Month: January 2016

by William Skink

Today must be a wonderful day for all those demanding government action in Oregon. Seven domestic militants have been arrested and one person–LaVoy Finicum–has allegedly been shot and killed by law enforcement. Yeah, take that crazy militia people!

Reasonable Americans were growing weary of relying on the internet’s dildo offensive to dislodge this armed takeover of a bird shack. Though a brilliant attempt to emasculate silly men with guns that would make this blogger proud, the onslaught of schlong didn’t have the desired impact, and the standoff continued.

Today, despite the arrests and use of lethal force by law enforcement (reports still sketchy how it started) the standoff continues.

To help our benevolent government win this fight, now is the time for culture warriors to escalate the cultural shaming campaign. Since the Bundy clan gets welfare (subsidies) from the Federal government, I envision the next stage should include an overweight black woman with 10 kids smoking a cigarette and driving a Cadillac.

This situation will probably get mopped up now, just like the tens of thousands of people who signed the online petition wanted.

To those who wanted to see the government acting earlier, one must consider that our government acts in unseen ways all the time through the many nodes of the surveillance state. Have more faith, appealers to government intervention. I’m sure the wildlife refuge was quite the honeypot for gathering intel.

by William Skink

By showing what Allen Dulles did with the CIA, David Talbot builds a strong argument with The Devil’s Chessboard that Dulles was the perfect player to checkmate the king of Camelot with assassination.

I haven’t read deeply into the conspiracy lore regarding JFK’s public execution to say anything about how this account stacks up with other dives into the JFK rabbit hole, but I will say the historical context of the Dulles/CIA lens is very helpful, at least for me, in understanding the opposing forces that came to see removing Kennedy as a necessary evil in order to maintain a lucrative, aggressive position of non-appeasement to Communism.

The reason this topic won’t go away is because we never stopped living the consequence of what died with Kennedy, and that was the chance to avert the direction that has taken us to where we are today: terminal imperial overreach with no political path out.

If you had the stomach to watch the political debates Norman Pollack’s depiction of what he describes as Reptilian politics may resonate, especially if you are realistic about the stunted range of rhetoric when it comes to foreign policy. From the link:

As of this writing, the Democrats still have their upcoming debate, with Sanders by all reports spurting ahead of Clinton in Iowa and a presumed slugfest in the making. Yet, nothing has really changed, with respect to the fundamental question of the direction of US foreign policy, of determinative importance for the structuring and democratization of American society. Clinton has proven herself a trusted warhorse on national security, with intervention and regime change in her DNA, along with maintaining Obama’s Cold War policies of confrontation with China and Russia. As Secretary of State she did not question or even seek to moderate the Pacific-first strategy and related Trans-Pacific Partnership, nor lessen the EU-NATO potential engagement of forces via deployment to the Russian border, all other constants of foreign policy also left largely unchanged with respect to Iran, North Korea, and of course the Middle East, with one-sided preferential treatment of Israel. Sanders here has nothing to offer except more of the same, thus vitiating whatever possibilities of differences he has with her on domestic policy.

Domestic policy is important, but what does it say of a nation that provides better health care at home while destroying the lives of innocent peoples abroad? What does it say, of more stringent corporate regulation at home while actively pursuing market and financial penetration abroad—another false dichotomization of reality in which the forces of wealth-concentration are assisted and continue? Sanders seems a Left-Donald Trump in that he refuses to cut away from American imperialism, and on gun control, Hillary is right (although she is no better) in calling attention to his record. So, we await the Democratic debate, but I suggest that we remain faced with a constipated dialogue between the two major parties; not only are Cruz and Clinton snakelike in their conduct, boa constrictors squashing the life and vitality out of democracy, thereby removing the air from public policy capable of addressing vast inequalities of wealth and power, the continued exacerbation of climate change, and escalating hegemonic claims to global supervision of the political-economic order. Of Trump and Sanders, we can expect if not a carbon copy of their opponents, then replication of the systemic universe which has established ideological boundaries to human creativity in nation-building, leaving us the same problems of international conflict and a social order dependent on expansion to avert stagnation. Trump would militarize capitalism; Sanders would soften the impact. In all four cases, Cruz, Clinton, Trump, Sanders, varying degrees of the law of the jungle would apply, each in readiness to strike at prey deemed harmful to America, Bernie’s democratic socialism, to his credit, perhaps narrowing the target-list, but not changing the overall picture of America’s combative mental set.

Is anything capable of changing the overall picture of America’s combative mental set? Some would say that ship sailed half a century ago. After reading Talbot’s tome on Dulles, I would tend to agree.

by William Skink

Last September, a mentally unstable person walked into a Missoula church and threatened to kill people:

According to an affidavit, a Missoula police officer responded to a report of a man threatening another person with a gun at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Bancroft Street on Sept. 6.

Members of the church said the man, later identified as Wood, came inside and behaved in a threatening manner toward a woman teacher, according to the affidavit.

When several men who were members of the church told him to leave, Wood allegedly opened his vest and revealed a handgun in a holster. According to a witness, the man said, “If I’m going to die, you’re going to die,” then left the church.

Police located Wood, who allegedly had an airsoft pistol in a shoulder holster under his vest, several blocks away and confiscated the weapon. They also confiscated a knife and multi-tool Wood was carrying.

