Month: April 2017

by William Skink

The opposition to Trump put their uselessness on display over the weekend by demanding Trump release his taxes. Instead of pointing out how over half over every tax dollar goes to America’s killing machine, the anti-Trumpers are maintaining their obsession over Trump’s taxes the same way conservatives frothed at the mouth for Obama’s birth certificate.

As tensions with North Korea ratchet up, where is the anti-war sentiment from Democrats? It’s conspicuously and dangerously absent. At Intelligent Discontent, for example, Nathan Kosted managed two posts back-to-back about Trump’s taxes but there is nothing about America’s path to a military confrontation with North Korea, just like there was nothing about Trump’s war crime against Syria.

Over at Cowgirl, there is similarly no substantive acknowledgement of Trump’s 180 degree turn from his campaign rhetoric against the interventionism that Hillary represented. Montana is in the middle of a special election for a Congressional seat, yet there seems to be no interest by local Democrats to discuss how Congress has abandoned its constitutional role in declaring war before, you know, bombing another country with missile strikes.

I guess Democrats are content with leaving the anti-war position to the alt-right. At Counterpunch today, Shamus Cooke ponders whether the alt-right will hijack the antiwar movement. From the link:

Society reeled from the newest war, but the fertile soil for protest barely produced a sprout. The establishment “supported” the new war, either directly by cheerleading or indirectly via silence.

The rest of the left was against the war but they didn’t bother to organize a protest. The only notable group that did — the ANSWER coalition — found little help from other left groups. The few protests that were organized were small or denounced by others on the left as being “pro Assad.” Trump was certainly pleased by the non-opposition and division against his new war.

Into the giant antiwar void crept the neo-Nazi “alt-right” groups, including leading white supremacist Richard Spencer, who loudly broke his support of Trump by protesting the new Syria bombing in front of the White House. Other alt-right-associated individuals or organizations — including altright.com and Infowars — loudly denounced their former Fuhrer.

In some ways the white supremacists protested more loudly and militantly than the left, which declined to ring any alarm bells, opting to minimize the aggression by dismissing the strike as “symbolic,” or “routine.”

While much of the alt-right unconditionally denounced the bombing, some on the left gave partial legitimacy to it by focusing half of their post-bombing energy on denouncing Trump’s target, Assad, helping to put the American public back to bed instead of agitating them into the streets.

Trump apparently silenced his critics by doing what they feared most. How did this happen?

It’s no mystery how this happened. Democrats gave up opposition to war once Obama was elected, and they were willing to elect an interventionist warmonger, so now that Trump is doing what Hillary would have done, how can they oppose it?

Democrats could admit they were wrong to give Obama a free pass to bomb a half-dozen countries, but they won’t do that. Here is a reminder of what the partisan conventional wisdom was like at the time of Libya’s destruction:

I don’t celebrate the death of anyone, but it’s hard to feel terribly sad about the fact that the Colonel is no longer in a position which allows him to torture and kill indiscriminately. Eventually, people rise up to take down despots. It’s often ugly, even brutal, but it will happen—and I’d prefer a national security policy which works to prevent those people from being slaughtered.

In the end, the US and NATO did an admirable job. They used a relatively inexpensive mission which gave the rebels breathing room in which they could defend themselves against a despot. And then the people of Libya did the rest. We can’t know what kind of government or future Libya will have, but I think we can be sure that it will be better than the past two generations.

As the years pass, these words get more and more disgusting. A few days ago The Guardian reported on the migrant slave market in Libya:

West African migrants are being bought and sold openly in modern-day slave markets in Libya, survivors have told a UN agency helping them return home.

Trafficked people passing through Libya have previously reported violence, extortion and slave labour. But the new testimony from the International Organization for Migration suggests that the trade in human beings has become so normalised that people are being traded in public.

There was no plan, post regime-change, to keep Libya from sliding into chaos. When it comes to opposition to American hegemony, American policy makers (aka, butchers) prefer chaos. It’s like the childish sentiment that if I can’t possess a toy, I’d rather destroy the toy than let another kid play with it.

It’s astonishing that the space left vacant by the left when it comes to opposing war is being filled by white supremacists. With the stink of the alt-right opposing America’s insane military brinkmanship, the chance of reviving the left’s opposition against military interventionism seems extremely unlikely.

