Anarchy in the EU, Liberty in the UK!

When I first heard that British Prime Minister David Cameron had promised the euroskeptics in his Conservative Party a popular referendum on whether or not the UK should leave the EU, in return for there support in the 2015 elections, I thought there was no fucking way it would ever happen. My skepticism only deepened after the failure of Yes! Scotland. The UK seemed as impervious to true radical change as the US. Last night, speaking as I scribble this last minute post down on a piece of computer paper with Sonic Youth's "Expressway to your skull" blaring through my headphones, the UK proved me and a lot of other leftists to be dead wrong. Unlike many of those other so-called leftists, I couldn't be happier to be so wrong. In spite of my Irish-Catholic Anglophobic tendencies, I'm feeling very proud of those dastardly limey bastards right now. I feel like I should by them a pint.

After months and months of the most brutal fear campaign to be launched on the Brits since the down and dirty days of Tony Blair's Downing Street Memo. After being fed shovel loads of pro-Euro propaganda from every establishment hack from both ends of the aisle. Even after a rushed visit by Sir Barack of Obomba, who came to little Lord Cameron's aid in order to threaten the citizens of America's oldest Allie with economic apartheid if they dared exercise there right to rid themselves of foreign rule. The British people still gathered together on the 23rd of June to deliver a great big middle finger to the tyrants of corporate globalism in Brussels and beyond. Today should be a day of international celebration. Because this is just the fucking beginning. The Brits have shown us all a way out and it didn't even cost them a single drop of blood.

The leaders of the movement to leave the EU, namely the UK Independence Party (UKIP), may have had there own chauvinistic and xenophobic reasons for the Brexit but the majority of the Brits who voted Leave this week weren't thinking about immigrants or Sharia nonsense. They were voting to emancipate themselves from a corrupt cabal of foreign crony capitalists. It was a loud and hearty rejection of Cameron's vaunted "Age of austerity." It was a glorious populist rebellion against the tyranny of "Business as usual" and sadly most of my comrades on the far left chose to sit this one out on the sidelines and miss out on all the anarchic fun.

The only parts of the UK that voted aggressively against the Brexit are, sadly, my own Celtic people in the leftist heartlands of Scotland and Northern Ireland and this breaks my fucking heart. Even Labor's insurgent leader Jeremy Corbyn and those fantastic lions in the Scottish National Party (SNP) spoke out (somewhat begrudgingly) against Leave. This is due to the sad fact that too many of even the finest minds on the far left (Noam Chomsky!?) buy into the bullshit theory that the EU is somehow a stateless socialist alternative to American hegemony. The reality couldn't be farther from this fallacy if it were in outer space.

The stone cold reality is actually quite the opposite. The EU and in fact the very notion of a united federal Europe was designed by CIA globalist masterminds like Allen Dulles and Wild Bill Donovan after World War 2 in order to create a unified European identity that would serve as a socioeconomic glue to hold the imperial NATO army together and ensure that the communist and anarchist partisans who liberated much of the continent from fascism would not be given an opportunity to provide a true socialist alternative to American global capitalism. Billions of US tax dollars were poured into a decades long propaganda campaign via the Marshal Plan to brainwash Europeans into believing that a United Europe was as inevitable as a fart on taco Tuesday.

The result of the EU's "socialist" paradise? A crooked fiefdom of moneyed banksters sucking the continents poorest people dry like vampires. Not to mention an economic appendage for America's NATO Megatron to better rape and pillage with. But still, even after decades of brutal austerity, corruption, ponzi schemes, labor exploitation and regime change, my people back in the old country of Ireland and Scotland are still convinced that an existence under the tutelage of this imperial juggernaut would be kinder then an independent UK. Which only proves how horrifically the Crown has abused these people (send your hate mail to the Queen). But like a battered spouse, they go running from the arms of one monster to another. My only hope is that the earth-shattering cataclysm that is the Brexit will finally shake some sense into my people and the early signs look good.

As news of the Brexit reached the masses, calls for a second referendum on Scottish independence have been made by the SNP and even the long castrated and taciturn Sinn Fein of Northern Ireland is calling for serious discussion on a similar referendum to FINALLY unify Ireland (and the Grinch's heart grew three sizes that day!) Perhaps even better, that defeated stooge Cameron has announced he will be stepping down from his dismally failed role as Prime Minister and leader of the Tories, leading some folks in Labor to whisper about the possibility of bumping up the 2020 general elections. Giving the NATO-skeptic if not totally euroskeptic Head of Labor, Jeremy Corbyn a serious shot at redeeming himself as the first true leader of the newly independent UK. Corbyn may have chickened out on Leave but I have a hard time believing that this longtime Euro-critic will go out his way to put the shackles back on.

Just like UKIP's Leave campaign, these actions by the SNP, Sinn Fein and Corbyn may not be done with the wisest of intentions but, like the Brexit, there result could be nothing short of miraculous. And the revolution doesn't stop at the shores of the British Isles. The Brexit sets a powerful precedent for countries like Spain, France, Italy and Holland with similar levels of Euro-discontent. Not to mention independence movements from Basque to Venice. 2016 could go down in history as the most revolutionary year in European history since at least May '68 if not 1799.

Of coarse this doesn't mean a clean, easy victory for the powers of good over evil. The EU is a multi-billion dollar menace that won't be dismantled without a long, bloody fight. The economic backlash against the UK has only just begun and it has already plunged the value of the British Pound to a thirty year low. Things will likely get far worse before they get better. The global corporate aristocracy is going to do everything they can to ensure an independent Britain will fail. There may even be backroom schemes in the works to sabotage the Brexit, which will likely take years to go into effect, before it can even begin.

But true revolutionary change is hard. If doing the right thing was easy then the world wouldn't be so fucked up. People of all nationalities and political stripes who truly value liberty need to come together now behind the Brits and show our unflinching solidarity with there declaration of independence. The Brexit is victory for us all. Stand strong limey bastards. This Marxist mick solutes you.

Peace, Love and Anarchy- CH

Summer Reading for Freaks and Radicals

Well dearest motherfuckers, it's finally summer and if your an amateur literati such as myself, that means one thing more than most. Long, warm afternoons designed by god (or whoever) for the express purpose of getting lost between the pages of a good book. It also means that every magazine, blog and website has some milquetoast, Ivy League, butt-monkey trying to sell you on a list of the latest mainstream, Oprah approved boregasms that I like to call the tyranny of the summer reading list. What's a bookish weirdo to do? Throw up your hands and settle for dreck? Not anymore! Never fear, freaks and radicals, this weirdo's got a blog and a summer reading list full of all the blasphemy, anarchy,sex, bloodshed and intrigue a fellow weirdo could ask for. Now, some of this shit is pretty esoteric and some of it's just plain fucked up, so don't expect to find much of it at your local Barnes and Noble, I'm permanently banned from mine! (Is he kidding?!) But if your craving something truly sinister, and I always am, you'll find a way to get your hands on these paperback gems. Hell, I did and I'm a goddamn agoraphobic basket-case. So without further ado, I give you, most dearest of motherfuckers, my own personal summer reading list. Read at your own discretion but except no substitutions.

*  Killing Hope and Rogue State by William Blum
If your looking to rip the fucking scab off the ghastly wound that is the American Empire, you can do no better than the great William Blum. As folklore would have it, young Bill spent one year working as a pencil pusher for the US State Department in the late sixties and found himself so repulsed by what he saw behind the Wizard's curtain at Oz that he quit in disgust and devoted the next 40+ years of his life to exposing American foreign policy for the repulsive, man-eating, nation smashing beast that it really is. Killing Hope and Rogue State are his masterpieces. In the latter he gives us a quick but thorough guided tour through the precise reasons why the United States is the most feared and hated nation on the planet. In his magnum-opus, Killing Hope, Blum goes into painstaking detail cataloging America's foreign misdeeds from country to country, coup to coup, war to war, in chronological order. Not everyone's cup of tea but it's the kind of shit a malcontent, history dork such as myself can get lost in for hours.

