I write this post to you, dearest motherfuckers, with a heavy heart. I write this post early because another one of my heroes has died. On November 25 in this year of the devil twenty-hundred and sixteen, Fidel Castro- revolutionary, lawyer, freedom fighter, dictator and all around contrarian bad-ass motherfucker shuffled off this mortal coil into the pantheon of oblivion at the age of 90. I know what some of you must be thinking. That I'm fucking nuts or, even worse, a hypocrite. An outspoken genderfuck anarcho-transfeminist defending a crusty old Leninist strongman. And you're right to judge me this way. Castro has done some horrible things that I wont even attempt to defend. He locked up his critics and followed the homophobic Soviet company line of sending queer people to the sanatoriums. I wont pretend like he was an angel. He wasn't. He could be a real cunt. He was an undeniably flawed human being. But these facts don't change the other facts. The fact that Fidel devoted his life to his people and to poor and maligned people across the globe. The fact that his lifetime of service to these people far overshadows the heinous mistakes he made in their name. And, perhaps most importantly, the fact that this simple son of a school-teacher went toe to toe with the most ferocious empire the world has ever known for over half a century and won. History may or may not absolve the good Comandante Castro but this is one queer anarchist who will be caught trying.
Fidel began his life pretty square. The son of middle-class landowners, he excelled at sports and academics. After a failed attempt at a pro-baseball career, he became a lawyer and then a moderately reformist politician before Yankee backed strongman, Fulgencio Batista liquidated what was left of Cuba's banana democracy and pushed young Fidel into a lifetime career as a revolutionary agitator. In 1953, Fidel led a failed revolt at the Moncada Barracks. After his arrest, the former lawyer chose to represent himself and electrified a nation with his unbowed and unapologetic defense of his crimes against the state and his thunderous condemnation of the very system that he had found himself at the mercy of. He was fearless. The Batista regime and their American handlers didn't know it then but Castro had already one the revolution before it even began. Fidel served two years in prison before being released as part of an amnesty. He fled to self-exile with his brother Raul and a handful of comrades in Mexico City where he plotted his next move.
The Castro Brothers returned to Cuba in 1956 with Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara and 79 others on a rickety old fishing boat known as the Granma. After a crash landing the tiny army found themselves the victims of an ambush. Only 12 of the original members of the 26 July Movement survived the onslaught. Fidel led them limping into the Sierra Maestra Mountains where for the next two years they led a popular rebellion that somehow snowballed into one of the centuries greatest and unlikeliest triumphs against tyranny. By 1958, Fidel and his movement road into the capital of Havana to a heroes welcome. But these brave sons of the Southern Hemisphere had pissed on a wasps nest. Their whole country would have to pay a heavy price for their courageous stand.
The moment that it became clear to the Mandarins in Washington that Castro would not allow himself to be perverted like Batista it was decided that the new Cuban Revolution would have to be strangled in it's cradle before it could gain the strength to take its first step. As Castro ordered that the wage-slave-plantations be returned to their rightful owners, the peasant farmers who toiled in them, and that the nations oil wells should belong to its citizens rather than the American conglomerates who stole them. As he shuttered the Mafia's Casinos and whorehouses and returned dignity to the streets of Havana, the United States gathered the Batista's disgruntled thugs along with a melange of fascist mercenaries and together they launched a reign of terror upon the tiny island nation that would last for more than half a century.
Fidel wasn't always a communist. Far from it. His original intention for Cuba was to hold popular elections once the last remnants of the Batista dictatorship had been thoroughly decimated. But before he could make this happen, Fidel found his nascent revolutionary government under siege by foreign funded terrorists and saboteurs. Trains were derailed. Harbors were mined. Crops were torched and scores of innocent civilians were slaughtered in cold blood. Once it had become abundantly clear that Uncle Sam was the source of this wave of madness, Castro was left with nowhere else to turn to but East towards the Soviet Union. The Bay of Pigs Invasion was the final straw. Castro had selflessly joined his own soldiers in personally thwarting off that American siege. He returned to Havana a very shaken and changed man. He came to the hard conclusion that democracy would have to wait until the threat of American Imperialism subsided. Sadly this day never came. Cuba joined their allies in the USSR in becoming a stifling state capitalist bureaucracy. The once bright and vivacious Cuban Revolution had been rendered to a permanent warfare state.
This was America's aim all along. The boys in the Beltway decided that if Castro couldn't be bought off or overthrown, he would be pushed by the threat of violence into suffocating his own revolution under a wartime dictatorship of the proletariat, Just as the Bolsheviks had. You see, the Americans didn't fear Castro for his nationalism or his flirtations with socialism or even his close friendships with Marxists like Che. They feared Castro's dream of a a successful anti-capitalist, post-colonial democracy. They were scared shitless of the prospect of Cuba becoming an example of hope to Uncle Sam's other banana republics in the Western Hemisphere and beyond. So they goaded Fidel into sabotaging his own revolution in order to defend his people from a greater tyranny. Tragically, it worked. Sort of.
Cuba's revolutionary democracy may have never came to fruition and the nations savior may have been pushed into the unwanted position of dictator, but Castro refused to let all of the revolutions promises die the same death. In spite of being shackled by the most brutal international blockade in world history, Cuba managed to develop healthcare and education systems that rivaled that of the First World. As illiteracy and infant mortality went the way of the Dodo, Fidel sought to export his nations hard gained bounties. Sending doctors to the poorest parts of the globe and trained revolutionaries to the most oppressed. Castro supported Nelson Mandela's fight for freedom while Washington still backed apartheid. He sent troops to aid Angola in fighting off a South African invasion. He gave a helping hand to the Sandinista's Nicaragua and Maurice Bishop's Grenada when the Soviet Union couldn't be bothered to give a damn. He even offered to send a thousand Cuban doctors to New Orleans after Katrina. Bush said no thanks. He preferred to let poor people drown as long as their floating bodies were black.
Most importantly, though the US succeeded in turning Cuba into a dictatorship, albeit a decidedly benevolent one, they ironically failed to prevent Fidel Castro's greatest threat of a good example. The children of the South, who watched in awe as this bearded mestizo defied the greatest empire on earth, dodging assassination attempts in the hundreds, grew up to lead the kind of revolutionary democracies Castro had failed to create in his own country. Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil. One after another, nearly fifty years after the Cuban Revolution, a Pink Tide of Latin American nations declared their independence peacefully and Democratically from their Northern overlords. In a strange way, Fidel Castro had to sacrifice his own revolution in order to save Latin America from greater American imperial tyranny.
Perhaps inspired by its radical progeny, Cuba didn't turn out so bad either under the circumstances. Decades after the Soviet Union fell, they stand proud. Poor but free, at least from foreign domination. Most countries in the Third World can't say the same. And they've even come a long way in the formerly dismal department of queer rights. Several years back, Cuba made history by becoming one of the first nations in the Global South to offer free sexual reorientation surgeries for their trans community and has also repealed their deplorable anti-gay laws. Speech is becoming more free, small business is thriving and the dreaded embargo fell before Castro did. Proof positive that it's never to late to change the world and good things can still come to those who go down swinging.
Was Castro a perfect man? No. But he was a courageous leader in the global fight against imperialism until his dying breath. He continues to stand tall as a hero to the poor and oppressed and ignored across the globe, from Columbia to Palestine and even right here in Happy Valley. At a time in my own life when mental illness and gender dysphoria made me a prisoner of my own home, heroes like Che Guevara and Fidel Castro gave me the courage to persevere over the oppression of my own demons. I read volumes about the guerrillas of the Sierra Mastra and it gave me hope, not just for myself but for my own seemingly hopeless country. I may not consider myself to be the hard line Marxist-Leninist that I considered myself to be back then but I will always be a Castroite at heart.
Godspeed Comandante. This is one queer anarchist who salutes you.
