Month: July 2016

by William Skink

I remember the conversations about the Poverello Center’s relocation and to say they were contentious is an understatement. One of the options was to rebuild at the Ryman Street location, but downtown businesses were never going to let that happen. If they could get only get the Pov out of downtown, they thought, then all of the problems with chronically homeless individuals would magically go away.

We tried to explain the difference between the “transient” population and the majority of people served by the shelter, but those kind of nuanced distinctions are difficult to explain when fear takes hold. Needless to say much of what we said fell on deaf ears.

Today the Missoulian has a story about the owner of the Florence building considering closing down its lobby due to aggressive transients. What we were saying years ago has now been proven true: moving a homeless shelter won’t improve the problems of addiction and mental illness that our community appears incapable of addressing.

Instead of blaming the homeless shelter (which people are still doing) that temporarily houses over a hundred people every night–people who abide by the rules of sobriety, do their required chores in return for shelter (yes, the shelter requires people help maintain the building) and for the most part transition out of the shelter in 30-60 days–it would be nice if more culpable parties got some of the “credit” for creating the situation downtown that more and more people are saying feels unsafe.

Take Wordens, for example. Wordens is owned by Tim France, who is also the president of the BID (Business Improvement District). Wordens sells alcohol, including single cans of cheap malt liquor, like Steel Reserve and Colt 45. Some of the tall cans of this gut-rot are equivalent to 3 shots of whiskey. Last year there was an effort by the Mayor’s Downtown Advisory Commission to see if downtown alcohol retailers were willing to voluntarily remove the single cans of specific brands of gut-rot. The overwhelming response from Tim France and other booze peddlers was no, they were not willing to lose the revenue from enabling alcoholics and self-medicating mentally ill people, even though it’s primarily alcohol (and in the last year, meth) that is at the root of much of the problems downtown has been complaining about for years.

Not surprisingly it was around this time I started developing the sentiment of ‘fuck this stupid town’ because one can only bang one’s head against a wall for so long before becoming very agitated.

The less-stupid town of Billings has done a much better job of dealing with the transient issue because they have had better community buy-in and better institutional responses. They have two police officers working in collaboration with a drug counselor, and the support of Rimrock, providing addiction treatment services as the carrot, and mandatory jail time as the stick. Billings is now seeing results, while Missoula continues banging its head against the proverbial wall.

It’s actually pretty simple, Missoula. If we don’t fix our jail crisis, nothing will get better. If we don’t fix the gaping holes in supportive services for addicts and those dealing with mental health issues, nothing will get better. I wish our city leaders would prioritize these issues over impotent gun loophole ordinances and the save Syrian refugees crusade, but I’m not holding my breath.

During one of the last MDAC meetings I attended, outgoing city councilman, Jason Wiener, expressed his frustration that we have been having the same conversations about this issue since 2009. I share that frustration because for 7 years I have had a front-row seat in this worsening shit-show, and some of the stories I could tell would drop jaws.

This is the lens through which I see. This is the core of the anger I can barely contain.

While Missoula laments over the town it no longer is, some real audacious panhandlers are trying to shakedown MRA for a few million dollars for student housing downtown:

A team of developers is urging the city to consider – with some urgency – a proposal to help pay the cost of expanding public parking in the downtown district, saying that rising steel prices have placed the project in jeopardy.

Jim McLeod, senior managing director and co-founder of Farran Realty Partners, said his firm is ready to move forward with a student housing project and parking garage on Front Street.

It’s asking the Missoula Redevelopment Agency to contribute roughly $2.9 million to help pay a portion of the parking garage, a portion of which would be reserved for public use.

“We’ve got our contract ready to sign, and we understand what our costs are,” said McLeod. “But costs are rising every day with steel because of the tariff placed recently on China. This project is teetering a little bit, so we’re looking for some assistance in a public-private partnership to make it happen.”

At its regular board meeting this week, MRA agreed the project has value to the downtown community and should move forward, and it’s likely to support Farran’s request at a future date.

Nice. Downtown panhandlers really need to get their act together. If you present well, and dangle the threat of lost development, you can bend over local taxpayers for millions. Socialism is great for the business class, especially when there are homeless shelter scapegoats to blame for the negative impacts of growth Missoula can’t even understand, let alone fix.

by William Skink

Two things jumped out at me from JC’s open thread on the coup in Turkey that touches on stuff I’m reading about right now. This part of the analysis JC excerpted (link at original post):

Erdogan has been practicing magic, going to soothsayers and fortune tellers, and accessing the occult—issues that are strictly forbidden in Islam. He has also been murdering journalists who have exposed the criminal oil smuggling operation he and his son have organized. This is a sin against Islam, and must be cleansed from Turkey’s name and her people.