*  American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
One of the most grossly underrated and misinterpreted novels in modern American History. It had radical feminists up in arms over what they perceived to be it's sexist depiction of a handsome, young serial killer slaughtering prostitutes and party girls. They couldn't be farther from the truth. In reality, Bret Easton Ellis' experimental, Reagan era horror story is one of the most savagely brilliant and darkly hilarious satires ever written on the sociopathic hollowness and savage chauvinism of American capitalism. It's also one of the most grotesque works of transgressive fiction since the Marquis De Sade, so read at your own risk.

*  Amok Fifth Dispatch
An absolute must have for any self-respecting, sub-altern bibliophile. Amok was basically like the internet before the internet, only weirder and better. The fifth and final dispatch is a massive catalog of paragraph long reviews of over a thousand of the worlds strangest pieces of underground literature broken up into sections on everything from anarchism, UFO's and perverted manga to Wilhelm Reich, neo-Nazi comics and the JFK assassination. It's beyond bizarre. It's information run amok and it fucking rules.

* The Untold History of the United States by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick
The best American history book is still probably Howard Zinn's indispensable Peoples History of the United States but Oliver Stones' Untold History is definitely the most entertaining. A downright cinematic tour-de-force through the last century of American intrigue, both at home and abroad. Stone doesn't pull any punches but he doesn't pull any of his trademark conspiranioa either. No doubt, disappointing his devoted gaggle of haters, just looking for another chance to take a swipe at old Ollie for using there own propaganda techniques against them and there precious status quo. Stone just sticks to the facts and leaves you to connect the dots if your daring enough to do so.

* Lords of Chaos by Micheal Moynihan
If you thought gangsta rap was violent, just wait until you get a load of the Norwegian Black Metal Scene. Biggie and Tupac ain't got shit one these lily-white devil worshipers. Murder, suicide, cannibalism, church arson, grave desecration, prison breaks, neo-Nazi terrorists, Jungian psychology? Lycanthropy! Nordic heathenry! Just when you think the shit can't get any crazier, it does. And it all started with just a handful of teenage metal-heads trading Celtic Frost tapes in an Oslo basement. A lot of people shit on this book because of it's authors alleged quasi-Fascist/occultist tendencies but I say, who better to lead a guided tour through the Satanic underground then a fellow basement dweller and all his eccentricities aside, Moynihan is a damn fine journalist and Lords of Chaos is the wildest rock book ever written.

* Introducing Marx by Rius and Introducing Marxism by Rupert Woodfin and Oscar Zarate
If you know me, you know I'm one anarchist who loves him some Marx. But even I have to admit, however brilliant the K-man might be, his books can be a bit of a bore. Blasphemy, I know, but it's true. Which makes converting non-believers a bit of a challenge. The best place to start is with these two pocket size graphic novels by the fine folks at Introducing Books, who specialize in what's basically college starter coarse's in comic form. I use to devour them when I was still a shut-in but the two on Marx are probably my favorites. There a great overview of all things Marx. His life, his work, his philosophy, his influence and why he still matters as much today as he did in the 19th century. All in all, fast paced and brilliantly illustrated infotainment.

* House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
By far, the strangest novel I've ever read which, naturally, makes it my favorite. It's probably not scientifically possible to sum it up in a single paragraph, so I won't even try. I'll just say it's a twisted horror story within an even more twisted horror story involving mental illness, a possibly haunted house, a decaying marriage, an endless hallway with a life of it's own and a documentary. All of which may or may not actually exist. It's a demented house of mirrors with multiple narratives that leaves you feeling upside down and inside out. Sounds like fun, right?....    ....pussies.

* The Serial Killer Files by Harold Schecter
Love serial killers? Me too! (Is he kidding?) Know one knows em better than Harold Schecter, who's Serial Killer Files serve as the most comprehensive study of murder and those fascinating psychopaths who commit it. It's basically the anti-Killing Hope. An encyclopedia of human destruction not sanctioned by the state.

* Preacher: Volumes 1-9 by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon
When I heard that my favorite comic, the greatest comic, was going to be made into an AMC Original Series by Frat Pack schlock-miesters Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, best known for there infantile "Bro" comedies like Superbad, my heart fucking sank. I thought, here we go again, another shitty comic adaptation that all the Deutsche bags of the world can cream themselves over. I couldn't have been more wrong and I couldn't be happier to be so wrong. Based on the first few episodes, it looks like those damn stoners might actually pull it off and make a halfway descent TV show. But nothing can ever beat the original. The epic tale of a drunken, apostate, Texas priest, granted the power of the word of god to command people to do anything from tell the truth to go fuck themselves (literally), only to be hunted down by an all powerful secret religious society, with his ass kicking, gun nut, feminist, bombshell girlfriend and his hard partying Irish vampire bestie at his side. Along the way they encounter everything from inbred desert cannibals to an indestructible god-slaying cowboy called the Saint of Killers. It's a long, bloody, surreal, hilarious, profane and romantic saga and it's the best way to waste your summer indoors without the use of high-powered recreational pharmaceuticals.

* Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem and the Pursuit of Profit by Gregory Elich
Radical investigative journalist Gregory Elich goes into downright gratuitous detail, playing devils advocate, defending some of America's favorite boogeymen, from Yugoslavia to Zimbabwe to Iraq to North Korea and he does a damn fine job doing it. Uncovering narratives that not only fly in the face of the "official" stories but make mince meat of them. Picking them apart, piece by piece. Forget everything you thought you knew about world politricks. If you can actually get your hands on this long out of print antiwar classic it will make you question everything and it will make you all the better for it.

* Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love
Not so much an autobiography as a scrapbook of letters, pictures, prison records, poems, psych evaluations and lyrics that create a complex self portrait of one of the most brilliant, incendiary and misunderstood feminist auteurs of the last several decades. Hate her all you want but this walking study in demonology will not, can not and should not go ignored.

* Kill Your Boyfriend by Grant Morrison and Philip Bond
Grant Morrison's batshit bonkers, gonzo one-shot graphic novel about a bored London schoolgirl who falls in love with a cheeky psychopath, kills her boyfriend (naturally) and joins an avante-garde terrorist collective hellbent on bringing down an iconic tower with a single hand grenade in the coastal English tourist trap of Blackpool. It's a zany, deliciously Nineties, psychedelic teenage riot from the maestro of comic book surrealism that set the stage for later cinematic cult classics (and personal favorites) like Natural Born Killers and the Doom Generation.

* Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azerrad
An oral history of the American 80's underground punk scene that formed the glue that connects the Ramones and Nirvana. Each chapter tells the story of a different band on the periphery and there journey through the still embryonic loose knit network of dive bars, basement parties and mosh pits that would eventually grow from the punk rock underground into the Alternative Revolution of the early Nineties. Includes chapters on Black Flag, Minor Threat, Sonic Youth, Husker Du, Big Black, the Replacements, Mission of Burma, the Minutemen, Fugazi, Mudhoney, Beat Happening and my personal favorite chapter on America's strangest band, the Butthole Surfers. A must read for any self-respecting Punk Rock fan.

* .45 Dangerous Minds by Steven Blush and George Petros
Before the internet and yes, dearest motherfuckers, there was a before the internet, freaks and radicals had to turn to the news stands for there intellectual fix which usually meant a crap-high of boring, airbrushed, jingoistic banality that gives propaganda a bad name. That is until the rise of the zines. After places like Kinko's made it possible for anyone with a few bucks and some angry words to Xerox and staple together there own glossy diatribes, the American underground was rocked by a wave of taboo smashing, homemade organs known as zines, in which freaks and radicals finally had a say. The best of these became full fledged periodicals in there own right with names like Maximum Rock&Roll, Re/Search, Answer Me!, Roller Derby, Anything that Moves and Murder Can Be Fun. More often than not, they were crude, crass, tasteless, profane and even downright pornographic. They were also fucking brilliant and the very best among them, in my not-so-humble opinion was a fearless little New York magazine called Seconds, run by two post-punk rejects named Steven Blush and George Petros with one simple mission in mind, give the most brutally honest, mercilessly rude and unabashedly prying interviews (aka interrogations) with the most dangerously unpredictable people they could get a hold of. The results where some of the strangest moments in journalism history and 45 of there finest interviews are collected in .45 Dangerous minds: Charles Manson, Allen Ginsberg, Henry Rollins, David Bowie, Marilyn Manson, Richard Remirez, GG Allin, Anton Levey and many, many more. Needless to say without iconoclastic rags like Seconds, without insane books like .45 Dangerous Minds and without brilliantly dangerous minds like Blush and Petros,  there would be no Comrade Hermit or Exile In Happy Valley. On my best day I am but a parasite clinging to the bellies of those brilliant savage beasts. Read, learn and pay it forward. Start your own Seconds, your own Exile, online today and be heard by other fantastic freaks like you and me. In the words of Jello Biafra- "Don't hate the media. Become the media." I say why not do both. Let the war begin at home with a pile of good books and a laptop.

