic was staging another reenactment of our famed Mujaheddin horror show in Afghanistan. (read "Forget Radical Islam, Fight Wahhabism!" below)
This was all prerequisite, of coarse, for another grand American invasion which Obama the pacifist set up with his infamous red line. Warning Assad that the US would only become involved directly if chemical weapons were used. Of coarse, Obama knew full well that Assad wasn't the only one with these weapons of mass destruction. According to our own intelligence, al-Nusra (AKA al-Qaeda) did as well, thanks to there friends and ours in the Turkish military but al-Nusra, with there asses pinned up against the wall by the Syrian Army, were the only ones who had motive to use them. Al-Nusra got the message and sure enough chemical weapons were deployed. Obama automatically blamed Assad without producing a lick of evidence and prepared to invade Syria. The only thing that stopped him from carrying out his plans was the unlikely collaboration of Vladimir Putin, who brilliantly cock blocked Obeezy with a camera friendly peace deal, and everyday american anti-interventionists, who clogged phone lines at the capitol building, demanding there representatives represent them for a change and prevent another bloody quagmire in the Middle East. With his support both at home and abroad dashed to bits Obama was forced to abandon his plans for direct intervention and fall back on his proxy war strategy. He was down but not out. After all Assad had to go, right?
America had more than a few reasons to risk another international catastrophe with its latest proxy war in Syria. The Assad regime had been a mainstay on our shitlist for years. If they weren't giving refuge to the (wrong) Kurds, they were cuddling up to the Russians and the Iranians. When they weren't busy defying our perverted notion of global, free market hegemony with there vulgar sense of Arab nationalism, they were defending there Shiite brothers in Lebanon from Israeli sanctioned Falangist genocide. But Assad and his father's biggest crime, in the eyes of the American Empire, was that they were the worst kind of dictators. The kind not under our payroll. Not to mention the fact that the Baathist regime sat smack dab on the intersection of every major oil pipeline linking Asia to Europe. (probably should've started with that)
So, once again, America called out the wild dogs of holy war and when al-Nusrah and the magic red line weren't enough to overthrow the Syrian government, we poured gas on the fire by introducing our latest Iraqi Frankenstiens in ISIS to the embattled country. All while maintaining our public support for the "moderates" of the Free Syrian Army, which largely served as a kind of minor leagues for the Jihadist pro's. As soon as any "moderate" proved himself on the battlefield he got picked up by the big boys in ISIS or al-Nusrah, often taking heaps of American military hardware with them. You can choose to believe this inevitable chain of events is all just one big coincidence if you wan't but it keeps fucking happening and we keep fucking funding it and we keep fucking funding the known Wahhabist snake pits of Ankara, Doha and Riyadh, The powers at be are all to aware of whats going down and I'm not convinced that it's not exactly what they wanted. As I said before, it wouldn't be the first time, just ask those pedophiles in the Northern Alliance if you don't believe me.
Just like Afghanistan and Libya before it, Syria has been reduced to a living hell. Multiple genocides now loom over the shattered state like cobra's waiting to strike. The Alawites, Christians, Kurds, and Druze are all at risk of being wiped off the map by America's latest monsters and like him or not, embattled strongman Bashar al-Assad is the only thing standing in the way of this tragedy in the making and his position grows weaker day by day, giving these minorities and the Sunnis who refuse to take part in there slaughter little choice but to flee there rapidly approaching demise in what has become the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War.
Some western nations, like Germany, have stepped up to the plate and offered generous refuge to these desperate souls but America, the nation more responsible for this crisis the any other, is not one of them. Since starting this despicable fucking war, The US has only accepted a poultry 1,500 of its refugees. (compared to Germany's pledged million) Lifelong war criminal John Kerry has offered to increase that number by as much as 30,000 but with over four million Syrians and growing seeking shelter from our latest war, that hardly amounts to jack shit.
We see a similar example of imperial callousness a little closer to home on our own southern border with more millions risking there lives in the desert to escape another hellish American experiment in war profiteering.