And comment from Swede:

The coup failed. I too feel sorry for the people of Turkey because of Ergodan’s new love affair with terrorists. All this was predicted over 2 thousand years ago.

“On that day, when all the nations of the earth are gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations. All who try to move it will injure themselves.”-Old Testament.

The real reason we left Iraq, green lighted Iran’s production on nuclear arms, destabilized Libya, and will leave Afghanistan like Viet Nam was to complete that prophecy.

Evil will have its day.

My recent research into the overlap between the occult underpinnings of Nazism and the emergence of the New Age movement has led me to some contemporary writers interpreting end times scripture from the Christian perspective.

Before getting into any of that, let me just reiterate a quick point I’ve made before: you don’t have to believe in this stuff to consider it. And the possibility that very powerful people believe they are fulfilling biblical prophecies should necessitate consideration.

I’m pretty sure I’ve cited this story before, but it’s worth repeating that Rumsfeld was known to slap biblical quotes on wartime memos because Bush was susceptible to envisioning himself playing an apocalyptic role in world affairs:

In 2003 while lobbying leaders to put together the Coalition of the Willing, President Bush spoke to France’s President Jacques Chirac. Bush wove a story about how the Biblical creatures Gog and Magog were at work in the Middle East and how they must be defeated.

In Genesis and Ezekiel Gog and Magog are forces of the Apocalypse who are prophesied to come out of the north and destroy Israel unless stopped. The Book of Revelation took up the Old Testament prophesy:

“And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”

Bush believed the time had now come for that battle, telling Chirac:

“This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins”.

There are other phrases utilized by Bush in the speeches he of course didn’t write that some end-times Christian decoders say are heavy with occult/biblical significance, like ‘Do you not think an angel rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm?’, ‘By our efforts, we have lit a fire as well – a fire in the minds of men.’, and ‘When our founders declared a new order of the ages . . . they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled.’.

Christians are right up there with conspiracy theorists as easy targets of ridicule and derision for their beliefs, especially from liberals who decry the pockets of anti-intellectualism and bigoted ignorance that exists among Christians.

At this point–and maybe in part due to an existential crisis I’m currently having–I’m not willing to discount anything that could help me understand what is happening. Hey, even some of us crazy people who claimed there were things about the 9/11 attack our government was covering up are right every once in awhile, so give us at least a little credit.

I’m referring of course to the fact that after 14 years of stonewalling, the release of the infamous 28 pages shows a clearer picture (though still strategically redacted at key points) of Saudi government support of 9/11 hijackers. Here is one quote from a Salon piece, now 4 days old:

“There was an awful lot of participation by Saudi individuals in supporting the hijackers, and some of those people worked in the Saudi government,” former commission member John F. Lehman said in an interview published by The Guardian in May.

Has there been a clamorous outcry from the American public over this scandal? Will Hillary supporters now suddenly find the Clinton Foundation donations from Saudi Arabia so odious they dump her at the convention?

No, and No. There will be no outcry, and Hillary will carry the day in November. The 28 pages were released on the ultimate lost Friday news cycle as France was hit and Turkey got thrown into turmoil, and more cops were executed.

And now the conventions–and whatever chaos and carnage our media and politicians (and Soros foot soldiers) can goad into occurring for the cameras–will dominate the numbed citizenry’s attention for the next two weeks. Whoopee!

As a part of my existential crisis, I’m debating how much longer I can keep this space going. I’ve got a large creative project slowly coming into focus and maybe a paid writing gig to consider. While I have no immediate plans to cease and desist, I may pull back on the pace of posting.

Thank you, readers and commenters, for the continued interest. I appreciate it.

by William Skink

I don’t know what to say. I’ve been trying to think of what to say, but I don’t know what to say.

I went to the lake this weekend. A perennial complaint from my better half is my time spent staring into the screen of my goddamn phone. So I tried to limit access, yet every time I made the online rounds, bang, some new bombshell exploded.

Thursday night, after the family settles in to the cabin, I check my phone to see some berserker dude in a truck killed dozens of people in France, latest count, 84.