Knowledge is power and we've got it. Happy reading, dearest motherfuckers.



Peace, Love and Anarchy- CH

In Search of Solutions After Orlando

I had every intention of writing a summer reading list this week. Something simple and fun. Then Orlando happened. Nearly fifty people dead and over fifty injured. I'm sure I don't have to tell you, the news is inescapable. A lot of turbulent emotions have been ripping  through me over this latest national tragedy. I have only just begun to feel safe identifying myself as an openly queer individual, only to see scores of beautiful people, who I'll never have the good fortune to know, in my newfound community, senselessly slaughtered in cold blood. I honestly don't know how to react to this. All I know is that I can't stay silent.

Especially when the people making the loudest noises over the mass media have there heads so firmly planted up there own pinch little assholes. And of coarse, there all fucking breeders. Who else always knows best? Even before anyone knows anything at all. It must be nice to know everything. Maybe that kind of blase self-confidence only comes with the good fortune of being born with all the right parts in all the right places, fitting so easily into all the right people. Anyway, I feel some obligation to rise above my own complex emotions and clear up some of the bullshit. It's a smelly, thankless job but somebody has to do it, so it might as well be my iconoclastic and recently decloseted gender fluid ass.

There's a reason bullshit usually reigns supreme in the aftermath of massacres like the one in Orlando. The Western World doesn't suffer these kinds of tragedies as often as the rest of the planet. The uncomfortable truth is that this country is often on the other side of the trigger. It's the nature of living behind the gilded fences of a global empire. That doesn't make these horrific events anymore exceptable than any of our own massacres. In fact the illusion of invulnerability created by this nations unchecked power on the global stage can make these events all the more traumatic. It's only natural for people living beneath an imperial bubble to overreact on the relatively rare occasions when that bubble is breached, even from within. But being reactionary has never solved anything. It's in trying times like these that we need to struggle to keep our heads straight and think logically. There are know simple solutions to a mess like this. So lets dispel with some of the politico-media-spheres favorite bullshit quick fixes right off the fucking bat.

#1. Labels are pointless- Terms like Terrorism and Hate Crime are nothing more than pointless labels for the same damn thing. Mass murder is mass murder. Killing a club full of innocent people isn't made any more or less tragic by giving it a fancy and often politicized title. All violent crimes are hate crimes and all terrorists are killers. There no different then any other garden variety psychopath. I don't give two fucks if your Osama Bin Laden, Richard Speck, Eric Rudolf, Ted Bundy or Omar Mateen, your all the same flavor of shit in my book and you don't fucking impress me with your cowardice.

#2. Islam is not the enemy- Omar Mateen is not an Islamic killer. He's just a killer who happens to call himself a Muslim. Whether it's revenge for American foreign policy or just another self-loathing closet case killing himself by killing his own kind, this crime had nothing to do with religion and it had nothing to do with immigration. Omar was the American born son of two quirky but moderate Afghan refugee's. His relationship to radical jihadism was minimal and totally inconsistent. He had variously claimed affiliation with ISIS, Hezbollah and Al-Nusrah, groups that are all currently at war with each other. The idea of banning all Muslim immigration into this country is not only unconstitutional and immoral, it's totally ineffective. Why would ISIS or anyone else for that matter waste there trained fighters by sending them away from the battlefield, overseas, when they already have there pick of the litter of mentally disturbed assholes within our borders, just a mouse click away. Scapegoating an entire population of mostly peaceful people plays directly into groups like ISIS' hands. They want Muslims to be isolated, vilified and humiliated by secular governments. It makes for easy marks in there holy war scheme. Don't take the bait.

#3. Guns are not the problem- I know this is probably dangerous for a hardcore leftist to say out loud but the only way to stop a gay-basher with a gun is a small army of fierce queens with high-powered pieces that match there outfits. How many people would that homophobic cunt been able to kill if there was more than just one armed, off-duty cop on the scene? We'll probably never know but I'm willing to bet it would have been far less then 49. Too many people on the left seem to suffer under the delusion that stripping law abiding citizens of there Second Amendment rights will stop loose cannons like Mateen from arming themselves illegally. This is just plain bullshit. Just ask Anders Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer who managed to slaughter 77 people in a country with fewer guns than Candyland. I'm not saying this country couldn't use a few new regulations but assault weapons bans, like all forms of prohibition, simply don't work, they only create black markets where regulation is impossible.

#4. The FBI fucked up- I find nothing more repulsive than the endless procession of current and ex-feds getting air time to demand that we the people hurl more of our tax dollars into there already bulging coffers so they can burn it haunting mosques, trolling antiwar chat-rooms and entrapping harmless mental-midgets in there pointless sting operations, all while known extremists like Mateen continue to fall through the cracks of our massive police state. This bastard had been on there radar for years. YEARS! And wear was Florida's finest feds on the night that Pulse got sacked. Well they were arresting a mentally ill homeless man in Miami who fell victim to there latest bait-and-switch build-a-terrorist trap, of coarse. And these assholes wan't more fucking money. FUCK THAT! And fuck the FBI. Get your fucking shit together and do your fucking job. Then will talk.

#5. War is not the Answer- Even if it does turn out that Mateen had some kind of legitimate terror connection, no amount of drone strikes will bring the beautiful people he killed back to us. It will only serve to sully there names with blood and give ISIS or whoever a new crop of traumatized survivors of American terrorism to turn into human weapons. Violence only begets more violence. Terror only begets more terror. Like I said earlier it doesn't matter if your strangling a dormitory full of nursing students, shooting up a dance club of unarmed party-goers or shooting a Hellfire Missile at a wedding party full of the same, it is all murder and it is all inexcusable. People have a right to defend themselves, yes. It is there god given, constitutional right to do so. But maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't have to if this country didn't insist on pissing on every hornet's nest from Aleppo to Kandahar.

This country desperately needs to stop being brainlessly reactive to every tragedy we suffer and start being proactive by putting an end to our own violent behavior abroad that makes the horror of tragedies like the one in Orlando so much more likely. Until we learn this lesson, the bodies will only continue to pile up in both hemispheres. I for one mourn them all and I refuse to sit by and stay silent until ALL the killing stops.

Until then, take care of each other, Beautiful people. If we don't, no one will. And if your religious, say a prayer for the dead and say a prayer for peace. We all deserve it.



PEACE, LOVE & EMPATHY- C.H.

Turning Back The Pink Tide

These are very dark days for the people of Brazil and there getting darker. It has been less than two weeks since the South American nations Senate voted to suspend left-wing populist president, Dilma Rousseff for no longer then 180 days and put her on trial for so called "crimes of responsibility." Over the months to come these same men (and their all men) will decide whether or not to make this suspension permanent. Those fine folks in our mainstream media would have you believe that this is an impeachment. I say, BULLSHIT! This is much more than an impeachment. This is a goddamn congressional coup and you don't have to follow the money very far to figure out that the usual suspects back in Washington are behind it.

You see, Dilma's crimes of responsibility, which remain totally unproven, amount to little more then sugar-coating the nation's debt to disguise the size of Brazil's fiscal deficit. A fairly common practice in most western countries, including our own. Ethically questionable? Perhaps but hardly grounds for impeachment. This is made all the more maddening by the fact that more then half of the men who voted to impeach Dilma are currently under investigation for far more serious corruption charges, under the so called Car Wash Scandal. This includes Dilma's backstabbing Vice President, Michel Temer, who is slated to take her place. These men have a few more things in common besides there shared interest in corruption. They are mostly wealthy white men from political dynasties who's relationships with Washington go back generations. In other words, these are our boys in Brazil. This "impeachment" is part of a larger conspiracy to destroy the independent left-wing government of Brazil. Which is itself a part of an even larger campaign to destroy a troublesome wave of independent left-wing governments across Latin America, known as the Pink Tide. Dilma's real crime was defying American hegemony and for that she must be destroyed. Sadly this coup isn't the first of its kind and it wont be the last. The days for Latin America will likely only grow darker from here.