Peace, Love and Solidarity- CH
Sunday, November 27, 2016
Thursday, November 17, 2016
Trump's Hybrid Moment
"If you're gonna scream, scream with me. Moments like this never last." Those were the first words, lyrics from an old Misfits song, that came crashing through my skull like a Katyusha rocket the moment I learned that our next president would be reality TV rapist and spray-tan enthusiast Donald Trump, followed shortly by "what the fuck?!" I, like most of the rest of the known universe* didn't see this coming. Not that I was hoping for a Killary win, far from it. I've long been one of the few leftists to take the decidedly politically incorrect position that a Trump presidency, while undeniably loathsome, would be far less dangerous than a reign by the self-anointed queen of chaos. But I had prepared for this outcome, both emotionally and pharmaceutically. Shit, I literally swung by my shrink's office on my way to the ballot box to stock up on Valium so I would have something to dull the shrill sound of the victory speech Killary has been rehearsing since preschool.
In case you folks aren't aware, old Comrade Hermit is just a tad bit agoraphobic. Which means I don't exactly handle change very well and as far as change goes, a Donald Trump presidency lands somewhere between an alien invasion and Tupac showing up for Thanksgiving dinner. I'm still not sure how exactly I should feel about all this mass hysteria, about Trump's hybrid moment, the strangest end to the strangest movie I've ever lived. The million dollar question on everybody's lips seems to be, how the fuck did we get here? And more importantly, who do we blame?
The Democrats and their loyal surrogates in the media already have the second part covered. The blame-game has become a cherished pastime for these malignant twats. Every time one of the Dem's sacred cows gets slaughtered in a presidential election they go on a finger-wagging shaming spree, blaming everyone but themselves for their own shortcomings. Naturally, with their queen dethroned by a moron, this year was hardly an exception to the rule.
This year the shouting heads have a veritable rogues gallery of malicious villains to shout about. Blame Wikileaks! They yelp, for picking up the mainstream media's slack and reminding us what real fucking journalism looks like. Blame Jill Stein! For giving lefty-peaceniks like me a non-violent alternative to Trumpizmo. Blame James Comey! For finally caving to feds sick of giving the Clintons a lifetime pass for every fucking crime in the book (before chickening out again, naturally.) And blame Putin! It's always his fault somehow, isn't it? Yeah, that's right shitheads, blame everybody! Everybody but yourselves, that is, for trying to pass a trigger-happy, Wall Street, oligarch off as an agent for desperately needed change.
The stone cold truth of the matter is, and neither side wants to hear this shit but they both need to, Trump didn't win the election, Killary lost. In spite of all the bullshit about Trump's great white surge, Clinton lost the white vote by virtually the same margins that Obama did to Romney in 2012. Trump got 1.5 million fewer votes than the viciously thrashed Mitt-ster, period. This should have been an easy win for the Dems and it would have been with almost any other candidate. But Killary got a whopping 5.4 million fewer votes than Obama did last election. The reason for this is clear, or at least it should be by now. To put it bluntly, the bitch is simply unelectable.
She's unelectable to working class whites who watched her husband sign their futures away to NAFTA. She's unelectable to blacks, five percent fewer voted for her than Obama, who have had to sit through decades of her patronizing pseudo-Baptist revival bullshit while she sold their kids out as "super-predators" to the prison industrial complex. She's unelectable to queer people like me who aren't buying her conveniently timely bromides about tolerance after years of DOMA. She's even unelectable to Trump's favorite scapegoats, Latinos, six percent fewer voting for her majesty than Obama, who, surprise, surprise, were paying attention when the latter wiped his ass with their votes and shipped their loved ones back over the border in record numbers.
When it all comes down to it, in spite of all of Trump's bigoted bullshit, this election wasn't about race or gender or the identity politics that Killary invested as much time into divisively exploiting as her competition did. It was about class and even next to an obnoxious, old money, slime-ball; poor folks could still smell Killary's elitist bullshit from a mile away. Apparently, we're all fucking deplorables now ("Jesus Christ and my mother too!"). So if you're going to blame anyone for this mess, high-holy-liberal-people, try taking a look in the fucking mirror. You blew it, not us.
As much as I may fear and loath the new president elect, a deep, sick, twisted part of me has no choice but to salute this hybrid moment, if for no other reason than that it insures that, after a lifetime of getting away with one crime after another, the last line of Queen Killary's obituary will undoubtedly read, "Finally put out of power by reality TV star." Yes karma certainly is a mean bitch and so am I.
If your gonna scream, scream with me, dearest motherfuckers. Just let me pop a few more pills before we start this terror ride.
* The only person that I know of who even came close to predicting the election results is my friend Tom Knapp over at Knappster.blogspot.com who called every state that Trump won except for two, back in fucking June and got a mountain of shit for it. Apparently he's some kind of libertarian wizard and he runs the second best blog online.
Peace, Love, Empathy and Anarchy- CH
In case you folks aren't aware, old Comrade Hermit is just a tad bit agoraphobic. Which means I don't exactly handle change very well and as far as change goes, a Donald Trump presidency lands somewhere between an alien invasion and Tupac showing up for Thanksgiving dinner. I'm still not sure how exactly I should feel about all this mass hysteria, about Trump's hybrid moment, the strangest end to the strangest movie I've ever lived. The million dollar question on everybody's lips seems to be, how the fuck did we get here? And more importantly, who do we blame?
The Democrats and their loyal surrogates in the media already have the second part covered. The blame-game has become a cherished pastime for these malignant twats. Every time one of the Dem's sacred cows gets slaughtered in a presidential election they go on a finger-wagging shaming spree, blaming everyone but themselves for their own shortcomings. Naturally, with their queen dethroned by a moron, this year was hardly an exception to the rule.
This year the shouting heads have a veritable rogues gallery of malicious villains to shout about. Blame Wikileaks! They yelp, for picking up the mainstream media's slack and reminding us what real fucking journalism looks like. Blame Jill Stein! For giving lefty-peaceniks like me a non-violent alternative to Trumpizmo. Blame James Comey! For finally caving to feds sick of giving the Clintons a lifetime pass for every fucking crime in the book (before chickening out again, naturally.) And blame Putin! It's always his fault somehow, isn't it? Yeah, that's right shitheads, blame everybody! Everybody but yourselves, that is, for trying to pass a trigger-happy, Wall Street, oligarch off as an agent for desperately needed change.
The stone cold truth of the matter is, and neither side wants to hear this shit but they both need to, Trump didn't win the election, Killary lost. In spite of all the bullshit about Trump's great white surge, Clinton lost the white vote by virtually the same margins that Obama did to Romney in 2012. Trump got 1.5 million fewer votes than the viciously thrashed Mitt-ster, period. This should have been an easy win for the Dems and it would have been with almost any other candidate. But Killary got a whopping 5.4 million fewer votes than Obama did last election. The reason for this is clear, or at least it should be by now. To put it bluntly, the bitch is simply unelectable.
She's unelectable to working class whites who watched her husband sign their futures away to NAFTA. She's unelectable to blacks, five percent fewer voted for her than Obama, who have had to sit through decades of her patronizing pseudo-Baptist revival bullshit while she sold their kids out as "super-predators" to the prison industrial complex. She's unelectable to queer people like me who aren't buying her conveniently timely bromides about tolerance after years of DOMA. She's even unelectable to Trump's favorite scapegoats, Latinos, six percent fewer voting for her majesty than Obama, who, surprise, surprise, were paying attention when the latter wiped his ass with their votes and shipped their loved ones back over the border in record numbers.
When it all comes down to it, in spite of all of Trump's bigoted bullshit, this election wasn't about race or gender or the identity politics that Killary invested as much time into divisively exploiting as her competition did. It was about class and even next to an obnoxious, old money, slime-ball; poor folks could still smell Killary's elitist bullshit from a mile away. Apparently, we're all fucking deplorables now ("Jesus Christ and my mother too!"). So if you're going to blame anyone for this mess, high-holy-liberal-people, try taking a look in the fucking mirror. You blew it, not us.
