Month: July 2019

by William Skink

I am wanting to write a post, a longer post, but this is not it.

Instead, this:

by William Skink

George Ochenski is a political columnist for the Missoulian. His most recent piece takes on press freedom. I read it not because I eagerly read each column every week, like I used to before Trump was elected, but because I wanted to see how Ochenski comes to the defense of a corporate media that has squandered Trump’s first term by obsessively peddling Russiagate.

Before getting to that, let’s rewind to a time before Trump and before the Indy was shuttered. Ochenski was talking about press freedom back then as well, when the Indy’s shitty editor, Robert Meyerowitz, decided to ax Ochenski as a columnist.

Here’s jhwygirl from a 4&20 Blackbird post from June, 2012:

Northern Broadcasting Network’s Aaron Flint of the Flint Report broke the news late yesterday afternoon regarding that the not-so-free-thinking Missoula Independent’s permanent severance of its relationship with long time political columnist George Ochenski was essentially the result of editor Robert Meyerowitz’s decision to not accept Ochenski’s planned column on the Indy’s 21st birthday and the importance of a free press in Montana.

So we have a political opinion columnist wanting to discuss the importance of the free press in Montana being censored by the editor of a newspaper that prominently features the byline of “Free Thinking” under its name “Missoula Independent”?

Ochenski’s response was to take his column to the Indy’s corporate competitor, the Missoulian. Several years later, with the help of POS Matt Gibson, the Indy as a competing voice is no longer a problem for the Lee Enterprises in the Missoula market. So when Ochenski promotes the concept of a free press, he is only doing so to narrowly criticize Trump without reflecting at all on the fact that Trump HAS been the target of a propaganda campaign by a corporate media that is more interested in using Russiagate to damage the Trump administration than it is in press freedom (otherwise they’d be defending Julian Assange).

Here’s a bit from Ochenski’s column:

Make no mistake about it, the individual sitting in the highest office of our nation is trying to destroy the foundational institution upon which our democracy was founded — a fearless and free press. And why would anyone who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, including the First Amendment right to freedom of speech and press, do so? Because unlike his ever-changing coterie of hired and appointed sycophants, our 325 million citizens must rely on a free press to sift fact from fiction. And without a free press, the truth is buried beneath the lies that spill endlessly from his lips.

There is a lot that Ochenski doesn’t mention in his column. He doesn’t mention how corporate media has consolidated its power since Bill Clinton enabled that consollidation in 1996 with the Telecommunication Act. Ochenski doesn’t mention the lies perpetuated by corporate media during the Bush years to enable the Bush regime to launch an unnecessary war of choice against a nation that posed no serious threat to this country. Ochenski doesn’t say anything about the “free press” that gave Trump free air-time because it was great for their ratings and shareholders.

325 million citizens are NOT getting a free press from their corporate media offerings. No, we are getting endlessly spun and manipulated content intended to push agendas and capture ratings, not tell us the truth about the world and America’s role in it.

The term “alternative media” exists because some of us citizens understand how badly we are being propagandized and we actively seek out media not beholden to shareholders, but even that is getting challenging as private tech platforms continue using their power in ways that doesn’t benefit us citizens and our need to know the facts driving policy.

I used to value George Ochenski and his opinions. That was before Trump. Now I’m not so sure his opinions are aging well. Corporate media is not a free press in the idealistic sense Ochenski is describing, and it hasn’t been for quite some time, thanks to Bill Clinton, George Bush, Barack Obama (who really ramped up the war on the last shreds of the free press), and now Trump.

I have said it before and I’ll say it again: Donald Trump is not an aberration of American politics, he is a continuation of trends that exist in a symbiotic relationship with other forces that have grown malignant, like our corporate media.

That should have been apparent when Trump bombed Syria and corporate media personalities gushed over his decision. Fareed Zakaria declared “I think Donald Trump became president of the United States last night,” and Brian Williams took it one step further, getting poetic at the sight of our lethal weaponry:

It was a sight that seemed to dazzle Williams, who described the images as “beautiful” in a segment on his show, “The 11th Hour.”

“We see these beautiful pictures at night from the decks of these two U.S. Navy vessels in the eastern Mediterranean,” Williams said. “I am tempted to quote the great Leonard Cohen: ‘I am guided by the beauty of our weapons.’”

Is this the free press George Ochenski is defending against Trump? If it is, this lowly blogger wants nothing to do with it.

by William Skink

While everyone’s attention is on THE SQUAD vs. THE RACIST, one of the core beliefs Russiagate truthers will still claim as fact has had its thin threads snipped.