They didn't use to do it this way. The they I speak of being the CIA, NEP and other dastardly tools of American imperialism. Back in the good old days, the all or nothing days, as Frank Miller would say, a Latin American leader got too uppity and tried to improve things for the poor at the expense of American business and we just popped em off, got some School of America alumni in the army to set up a junta and sent in the death squads to mop up the rest. BING! BANG! BOOM! Congress liquidated, constitution shredded, Twenty thousand dead and back to business as usual. Yep, those were the good old days. This all changed thought with the rise of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

The mixed race son of working class parents, Hugo rose through the ranks of the Venezuelan military, only to lead a Free Officers-style revolt against his nations notoriously shameless plutocracy in 1992 with his clandestine brigade of left-wing soldiers known as MBR-200. It failed but it ignited a spark in the Venezuelan people that would not. After a couple years in the clink and a few more raising hell on the outside, Hugo shocked the world by winning the 1998 Venezuelan Presidential Election in a landslide victory. He wasted little time bringing a stick to his old rivals in the oligarchy, nationalizing Venezuela's colossal oil industry and using its profits to fund a rash of radical social programs that brought direct democracy to the destitute favelas and desperately needed free healthcare and education to everyone else. All part of Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution, named after the famed 19th century Venezuelan General, Simon Bolivar, who liberated his continent from the Spanish Monarchy. Hugo's goal was to do the same with the American Empire which had long bled South America dry. It was all marvelous but it couldn't possibly last, could it? Leftists around the world waited in agonizing anticipation for another Yankee coup. But no one could have predicted what happened next.

The 2002 Venezuelan Coup began like any other. Pompous rich kids took to the streets with there signs, doing there best impressions of campesinos. While American trained officers in the Venezuelan Army took control of the Senate and the Presidential Palace. Chavez was kidnapped and whisked away to a covert location where he was likely to be assassinated. A corporate Yankee stooge was unceremoniously declared the new president. The Senate was suspended, as was the constitution. And the crooked liars in the mainstream media, both American and Venezuelan, declared this sickening farce to be a democracy. Then something strange happened. The people woke up and flipped the fucking script.

Irate Venezuelans took to the streets in the millions, many of them coming from the nations poorest favelas, and swarmed the capitol, surrounding the coup leaders and making a massive citizens arrest. Low ranking soldiers in the Army, many from the same favelas, rejected the orders of there corrupt commanding officers  and stormed the Senate and Presidential Palace, demanding the immediate release of there rightful Commander In Chief. All of this was totally unprecedented. An American coup had never been reversed like this. But that's precisely what happened. Within 48 hours of his kidnapping, Hugo Chavez was returned to power, triumphant. The masses celebrated there victory in the streets with the kind of festive enthusiasm usually reserved for Carnival. They won. The very poorest people of the once submissive nation of Venezuela had snatched the dragon of American Imperialism by its throat, held that wicked beast above there heads and roared NO MAS! This was the true beginning of the Bolivarian Revolution, waged not by a man or a party but by a people. This was when the Pink Tide came in.

The people across Latin American were equally electrified. Anything was possible. With the shackles of American Hegemony broken, nation after nation launched there own democratic revolutions. In 2003, Nestor Kirchner was elected President of Argentina on a populist, anti-IMF platform. That same year Dilma Rousseff's mentor, the charismatic Lula da Silva took control of Brazil. Followed by Evo Morales of Bolivia in 2006, Rafael Correa of Ecuador and former Sandinista guerrilla leader, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua in 2007 and former Catholic Bishop Fernando Lugo in 2008 and on and on it went with no end in site.

Under the leadership of these men and women, Latin America witnessed a veritable renaissance, the likes of which hadn't been seen since the days of Bolivar. Corruption plummeted (though, clearly hadn't disappeared.) Quality of life among the poor skyrocketed. The rights of women, minorities, indigenous people and even the long ignored LGBTQ community were championed like never before. Groups like CELAC and UNASUR were formed to unite the poorer nations of the America's against corrupt agents of Yankee tyranny like NAFTA, CAFTA, the IMF and the OAS. Perhaps most revolutionary of all was the formation of BRICS by Brazil's Lula da Silva and the leaders of four other rising second-world nations, Russia, India, China and South Africa. BRICS primary goal was to offer poorer nations an economic alternative to the "humanitarian" black male of the World Bank and the creation of a new global currency reserve as an alternative to the tyranny of the Dollar. I always felt that BRICS was a rather fitting title for such an economically dangerous union, for that's exactly what the group created in the pants of the Western banklords, bricks.

Of coarse that wicked old dragon known as American hegemony didn't just roll over. Washington continued to bankroll acts of sabotage and destabilization across the Pink Tide nations from the Bolivian Gas Wars to the failed Ecuadoran police coup. But the most violent and persistent dirty tricks were reserved for the father of the Bolivarian Revolution. In the late 2000's/early 2010's no fewer then four attempts were made on Hugo Chavez's life. Everything from Colombian death squads to radiation poisoning. But they all failed. Hugo seemed as indestructible as the Pink Tide he ushered in appeared to be. Until 2011 that is.

That's the year that the seemingly healthy Venezuelan leader was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive strain of cancer of the gut and just in time for election season. Isn't it ironic, don't you think? The American funded Venezuelan media lost there proverbial shit, spreading vicious rumors of the leaders imminent death. But good old Hugo, like a sword pierced toro, rallied gallantly. In spite of the Kimo Therapy and the softball sized tumor removed from his gut, Hugo won his third and final re-election in 2012. Things looked good, Hugo seemed noticeably on the mend. The cancer went into remission and the long cherubic socialist even regained some of his trademark girth. But then, out of nowhere, the cancer came back with a vengeance. In a matter of weeks, Hugo went from remission to the grave. Just like his arrival on the international stage, no one saw it coming. Hugo Chavez, quite possibly the greatest anti-imperialist leader of the 21 century died at age 58 in Caracas on March 5, 2013.

I know what your thinking. You can't possibly blame this one on the United States. People die of cancer every day. I thought the same thing when I first heard the conspiracy theories percolating of a covert poisoning. But then strange things began happening. Several of Chavez's closest aides and confidantes, including his bodyguard and private nurse defected to the US only months after the President's passing and disappeared into the witness protection program. Both of these people alone would have had more then enough opportunity to poison the President. I also couldn't help remembering the Cold War documents released through FOIA detailing a top secret US Army program to develop an injectable radioactive carcinogen designed for the express purpose of serving as a mode of covert assassination. The results of the experiments were mostly mixed but the one area where this new method of germ warfare showed real promise was in the creation of soft tissue cancers, just like the one that killed Chavez. We'll probably never no for sure but it couldn't have came at a more convenient time.

The US had just perfected a new, more media friendly brand of coup de tat. The congressional coup. You see while left-wing movements had swept the executive offices of many of America's former banana republics, American Quislings funded through the State Department's inappropriately labeled National Endowment for Democracy remained in control of many of these nations legislative offices. Similarly, much of the top brass of these nations standing armies were alumni of the US military's personal war criminal academy, the School of the Americas. The only thing our jizz crusted political sock puppets had to do was create the illusion of democratic change, vis a vis trumped up impeachments and our boys in the military would take care of the rest.

This is precisely what happened in 2009 to Honduras' moderately populist new leader, Manuel Zelaya. Who was kidnapped under orders from congress and exiled to Costa Rica. The new Obama Administration feigned shock and disapproval but none other than then Secretary of State, Killary Clinton sent her and Bill's favorite impeachment lawyer Lanny Davis to sanitize the image of the new junta for the world stage. It kind of worked. The United States stood alone in applauding the totally rigged election that followed which left this poor tiny nation at the mercy of "elected" pro-Washington thugs with intimate connections to local drug cartels. The resulting carnage and mayhem has led to an influx of Central American immigrants to the United States, most of them women and children trying to avoid becoming child soldiers or sex slaves for the cartels. All because a Democratically elected centrist wanted to regulate a few American Business interests. Change we can believe in my ass.

