Month: March 2019

by William Skink

There is an increasingly desperate effort across the pond and within American borders to conflate leftist criticism of Capitalism with Anti-Semitism. The enforced dogma of blind support for Israel from the Neoliberal establishment is being tested like never before, so mouthpieces for the ruling class, like the Financial Times, are just coming out and saying it:

Rhetoric about the 1 per cent and economic inequality has the same underlying theme–anti-capitalism masks and normalises anti-Semitism.

The discussion of wealth and power and how those who have it exert influence across the globe has been rendered a mine-field one must carefully navigate. Take a wrong step, use the wrong term, and BOOM! You are a hater of Jews trafficking anti-Semitic tropes and probably love Hitler.

I think push-back against anti-Semitic smear campaigns is getting more traction because the efforts to apply anti-Semitism are becoming so numerous and absurd. A good example is how isolated incidents in France were quickly exploited in an attempt to discredit the Yellow Vest movement. Here’s how Macron’s France reacted:

THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT will instruct police officers and magistrates to investigate critics of Israel who question its right to exist as a Jewish nation-state for possible violations of the law against anti-Semitic hate speech, President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday night.

“Anti-Semitism hides more and more behind the mask of anti-Zionism,” Macron said in an address to the Council of Jewish Institutions in France. “Anti-Zionism is one of the modern forms of anti-Semitism.”

The French president added that France would adopt a definition of anti-Semitism proposed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. That definition has been condemned by supporters of Palestinian rights for including as an example of anti-Semitism: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”

While Macron also said that not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic, that distinction was quickly blurred by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who released a statement welcoming the news that France had adopted a “definition which determines that anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism.”

Since anti-Semitism is prohibited hate speech punishable by up to one year in prison under French law, critics of Israeli policies that discriminate against non-Jewish citizens and that deny basic civil rights to millions of Palestinians living under military rule could be at risk of prosecution. Supporters of a binational state, with equal rights for Arabs and Jews, and proponents of the right of Palestinian refugees to return to homes they were expelled from when Israel was founded could also be in legal jeopardy.

It’s hard to keep up with the ever-widening scope of anti-Semitism, so here’s a quick summary: The Yellow Vest movement is anti-Semitic, the Labour Party is anti-Semitic, criticizing Zionism is anti-Semitic, engaging in Constitutionally protected boycotts is anti-Semitic, using the word “globalist” is anti-Semitic, talking about the influence of billionaires is anti-Semitic (if it’s Soros or Rothschild, but not so much Sheldon Adelson for some reason) and saying anything about money and Israel in the same sentence is anti-Semitic.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu had this to say to Rotem Sela about who belongs to the nation-state of Israel:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel “is not a country of all its citizens,” hitting back at criticism from an Israeli actress who said the government treats Arabs like they are less worthy.

“First of all,” Netanyahu wrote in a Facebook message Sunday morning addressed to actress Rotem Sela, “an important correction: Israel is not a country of all its citizens. According to the Nation-State Law that we passed, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish nation – and its alone. As you wrote, there is no problem with Arab citizens – they have equal rights like everybody and the Likud government has invested in the Arab sector more than any other government.”

There is very little difference between what Netanyahu is saying here and what White Supremacists yearn for in America. Could I someday face jail time for making this comparison?

by William Skink

I was disappointed to see James Conner piling on the smear campaign against Ilhan Omar. The opening of his recent blog post is rife with accusations unsupported by facts:

Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar, now in her third month in the U.S. House of Representatives, does not like Jews and does not like Israel. She’s a duly elected anti-Semite who accuses American politicians of being bought and paid for by pro-Israel Jewish money. She also slurs the patriotism of American politicians, accusing them of subordinating their loyalty to the United States to their loyalty to Israel. Her comments are crude and ugly, and as Bret Stephens observes in today’s New York Times, she knows exactly what she’s doing.

Criticizing the influence of AIPAC does not mean Omar “does not like Jews”. Criticizing American politicians who think passing laws that undermine the 1st amendment of our Constitution in order to keep US citizens from boycotting Israel is not slurring the patriotism of those politicians.

If you live in Texas and don’t like the idea of billions and billions of your taxpayer dollars going to a government that executes unarmed children, medics and journalists, then your first amendment right to boycott that government no longer exists. How is that not putting loyalty to a foreign country ahead of loyalty to the constitutional laws of THIS country?

Accurately describing reality is not Anti-Semitism and Democrats don’t have an Anti-Semitism problem, the state of Israel has a racism/war crime problem.

Just last month UN investigators took a tentative step in acknowledging the intentional targeting by Israeli snipers of unarmed protestors. Why isn’t there more outrage over children and journalists being shot and killed by Israeli snipers?