The core belief is that Russia impacted the outcome of the 2016 election. How? Two ways, the “hacking” of the emails that exposed Hillary and establishment Democrats as dirty rotten scumbags, and a Russian troll farm.

One of the best pieces of analysis on the joke that is the troll farm argument comes from Moon of Alabama–from 2018!

Apparently the judge in that case, which is still ongoing, isn’t laughing. That is one of the threads that got snipped:

As the truth seeps out, there will be plenty of crow to go around. To avoid eating it, the Democrats on the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, the stenographers who pass for journalists at the Times and Post, and the “Mueller team” will need all the time they can muster to come up with imaginative responses to two recent bombshell revelations from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

Perhaps the most damning of the two came last Monday, when it was disclosed that, on July 1, Judge Dabney Friedrich ordered Mueller to stop pretending he had proof that the Russian government was behind the Internet Research Agency’s supposed attempt to interfere via social media in the 2016 election. While the corporate media so far has largely ignored Judge Friedrich’s order, it may well have been enough to cause very cold feet for those attached to the strained Facebook fable. (The IRA social-media “interference” has always been ludicrous on its face, as journalist Gareth Porter established.)

Is this why Mueller delayed his appearance before Congress?

The other big claim of Russian meddling, the emails, is also a joke. The FBI never did any kind of forensic examination of the servers that were allegedly hacked, instead allowing the DNC to outsource that critical work to Crowdstrike. Then there’s credible claims that point to the emails being leaked from an insider, not hacked by the Russians.

When DNC staffer Seth Rich was shot dead and not robbed in Washington DC, plenty of people jumped to the assumption the leaker was Rich. Assange fanned the flames of suspicion by seemingly insinuating the same thing. Luckily everything in the world of politics that happens is because of Russia, and thanks to Michael Isikoff we can add the Seth Rich Conspiracy Theory to dastardly things the Russians have done to fog our minds with paranoia and suspicion.

The Russians even infiltrated Hawkins, Indiana and brought the evil monsters back to earth from another dimension.

Whoops, sorry, that’s a fictional tv show with no real world correlation to an evil American government agency experimenting and exploiting children.

by William Skink

Missoula’s City Council is often presented as a homogeneous group of rubber-stampers dutifully voting for the Mayor’s agenda. This is obviously an oversimplification, but unless deviations and disagreements become public, those of us on the outside of the municipal sausage factory will assume everyone but Jesse Ramos is basically on the same page regarding most issues.

Apparently not everyone is on the same page with regards to primaries. Julie Armstrong made it clear that she does not approve of Mayor Engen’s recent push to have costly primaries and she did something about it by purposefully disqualifying herself for a run at reelection.

Before getting to Armstrong’s explanation let’s revisit why Engen is adamant to have primaries:

While the city will conduct a primary to ensure that only two candidates appear on this November’s ballot, it has permitted more than two candidates on the ballot in the past.

In the 2015 general election, three candidates appeared on the ballot in Ward 6. In 2017, Ward 3 saw three candidates on the ballot, while Ward 4 saw four candidates.

That latter election saw two left-leaning candidates split each other’s vote, essentially handing the seat to right-leaning council member Ramos, who also ran a strong campaign.

I think it’s obvious why Engen is choosing to burden taxpayers with the cost of unnecessary primaries. The timing is particularly disgusting, considering City Council is just starting its 6 weeks of budget reviews.

With all this context in mind, here is Julie Armstrong’s reasoning for stopping payment on the check to trigger her disqualification. The comment was originally made on Facebook:

“When I found out that the mayor was intent on running a primary, I went to withdraw from the race because we have two good candidates there now. We (the City Council) voted on the primary on the same exact day that was the last day to withdraw from a primary, June 17th, making it impossible for me to withdraw. The only way to withdraw from a primary is to be disqualified, and there’s only three ways to be disqualified, not paying your fees, which I put a stop pay on my check: or moving out of your ward or no longer having a valid voter registration.

“Trust me folks I have the money to pay my fees that wasn’t the issue. I am glad however that there will not be a primary in Ward 5, as we will not be wasting $10,000 and having our candidates spend more of their own money to campaign. I feel confident that our citizens and Ward 5 can make up their minds in one election, and don’t need two.”

Julie Armstrong was a good councilperson, but thanks to the Mayor’s political shenanigans, she is deciding to throw in the towel. That is unfortunate.