Next up was Fernando Lugo in Paraguay, a former Catholic Bishop who had ended 61 years of single-party rule in his impoverished country only to find himself at the wrong end of an internationally scorned kangaroo court impeachment for many of the same reasons as Zelaya. So much for spreading the word of Christ.

In countries that managed to create a palpable presence in the legislature, our favorite pig-dog-Americans had to get a little more crafty. Both Venezuela, now under the leadership of Chavez's dauphin, Nicholas Madura, and Argentina, until recently, under the rule of Nestor Kirchner's widow Cristina, were subjected to a labyrinthine myriad of economic and media warfare. Currency manipulation, crooked over-speculation, fudged poll numbers, tabloid hatchet jobs, flooding oil markets with cheap crude, fostering black markets and manufacturing shortages of basic goods through corporate hoarding and self sabotage and staging increasingly violent riots. All connected to the US and/or its allies in the old moneyed aristocracies and all giving the people in these countries the illusion of a government and economy in free fall. Add to this the inescapable carnage created by Wall Street's great recession and you can hardly blame a people for becoming desperate enough to turn against there own democracies.

Cristina Kirchner's heir apparent, Daniel Scioli lost in Argentina's most recent presidential election to Wall Street's favorite Argentine bitch-boy, Mauricio Macri, and surprise surprise, the moment the people of Argentina finally cried uncle by electing another neoliberal hose-bag, the Chicken Little, sky is falling chaos came to an abrupt stop. Macri thanked his countries black-mailers for ceasing there rape by dutifully undoing years of the Kirchner's hard fought struggle for Argentina's economic independence and selling his battered nation back into IMF enslavement, but they weren't alone. That same year saw Chavez's PSUV lose control of the assembly, setting up his predecessor, Madura to become the next Dilma Rousseff. And here we are a again, full circle or should I say ninth circle in the Dante's Inferno that America's most "Progressive" President has turned Latin America back into.

During Hugo Chavez's first meeting with President Barack Obama in the latter's first year of leadership, Hugo gave Barack a copy of Eduardo Galeano's Open Veins Of Latin America, in hopes that the new president might learn something about Latin America's plight under the yoke of Imperialism. Judging by his policies since, Obama appears to have mistaken this tome for an instruction manual. So much for reaching across the aisle.

What do we make of this nasty turn of events. I, like many jaded young leftists across the globe, found hope in the underdog victories of the Pink Tide. I thought if true democracy was still possible in places as woefully corrupt as Venezuela and Argentina, then why not here, why not anywhere. In the years following Hugo's 2002 victory over the powers of imperialism, anything seemed possible. Revolutionary Socialism was winning and it felt good. I felt proud of men like Hugo Chavez and Nestor Kirchner, almost as if they were my own presidents. I would watch them stand before the UN assembly and tell my own corrupt government to go fuck itself and I would cheer like a drunken campesino.

So what am I and people like me supposed to do when the Pink Tide turns back and recedes into the deep dark ocean of the radical imagination from which it sprang. What are the people of those poor countries supposed to do when the Bolivarian Revolution burns out. I'm honestly not sure I can answer these questions. But I think I know what Hugo Chavez would tell us. I can almost hear his voice now, booming from the heavens like a thunderclap calling, " I am not the revolution! YOU ARE THE REVOLUTION!!! You have the power!"

Ultimately as heroic as men and women like Hugo Chavez and Dilma Rousseff may be, the people in the streets were the true saviors of the America's and they can be again. We need to remember the lesson Venezuela taught us back in 2002. That even the biggest imperial dragon can be slain by the united will of the people.

Maybe the Pink Tide has receded. Maybe the Bolivarian Revolution is over. But just like like the tide, revolutions come and go and come again. The Marxist dialectic teaches us that there is no such thing as a failed revolution. Every past revolution furthers the progress of the next. I say it's high time for another revolution and this time it starts right here in the belly of the dragon.The ghost of Simon Bolivar will have his revenge on the American Empire and like I said in my last post, revenge is a dish best served Green. Lets keep the ghost alive dearest motherfuckers. Let the revolution begin in 2016. Things may look dark now but it's always darkest before the dawn.

After-Bern: Revenge is a Dish Best Served Green

Well dearest motherfuckers, it appears that the revolution is over. Or should I say the "revolution" is over. I speak of coarse of the much vaunted Bernie Sanders revolution of 2015/16. After a series of crushing if suspicious defeats in a spread of important primaries on the Eastern Seaboard, old Bernie is looking down the barrel at some long odds in his Quixotic run for the Democratic nomination for President of these United States. That's not to say that a Sanders victory is impossible but with a growing gulf of nearly 300 delegates between him and the Dragon Lady and a slew of Clinton friendly closed primaries ahead the odds of a democratic socialist White House look about as likely as they ever have. To put it simply, the jig is up. As the Mountain Goats once sang- The warning signs have all been bright and garish, far to many in number to ignore.

But don't tell that to the kids. They still have there young hearts set on sweet Uncle Bernie saving them from the bleak future of Killary's America. They've even bought into the false hope of a contested convention, with the mighty will of the people being upheld by the wise and holy Super-delegates. Oh you pretty things don't you know that Satan made Super-delegates for the express purpose of crushing the peoples will? There's nothing left for you to do but watch in horror as your dear leader, Chairman Bern, bows down and kisses Madam Killary's ring in return for a pittance of hollow platitudes and empty promises to respect the spirit of the revolution as long as it's children agree to mind there manners and vote Killary come fall. As I had predicted earlier on this blog, this has been the plan all along. This is how Killary aims to hijack the youth vote.

Bernie's revolution has always been little more then a viral marketing campaign to herd wayward millennials into the Democratic barn. That's not to say it has been a total waste for the far left in this country. Quite the contrary, in fact. Regardless of its true intentions, Bernie's campaign has actually (and probably inadvertently) done a great deal of good. For starters it has removed layers of stigma attached to the word socialist by generations of hysterical Cold War red baiting. It has also revealed seemingly radical ideals like living wages, free education and single-payer healthcare for what the rest of the western world already knows them to be; Basic common sense. Most importantly it has lit a fucking fire in the post-Occupy left that wont go out and Killary is in for a rude awakening if she thinks she can just hijack this inferno and use it to burn a straight path to the White House.

The kids are pissed and seeing darling Bernie capitulate to the very same forces he claimed to be fighting against is only gonna make it worse. Especially when you consider how these very forces extinguished the Bern. From the coin tosses of the Iowa Caucus' to the New York Board of Elections purging of 126,000 Brooklyn voters, the 2016 Democratic Primary has been the most horrifically corrupt American election since Bush had half the black people in Ohio arrested back in 2004. 17 out of the 19 contests with exit polling overestimated Bernie's lead. 9 of them outside of the margin of error. By these calculations at least 58 of Killary's delegates should be Bernie's. This may not be enough to close the gap but in the heat of the moment it could have been enough to swing momentum in Bernie's favor. In other words, dear Madam Killary is so woefully loathsome that she needed to fix a race against her own sheepdog. This woman makes Dick Nixon look like Atticus Finch.

Of coarse the devout Killary loyalists in the mainstream media have done everything they can to keep these facts silent. Not that Bernie has exactly made it hard for them. He barely made a fucking peep until the Brooklyn heist. But this isn't the nineties. America's finest propagandists in the Fourth Estate can't manufacture consent like they use to. Social media is ablaze with furious Sandernistas, beside themselves with well earned rage after being turned away from the ballot box. And Bernie still believes he can sell those poor fucked kids on Killary with peons to party loyalty and platformism. Fat fucking chance.

It's little wonder that a growing number of Sanders supporters have vowed not to vote at all if/when Killary finally finishes stealing the nomination. What choice do they have? They figure if there votes are worth less than shit to the DNC then why even fucking bother. Not voting in there mind's eye is the only way to get back at the system that chewed them up and spat them out like so many young believers before them. I don't blame them. I've been there myself.