UN investigators have accused Israeli soldiers of intentionally firing on civilians and said they may have committed war crimes in their lethal response to Palestinian demonstrations in Gaza.

The independent Commission of Inquiry, set up last year by the UN’s human rights council, said Israeli forces killed 189 people and shot more than 6,100 others with live ammunition near the fence that divides the two territories.

The panel said in a statement that it had found “reasonable grounds to believe that Israeli snipers shot at journalists, health workers, children and persons with disabilities, knowing they were clearly recognisable as such”.

Why is there no significant outrage and/or legislative condemnation of Israel for what it’s doing to Palestinians? If I say American politicians are too afraid of the type of immediate smear campaign Omar is experiencing, does that also make me an Anti-Semitic?

To further make his case that Democrats have an Anti-Semitism problem Conner has to go back more than 3 decades to 1984, when then-candidate Jesse Jackson referred to New York as Hymietown. I fail to see how Jackson + Omar = Democrat problem with Anti-Semitism in 2019.

James, I respect your independent-minded inclinations and tendency to avoid herd-thinking around issues like identity politics, but in this case I think you are dangerously conflating legitimate criticism with Anti-Semitism.

If Ilhan Omar should be considered an Anti-Semite for criticizing the influence of AIPAC and Anti-BDS legislation passed in states like Texas, then so should I.

by William Skink

The thermostat in our neck of the woods in Missoula County read -14. Throughout this late winter blast of cold and snow I’ve been thinking about those who continue to sleep outside in places like the Reserve Street camps. I think about that reality, but can’t really imagine living it.

Last week there was a pretty interesting article from a homeless man who is living that reality. Here is his method for staying warm in Montana’s frigid winter:

Lean-to’s and tarps are common in the camp he’s in. Even on the coldest night you won’t see a campfire.

“It’ll attract the cops,” said Burns. “So you get a Folgers can, a metal can, and put a roll of toilet paper in there and a whole bottle of isopropyl alcohol. It burns real faint blue but super hot so, yeah, you can keep yourself warm.

“Then you warm some rocks around you like the river rocks, the big ones, and after your fire goes out you put some rocks in your sleeping bag. At the foot. Don’t put them up any higher. It does pretty good for heat.”

This first-hand perspective of lived experience doesn’t usually make it to the pages of local media, so I say a begrudging kudos to the Missoulian for running this piece. I also appreciate that the man was willing to tell his story and share what he’s seeing, and some of what he is seeing is very concerning, like the prevalence of “young ladies” on the homeless scene:

“I would much rather, I think, sleep outside than deal with that,” he said. “It’s not the staff as much as it is the folks that are there. It’s cutthroat and there’s opportunistic folks all around. I couldn’t set my pack down to save my life right now.”

Night camps aren’t warm places in any sense of the word.

“It’s almost cliquish,” Burns said. “If you’re a drinker you hang out with your drinkers. There’s a bunch of dope fiends. They’re over there and they’ve got no gear, they’re just out there getting high and trying to get out of there.”

Burns said it’s surprising how many “young ladies” are in camp, some appearing to be as young as 17.

“There’s quite a few of them that are, like, runaways (who) ended up in the wrong spot at the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s incredible,” he said.

He keeps a low profile in camp.

“I just try to find my little spot and duck out, which has been all right,” Burns said.

Because not everyone is as resourceful as Rickey Burns, Missoula leaders and local non-profits have continued the scramble to provide warm, safe spaces for those without stable housing. After the Salvation Army raised $50,000 to open a warming center, the bitter cold snaps we’ve been experiencing exposed time gaps between when other places closed and the Salvation Army opened its warming center at 10pm.

The City’s solution was to coordinate a convoluted 2 week solution using the Mountain Line transfer center to keep people warm and a combination of Mountain Line and ASUM busses to transport people to the Salvation Army. Law enforcement was used for security and volunteers staffed the center and transportation efforts.

The persistence of extreme winter conditions made another solution needed after the 2 weeks quickly came and went. A diverse coalition of advocacy groups have been keeping the pressure on city leaders by showing up to City Council and demanding more resources be deployed.

The city acquiesced and threw $8,000 at the Poverello Center to bridge the gap, so now the Pov is temporarily warming those under the influence, going over their limit of people who can be served and possibly compromising the sobriety of other clients in order to do what the city only planned on doing for a measly 2 weeks.