Since 1971, the United States has waged total war against drugs or at least some drugs. A war that has proven to be as brutal as it is senseless. Over a period of over forty years, tens of trillions of dollars have been dumped into the bottomless coffers of the military and prison industrial complexes with zero discernible effect on the rate of drug abuse in this country or any other but with a catastrophic effect on the rate of violent crime across the globe, creating an entire industry of organized thuggery, devoted entirely to the growth, processing, trafficking and distribution of common plants, used and abused for centuries, free from this level of chaos until it was unleashed by the beasts of prohibition.
These two industries, the industry of selling narcotics and the industry of prohibiting them, are really one. Like professional wrestlers battling each other in a steel cage, there relationship is completely symbiotic. One opponent cannot exert strength without another opponent to willingly receive it and vice versa. They appear to be battling but in reality it is simply a carefully choreographed dance.So it should come as little surprise that the faces of the American Empire have a long and storied history of sharing a bed with the very heels they have pledged to destroy. From the Hmong tribesmen of Indochina to the opium lords of Afghanistan to the Contra death squads of Nicaragua. Much like the War on Terror, the War on Drugs has become such a booming industry that the US has gotten into the business of creating monsters just so they can charge hardworking tax payers a fee to destroy them. The result of this bloody shell game, aside from piles of money, is piles of bodies.
In few places have these piles grown taller or more grotesque then in the failed narco state of Mexico. America spends tens of billions of dollars every year to prop up a government our own intelligence readily admits is thoroughly infested with the cartels there supposedly at war with. We send literally tons of weapons. Rifles, grenades, machine guns, armored vehicles, much of which inevitably ends up in the hands of the gangsters. So we send even more guns to destroy those gangsters (sound familiar) and so it goes, with the war profiteers who lobby Washington for this shit making a mint and the innocent people of Mexico caught in the crossfire of a shit storm that they have done nothing to deserve.
While the thugs in Sinaloa and Washington count there money, the Mexican people count decapitated heads in there streets and pray they don't stumble across one belonging to someone they love. Is it any wonder they flee in the billions to the relative safety of the United States? Wouldn't you?
Like the now stateless orphans of Syria, these people are refugees, not Illegals, not even migrants but refugees, fleeing a seemingly endless tragedy that we created and continue to perpetuate. And what do these refugees do? Do they beg and demand the restitution they so richly deserve from the American Empire that screwed them? No. They work. They work there fucking asses off, building our houses, cooking our food, tending to our lawns and making our cushy, lily white lives better and easier, one back breaking, thankless chore at a time. And how do we fucking thank them? By harassing, humiliating and belittling them. By rounding them up like loose cattle, taring apart there families and sending them straight back to the hell holes we created for them.
And I'm not just talking about the Republicans either. The Democrats are even worse. Selling the Latino community false promises, building stunning electoral victories on there shoulders and then deporting them in higher numbers then any Republican regime ever has. If the GOP wasn't so goddamned racist there would be no Latino Democrats. Put that on a fucking hat, Trump!
The point I'm attempting to make with this latest rant, dearest motherfuckers, is that both of these refugee crises are the same in that both of them were made possible by our dear old empires unquenchable thirst for conquest and greed at the expense of the worlds poor. We destroyed Syria and we corrupted mexico, leaving legions of stateless orphans in our wake.
Any American with half a soul needs to realize that all of these refugees are our fucking responsibility. The very least we can do for them is give them a place to crash for proverbial weekend. That and attempt to ween ourselves off of the addiction to international violence that left them homeless in the first place.
America should match Germany's one million refugees and fucking double it, for starters. The Syrian people are smart, tough, educated and industrious, we could use a little of all that in this country. We should also do right by giving full amnesty to our displaced neighbors from south of the border if there still willing to forgive us and join this crazy fucking country. I for one would be proud to call them Americans.
I know what your gonna say, "How the hell do we pay for this, Nick?", glad you asked, that parts simple. End the fruitless trillion dollar boondoggles we call the War on Terror and the War on Drugs and try waging peace for a fucking change. It's surprisingly affordable and no one has to get there head blown off.
It's not fucking rocket science, dearest motherfuckers. It's just called doing the right thing. give it a shot. Only we can save the orphans of empire.
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