During the first Presidential Election that I was eligible to vote in back in 2008, I put my heart and soul behind another Democratic outsider named Dennis Kucinich. I even joined the Democratic Party for the sole purpose of voting for him in the primaries. Much to my dismay Dennis dropped out of the race just before he could reach my state of Pennsylvania, leaving this young anti-imperialist with the unsavory option of voting for Barack "lets bomb Pakistan" Obama and Killary herself. I chose to vote for neither. But the worst was yet to come. I had to watch a great man who I still deeply admire sell his convictions short and endorse Obomba at the Denver Convention with a rousing speech encouraging young leftist like myself to do the same. The DNC loved it and heaped mountains of praise upon there prodigal son before thanking him by redistricting him out of congressional existence. I felt like throwing up. I may not have voted at all in 2008 if it wasn't for Ralph Nader which leads me to my final point. Sandernistas could simply stay home in November, binge watch Dexter or re-read A People History of the United States (both great choices.) But there remains another option. A third option.

I speak of coarse of current Green Party favorite Jill Stein. A woman who's views are more then compatible with Bernie's and are far more consistent and thought out. Like Bernie, Jill supports Single-payer, the $15 an our minimum wage and free public education. Unlike Bernie, she realizes that the only way to actually achieve these goals is to do what Scandinavia has done and cut our bloated military spending by at least 50% and shutter America's phalanx of 700+ foreign military bases.

Jill herself has realized the opportunity provided to her by the Sanders shellacking. She has even left the door open for Bernie to run with her on the Green Party ticket. This would give Bernie automatic access to general election ballot boxes in nearly every state. Personally, I wouldn't count on this possibility and I doubt Jill is either. With decades of Democratic Party loyalty behind him and a shot at a senior senators seat ahead, Bernie is one "Socialist" sheep-dog who knows his place at the foot of the Washington dinner table. And I believe that this is precisely what Jill is trying to point out to the Sandernistas with her unprecedented offer. As she herself poignantly put it recently; "You can't really have a revolutionary campaign inside a counter-revolutionary party." Amen, but I would take it one step further and say; You can't really have a revolutionary campaign with a counter-revolutionary candidate.

What the true revolutionaries of this country have now is a grand opportunity to reach out to a whole new generation of would-be revolutionaries before they can be co-opted or jaded beyond repair. I don't suffer under the delusion that Jill Stein will win this time. She likely won't. But the crater size mud hole she can stomp in the two-party plutocracy's ass, with a little help from some young pissed Sandernistas, will be too massive for even Killary's little Eichmann's at the Clinton "News" Network (aka CNN) to ignore. Revenge truly is a dish best served green.

Cheer up, dearest motherfuckers. This is where we get to make it right.

Bathroom Liberation Front

Nearly a year ago, on my 27th birthday, I wrote a post celebrating the Supreme Court decision to essentially legalize same-sex marriage nationwide. I used the event to remind myself, in the haze of my annual birthday depression, that even in fucked up little Amerikkka, good things come to those who wait. After decades of discrimination, humiliation, violence, disease and repression, the queer community in this country that I've come to see as a kind of extended family of proud misfits finally had a bright, shining victory to celebrate for all the heartache and backbreaking hard work and it felt like a victory for the whole fucking country. One that gave me hope when I needed it most. We had witnessed true radical change in this country for the first time in a very long time and it felt good, damn good. The people had come together and together we were heavy.

Unfortunately, like most great moments of cataclysmic change in this country, it came with a price. One step forward and two steps back. And those steps were to be taken on the backs of the queer communities most vulnerable minority and the one nearest to my heart. Those fine folks at fag-basher's INC. set there sights on the trans+ community and set there phasers to kill. What transpired and sadly continues to transpire is not legislation or even a backlash. It's revenge. Our happiness angered the gods of hate and they demanded blood.

They got it over the last year as a slew of states across the Bible Belt got busy creating legislation that targeted queer people under the guise of defending small business' and civil servant's right to discriminate as long as they invoked the name of god to do so (they always do) giving everyone from bakers to pissed off crazy cat ladies like that bitch Kim Davis the ability to deny services to gay couples. But that was just the proverbial lubricant. The real dick in the ass came with the anti-trans+ bathroom laws.

They differ slightly from state to state but they all follow a similar line of thought, if you can call it that. In order to protect the delicate sensibilities of our precious daughters from the off possibility of seeing a wiener (GASP!) women's bathrooms had to be policed by laws that barred anyone born with a prick from entering them. Now, aside from the fact that these laws are totally unenforceable, which I'll get to shortly, they seem designed and marketed to humiliate, dehumanize and demonize a minority that already suffers from more gruesome brutality then any other. The vile commercials for these campaigns routinely go out of there way to paint transgender people and trans-women in particular as depraved sexual predators only interested in using public restrooms as a hunting ground to prey on young children. They did everything but invoke the name of Buffalo Bill.

These laws weren't designed to be effective. As stated above, there totally unenforceable unless your going to put an armed state trooper at every fucking rest stop to check peoples birth certificates at the door like a goddamn bouncer. No, these laws are designed with only one purpose in mind and that is to unleash a witch-hunt style wave of persecution against transgender and genderqueer individuals which can only end in violence. I'm not being hyperbolic here. The letter of these laws is written word for word by "faith" based, designated hate groups like the Liberty Council. These laws are about hate, pure and simple. There is no room to mince words on this. There is yet to be a single, solitary recorded case of a trans+ person assaulting anyone in a public restroom. Yet over 70% of polled transgender people report having experienced traumatizing encounters in public restrooms. Many of those incidents include violence and even rape. Many of these victims are trans+ kids who also experience record shattering rates of suicide, largely because campaigns like this make them feel like loveless monsters. But I guess those precious daughters don't fucking matter to all the fine Christian folk at the Liberty Council. Well, they fucking matter to me. To quote Throwing Muses- They can no longer move and I can no longer be still.

To be clear, I may be some yet to be defined variant of genderqueer (still figuring that out) but I'm lucky enough to be able to say that these laws don't effect me directly. However frustratingly complicated it may be, my predominant gender identity still matches my biology. I have no problem using a men's room aside from the fact that there fucking repulsive. Even if the prototypical jarhead fag-basher pissing next to me knew I was genderqueer, one look at my mountain man beard and my Haystacks Calhoun physique and he would probably just assume that a guy like me being genderqueer just meant that I liked to wear women's lingerie while I slaughtered my victims with a fire-ax (I actually prefer kimonos and chainsaws.) Long, hypothetical story short, Johnny Fag-Basher would probably sooner piss sitting down then risk a bloody death in my basement choreographed to the tune of "Goodbye Horses". What can I say, even the most hideous stereotypes can be fun sometimes. My point is, I have the luxury of being able to blend in with the straight world. Even my feminine side is pretty butch. But most gender non-conforming folks aren't so lucky. And since I can't be in every men's room from Kansas to Mississippi with my kimono and chainsaw to protect my people, I have no other choice but to once again fall back on the sadly limited power of my mighty little blog.

My solution, aside from castrating the Johnny Fag-Basher's of this universe, is actually pretty simple. Down right obvious in my opinion. Desegregate the bathrooms. Seriously, why the fuck not. I don't think even the most heavily chromosomed mongoloids out here in cousin-fucker country suffer under the delusion that not everybody poops. The very premise of gender segregated bathrooms is actually relatively recent. About 127 years to be exact. Which in the scheme of human existence is equivalent to a fucking pin drop. Furthermore, it's a relic of an antiquated and sexist era.