As much as I may fear and loath the new president elect, a deep, sick, twisted part of me has no choice but to salute this hybrid moment, if for no other reason than that it insures that, after a lifetime of getting away with one crime after another, the last line of Queen Killary's obituary will undoubtedly read, "Finally put out of power by reality TV star." Yes karma certainly is a mean bitch and so am I.
If your gonna scream, scream with me, dearest motherfuckers. Just let me pop a few more pills before we start this terror ride.
* The only person that I know of who even came close to predicting the election results is my friend Tom Knapp over at Knappster.blogspot.com who called every state that Trump won except for two, back in fucking June and got a mountain of shit for it. Apparently he's some kind of libertarian wizard and he runs the second best blog online.
Peace, Love, Empathy and Anarchy- CH
Thursday, November 3, 2016
The Madness Of The American Way
As I scratch out this latest post on a crumpled piece of white computer paper at my local psych-rehab, it is less than one week until election day and this emotionally unstable blogger is desperately fighting the urge to swallow his/her own tongue. Yes dearest motherfuckers, after what feels like a century in this foul election season, your favorite genderfuck anarxist is finally fucking losing it or at least whatever's left of 'it' to lose. I'm seriously considering upping my Valium dosage, shit, I'll try fucking Thorazine at this point. Anything to calm the demons in my head. Only they're not in my fucking head. Their on my phone and my machine and the radio and YouTube and every motherfucking goddamn TV channel and sweet zombie Christ!
I feel like Ray Liotta in the last scenes of Goodfellas. Coked up, freaked out, searching for helicopters from my speeding Cadillac as Harry Nilsson caterwauls "We can make each other happy!" in the background. Be cool. Maintain. I can just hear my inner Raul Duke trying to coach me through this hell like a trip sitter preaching the gospel of calm to an audience of jimsonweed addled Mansonites, "Never mind these sick visions of American apocalypse. In spite of the rapidly growing mountain of evidence to the contrary, Helter Skelter is not in fact coming down." Oh but it is Dr. Duke. It most definitely is. And the most fucked up thing about it is that I don't even give a shit anymore. Go ahead and nuke the globe you goddamned oligarchs. Anything to end this fucking circus ride. Cause I just can't fucking do this shit anymore.
I can't watch Donald Trump yelp his way through another white pride rally, denying that he ever fucked that sexy endangered aardvark at the Bronx Zoo. Not because he wouldn't but because his day-glow orange dick is clearly too YUUUUGE! to fit inside that poor, raped to death critter. Plus she was a fatty. Never mind the tiny claw marks on his baby-doll hands. Just focus on the hate speech.
And I can't listen to Killary wretch about James Comey being Putin's latest puppet for committing the high treason of caving to his own agent's refusal to drink another gallon of lukewarm Clinton piss and bury yet another of their skeletons in the fucking basement next to Jimmy Hoffa and J. Edna's evening gowns. As for the latest child prostitute covered in Bill's jizz, well clearly she's also a part of the vast Russian right-wing conspiracy to deny Queen Kill-em-all's coronation. Aren't we all at this point.
And I can't stomach seeing another ostensibly liberal celebrity that I once admired pretend to be inspired by the prospect of voting for America's preeminent neocon chicken-hawk just because she's technically a Democrat and just because she happens to possess a vagina, even if it is loaded with scatter-bombs. If World War 3 is the price trendy people have to pay to break the glass ceiling than so be it. World peace is so 2008 anyway.
And I can't watch the "liberal media" make all of Roger Ailes bullshit lies true by openly campaigning for their beloved Clinton's and against Trump. Not because he's a race-baiting career con-artist or a knuckle-dragging malignant narcissist but because he's committed the unspeakable atrocity of using the podium they gladly gave him (Ratings! Ratings! Ratings!) to suggest MAYBE calling off the new Cold War to make nice with Russia. A crime apparently worse than rape in today's mass media zeitgeist.
And I will literally fucking die if I have to read one more deluded softcore Trump puff piece from my former favorite paleolibertarian muckraker, Justin Raimondo, trying to convince himself as much as anyone else still listening that the Donald is the second coming of the Old Right just because he accidentally sounds vaguely antiwar in every fifteenth sentence he barks out. Apparently even our renegades have gone batshit fucking mad.
I just can't fucking do this anymore. Voter fatigue is one thing but when you mix it with the host of other festering mental ailments I'm already infected with you get something that resembles psychological mustard gas, scarring the lungs of my imagination. What makes it even worse is that regardless of which megalomaniacal psychopath happens to win next Tuesday, they will undoubtedly be the worst president this already wretched nation has ever seen. No matter what there will be more war, more death, more innocent blood drowning the howitzer cracked streets of planet earth's poorest cities. My heart feels like it could vomit hydrochloric acid right now. My brain feels even worse. And of coarse election day has to fall just days after the end of daylight-savings plunges my universe into months of seasonal affective darkness. If this sick fucking charade qualifies as democracy than I have officially had enough of it. It's times like these that made me desperate enough to look towards despots like Castro and Lenin for hope during my youth. And maybe that's the point. The same way that public schools murder free thinking by making "learning" an insufferable chore. The American election season spoils whole generation's appetites for true democracy by turning it into a mental illness. That's the sick, twisted madness of the American way. Is it really any wonder that the majority of Americans don't even fucking bother showing up at the ballot box?
But not this basket case. For me voting amounts to an almost sadomasochistic act of protest. A sort of electoral propaganda of the deed, if you will. The more people that vote for legitimate, renegade, third party candidates, the clearer it becomes to those poor souls who don't vote that the tyranny of the two-party cartel is nothing more than a demented illusion. We can opt out. We can tear it down. So next Tuesday, I aim on dragging my fat fatigued carcass out of bed. Driving down to my designated voting place, in a fag-bashing baptist church, naturally, and voting for Jill Stein and Amaju Baraka and any other third party candidate I can find on the ballot. Then and only then will I return to the relative safety of my basement to pop Benzos, light candles and hyperventilate.
Stay sane if you can, dearest motherfuckers, it's already too late for this twisted bitch but it's not too late to vote for real change. If I can do it, anyone can.
Peace, Love and Empathy- CH
I feel like Ray Liotta in the last scenes of Goodfellas. Coked up, freaked out, searching for helicopters from my speeding Cadillac as Harry Nilsson caterwauls "We can make each other happy!" in the background. Be cool. Maintain. I can just hear my inner Raul Duke trying to coach me through this hell like a trip sitter preaching the gospel of calm to an audience of jimsonweed addled Mansonites, "Never mind these sick visions of American apocalypse. In spite of the rapidly growing mountain of evidence to the contrary, Helter Skelter is not in fact coming down." Oh but it is Dr. Duke. It most definitely is. And the most fucked up thing about it is that I don't even give a shit anymore. Go ahead and nuke the globe you goddamned oligarchs. Anything to end this fucking circus ride. Cause I just can't fucking do this shit anymore.
I can't watch Donald Trump yelp his way through another white pride rally, denying that he ever fucked that sexy endangered aardvark at the Bronx Zoo. Not because he wouldn't but because his day-glow orange dick is clearly too YUUUUGE! to fit inside that poor, raped to death critter. Plus she was a fatty. Never mind the tiny claw marks on his baby-doll hands. Just focus on the hate speech.
And I can't listen to Killary wretch about James Comey being Putin's latest puppet for committing the high treason of caving to his own agent's refusal to drink another gallon of lukewarm Clinton piss and bury yet another of their skeletons in the fucking basement next to Jimmy Hoffa and J. Edna's evening gowns. As for the latest child prostitute covered in Bill's jizz, well clearly she's also a part of the vast Russian right-wing conspiracy to deny Queen Kill-em-all's coronation. Aren't we all at this point.
And I can't stomach seeing another ostensibly liberal celebrity that I once admired pretend to be inspired by the prospect of voting for America's preeminent neocon chicken-hawk just because she's technically a Democrat and just because she happens to possess a vagina, even if it is loaded with scatter-bombs. If World War 3 is the price trendy people have to pay to break the glass ceiling than so be it. World peace is so 2008 anyway.