So here we are, waiting for war.

by William Skink

The Missoula Independent has been bought out by the corporate media beast, Lee Enterprises. After turning Montana dailies into shit by firing, consolidating and regionalizing content, Lee has turned its corporate crosshairs on Missoula’s weekly alternative rag.

Will the Indy now bring us important, cutting edge stories like this one about how the Air Force is struggling to remove a Humvee stuck on a muddy road in Montana? We can only hope.

Selling the Indy to the corporate raiders at Lee is just one more sad sign of what Missoula is becoming. But don’t worry, Indy journalists, your new corporate bosses will let you keep your jobs, for now.

I guess when it comes to reporting on things like bonuses for the Lee executives responsible for degrading our media landscape we’ll have to rely on online startups like Missoula Current.

by William Skink

I wasn’t particularly invested in the efforts to save the Merc, but I can’t help feeling kinda sad seeing images of the walls being torn down. I do think the whole process of how this came to be is significant in ways that are just now starting to become visible.

When the plans to tear down the Merc emerged, lots of people were shocked and surprised. I suspect City Council members quickly realized they were now going to have to deal with the fallout over the Mayor’s secretive dealings that greased the wheels for this deal, a deal that was suddenly blowing up in their collective face.

Here is an article from Missoula Current that hints at this dynamic. From the link:

After the Missoula City Council threatened to cut funding to MEP over a perceived lack of communication earlier this month, the two sides have been working to improve both communication and collaboration.

Ward 1 council member Bryan von Lossberg praised MEP as one of several entities in Missoula that work toward economic development. However, he also said that the City Council remains the policy setting body and needed more understanding from MEP in that regard.

“It’s not so much about making sure there’s a scheduled presentation to the council, it’s about us getting around the table and working collaboratively,” he said. “Economic development has lots of different facets. One is policy creation by the council.”

Grunke said MEP was also looking to build a stronger partnership with the council.

“We want more engagement and they’d like to be more involved in the process and know the companies we’re dealing with, and communication is certainly part of that,” Grunke said. “It’s also about being at the table.”

While Missoula Mayor John Engen sits on MEP’s Board of Directors, Ward 5 council member Julie Armstrong said communication doesn’t always trickle down to the City Council. Adding a council member to MEP’s Board of Directors would help, she believes.

Unknown by the general public at the time, Mayor Engen was, by his own admission, extending drinks at lunch into a full-blown, alcohol-dependent addiction that ultimately resulted in an intervention and in-patient treatment. While the public wasn’t aware of the extent of Engen’s struggle with alcohol, many people close to him did.

After the Merc debacle, I think some Council members realized the Mayor couldn’t be trusted to include them in the scheming going on with the Missoula Economic Partnership. Despite the mea culpa/reelection announcement stunt the Mayor pulled, I don’t think that trust has been restored.

And that may be a good thing.

Without the Merc fallout, the gluttony of City Hall may have continued unchecked. Now, post-fallout, there are some glimmers that Missoula’s City Council won’t be the rubber stamp Engen once enjoyed.

Mayor Engen recently pulled funding for a workforce study (being done by the sycophants at MEP) from the council agenda. This may not seem like a big deal, but I think it’s evidence of a rift that has developed between Missoula’s City Council and the Mayor’s Office. From the link:

Intent on “not setting up anyone for failure,” Missoula Mayor John Engen pulled a $12,500 request to help finance a workforce study from Monday night’s City Council agenda.

Mayor John Engen pulled a request for $12,500 to help fund a workforce study from Monday night’s City Council agenda.

Whether it returns will depend on the answers to several questions he’ll ask city staff and the Missoula Economic Partnership, which is leading the investigation into local workforce shortfalls.

The study carries a $62,000 price tag, to be paid with a $25,000 state Department of Commerce grant, and equal $12,500 contributions from the city, Missoula County and MEP.

Last week, the City Council’s Administration and Finance Committee approved the city’s contribution and sent the request to the full council, but not without grumbling about the unexpected spending.

Ward 6 councilwoman Michelle Cares voted against the request, saying the $100,000 the city already pays MEP each year should be enough to conduct the study and pay the city’s contribution to administrative costs.