And if anyone needs evidence that our criminal justice system and mental health system is broken, a few months later this mentally unstable individual is back on the streets in Missoula, this time attacking someone with nunchucks:

A Missoula man awaiting sentencing for threatening church-goers with an airsoft pistol in September has been arrested again for allegedly knocking another man unconscious with nunchucks.

Deland Leroy Wood, 49, appeared in Missoula County Justice Court on Wednesday, a day after he was booked into Missoula County jail for felony assault with a weapon.

I guess we’re not hearing the clamor of outrage over our broken mental healthcare system with these incidents because this mentally ill individual hasn’t used a real gun to kill people (yet) and he hasn’t threatened to kill school kids and Jews.

by William Skink

In your world you can take a pen and write on a piece of paper and destroy 200,000 people and it’s okay because you don’t have to see it.”

—TBA

My trip to Kansas City last month accelerated a reading binge I’ve been on, kicked-started by reading four books on Jim Morrison–both biographies and two memoirs, one from Ray and one from John. While the occult doesn’t play a prominent part in Morrison’s story, it’s a part of the tapestry of that time, a time that would turn darker than the public could imagine.

In Kansas City I came across an interesting collection of writings edited by Richard Metzger, titled Book of Lies. There’s some well known names, like Timothy Leary and William Burroughs, and some lesser known names, like Donald Tyson and Hakim Bey.

And then there’s the name most associated with the modern day occult: Aleister Crowley.

While I’ve read up on Crowley before, years ago, this latest go around has cast Crowley and the seeds he planted (figuratively speaking, unless we’re talking about speculation regarding Barbara Bush) into a much more sinister light–especially the relationship between Crowley and Jack Parsons.  Officially Parsons was a brilliant scientist who helped establish the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Souther California. Unofficially Jack practiced sex magic as he ascended the ranks of Crowley’s O.T.O., SoCal chapter.

From Book of Lies I moved on to some other books already mentioned in other posts. Yesterday I finished The Family, by Ed Sanders, about Charles Manson. The quote up top is from Manson, from a different book called The Manson File. Yeah, just some light winter reading, right?

One of the reasons I’ve been diving into this area of inquiry is the writing project I’m working on. Another reason is because I think it matters, and not because I believe all this occult shit, but because I believe some very powerful, very twisted groups do believe all this occult shit.

It’s well established that Hitler had become obsessed with the occult and I’m pretty sure that even our own military had guys staring at goats to try and kill them with their minds because I saw a movie about it played wonderfully by George Clooney and it must be true.

Another interesting aspect of the occult is its partial absorption into white supremacist/Neo-Nazi dogma, a topic that needs a post of its own.

Basically what I’m saying is this:  dismissing the occult, like some people tend to do at the slightest whiff of conspiracy theory, would be a mistake, imho. I mean, if Bush let his Gog and Magog theory slip out with the French President, just imagine what goes on when they smear themselves with blood and fornicate in the woods under a full moon.

by William Skink

Partisan politics is pretty simple: attack your opponents and defend your party to win elections. For partisans, this trumps being consistent when it comes to deploying moral righteousness.

Readers at ID were treated to a post titled There’s No Room for This Kind of Sexism at the Montana Legislature condemning a state Senator from Butte for making sexist comments about a staffer. This is the easy part for a partisan, attacking one’s opponent. But last month was a bit more difficult because it entailed having to do damage control for the nasty split between Governor Bullock and McLean, as evidenced by this ID post, titled Bullock and McLean Outrage: Just Another Diversion from the GOP’s Noise Machine where damage control keeps the focus away from the actions of the Governor and firmly focused on the opponent:

It’s unfortunate that Lt. Governor McLean will no longer serve in the office, as she was a popular, dynamic leader, well-liked in Democratic circles and outside. But the fact that Lt. Governor McLean is leaving for another job, one she is well-qualified for, is hardly a story about governance or competence. It’s a political story that certainly might be about clashes of personality, might be about differing visions for the job, and might be a momentary diversion from the issues facing the people of Montana.

Unfortunately this story hasn’t just disappeared, as partisans have hoped. Last week’s Indy took another look at the Governor’s behavior in the Etc. section, concluding with this:

Politics is an ugly sport, but these emails show that whatever disagreements developed between Bullock and his appointee clearly affected their ability to work together and, therefore, handle the public’s business. They also show that McLean, a first-generation college graduate, was eager to embrace her duty as a public servant and Bullock’s partner. “It has been my honor since day one to help you be the most successful governor in Montana’s history,” she wrote.

Despite requests, Bullock apparently never told McLean if her name would appear on the 2016 ticket. But McLean got the hint—plenty of them.

In October alone, Bullock’s staff locked her out of her official Twitter account, scrutinized the length of her public remarks, chided her for scheduling appointments and excluded her from meetings. Near the end, according to the emails, Montana’s governor and lieutenant governor went a month and a half without speaking.

There’s a schoolyard term for how the governor’s office appeared to treat the former Anaconda teacher: Bullying. McLean might not want to say it, but her emails speak volumes.

One wonders if a male Lt. Governor would have received the same treatment.

UPDATE: I incorrectly assumed the offending state Senator from Butte was a Republican due to his political affiliation being conspicuously omitted from the ID post.