And I can't watch the "liberal media" make all of Roger Ailes bullshit lies true by openly campaigning for their beloved Clinton's and against Trump. Not because he's a race-baiting career con-artist or a knuckle-dragging malignant narcissist but because he's committed the unspeakable atrocity of using the podium they gladly gave him (Ratings! Ratings! Ratings!) to suggest MAYBE calling off the new Cold War to make nice with Russia. A crime apparently worse than rape in today's mass media zeitgeist.
And I will literally fucking die if I have to read one more deluded softcore Trump puff piece from my former favorite paleolibertarian muckraker, Justin Raimondo, trying to convince himself as much as anyone else still listening that the Donald is the second coming of the Old Right just because he accidentally sounds vaguely antiwar in every fifteenth sentence he barks out. Apparently even our renegades have gone batshit fucking mad.
I just can't fucking do this anymore. Voter fatigue is one thing but when you mix it with the host of other festering mental ailments I'm already infected with you get something that resembles psychological mustard gas, scarring the lungs of my imagination. What makes it even worse is that regardless of which megalomaniacal psychopath happens to win next Tuesday, they will undoubtedly be the worst president this already wretched nation has ever seen. No matter what there will be more war, more death, more innocent blood drowning the howitzer cracked streets of planet earth's poorest cities. My heart feels like it could vomit hydrochloric acid right now. My brain feels even worse. And of coarse election day has to fall just days after the end of daylight-savings plunges my universe into months of seasonal affective darkness. If this sick fucking charade qualifies as democracy than I have officially had enough of it. It's times like these that made me desperate enough to look towards despots like Castro and Lenin for hope during my youth. And maybe that's the point. The same way that public schools murder free thinking by making "learning" an insufferable chore. The American election season spoils whole generation's appetites for true democracy by turning it into a mental illness. That's the sick, twisted madness of the American way. Is it really any wonder that the majority of Americans don't even fucking bother showing up at the ballot box?
But not this basket case. For me voting amounts to an almost sadomasochistic act of protest. A sort of electoral propaganda of the deed, if you will. The more people that vote for legitimate, renegade, third party candidates, the clearer it becomes to those poor souls who don't vote that the tyranny of the two-party cartel is nothing more than a demented illusion. We can opt out. We can tear it down. So next Tuesday, I aim on dragging my fat fatigued carcass out of bed. Driving down to my designated voting place, in a fag-bashing baptist church, naturally, and voting for Jill Stein and Amaju Baraka and any other third party candidate I can find on the ballot. Then and only then will I return to the relative safety of my basement to pop Benzos, light candles and hyperventilate.
Stay sane if you can, dearest motherfuckers, it's already too late for this twisted bitch but it's not too late to vote for real change. If I can do it, anyone can.
Peace, Love and Empathy- CH
Thursday, October 20, 2016
November 2016: Pick Your Favorite Rapist!
Well dearest motherfuckers, it looks like it's finally all over but the barking. After what felt like a fucking century at the circus, that snarling, rabid, human chow-chow known as Donald Trump finally appears to be fucked beyond all repair or at least on his way to the pound for gassing. And all it took was both major parties and half the fucking media to do it. The final nail in the proverbial coffin? A nauseating 2005 recording of the Donald bragging about his a adventures in unsolicited pussy grabbing to giggling tabloid news gimp Billy Bush, which just happened to hit the news like a goddamn scatter-bomb on the same day Wikileaks was set to drop its latest load of damning information on the Clinton campaign (Coincidence?). What followed, naturally, was a shit storm of epic proportions. At least nine women charging Trump with everything from manic groping (the word octopus will never sound the same) to full-blown rape. While I feel contractually obligated as a feminist, half a woman and a quarter of a descent human being to join this pile on, I feel equally obligated to level the fucking playing field, because, while Killary's fingers may not be grabbing any pussy, they sure as fuck aren't clean.
As the stories of Trump's growing flock of victims began to pile up like Tetras pieces, I couldn't help but feel an uncanny sense of deja-vu. That's because Trumps crimes bare a striking resemblance to the nineties exploits of old Kill-dog's hubby and semi-impeached ex-president Bill Clinton. The harassment, the indecent exposure, the octopus groping, even the rape. All of which was covered up by his supposedly feminist wife, who also lead the campaign to demonize and slander Slick Willy's victims. She even convinced the bastard not to drop out of the '92 election after getting his hand stuck in the cookie jar. All so she could climb the ladder to the Oval Office. The Clinton marriage has always been one of political convenience. Bill's chauvinistic womanizing goes back at least as far as his days as Governor of Arkansas (after Florida, America's second most rape-vibe state). Killary didn't care then and she doesn't care now. That oddly charming, southern fried fuck freak of a husband of hers is nothing more than a bird-brained Clydesdale that Killary expertly used to ride to power.
All of this has been conveniently forgotten by the pillars of moral superiority in the mainstream media, currently sneering at Trump from their high horses for crimes that only earned their precious Bill a couple of cheap laughs for being a fun-loving randy boy. Strangely enough, the only people who seem to be taking Bill's moonlight hobby as a sexual predator seriously are those silicon female chauvinist pigs over at Fox News. Apparently everyone's a fucking feminist when it's convenient for them. It isn't even November and it's feeling like Killary's America already.
Also forgotten by the talking heads of network and cable news is the creepy link between both Bill and Donald's crime spree's and a mysterious billionaire sex-offender named Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein was busted in '08 for running a massive underage sex ring that provided many of America's 1% with a steady flow of underage ass. Epstein also happens to be good friends of both Trump and the Clintons. And both Bill and the Donald are known to be frequent flyers on Epstein's own personal flying brothel, known as the Lolita Express, in spite of the fact that both men already own their own private jets. Epstein has also financed the Clinton Foundation to the tune of millions and was known to instruct his young sex slaves to keep tabs on their johns personal predilections for the purpose of future blackmail. It's little wonder that one of Trump's anonymous accusers is a former Epstein girl.
There is something profoundly rotten about this picture. We don't have all the pieces to this Kafkaesque puzzle yet but it has Killary's signature all over it. The shit just gets stinkier when you read the section of Wikileaks' latest Podesta Files that exposes the Clinton Campaigns strange involvement in secretly supporting Trump's presidential run even before he announced his candidacy. Maybe Killary knew something we didn't. Maybe she pushed a candidate to GOP victory that she already had the dirt to destroy. The only candidate she knew she could beat. I know, I'm starting to sound like Ollie Stone again here but who else but Killary would and could use, not one, but two rapists to guarantee her place in the White House?
Perhaps an even more important question is what kind of a fucking country has this become when both Democratic and Republican candidates can be tied to sexual violence and Jill Stein is still polling in the single fucking digits? What the hell is it going to take you people to grow a pair of fucking ovaries and vote for a real goddamn feminist. But no, you people are slaves to the lesser of two evils. Well you fucking got it. Congratulations. November 2016, ladies and gentleman! Pick your favorite rapist!
Begrudgingly yours,
Peace, Love, Anarchy and Empathy- CH
As the stories of Trump's growing flock of victims began to pile up like Tetras pieces, I couldn't help but feel an uncanny sense of deja-vu. That's because Trumps crimes bare a striking resemblance to the nineties exploits of old Kill-dog's hubby and semi-impeached ex-president Bill Clinton. The harassment, the indecent exposure, the octopus groping, even the rape. All of which was covered up by his supposedly feminist wife, who also lead the campaign to demonize and slander Slick Willy's victims. She even convinced the bastard not to drop out of the '92 election after getting his hand stuck in the cookie jar. All so she could climb the ladder to the Oval Office. The Clinton marriage has always been one of political convenience. Bill's chauvinistic womanizing goes back at least as far as his days as Governor of Arkansas (after Florida, America's second most rape-vibe state). Killary didn't care then and she doesn't care now. That oddly charming, southern fried fuck freak of a husband of hers is nothing more than a bird-brained Clydesdale that Killary expertly used to ride to power.