While this was all happening, Missoula taxpayers also got news that the cultural experts of our fair city determined they couldn’t get quality public art for just $12,500, so they asked MRA for TIF money to purchase an incredibly ugly abstract dog sculpture that will be pissed on by thousands of canine’s, all for the cool price of $25,000 dollars. Seriously. From the link:

Missoula has a long-standing Percent for Public Art ordinance, which mandates that on eligible city capital projects, 1.5 percent of the construction costs must be set aside for public art. The capital projects include construction or remodeling of any public or city building, structure or park.

The Montana Rail Link Park falls under that designation, and its $1.7 million budget included $19,914 to be set aside for public art in two locations, according to Annette Marchesseault with the Missoula Redevelopment Agency. A portion of that, about $7,400, needed to be set aside for maintenance, leaving roughly $12,500 for the art.

One of the twists here is the entire park construction budget came from Tax Increment Financing, or TIF, funds in urban renewal districts. These districts are formed when an area officially is deemed “blighted.” At that point, the tax base of the district is recorded and any increase in tax revenues are put into the TIF fund, and can only be used within the district to spiff up the area so more development will be drawn to it. Eventually, those upgrades end the “blighted” designation, and after a set period of time, the district is dissolved and all the tax dollars then go into the city’s general fund.

In this case, the TIF money designated through the Percent for Public Art ordinance wasn’t enough scratch to pay for Scratch. So the Montana Redevelopment Agency, which administers the TIF dollars, put up another $12,500 in TIF funds to cover the rest of the cost.

“They (the art committee) felt that for $12,500 it would be difficult to solicit any art of any importance,” Marchesseault said. “So they asked the MRA board for an additional $12,500.”

The MRA board approved the funding last July.

LeBlanc said the committee believed that $25,000 was a fair price for the artist, who not only has to purchase the materials, but also create and install the work.

Missoula fucking Montana, man. Don’t ever change.

by William Skink

I think the most important portal into understanding the structures of global power is the portal of human trafficking, especially the trafficking of children.

That vast networks of powerful, successful traffickers exist is not debatable. The evidence is in the profits. Here are some numbers:

Human trafficking earns profits of roughly $150 billion a year for traffickers, according to the ILO report from 2014. The following is a breakdown of profits, by sector:

$99 billion from commercial sexual exploitation
$34 billion in construction, manufacturing, mining and utilities
$9 billion in agriculture, including forestry and fishing
$8 billion dollars is saved annually by private households that employ domestic workers under conditions of forced labor

The numbers are numbing, which is one reason people have a hard time moving from the large scope, as represented by these immense profits, to how these networks actually operate.

The scandal with the Trudeau administration in Canada is a good example. The scandal is ostensibly about bribes and political interference in a court case, but it goes much deeper than that. Moon of Alabama gives a good, surface-level summation of what the scandal is about. Here’s the opening paragraph:

Between 2001 and 2011 the Canadian construction and engineering company SNC-Lavalin bribed officials in Libya with tens of millions to get contracts in that country. In 2015 the company was charged by the Public Prosecution Service of Canada. It tried to avoid a trial and argued instead for a negotiated settlement since it had cleaned shop by changing its chief executive officer.

Things get interesting when you start looking at the powerful individuals/families that exist around heads of state like Trudeau. For example, Trudeau’s “Revenue Chair” is Stephen Bronfman. The Bronfman clan have deep Canadian roots and lots of wealth to throw around. And hey, family being what it is, sometimes a family member (or members) becomes an influential force in a sex cult. You know how it goes.

While you can read about this billionaire heiress’ involvement in a sex cult accused of engaging in human trafficking in upstanding media platforms like the New York Times, this cult’s involvement in trafficking children for sexual exploitation is not usually a prominent part of the story.

Not only is legacy media incurious about the darker connections of stories like the Trudeau scandal, there are active operations run through corporate media intended to poison the well of honest inquiry.

When I write the word “Pizzagate” most will see that term and think of absurd accusations that Hillary Clinton personally chained up children in the basement of a pizza parlor in DC. When an unhinged individual showed up with a gun to Comet Pizza, that sealed the deal. Now anyone who even entertains the idea that there is something to the accusations of the Clintons and their “foundation” being involved in any way in human trafficking can be not just dismissed, but accused of perpetuating a dangerous conspiracy theory that lead to direct threats of violence to totally innocent people.

This is very convenient for the Clintons, considering their interest in saving accused child trafficker Laura Silsby from accountability for kidnapping children from Haiti:

On January 29, 2010, Silsby was arrested with nine other American nationals attempting to steal 33 children from the country, most of whom were not even orphans and had families according to some reports. CNN reported on February 9, 2010 that this was not the first time Silsby had attempted to traffic children out of Haiti. Haitian police acting on a tip had intercepted Silsby in an earlier, separate attempt to remove 40 children out of the country. She was turned back at the Haitian border. For a brief period, Haitian authorities were considering adding a new kidnapping charge based on this evidence.