Thank you, Michelle Cares, for voting against this. There is little appetite left for funding these pointless studies that often carry bigger price tags than many people in this community make in an entire year of work.

I really hope City Council has permanently retired their rubber stamp. We need people who are actually capable of using some healthy skepticism when it comes to the Mayor’s vision of Missoula Metropolis.

by William Skink

Recently I’ve been thinking about Anthony Burgess’s novel, The Wanting Seed, which directly followed Clockwork Orange in 1962. Here is a narrative summary from the LA Review of Books:

Burgess’s novel imagines a future England wrecked by overpopulation, packed with immigrants, and controlled by homosexuals. As the island nation becomes increasingly overcrowded, and Greater London spreads to the sea, the government takes up the task of population management with gusto. It encourages homosexuality, tries to control the number of children citizens can have, all but outlaws religion, runs Abortion Centers, and takes on the task of converting dead children into fertilizer. “It’s Sapiens to be Homo,” runs one of the Ministry of Infertility’s slogans. The “Homosex Institute,” we learn, “even ran night-classes.”

The novel follows a love triangle among Tristram Foxe, a hapless history teacher, his inconveniently fertile wife, Beatrice-Joanna, and his Machiavellian brother, Derek, who pretends to be gay in order to get ahead at the Ministry of Propaganda. Early in the novel, Derek impregnates Beatrice-Joanna, Tristram is thrown into prison during a riot, and Beatrice-Joanna is forced to flee to Wales to have her illegal children (she is pregnant with twins, which she names Tristram and Derek). The remainder of the story tracks Tristram’s attempt to reunite with his unfaithful wife and Beatrice-Joanna’s attempt to avoid arrest.

In this novel (spoiler alert) Tristram discovers the wars occurring are nothing more than a contrived slaughter to keep the population down. I hope our globalist overlords didn’t take notice.

Since Trump popped his presidential death cherry, naval assets are being positioned and rumors of massive Chinese troop deployments are making the media rounds. Considering this is the week Christians celebrate the resurrection of Christ, anything could happen.

Case in point: the glitter bombing of Richard Spencer. From the link:

Richard Spencer appears to have been “glitter bombed” by an anti-fascist protester outside the White House over the weekend.

The white supremacist, who rose to fame for being punched at an anti-Trump protest, was in Washington to lead a protest against President Donald Trump’s decision to launch a cruise missile strike on a Syrian airbase on Friday.

While Spencer, an “alt-right” leader, has long been a vocal supporter of Mr Trump, he has distanced himself from the president in the wake of the Syria strikes, calling the attack a “total betrayal”.

The wider so-called “alt-right” movement, which is made up of loyal Trump supporters, has also distanced itself from the president in the aftermath of the strikes. Accompanied by Spencer, who is credited with coining the term “alt-right”, protesters chanted “We want walls, not war!” and held signs saying “No more wars for Israel”.

Again, I am simply dumbfounded that the alt-right appears to be more consistent with their opposition to foreign intervention than all the screeching liberals who gnashed their teeth when Bush was waging war, but quietly got with the program once their guy streamlined the killing.

The glitter bomb isn’t the story here, the story is the fact white supremacists are out protesting this escalation in Syria while Democrats cheer and scheme to take out a courageous representative who dares question whether Assad was even behind this gassing in the first place.

America recently observed the 100 year anniversary of entering WWI. During the subsequent century American power peaked and is now apparently locked in a dangerous death spiral. Our economy is run like a battery-operated bubble machine and guess what, the batteries are almost dead.

War as fiscal stimulus seemed to help propel us past the shadow of the Great Depression during the 20th century, so why not take that page from the playbook and try it again?

As the petrodollar regime plays global cop with two oceans to buffer us from the blowback, Americans are apparently too busy being outraged over a man forcibly removed from an airplane to notice we are fast approaching a boiling point we may not be able to recover from.

by William Skink

It’s hard to imagine things getting more bizarre, more surreal. With a volley of cruise missiles, Donald Trump has flipped the steady stream of condemnation flowing from the media and establishment Democrats into an obscene outburst of praise because now Trump is finally doing what the insane interventionists and their media whore enablers wanted him to do:

Trump is certainly a fool for going ahead with such an attack in clear contravention of international law and entangling the United States more deeply into the complicated Syrian conflict. But the blame also should go to the people who frog-marched him to the precipice and then all but commanded him to step over the edge.