During the burgeoning Industrial Revolution of the late 1880's, the mustache twirling patriarchy of Victorian America jumped at ways to protect or rather control the growing population of female factory workers. What they came up with in there infinite, manly, Caucasian wisdom was that good old stand by of segregation. They figured, shit, it worked on those troublesome colored folk down south, so fuck it, why not? And thus we had ladies reading rooms in libraries, ladies parlors in department stores, ladies train cars (in back, naturally) and ladies restrooms. Most of these brilliant, paternalistic advances fell by the wayside of progress. So why hold on to the last vestige of a stupid era. Especially when it oppresses and violates peoples basic dignity. Privacy would simply be a matter of locking the stall door. Urinals and open showers would have to go but I'd hardly call that a tragedy. And I know what you ladies out there are thinking. Men are fucking animals in the bathroom. My OCD has made me painfully aware of this fact. But ask any straight married man if his bathroom habits have become more human since cohabitating with a member of the opposite sex and they will promptly give you a defeated sigh and concur. The more women in a house, the more cleanly the bathroom. Never underestimate the power of a good example. We can fucking do this people. It's not fucking rocket science. All we have to do is grow the fuck up and evolve. Segregation of any kind is bullshit. Lets liberate the bathroom, NOW!!!

Putin's Last Laugh Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Great Chess Game

It was a beautiful dream. A dream of blood and guts and conquest. A dream of sword swinging Mujaheddin. A dream of transcontinental pipelines. A dream of an ethnically cleansed, Wahhabi quisling state, a hatchets throw from Russia's jugular. It was a hideous, ghastly wet dream straight out of Churchill's musty spank bank. It was a nightmare about secular Syria in chains, splay legged and prepped for Yankee rape. And it almost came true. They would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for those meddling Russians.

Yes, dearest motherfuckers, on March 14, Vladimir Putin, that most wily of Kremlin bastards, announced before a shocked global audience on the eve of the Geneva Ceasefire that Russia had achieved its goals in Syria and would be pulling the majority of its combat forces out of the country less then six months after they had arrived. In other words, checkmate.

But to fully understand and appreciate the gravity of Putin's victory speech you have to look at how we got here and start at the very beginning of this Syrian mess.

It all started with a pipeline. In the year of our lord, two-thousand-and-nine, Qatar, one of America's finest little oil-rich terror state-lets, offered the secular regime of Bashar Al-Assad the opportunity of a lifetime. You see, Qatar, with the full support of its American handlers, had cooked up a grand scheme to funnel its plentiful oil stash directly into the EU by way of a pipeline that was to run through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey and hopefully Syria. Thus cutting a huge chunk out of Russia and Iran's own Euro driven oil profits and further isolating two of America's final targets in its century long quest for global domination. Syria was the last state necessary to make this scheme come true.

Naturally, Assad said no. Which only came as a surprise if you've spent the last fifty years up your own asshole (AKA the US State Department). Syria wasn't about to fuck over two of its oldest and most loyal allies just to hop in bed with a nest of serpents who would (and have) gladly devour there own young just to see there stock value rise half a point. As if that weren't enough to finally due in this little anti-imperialist pariah state, Assad then went ahead and signed on to a counter deal to start a similar pipeline with Iran in 2010. That was the point of no return. As far as Uncle Sam and his Wahhabi quislings were concerned, Assad's ass was as good as grass.

Thankfully the villains of our story had just figured out how to hijack the once troublesome Arab Spring vis-a-vis the magic of social media and use it for there own evil plots. This reckless formula had already (pseudo)successfully brought down Gaddafi in Libya. All part of then Secretary Killary's new wave of American imperialism, ironically deemed Soft Power. Now it was time for a sequel in Syria. And Killary, in her perma-infinite wisdom, decided to use the war-booty of Muammar's massive weapons cache to do it. Soon literal shiploads of Libyan weaponry began to find its way to rebels on the shores of Syria. But after this pipeline got hit by Killary's own once loyal freedom fighters in Benghazi, slaughtering Ambassador Steven and his entourage in the process, Obama got spooked and rejected Killary's plot to directly arm what was essentially Al-Qaeda with the emphasis on directly. This wouldn't do. Madame Killary, not accustomed to hearing no from someone who, as her charming hubby once mused, would have been getting her coffee a few years ago, left in protest. This didn't stop Obama from getting a little help from his friends.

With Madame Killary out and the post-Benghazi arms tide too toxic to touch with American fingers, the job of moving Gaddafi's deadly loot to our latest proxy jihad was outsourced to Turkey who dutifully began to flood the Syrian deserts with a searing hot ocean of high-powered weaponry. Meanwhile Qatar and Saudi Arabia did what they do best and gathered the disaffected maniacs of the world and sent them into another poor secular nation in dire need of destabilization. All while Obama and his cabal of little Eichmann's in the State Department went to work pumping the compliant western media-sphere full of propagandist tall tales of brave Syrian rebels being violently repressed by big badman Assad, infringing upon there there god given right to slaughter infidels and sell there daughters like cattle. Naturally, the bright, wholesome folks of the fifth estate, entrusted to educate the American people, ate this devil's dung like fine chocolate and spit it back out into the gaping mouths of there already thoroughly debased audience.

Not that this was nearly enough. The reality on the ground in Syria was that the manufactured rebellion never had the support of more than thirty percent of the local population and that number plummeted once it became undeniable that this supposedly homegrown uprising was in fact comprised largely of foreign mercenaries who couldn't give two shits about democracy or even humanity itself for that matter. The Syrian people did the only sane thing they could and stood by the devil they knew. Russia did the same and continued to back there Baathist Allies against yet another uprising clearly aimed at weakening there presence in there own continent.

In spite of all the free guns and man power or more then likely because of it, America's latest mujaheddin loverboys quickly had there asses handed to them by the very people they claimed to be liberating. It rapidly became painfully clear to Obama that Killary was right about one thing. You couldn't have your imperialist pie and eat it too. He could have pulled a JFK and realized that he was in over his head with his dusty Bay of Pigs and pull the plug on it. But no, the Nobel Peace Prize winner decided to double down on his mess. It was time to pull a Dubya and go balls deep in this bloody bitch. The only problem was Obama didn't have the 911-style support he needed to commit such an act of imperial pasty rape with his dovish posterity in tact. Even with the waves of State Department approved propaganda being vomited at the American people, they still couldn't stomach another Middle Eastern quagmire. The corpses of Iraq and Libya weren't buried deep enough to stop reeking. Obama would have to get crafty with this one.

So the Commander in Chief came up with a plan, A wickedly ingenious plan. With Assad's boys enjoying the joyful sadist's end of a glorious ass whooping and with the full knowledge that the rebel's re-gifted Gaddafi arms stash included biological weaponry, Obama sent his whip-lashed errand boys a thinly coded message through the western mass media. The crafty young president made a series of public announcements the he would not interfere (directly) in the Syrian Fracas UNLESS, that is, someone (anyone?) crossed the "red line" and used chemical weapons (wink wink). The desperate Jihadi's heard the message loud and clear and launched a series of nerve gas false flag attacks against Syrian civilians. Obama and his NATO posse wasted zero time waiting for the bodies to get cold before declaring unequivocally that the then victorious Assad had inexplicably crossed the red line that insured his own doom. And of coarse, once again, Obama's devoted fanclub in the media joyfully jumped aboard another war bandwagon with the unblinking giddiness of kindergartner's on an Autumn hayride. It looked like Obama would finally have his war. But Putin had other plans.

As Obama began to circle the wagons and prep for a full blown Syrian invasion, complete with fleets of menacing gunboats gathering along the nation's coastline, even going so far as to fire a warning shot over the bow of a locally stationed Russian battleship (Gulf of Tonkin, much?), Vladimir Putin, ever the Russian chess master, carefully plotted his next move. A weaker leader, like Yeltsin, would have simply abandoned there embattled Allie. A dumber one, like (insert American president's name)
would have over reacted with military bombastics. Putin chose a third way and against all odds it fucking worked.

With a little help from a fellow anti-imperialist hell raiser in the Vatican, Putin brokered a peace deal with the Assad regime. Assad agreed to hand over his own antiquated chemical weapons stash, left-over from his feud with Yankee armed mustard gas enthusiast Saddam Hussein, to the Russians for disposal if the "free world" agreed to step off there throat. The lion share of the so called free world was pleased with this option. Obama was beside himself with frustration but what could he do? Putin caught him with his pants down, spanked him and called his bluff. Without the already played out specter of weapons of mass destruction, Obama didn't have the support he needed at home or abroad to engage in a "humanitarian" bloodbath. What was even better was that now Obama's Heroes(TM) in Al-Qaeda could no longer gas people without exposing the lie of the previous false flag attacks. In one fare swoop Putin managed to not only kill Obama's war but he also depleted him of an option in provoking another one. Obama, who had previously poo-pooed the constitutional necessity of congressional approval for war powers, was forced to send his plot against Syria to die in the Senate and anti-warriors such as myself welcomed the rise of Putin as an unlikely champion for peace.