All of this has been conveniently forgotten by the pillars of moral superiority in the mainstream media, currently sneering at Trump from their high horses for crimes that only earned their precious Bill a couple of cheap laughs for being a fun-loving randy boy. Strangely enough, the only people who seem to be taking Bill's moonlight hobby as a sexual predator seriously are those silicon female chauvinist pigs over at Fox News. Apparently everyone's a fucking feminist when it's convenient for them. It isn't even November and it's feeling like Killary's America already.
Also forgotten by the talking heads of network and cable news is the creepy link between both Bill and Donald's crime spree's and a mysterious billionaire sex-offender named Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein was busted in '08 for running a massive underage sex ring that provided many of America's 1% with a steady flow of underage ass. Epstein also happens to be good friends of both Trump and the Clintons. And both Bill and the Donald are known to be frequent flyers on Epstein's own personal flying brothel, known as the Lolita Express, in spite of the fact that both men already own their own private jets. Epstein has also financed the Clinton Foundation to the tune of millions and was known to instruct his young sex slaves to keep tabs on their johns personal predilections for the purpose of future blackmail. It's little wonder that one of Trump's anonymous accusers is a former Epstein girl.
There is something profoundly rotten about this picture. We don't have all the pieces to this Kafkaesque puzzle yet but it has Killary's signature all over it. The shit just gets stinkier when you read the section of Wikileaks' latest Podesta Files that exposes the Clinton Campaigns strange involvement in secretly supporting Trump's presidential run even before he announced his candidacy. Maybe Killary knew something we didn't. Maybe she pushed a candidate to GOP victory that she already had the dirt to destroy. The only candidate she knew she could beat. I know, I'm starting to sound like Ollie Stone again here but who else but Killary would and could use, not one, but two rapists to guarantee her place in the White House?
Perhaps an even more important question is what kind of a fucking country has this become when both Democratic and Republican candidates can be tied to sexual violence and Jill Stein is still polling in the single fucking digits? What the hell is it going to take you people to grow a pair of fucking ovaries and vote for a real goddamn feminist. But no, you people are slaves to the lesser of two evils. Well you fucking got it. Congratulations. November 2016, ladies and gentleman! Pick your favorite rapist!
Begrudgingly yours,
Peace, Love, Anarchy and Empathy- CH
Thursday, October 6, 2016
Jill Stein: The Rothbardian Candidate
In case you haven't noticed, my political beliefs are kind of all over the fucking map. Most of them seem to fall under the generally anti-statist left-wing umbrella of libertarian socialism but it's a pretty big umbrella. When it comes to philosophy, I turn to Young Marx. However, when it comes to political solutions, more often than not, I turn to Karl's mortal enemy, Mikhail Bakunin. When it comes to big business, I'm a hardcore syndicalist. When it comes to small business, on the other hand, I'm much more of a mutualist. When it comes to big government, I'm definitely a social anarchist. Then again, when it comes to small government, I generally air closer to the side of council communism. But my political influences aren't even relegated solely to the radical left. Over my years of reclusive research, I've pulled inspiration from some pretty odd places, even some elements often considered to be on the radical right.
Sounds scary, right? Well, let me explain. I've always been fascinated by extremes and since middle-school I've considered myself to be a part of the radical left. This dichotomy naturally led me to seek to understand my perceived enemies on the other side. What I found, quite frankly, shocked me. While there certainly existed more than a fair share of malignant fuck-heads, Your Nazi's, your racists, your elitist charlatans and your Christian wack-jobs, there was also a fair share of common ground on the fringes as well. Try as I might, I couldn't help but draw comparisons between thinkers like Oswald Spengler and Karl Marx or tragic heroes like Che Guevara and Yukio Mishima. But my favorite new frenemy was probably right-libertarian iconoclast, Murray Rothbard. Who, in many ways, changed the way I looked at politics completely.
Rothbard was a character after my own heart. An ideological renegade who took great pride in shaking the system and spitting in the eye of doctrinaire orthodoxy in all its many forms. Getting his start as the new voice of the Old Right, Rothbard first broke bad when his beloved Grand Old Party ditched the relatively peaceful isolationism of Taft for the hyper-statist Cold War hawkishness of the Rockefeller's. Rothbard came to the harsh conclusion that the state itself was the problem and that the whole stale left-right paradigm only served to legitimize it. While the rest of his former comrades toasted Tricky-Dick and Victory With Honor, Rothbard was busy breaking bread with their dope-smoking, long-haired enemies in the antiwar movement. Along with his fellow Republican renegade, Karl Hess, Murray sought to build bridges between the disaffected anti-interventionists of the Old Right and the young anti-imperialists of the New Left. Defending the Black Panthers, meeting with members of the Students for a Democratic Society and eulogizing the late Che Guevara after his execution at the hands of the CIA, Rothbard devoted himself entirely to upending every conservative convention that he could get his fucking hands on. I didn't agree with the man on everything, not by a long-shot. But few American wonks remained as consistently antiwar over the decades as Murray Rothbard. During no time was that principled stance more true than during election season and it's Rotbard's basic philosophy on responsible antiwar voting that has had the most lasting impact on my own world view.
The Rothbardian philosophy on voting is basically a sane, moral version of the lesser-evil principle. The notion goes that a true pacifist should vote for the least interventionist candidate available, regardless of their over-all political ideology, because there is no problem more severe than the need for world peace, especially in the belly of the beast of history's deadliest empire. Rothbard believed that the source of all the woes of the state could be traced back to a nations foreign policy. I personally believe in that old Marxist theory that imperialism is the highest and deadliest incarnation of capitalism. Either way, our goal remains the same, Bring peace to the White House by any means necessary, whether that means electing a libertarian or a socialist.
The Rothbardian choice for president has never been easier than it is this year because sadly there is only one anti-interventionist candidate running and that candidate is the Green Party's Jill Stein. As Donald Trump and Killary duke it out over who can be a more repulsive tyrant, even the so-called Libertarian alternative, Gary Johnson, is singing the praises of drone strikes and foreign bases. Regardless of how you feel about Jill Stein's other policies, it is undeniable that she is not only the most anti-interventionist candidate running, she is the ONLY anti-interventionist candidate running. She stands alone in her call for a cut of at least 50% in military spending and shuttering every last American base on foreign soil from Thule to Riyadh. Both Killary and Trump call for drastic increases in military spending and global intervention and Gary Johnson's latest flip-flop has him cutting a measly 20% while continuing support for NATO. The choice is clear. Regardless of whether you consider yourself to be right or left, whether your a Marxist, a libertarian, an anarchist, a conservative or any mix of the above, their remains only one choice for peace. Jill Stein is 2016's Rothbardian candidate and this crazy, mixed-up, radical officially endorses her.
Come together, dearest motherfuckers, right now, over Jill.
Peace, Love, Empathy and Anarchy- CH
Sounds scary, right? Well, let me explain. I've always been fascinated by extremes and since middle-school I've considered myself to be a part of the radical left. This dichotomy naturally led me to seek to understand my perceived enemies on the other side. What I found, quite frankly, shocked me. While there certainly existed more than a fair share of malignant fuck-heads, Your Nazi's, your racists, your elitist charlatans and your Christian wack-jobs, there was also a fair share of common ground on the fringes as well. Try as I might, I couldn't help but draw comparisons between thinkers like Oswald Spengler and Karl Marx or tragic heroes like Che Guevara and Yukio Mishima. But my favorite new frenemy was probably right-libertarian iconoclast, Murray Rothbard. Who, in many ways, changed the way I looked at politics completely.