The next day, after kayaking and exploring Philipsburg, I check the phone (which I consciously didn’t bring with me) and see there is an ongoing military coup in Turkey.

Saturday I notice a local scare when I see a news report on Facebook about a friend of a friend’s teen daughter gone missing. The situation is ongoing.

Then we pack it up Sunday, and by the conclusion of our trip home I see that 3 cops have been killed in Baton Rouge, one suspect dead, others at large.

I don’t know what to say.

By JC

Ok, now it really is getting interesting in the Middle East war. Unless you’ve been off-grid, you’ve undoubtedly heard about the ongoing coup attempt in Turkey. As I watched the coup unfold in near-realtime across a variety of media, it became apparent that everybody is spinning the event to their own purposes, and many pumping out disinformation.

Do the Turkish people (as if there is a monolithic Turkish population) support the military, or do they support President Erdogan? How will this affect NATO, or the American military presence in Turkey, particularly our use of the Incirlik Air Base in SW Turkey? How will it affect the Syrian war? What will the Russians do?

All these, and more, are good valuable questions. And of course, everybody has gone into propaganda hyperdrive trying to push their own agenda and view out there to take hold. So I did a bit of backgrounding, and came across a very interesting piece by Scott Bennett (ignore the popup, just click outside it to read):

Scott Bennett is a U.S. Army Special Operations Officer (11th Psychological Operations Battalion, Civil Affairs-Psychological Operations Command), and a global psychological warfare and counter-terrorism analyst, formerly with defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. [yeah, that Booz Allen Hamilton of Ed Snowden notoriety]

This piece of analysis (again, ignore the popup — or read it and then continue by clicking outside the box) was written Dec. 6, 2015, so it is not tainted by today’s events. Of course, one must take into account the nature of the person writing this, as obviously he had a particular bent when working as a psyop analyst. But it sets a good stage that contrasts with most of what is pouring out of the media and inner tubes today — particularly in the West’s mainstream english-speaking media.

I’ll post a clip from it, and this can be an open thread to talk about the ongoing events as the coup unfolds in Turkey. It will undoubtedly be several days before the situation begins to clarify, and we see where it may lead Turkey and the region in the future.

REPLACING PRESIDENT ERDOGAN: THE COMING MILITARY COUP D’ETAT IN TURKEY 

As the old saying goes, “What’s good for the goose, is good for the gander.”
— 06 December 2015

Geopolitically this means, “What the U.S. did to Ukraine, Russia can do to Turkey.”

As Russian President Vladimir Putin alluded to, it is only a matter of time before Turkey’s military recognize the courage, strength, and wisdom Allah has blessed them with as warriors, and act as warriors by defending their own Turkish citizens from the insane and self-destructive recklessness of President Erdogan—who will very soon bring down upon Turkey  the curses of God and his destruction if he is not forcibly removed from power by the righteousness of the Turkish military. As much as Allah has taken away Erdogan’s mind, Allah will defend all soldiers who work to free Turkey from Erdogan’s tyrannical and sinful grasp.

As a former psychological warfare officer, I look at this problem and solution through the enemy’s eyes, first and foremost, for it is the only way to “influence the mind and heart” of the enemy. So here is what the Turkish Muslim will think and act.

The average Turk will understand now that Turkey has a very simple choice:  Either replace insanity with intelligence and weakness with power, and thereby soon discover a new destiny of peace, independence, wealth, prosperity, and hope; or continue on the present insane, downward course Turkey’s President Erdogan is chasing, and inevitably be hated, torn apart, and eventually forgotten by the world (and Allah) under the smoldering ashes of civil war and destruction.  Only the Turkish military has the honor and courage to make this choice, for only the Turkish soldier has the strength to resist becoming himself a tyrant who betrays trust by harming the civilians who obey them, and hurting Allah who loves them.

This means Allah has created Turkey’s military to save the Turkish people.  Allah knows Turkey’s military are the only men with the honor and intelligence to save their nation from slavery or destruction.

Erdogan has been practicing magic, going to soothsayers and fortune tellers, and accessing the occult—issues that are strictly forbidden in Islam. He has also been murdering journalists who have exposed the criminal oil smuggling operation he and his son have organized. This is a sin against Islam, and must be cleansed from Turkey’s name and her people.