Putin had humiliated Obama. He made a wanna-be warmonger look like a fucking pussy in front of the chicken-hawk set. The cruelty of cold, hard reality didn't stop Obama's liberal fanboys however from ludicrously giving there dear leader credit for preventing a war he carefully designed himself. It also didn't stop this wolf in doves clothing from seeking revenge. But he'd have to look north of Damascus to get it.

As the Russian people basked in the new found glory of there international leadership at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Obama's minions in the State Department busied themselves manufacturing an uprising in Russia's neighbor and former heartland Ukraine. By the Games closing ceremony the democratically elected government of Viktor Yanukovych had been violently overthrown and replaced with an openly Russophobic, neofascist junta who wasted little time antagonizing the nations sizable Russian speaking population when the people of Crimea rose up and decided, democratically, to return to there motherland. Putin stepped up again and bravely accepted the will of the people followed immediately, of coarse, by another toxic campaign of slanderous vilification from the lemmings in the western media.

The point of the Maidan coup was to provoke Russia into a confrontation that would permanently alienate them from the European market they depended on for oil revenue. Putin recognized this right away and adamantly refused to take the bait. I myself, as a lifelong Russophile and history nerd was livid with what appeared to me to be Vlad's cowardly indecision on Eastern Ukraine. I was all to familiar with the long plight of the Novorussiyan people. I had read extensively on the grotesque horrors they had suffered and against all odds survived at the hands of the Nazi's and there Western Ukrainian henchmen. Millions of bullet riddled bodies in mass graves. Only now to face skinheads marching beneath the same treacherous flags there forefathers had died beneath. I supported there independence. I still do. And I was furious that Putin refused to do the same, especially after Crimea. I was wrong. Though I may possess a Russian soul, I lack a Russian mind. You see, Russians play the long game and Putin was no exception. Putin played for keeps.

While Vlad had little choice but to respect Crimea's wishes in order to maintain Russia's indispensable Black Sea fleet in Sebastipol, he wasn't about to be suckered into another Afghan trap like his Soviet forefathers before him. So he played it cool. He aloud NATO to go out of there way to harass him and he aloud the US to discredit itself and expose there own duplicity with there relentless and increasingly unhinged tall tales about fictional Russian invasions. Sure enough, it took less then a year for Europe to grow exasperated by the constant Yankee wolf crying. These cultured self righteous Euro-twats may have been ready and willing to indulge in there innate Slavophobia with sanctions and economic warfare but they weren't about let the US use them as a front for starting the third world war. So they cautiously decided to go against Obama's wishes and give Putin another opportunity to play peacemaker. And so it was that Putin brokered another peace deal that still stands strong today. Novorussiya has held on to there hard fought autonomy while the fascist American rump state of Banderastan has devolved into a colossal despotic money-pit, totally dependent on funds the US and the EU can barely afford to pay. Once again, Putin had shrewdly turned the tables on his foes.

This didn't mean he was out of the woods yet. Not by a long shot. While Vlad was distracted up north, Obama's black budget henchmen devised a devilish new strategy to destabilize Assad. Two armies were built. One, the ironically titled Syrian Free Army, was built out in the open as a force of American armed and trained "good guys" ready to fight for mom, apple pie and democracy. The other army appeared just as suddenly but from the shadows. ISIS, as they called themselves, seemed to have mysteriously rose from the sands of Iraq like Ozy-fucking-mandias. It's leaders were all former Al-Qaeda fighters who met in the same American run prison and were summarily released for reasons still shrouded in mystery. The nucleus of there rank and file came directly from the Sunni death squads used by Petreaus during the Fox fabled surge. I think you get where I'm going with this.

While America had zero traceable ties to ISIS, our client states in Turkey and the Persian Gulf pulled out all the stops to bankroll these bastards. As did our own Free Syrian Army in there own weird way. While officially enemies of ISIS, our boys seemed to act mostly as a recruiting ground or even a conduit to the army of darkness. A common narrative unfolded. A Syrian rebel is vetted by the US. Trained by the US. Armed by the US. Sent back into Syria by the US. Then summarily joined ISIS the moment there boots hit the fucking sand. Obama puts up his hands and says oopsy-daisy. But it happened way too goddamn much to just be a coincidence. That tasty, cinnamon flavored neocon Marco Rubio was right about one thing. We need to dispel with the notion that Obama doesn't know what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing. He's doing what right-wing chicken-hawks like Rubio only dream about and he gets away with it every fucking time.

After destabilizing the Iran-friendly Shiite government in Iraq, leading the once resistant Al-Maliki regime to get down on there knee's and beg us to re-occupy there country, ISIS turned there attention to Syria and quickly pushed Assad's back back up against the wall. After a Grand Guiginol-esque orgy of depravity on YouTube, Obama finally had the support he needed from the thoroughly terrified western populace to justify his presence in Syria. America, along with a coalition of other ISIS backers, began dropping bombs but unsurprisingly most of them seemed to be directed at Syrian infrastructure, while those sly little cretins in ISIS always managed to slink away with only minor damage. Meanwhile our presence in the Levant served another twisted purpose. Keeping Assad's allies and ISIS' real enemies like Iran and Hezbollah at bay. Brilliant, right? But as we all know, things quickly got completely out of hand.

Obama's Free Syrian Army rapidly devolved from winkingly unreliable to a total multi-billion dollar embarrassment that Obama could no longer just shrug off with a flippant "shit happens" pose and there predecessors fared even worse. All the while the Black Plague of the Islamic State had grown far too powerful to contain and swiftly spread across three continents. Yet our Frankenstein monster still couldn't manage to dislodge Assad quickly enough to make Obama's inaction look less then suspicious. Obama's plan B? Killarys Plan A. Arm Al-Qaeda directly and proclaim them to be newly minted "moderates". Shit was going to hell in a hand basket alright. That is, until Putin stepped up and stepped in to end this mad imperialist circus once and for all.

Flash forward some six months later. Al-Qaeda and it's other "moderate" Yankee Doodle head choppers are fucking decimated. In spite of it's cowardly attacks on civilians abroad, ISIS is on the run like scared rabbits caught in a surly old Russian's turnip garden. There territory shrinks day by day. As I type this Palmyra is being liberated and Raqqa appears to be next. The bullet-proof umbrella of the Russian air campaign has allowed the true enemies of jihad, Iran, Iraq, Kurdistan, Rejova and Hezbollah to flourish and Russia's sudden removal of this umbrella has both empowered these forces reclaimed sense sovereignty and forced Assad to get serious about reform. The myth of a America, the great and mighty imperial peacekeeper has been shattered by Putin's mastery of the great chessboard and the people of the Middle East aren't the only ones to realize it. From England to Germany, America's quisling Allies in the EU establishment are fighting a losing battle against there own citizens, who are drowning in a deluge of the refugee's created by there own reckless support of America's war on Russia. An uprising of anti-establishment populist movements on both the left and the right now threaten the very fabric of the EU and NATO's existence. Similarly Obama's heir apparent and the architect of the Syrian conspiracy, Imperial Queen Killary is dodging a barrage of shit being flung by monkey's on both ends of the Bipartisan Washington Zoo while both major parties are beginning to lose control of there own constituents.

And somewhere in Russia, on the porch of a rustic old dacha in a birch tree grove an hour outside the Kremlin walls, Vladimir Putin watches the winter ice thaw with his dog Buffy at his feet, a glass of vodka in his hand and the wind at his back. On a distant television reports of Putin's unprecedented high approval ratings are interrupted by news of Donald Trump's victory in another Rustbelt primary. Vlad cracks a wry little smile and takes another sip of Stoli. Like a Screwdriver, revenge is best served orange with a splash of vodka. Drink up Vlad. You've earned it. But I'm still moving to Canada.


Nostrovia, dearest motherfuckers, Peace, Love and Nostrovia.