Within hours, all the usual suspects were congratulating one of the most scorned U.S. presidents in history for taking the leap.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said: “Making sure Assad knows that when he commits such despicable atrocities he will pay a price is the right thing to do.” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi described Trump’s missile barrage as “a proportional response to the regime’s use of chemical weapons.”

Republican super-hawks Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, previously as anti-administration as any Democrat, issued a joint statement declaring that Trump “deserves the support of the American people,” while liberal heart-throb Sen. Elizabeth Warren also agreed that “the Syrian regime must be held accountable for this horrific act.”

Well, fuck me seven ways from Sunday, ain’t that great? In my mind’s eye I see Chuck and Beth skipping hand-in-hand with John and Lindsey as missiles rain down and explode in the background, sending body parts of dead Syrians flying in all directions while Brian Williams serenades the scene of destruction with his best impression of Leonard Cohen.

Words like “disgusting” are no where near adequate to describe how former anti-Trump media outlets like CNN are now declaring Trump is presidential because he violated international law and launched missiles at Syria without authorization from Congress.

Trump watched some propaganda on television, claims he had some feelings, then bombed away without any solid evidence the Assad regime was responsible for the alleged chemical weapons attack. While establishment Democrats and the media laud Trump for this insanity, some Trump supporters are realizing their guy has been co-opted by the Deep State:

“What Trump did was nothing less than a betrayal, a betrayal of his supporters, of his message ‘America First!,’ of his promise to be different—to learn from the mistakes of the past and chart a new course,” said Richard Spencer, the alt-right leader who takes credit for coining the term. “I’ll wait and see, of course, but I’m not sure I can continue to support him. Most all of the alt-right feels the same way.”

Spencer tweeted on Thursday, “Tulsi Gabbard 2020 #Trumped,” a reference to the Democratic congresswoman who recently made a controversial trip to Syria and met with Bashar al-Assad.

Mike Cernovich, the pro-Trump blogger and Twitter personality who identifies as a member of the “new right,” has been tweeting and livestreaming his opposition to military action almost constantly since the news of the strikes last night.

Cernovich, who claimed this week that the chemical attack was carried out by “deep state agents,” told me he still supports Trump.

“If Hillary had been elected I wouldn’t even bother speaking out, as war would be certain,” Cernovich said in an email. “I’m still a Trump supporter, as last night’s air strikes appeared to have been limited. I do not and will not support another war in the Middle East.”

“There comes a day in every child’s life when his Daddy bitterly disappoints him,” Milo Yiannopoulos, the former Breitbart tech editor and provocateur who resigned from the site earlier this year amid controversy over remarks he’d made about pedophilia, wrote on his Facebook on Thursday night.

The tone on Breitbart News, the outlet formerly led by Bannon, has remained studiously neutral so far, and even slightly critical.

Let me summarize: white supremacists and Breitbart news are more critical of Trump’s foreign policy than CNN and Elizabeth Warren. I just looked outside to make sure the sky is still blue (it is).

Over at Cowgirl, combat Veteran Josh Manning continues claiming Democrats are the true champions looking out for Veterans. Here is a funny snippet from his latest effort:

“…Republicans are more than happy to talk about how much they support and will defend veterans but when it comes time to question wars, ask about military preparedness, or expand VA care they sit on their hands. Progressives are the ones now taking up the mantle to support our troops and veterans by asking the hard questions about militarism and how we can care for those who have fought in all our nation’s wars.”

Nope, I call bullshit. Democrats like Jon Tester are not the ones questioning America’s foreign policy. Politicians like Rand Paul and Tulsi Gabbard are the ones asking the tough questions, and they get no establishment support for doing so. Gabbard, for example, will more than likely get a primary challenge because of her outspoken efforts to bring attention to the fact America’s allies materially support jihadists in the Middle East.

Trump was going to leave Assad alone and take the fight to ISIS, but the Deep State doesn’t want its terrorists to lose the fight in Syria. It appears the war party of John McCain and Hillary Clinton have won.

Will the anti-Russia hysteria die down now that Syrian soldiers are dying from American missiles? If yes, what does that say about the opposition to Trump?