I hope people in Missoula are paying attention, and I REALLY hope someone provides a substantive challenge to Sailor Engen when he is up for reelection in 2 years.

by William Skink

It’s been bizarre to see corporate media shift into suddenly being very, very interested in where the sordid tale of Jeffrey Epstein goes next. I’ve heard the phrase “rabbit hole” more than a few times regarding this not-very-well-kept secret of child sex trafficking networks that cater to the appetites of wealthy and powerful predators.

There is plenty of information out there about other instances of this insidious and profitable industry of exploitation having one of its tentacles exposed, but you have to seek it out. Most people don’t have the stomach to peek behind the curtains of power.

No need to seek it out now, thanks to the bullhorn of corporate media the water cooler will be buzzing with details of how Epstein did what he did, and who he may have done it with.

One naive hope of mine is that more people will understand that the scope of the depravity and corruption encompasses both political parties in this country. There is already plenty of fuel to insinuate all kinds of possibilities and implications, but almost immediately people have started self-organizing along partisan lines.

You can see it in the comment here, from Swede, quickly absolving Trump despite some pretty creepy remarks from Trump himself about Epstein liking young girls, and Acosta getting what appears to be a convenient promotion after he protected a well-connected pedophile (and broke the law by not telling the victims).

And you will see it from the other side, deflecting Epstein’s deep connection with the Clintons in order to focus on Acosta and the atrocious plea agreement he handed out (that also conveniently blocked the FBI from further investigation). Epstein’s own lawyers made the case that he was one of the original investors in the Clinton Global Initiative:

Billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was indicted Monday on child sex-trafficking charges, helped president Bill Clinton devise the Clinton Global Initiative, according to a letter his attorneys sent to federal prosecutors in 2007.

“Mr. Epstein was part of the original group that conceived the Clinton Global Initiative, which is described as a project ‘bringing together a community of global leaders to devise and implement innovative solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges,” attorneys Alan Dershowitz and Gerald Lefcourt wrote in the letter, which was first reported by Fox News in 2016 and resurfaced Monday by the Daily Caller.

And what does Bill Clinton start doing? Immediately lies his ass off, of course.

Anyone trying to score partisan points with this predator pedophile who (is alleged) to have victimized dozens, if not hundreds, of underage girls, is an opportunistic political hack in my book. This is your chance to take a step back from the partisan firing lines and reassess how power works and your relationship to it.

For those of you new to this rabbit hole, I am here to offer my guidance and support. When I find myself overwhelmed I remember that inquiry of this nature has spiritual consequences and self-care is important.

I also like to recall what author Robert Anton Wilson had to say about entering the metaphorical space of Chapel Perilous:

“In researching occult conspiracies, one eventually faces a crossroad of mythic proportions (called Chapel Perilous in the trade). You come out the other side either stone paranoid or an agnostic; there is no third way. I came out agnostic.

Chapel Perilous, like the mysterious entity called “I,” cannot be located in the space-time continuum; it is weightless, odorless, tasteless and undetectable by ordinary instruments. Indeed, like the Ego, it is even possible to deny that it is there. And yet, even more like the Ego, once you are inside it, there doesn’t seem to be any way to ever get out again, until you suddenly discover that it has been brought into existence by thought and does not exist outside thought. Everything you fear is waiting with slavering jaws in Chapel Perilous, but if you are armed with the wand of intuition, the cup of sympathy, the sword of reason, and the pentacle of valor, you will find there (the legends say) the Medicine of Metals, the Elixir of Life, the Philosopher’s Stone, True Wisdom and Perfect Happiness.

That’s what the legends always say, and the language of myth is poetically precise. For instance, if you go into that realm without the sword of reason, you will lose your mind, but at the same time, if you take only the sword of reason without the cup of sympathy, you will lose your heart. Even more remarkably, if you approach without the wand of intuition, you can stand at the door for decades never realizing you have arrived. You might think you are just waiting for a bus, or wandering from room to room looking for your cigarettes, watching a TV show, or reading a cryptic and ambiguous book. Chapel Perilous is tricky that way.

Again, I hope more of this sinister filth rises to the surface and the scope of what we’re dealing with becomes clearer.

My concern is this will be a limited hangout operation and Epstein will somehow be silenced or kept from cooperating, reinforcing the power of the people in the network who were able to keep him free and jet setting the globe to find and create new victims for them to abuse.

I will be paying close attention to this case as it unfolds, stay tuned.