The military must stop this because it is bringing a curse upon Turkey in the eyes of the world…

Enjoy!

by William Skink

I applaud Netflix for recently adding The Big Short to its list of available titles to watch and shout profanity-laden diatribes at while the kids are outside, playing. I can’t tell you how many times I had to pause this educational film as the kids filtered in, doing their kid stuff, which is basically being loud and destroying shit. Eventually I finished the second half of the movie while neglecting my babysitting duties and, all mad about the fraud that never went away, I stewed like I’ve been doing lately over the inescapable clusterfuckedness of it all.

It’s weird, waiting for the next catalyst to spark the next cataclysm. The savvy bastards who shorted the mortgage market were a motley crew who came to understand how deep the corruption has metastasized, and nearly a decade later what has changed? Nothing that will stop Bancopalypse 2.0:

One of the major issues in the 2008 crisis was that banks were over-leveraged and had very thin levels of capital.

In other words, the banks’ rainy-day reserve funds as a percentage of their overall balance sheets were extremely low, so even a small loss in their investment portfolios would cause financial Armageddon.

That’s precisely what happened.

Lehman Brothers famously had a capital ratio of less than 3% of its assets. So when the value of its assets fell by more than 3%, the bank was finished.

Well-capitalized banks are supposed to have double-digit capital levels while making low risk investments.

Deutsche Bank, on the other hand, has a capital level of less that 3% (just like Lehman), and an incredibly risky asset base that boasts notional derivatives exposure of more than $70 trillion, roughly the size of world GDP.

Even the IMF has stated unequivocally that Deutsche Bank poses the greatest risk to global financial stability.

Europe is a shitshow in slow-motion collapse. If Deutsche Bank is truly this fucked, then what can the EU do to keep its ship afloat?

The Brexit was brilliant. It can now be deployed as a sort of magical incantatory haze cast on what has always been a perpetuation of ponzi-fueled crony capitalism papering over big bank insolvency with quantitative easing and, coming up next, helicopter money.

And what is the response from a western world populace sliding into totalitarian dystopia? Pokemon Go.

Um, Pokemon No:

And it’s not like Pokémon Go itself doesn’t already have a direct(-ish) line to the CIA. After all, Pokémon Go was created by Niantic, which was formed by John Hanke.

Now, Hanke also just so happened to help found Keyhole. What does Keyhole do, you ask? I’d tell you to go to Keyhole’s website—but you can’t. It just takes you straight to Google Earth. That’s because Keyhole was acquired by Google back in 2004.

Before that, though, Keyhole received funding from a firm called In-Q-Tel, a government-controlled venture capital firm that invests in companies that will help beef up Big Brother’s tool belt. What’s more, the funds In-Q-Tel gave Keyhole mostly came from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), whose primary mission is “collecting, analyzing, and distributing geospatial intelligence.”

The above quote is from a Gawker piece, truly a quality news source that also reported on the possibly off-wagon antics of former Prez, George W. Bush by writing this:

Today in Dallas, the city held a memorial service for the five officers killed by Micah Johnson last week. The service was attended by Barack and Michelle Obama, among others. It was, as you would expect, a somber affair for everyone—everyone except George W. Bush, who was ready to fucking party.

The video above captures a choir’s rendition of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” You’ll notice that everyone onstage is bowing their heads respectfully—everyone except George W. Bush, wearing a royal blue suit, who bopped along quasi-maniacally like the one person at a music festival set who clearly took too many drugs. Clasping his hand in quiet but abject horror is Michelle Obama, bless her soul.

It’s a good thing George W. Bush is white, because if he was a half-black president, well, that kind of jovial enjoyment of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” at the funeral of a dead cop fueling what could erupt into a race war before the summer is over would be an inflammatory incident possibly used to depose the alien Muslim from his perch on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Just sayin’.

Now, for a totally random pivot to a fun local issue, let’s collectively marvel that incoming VP Tom Crady got a $70,000 dollar bonus just for accepting the job of director of resurrection for UM’s lifeblood, students:

The University of Montana has offered a $70,000 signing bonus to its new vice president, hired to boost enrollment at the Missoula campus.

The Montana Board of Regents will hold a brief telephone conference meeting July 19 to approve salaries for a handful of administrators and spending up to $500,000 for new turf at UM’s Washington Grizzly Stadium.

UM announced in April the hiring of Tom Crady as the new vice president for enrollment and student affairs, with no mention of salary or bonus. He was vice president for enrollment management at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, for six years and succeeds Teresa Branch, who retired from UM after 13 years.

Don’t worry, Tom Crady, if you royally fuck this up I’m sure the golden parachute will be waiting for you.