Rothbard was a character after my own heart. An ideological renegade who took great pride in shaking the system and spitting in the eye of doctrinaire orthodoxy in all its many forms. Getting his start as the new voice of the Old Right, Rothbard first broke bad when his beloved Grand Old Party ditched the relatively peaceful isolationism of Taft for the hyper-statist Cold War hawkishness of the Rockefeller's. Rothbard came to the harsh conclusion that the state itself was the problem and that the whole stale left-right paradigm only served to legitimize it. While the rest of his former comrades toasted Tricky-Dick and Victory With Honor, Rothbard was busy breaking bread with their dope-smoking, long-haired enemies in the antiwar movement. Along with his fellow Republican renegade, Karl Hess, Murray sought to build bridges between the disaffected anti-interventionists of the Old Right and the young anti-imperialists of the New Left. Defending the Black Panthers, meeting with members of the Students for a Democratic Society and eulogizing the late Che Guevara after his execution at the hands of the CIA, Rothbard devoted himself entirely to upending every conservative convention that he could get his fucking hands on. I didn't agree with the man on everything, not by a long-shot. But few American wonks remained as consistently antiwar over the decades as Murray Rothbard. During no time was that principled stance more true than during election season and it's Rotbard's basic philosophy on responsible antiwar voting that has had the most lasting impact on my own world view.
The Rothbardian philosophy on voting is basically a sane, moral version of the lesser-evil principle. The notion goes that a true pacifist should vote for the least interventionist candidate available, regardless of their over-all political ideology, because there is no problem more severe than the need for world peace, especially in the belly of the beast of history's deadliest empire. Rothbard believed that the source of all the woes of the state could be traced back to a nations foreign policy. I personally believe in that old Marxist theory that imperialism is the highest and deadliest incarnation of capitalism. Either way, our goal remains the same, Bring peace to the White House by any means necessary, whether that means electing a libertarian or a socialist.
The Rothbardian choice for president has never been easier than it is this year because sadly there is only one anti-interventionist candidate running and that candidate is the Green Party's Jill Stein. As Donald Trump and Killary duke it out over who can be a more repulsive tyrant, even the so-called Libertarian alternative, Gary Johnson, is singing the praises of drone strikes and foreign bases. Regardless of how you feel about Jill Stein's other policies, it is undeniable that she is not only the most anti-interventionist candidate running, she is the ONLY anti-interventionist candidate running. She stands alone in her call for a cut of at least 50% in military spending and shuttering every last American base on foreign soil from Thule to Riyadh. Both Killary and Trump call for drastic increases in military spending and global intervention and Gary Johnson's latest flip-flop has him cutting a measly 20% while continuing support for NATO. The choice is clear. Regardless of whether you consider yourself to be right or left, whether your a Marxist, a libertarian, an anarchist, a conservative or any mix of the above, their remains only one choice for peace. Jill Stein is 2016's Rothbardian candidate and this crazy, mixed-up, radical officially endorses her.
Come together, dearest motherfuckers, right now, over Jill.
Peace, Love, Empathy and Anarchy- CH
Thursday, September 29, 2016
Joe Knew And So Do You!
In a dimly lit room at an undisclosed location, aging soldiers of a shamed and once fearsome army gather in the tacky regalia of their misspent youth and drink to the memory of their long lost fearless leader, a man disgraced by history who's grainy black and white image flickers like an electronic ghost on a nearby wall, ten feet tall. No, these aren't the Boys From Brazil mooning over their dearly departed Hitler. These are wealthy Penn State alumni celebrating the 50th anniversary of their alma mater's appointment of my communities local demigod, Joe Paterno, best known by the sane world outside of this counties confines as the worst rape-appeaser west of Vatican City. But this isn't the sane world folks. This is Happy fucking Valley. The place I call home. And these people aren't Nazi's, their my neighbors.
I wish I could tell you that these kind of sickening displays of affection for the morally derelict are an anomaly here. The campus trustees would surely have you believe this, thus the clandestine nature of the above mentioned creepy little shindig. But it's not. It's been at least forty years since Joe knew and it's been over five since the rest of the Nittany Nation has too and they remain as complacent and undisturbed as their revolting hero. Their are over fifty children who's lives were mercilessly eviscerated by Jerry Sandusky and his willing accomplice Joe Paterno and those are just the ones that we know of. The real victim count is likely much much higher. But the Nittany Nation couldn't fucking care less. Who cares about ass-rape and strangled childhoods when there's football games to be lost to teams with half the funding and a third of the resources as the multi-billion dollar student-debt factory known as Penn State. This is the twisted fucking mindset of your average Nittany Lion who lives in a state of perpetual denial and outright indifference.
According to your average Nittany Lion, JoPa is innocent. In fact JoPa is the real victim here and all the mountains of court documents, eye witness accounts and quote unquote evidence are all just part of a vast conspiracy to destroy dear poor old JoPa and abuse the carefully constructed illusions of his sick little fan-club. The sane world has deemed these pretentious little twats Penn State Truthers and they have made their presence known world wide on the world wide web, trolling every message board from here to Timbuktu that dares to mention their dear leader's name without licking his crusty nut-sac and often threatening his critics with acts of sexual violence that would get Sandusky hard. Anybody who has had the supreme misfortune of spending more than thirty seconds online with one of these human toilet-bowls has a new appreciation for the revolting level of depraved ignorance that human beings have become capable of in the twilight of our own self-imposed extinction. Try living with these motherfuckers and you'll also have a new appreciation for my festering issues with agoraphobia.
In my savage minds-eye, old Joe became as guilty as Jerry the moment he found out about his grotesque extra-curricular activities and decided to cover them up for sake of his career rather than doing the right thing and calling the fucking cops like any sane person with half a soul to squeeze. And the whole damn Nittany Nation became just as guilty as Joe the moment they decided to ignore and silence the truth about their soiled hero rather than growing the fuck up and excepting the harsh reality that his carefully crafted cult of personality was a fucking lie. You are all complicit! Joe knew and so do you!
Yes, dearest motherfuckers, I live in a community full of collective sex offenders. And people wonder why I'm afraid to leave my fucking house.
I wish I could tell you that these kind of sickening displays of affection for the morally derelict are an anomaly here. The campus trustees would surely have you believe this, thus the clandestine nature of the above mentioned creepy little shindig. But it's not. It's been at least forty years since Joe knew and it's been over five since the rest of the Nittany Nation has too and they remain as complacent and undisturbed as their revolting hero. Their are over fifty children who's lives were mercilessly eviscerated by Jerry Sandusky and his willing accomplice Joe Paterno and those are just the ones that we know of. The real victim count is likely much much higher. But the Nittany Nation couldn't fucking care less. Who cares about ass-rape and strangled childhoods when there's football games to be lost to teams with half the funding and a third of the resources as the multi-billion dollar student-debt factory known as Penn State. This is the twisted fucking mindset of your average Nittany Lion who lives in a state of perpetual denial and outright indifference.
According to your average Nittany Lion, JoPa is innocent. In fact JoPa is the real victim here and all the mountains of court documents, eye witness accounts and quote unquote evidence are all just part of a vast conspiracy to destroy dear poor old JoPa and abuse the carefully constructed illusions of his sick little fan-club. The sane world has deemed these pretentious little twats Penn State Truthers and they have made their presence known world wide on the world wide web, trolling every message board from here to Timbuktu that dares to mention their dear leader's name without licking his crusty nut-sac and often threatening his critics with acts of sexual violence that would get Sandusky hard. Anybody who has had the supreme misfortune of spending more than thirty seconds online with one of these human toilet-bowls has a new appreciation for the revolting level of depraved ignorance that human beings have become capable of in the twilight of our own self-imposed extinction. Try living with these motherfuckers and you'll also have a new appreciation for my festering issues with agoraphobia.
In my savage minds-eye, old Joe became as guilty as Jerry the moment he found out about his grotesque extra-curricular activities and decided to cover them up for sake of his career rather than doing the right thing and calling the fucking cops like any sane person with half a soul to squeeze. And the whole damn Nittany Nation became just as guilty as Joe the moment they decided to ignore and silence the truth about their soiled hero rather than growing the fuck up and excepting the harsh reality that his carefully crafted cult of personality was a fucking lie. You are all complicit! Joe knew and so do you!
Yes, dearest motherfuckers, I live in a community full of collective sex offenders. And people wonder why I'm afraid to leave my fucking house.