Hillary and Bill Clinton took an extraordinary interest in Silsby’s case from the moment she was arrested and almost immediately stepped in on her behalf. The Harvard Human Rights Journal stated that one of Bill Clinton’s first acts as special envoy for the United Nations in Haiti “was to put out the fire of a child abduction scandal involving American citizens.” On February 7th, 2010, The Sunday Times reported that Bill Clinton had intervened to strike a deal with the Haitian government, securing the release of all co-conspirators except for Silsby. Prosecutors ultimately sought a six-month sentence in Silsby’s case, reducing charges for conspiracy and child abduction to mere “arranging irregular travel.” A shockingly light penalty given the circumstances of her arrest, which would likely not have been possible but for the intervention of the Clintons in Silsby’s case.

On February 9th, 2010 Hillary Clinton consulted with Counselor Cheryl Mills and other attorneys in an email discussing the U.S. Government’s “options” regarding the arrested Americans. The heavily redacted memo attached to that email does not reveal what these “options” consisted of. However, the State Department’s American Citizens Services is only authorized to offer lists of local, English speaking attorneys to Americans arrested or detained abroad. To go beyond that authorization is a severe violation of protocol and is illegal. Additional emails reveal that the State Department was involved with making statements on the Silsby scandal and preparing to assist Silsby’s co-conspirators with their return to the United States, although this is consistent with State Department protocol in these situations.

Power, corruption and pedophilia is a bipartisan affair. Just ask Dennis Hastert. Or, better yet, ask Donald Trump about the pedophile he and the Clintons have in their shared social orbits, Jeffrey Epstein. Thanks to a recent judgement, it looks like Epstein’s sexual appetite for young girls is going to be a problem again:

A judge ruled on Thursday that federal prosecutors broke the law by failing to keep victims adequately informed about a plea deal that Jeffrey Epstein, a prominent financier, cut to avoid federal prosecution for sexual encounters with numerous underage girls.

Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta was the U.S. attorney for Southern Florida at the time the agreement was negotiated more than a decade ago. The Justice Department’s internal watchdog for attorney misconduct announced earlier this month that it had opened an investigation into the government’s conduct in the case.

U.S. District Court Judge Kenneth Marra said Thursday that prosecutors violated the Crime Victims Rights Act by failing to notify victims before signing off on the arrangement, under which federal prosecutors promised not to prosecute Epstein in federal court if he pleaded guilty to a pair of prostitution-related offenses in a Florida state court.

“Petitioners and the other victims should have been notified of the Government’s intention to take that course of action before it bound itself under the NPA,” or nonprosecution agreement, Marra wrote.

Marra criticized federal prosecutors for not only hiding the agreement from the victims but also misleading them about the state of the case.

“Particularly problematic was the Government’s decision to conceal the existence of the NPA and mislead the victims to believe that federal prosecution was still a possibility,” the judge wrote.

Powerful pedophiles and the networks that feed their appetites exist and have existed for a long time. Their tentacles reach into law enforcement, social service agencies, faith-based organizations, international aid organizations, organized crime, intelligence agencies, corporations and governments.

There is another incentive to avoid this topic–in can be fatal. Natasha Jaitt was recently found dead, something she predicted could happen in a portentous tweet. From the link:

Last year, Natacha Jaitt, a model, socialite, TV presenter, and former contestant on the show Big Brother, came forward claiming she had evidence of a high level pedophile ring involving VIPs, politicians, movie stars, and other celebrities. The allegations led to a barrage of attacks against her—including death threats. And, this month, she was found dead in a nightclub, prompting calls of foul play by her family.
…
In 2018, Jaitt had made explosive allegations that dozens of high-profile sports and entertainment personalities were involved in an underage prostitution ring. Indicating she feared for her safety, she once went as far as to warn via Twitter that she could pay the ultimate price for revealing dirty information she had on some of the country’s rich and famous.

After making these allegations of child sex rings, Jaitt made several television appearances and noted that she received death threats and a slew of backlash. This prompted the former model to go on Twitter to let people know that she would never harm herself.

“WARNING: I am not going to commit suicide, I am not going to take too much cocaine and drown in a bath, or shoot myself. So if this happens, it wasn’t me. Save this Tweet,” she wrote in April, 2018 according to a translation from the Times.

I get that human trafficking is a disturbing topic that most people with a soul and a conscience feel an immediate revulsion toward. But it is happening at a scale that is hard to imagine, and it is facilitated by powerful networks corrupting the institutions and organizations meant to keep those who are vulnerable safe.