Thursday, September 15, 2016
The Rojava Screw-Job
I've never made much of a secret out of my affection for the Kurdish Independence Movement, particularly of the PKK/YPG variety. I've earned something of a reputation on my usual message boards for being their whitest cheerleader. Part of it's political, self-determination and all that shit. But its also become something very personal. Partly because of what I like to call the Irish thing. Coming from a lineage of proud and often doomed struggle against imperial oppression and subjugation has made me into something of a serial fellow traveler with third world independence movements from Gaza to Grozny. But mostly it has to do with the fact that the PKK and their Syrian cousins in the YPG have followed an ideological trajectory that is nearly identical to my own. Over the last couple decades, we have both evolved from garden variety, New Leftish, revolutionary socialism to a kind of post-Marxist anarcho-syndicalism without ever losing our cheeky zeal for radical chic. The Syrian YPG have even managed to construct a successful stateless society that reflects these shared ideals.
From the toxic dust of the American Empires latest Middle Eastern jihad, the YPG have erected the autonomous democratic confederation of Rojava in Syria's north eastern Kurdish region. What began as a basic defense mechanism against the growing genocidal scourge of ISIS has blossomed into a secular, poly-ethnic and self sustainable example of bottom-up, Athenian-style, direct democracy. A true leaderless, borderless society. Proof positive that social anarchism can still work. No gods. No masters. And all of this achieved while leading the regions most successful counter-insurgency against Wahhabist tyranny. For the longest time, support for Rojava was the one thing that most of the major players in the Syrian cluster-fuck could agree on. Over the last couple weeks, however, things have changed. And the rare, hard won good fortune of the Kurds has shifted towards a strange new darkness.
It all seems to have started shortly after the failed July coup attempt in Turkey. A month later nearly to the day, a firefight erupted between the YPG and their supposed allies in a pro-Assad militia in the city of Hasakah which led to the first Syrian Air Force strike against Kurdish forces in the five year history of the war. A week later Turkey invaded Rojava under the guise of fighting their friends in ISIS who turned tail and ran the moment they saw the tanks, without firing more than a handful of bullets. The real target was obviously the YPG and their alleged allies, east and west, didn't seem to give a shit. The US even supplied the Turks with logistical support and just days ago, as I type this, Russia, America and Turkey agreed to a week-long ceasefire to be topped off with unprecedented joint US-Russian operations against ISIS and Al-Nusra. So what the fuck happened? What changed? How did the US, Russia and Turkey all get on the same page? And why did the Kurds get screwed in the process? In order to answer these questions we have to ask ourselves, what do these three countries in this weird new alliance want?
What Turkey wants is pretty simple. It's what they've always wanted. A return to the glory days of the Ottoman Empire. The two biggest obstacles to this goal are the Kurds and the Assad regime. That's why it's little wonder that Turkey and their new Sultan Erdogan have consistently been ISIS and Al-Nusra's best friends in the region. Sending them guns, gas and maniacs and buying their pilfered oil in bulk. All this had put Turkey at odds with Russia and naturally Syria. This all seemed to change shortly after the failed coup against Erdogan which leads us to Russia.
What Russia wants is to avoid the creation of another bottomless vortex of never ending terrorism within shooting distance of their borders. The only way they can achieve this relative peace is to keep the Assad regime in place and destroy the foreign jihadis sent by Uncle Sam and his Gulf buddies to turn the Levant into a smoking ash heap. Russia has been pretty successful at doing this so far with their loose coalition of Syria, Iran, Iraq, Hezbollah and the Kurds. But as long as Turkey remains committed to the overthrow of Assad there will always be a permanent flow of armed Wahhabists spilling over the border to unleash holy fucking hell. Russia was left with only two options, beat em or join em. And since Putin doesn't share America's lust for endless war, they were left with no choice but to find a way to rope Turkey into their orbit. This is where the failed Turkish coup comes into play.
The attempt to overthrow Sultan Erdogan lasted less than 24 hours and was basically squashed before it had even begun. What followed was Erdogan's self-proclaimed "gift from god". A massive purge of tens of thousands of the Sultan's biggest critics in the government, military and judiciary. As well as the evisceration of the last feeble vestiges of Turkey's so-called democracy. What also followed was a very public break-up between Erdogan's Turkey and their alleged NATO allies in Obama's Washington and a previously unthinkable reconciliation with Putin's Moscow. What appears to have happened is that Russian intelligence caught wind of an American backed plot against Erdogan, hardly unusual, historically speaking, and tipped the strongman off in advance in order to pull Washington's favorite Sultan into the Kremlin's tent. What likely transpired next was a Faustian bargain of sorts. Erdogan would thank Putin for the heads up by laying off Assad and Putin would return the favor by keeping his hands in his pockets while Erdogan rips Rojava to fucking ribbons. And how does America play into all this? I'll tell you my theory.
What America wanted from Syria was an oil pipeline to undercut Russia's burgeoning integration with Europe. When Assad shot this idea down, America wanted Assad gone and was willing to do just about anything to make it happen. They tried arming rebels including the Kurds as well as terrorists (with the exception of the Kurds, there was hardly a difference between the two). They even tried blaming Assad for these same terrorist's poison gas attacks in order to justify an American invasion. But Putin outsmarted them every step of the way with better rebels, popular peace deals and successful interventions. America's last hope became using their partners in crime, the Turks, to launch the NATO backed intervention that they couldn't get away with doing themselves and maintain an indefinite no-fly-zone from which to launch a never ending barrage of jihadist mayhem into Syria and eventually, in time, an American invasion to clean up the mess once the world becomes frightened enough to let them get away with it. There were only two problems with this devilish little plot. Turkey didn't have the guts or the firepower to take on Russia, who stood between them and Syria, and they didn't have the support from their own military to launch a Yankee proxy war.
I believe America solved the first problem by using their old buddies, the Gulenists, to launch a purposely doomed and half-assed coup, with Erdogan's full approval, right under the noses of Russian intelligence. Thus giving Putin the opportunity to play the hero and Erdogan the opportunity to play the spurred former allie desperate to make a deal and find a new pappa bear to protect his crumbling fiefdom. All this gave Putin the false impression of having the upper hand and convinced him to make a previously unthinkable concession to his former enemy by unofficially green-lighting a Turkish invasion as long as it ended with Rojava. And just like that Putin fed the Kurds to the treads of Ottoman tanks.
This brings us to what I believe was America's solution to the second problem. With the powerful Turkish Army unwilling to fight their brothers in ISIS or the Russian backed Syrians, a scapegoat was needed and in Turkey their is know better scapegoat than those dastardly, unruly Kurds. So what does America do? They back the Kurds of coarse. Supplying the YPG with guns, air power and even Green Berets. As the territory held by Rojava spread, so did the anti-Kurdish anxiety among the Turkish military elite. By the time the YPG was given the green-light by the US to cross the Euphrates, Turkey had been given the green-light by Russia to invade. It was a fucking set-up from the drop and the Kurds never saw it coming.
The Kurds biggest flaw has always been their seemingly boundless faith in the myth of America as the savior of oppressed peoples. No matter how many times we screw them, they just keep coming back for more abuse like a battered spouse loyal to lover-boy till the bloody end. I'll never understand it. It's as if they were all raised on a steady diet of Sodium Pentothal and John Wayne movies. They still buy into that old post-World War legend of the indispensable America. The America without sin. None other than the late, great Ho Chi Minh once shared this same delusion. Sending Eisenhower opium peace pipes while he sent him agent orange and erecting shrines to the Founding Fathers who would have treated him like a mutt. But Ho finally woke up and grew up. Realizing that Russia would always make a more dependable allie because they knew the taste of Uncle Sams jack boot. He lead his people to freedom. I had long hoped that the Kurds would do the same. That the combination of Vladimir Putin's pragmatism and Abdullah Ocalan's idealism would prove to be the perfect cure for the Middle East's endless woes. Perhaps I was being as foolish as my friends the Kurds. But so is Putin if he believes that he'll ever be able to trust Erdogan and his fellow revanchist barbarians. He had a rare opportunity to win over the most fiercely loyal warriors in the Middle East and he fucking blew it. My admiration for the man has taken a serious blow in the process. I guess the Kurds didn't count as much as the Crimean's or the Abkhazian's. Oh well, Fuck him. My Irish heart will continue to beat for Rojava in spite of my Russian soul. I guess it just goes to show that the only nations you can ever truly rely on are the ones without leaders.
Peace, Love, Empathy and Anarchy- CH
From the toxic dust of the American Empires latest Middle Eastern jihad, the YPG have erected the autonomous democratic confederation of Rojava in Syria's north eastern Kurdish region. What began as a basic defense mechanism against the growing genocidal scourge of ISIS has blossomed into a secular, poly-ethnic and self sustainable example of bottom-up, Athenian-style, direct democracy. A true leaderless, borderless society. Proof positive that social anarchism can still work. No gods. No masters. And all of this achieved while leading the regions most successful counter-insurgency against Wahhabist tyranny. For the longest time, support for Rojava was the one thing that most of the major players in the Syrian cluster-fuck could agree on. Over the last couple weeks, however, things have changed. And the rare, hard won good fortune of the Kurds has shifted towards a strange new darkness.
It all seems to have started shortly after the failed July coup attempt in Turkey. A month later nearly to the day, a firefight erupted between the YPG and their supposed allies in a pro-Assad militia in the city of Hasakah which led to the first Syrian Air Force strike against Kurdish forces in the five year history of the war. A week later Turkey invaded Rojava under the guise of fighting their friends in ISIS who turned tail and ran the moment they saw the tanks, without firing more than a handful of bullets. The real target was obviously the YPG and their alleged allies, east and west, didn't seem to give a shit. The US even supplied the Turks with logistical support and just days ago, as I type this, Russia, America and Turkey agreed to a week-long ceasefire to be topped off with unprecedented joint US-Russian operations against ISIS and Al-Nusra. So what the fuck happened? What changed? How did the US, Russia and Turkey all get on the same page? And why did the Kurds get screwed in the process? In order to answer these questions we have to ask ourselves, what do these three countries in this weird new alliance want?
What Turkey wants is pretty simple. It's what they've always wanted. A return to the glory days of the Ottoman Empire. The two biggest obstacles to this goal are the Kurds and the Assad regime. That's why it's little wonder that Turkey and their new Sultan Erdogan have consistently been ISIS and Al-Nusra's best friends in the region. Sending them guns, gas and maniacs and buying their pilfered oil in bulk. All this had put Turkey at odds with Russia and naturally Syria. This all seemed to change shortly after the failed coup against Erdogan which leads us to Russia.
What Russia wants is to avoid the creation of another bottomless vortex of never ending terrorism within shooting distance of their borders. The only way they can achieve this relative peace is to keep the Assad regime in place and destroy the foreign jihadis sent by Uncle Sam and his Gulf buddies to turn the Levant into a smoking ash heap. Russia has been pretty successful at doing this so far with their loose coalition of Syria, Iran, Iraq, Hezbollah and the Kurds. But as long as Turkey remains committed to the overthrow of Assad there will always be a permanent flow of armed Wahhabists spilling over the border to unleash holy fucking hell. Russia was left with only two options, beat em or join em. And since Putin doesn't share America's lust for endless war, they were left with no choice but to find a way to rope Turkey into their orbit. This is where the failed Turkish coup comes into play.
The attempt to overthrow Sultan Erdogan lasted less than 24 hours and was basically squashed before it had even begun. What followed was Erdogan's self-proclaimed "gift from god". A massive purge of tens of thousands of the Sultan's biggest critics in the government, military and judiciary. As well as the evisceration of the last feeble vestiges of Turkey's so-called democracy. What also followed was a very public break-up between Erdogan's Turkey and their alleged NATO allies in Obama's Washington and a previously unthinkable reconciliation with Putin's Moscow. What appears to have happened is that Russian intelligence caught wind of an American backed plot against Erdogan, hardly unusual, historically speaking, and tipped the strongman off in advance in order to pull Washington's favorite Sultan into the Kremlin's tent. What likely transpired next was a Faustian bargain of sorts. Erdogan would thank Putin for the heads up by laying off Assad and Putin would return the favor by keeping his hands in his pockets while Erdogan rips Rojava to fucking ribbons. And how does America play into all this? I'll tell you my theory.
What America wanted from Syria was an oil pipeline to undercut Russia's burgeoning integration with Europe. When Assad shot this idea down, America wanted Assad gone and was willing to do just about anything to make it happen. They tried arming rebels including the Kurds as well as terrorists (with the exception of the Kurds, there was hardly a difference between the two). They even tried blaming Assad for these same terrorist's poison gas attacks in order to justify an American invasion. But Putin outsmarted them every step of the way with better rebels, popular peace deals and successful interventions. America's last hope became using their partners in crime, the Turks, to launch the NATO backed intervention that they couldn't get away with doing themselves and maintain an indefinite no-fly-zone from which to launch a never ending barrage of jihadist mayhem into Syria and eventually, in time, an American invasion to clean up the mess once the world becomes frightened enough to let them get away with it. There were only two problems with this devilish little plot. Turkey didn't have the guts or the firepower to take on Russia, who stood between them and Syria, and they didn't have the support from their own military to launch a Yankee proxy war.
I believe America solved the first problem by using their old buddies, the Gulenists, to launch a purposely doomed and half-assed coup, with Erdogan's full approval, right under the noses of Russian intelligence. Thus giving Putin the opportunity to play the hero and Erdogan the opportunity to play the spurred former allie desperate to make a deal and find a new pappa bear to protect his crumbling fiefdom. All this gave Putin the false impression of having the upper hand and convinced him to make a previously unthinkable concession to his former enemy by unofficially green-lighting a Turkish invasion as long as it ended with Rojava. And just like that Putin fed the Kurds to the treads of Ottoman tanks.
This brings us to what I believe was America's solution to the second problem. With the powerful Turkish Army unwilling to fight their brothers in ISIS or the Russian backed Syrians, a scapegoat was needed and in Turkey their is know better scapegoat than those dastardly, unruly Kurds. So what does America do? They back the Kurds of coarse. Supplying the YPG with guns, air power and even Green Berets. As the territory held by Rojava spread, so did the anti-Kurdish anxiety among the Turkish military elite. By the time the YPG was given the green-light by the US to cross the Euphrates, Turkey had been given the green-light by Russia to invade. It was a fucking set-up from the drop and the Kurds never saw it coming.
The Kurds biggest flaw has always been their seemingly boundless faith in the myth of America as the savior of oppressed peoples. No matter how many times we screw them, they just keep coming back for more abuse like a battered spouse loyal to lover-boy till the bloody end. I'll never understand it. It's as if they were all raised on a steady diet of Sodium Pentothal and John Wayne movies. They still buy into that old post-World War legend of the indispensable America. The America without sin. None other than the late, great Ho Chi Minh once shared this same delusion. Sending Eisenhower opium peace pipes while he sent him agent orange and erecting shrines to the Founding Fathers who would have treated him like a mutt. But Ho finally woke up and grew up. Realizing that Russia would always make a more dependable allie because they knew the taste of Uncle Sams jack boot. He lead his people to freedom. I had long hoped that the Kurds would do the same. That the combination of Vladimir Putin's pragmatism and Abdullah Ocalan's idealism would prove to be the perfect cure for the Middle East's endless woes. Perhaps I was being as foolish as my friends the Kurds. But so is Putin if he believes that he'll ever be able to trust Erdogan and his fellow revanchist barbarians. He had a rare opportunity to win over the most fiercely loyal warriors in the Middle East and he fucking blew it. My admiration for the man has taken a serious blow in the process. I guess the Kurds didn't count as much as the Crimean's or the Abkhazian's. Oh well, Fuck him. My Irish heart will continue to beat for Rojava in spite of my Russian soul. I guess it just goes to show that the only nations you can ever truly rely on are the ones without leaders.
Peace, Love, Empathy and Anarchy- CH
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