Month: November 2019

by William Skink

Someone needs to notify the culture police about some cultural appropriation going down at the Merc. Are David Beck, Ekoo Beck and Rosalyln LaPier available? They were instrumental in fueling the outrage over Missoula’s alleged cultural crimes of painting faces and having a day of the dead parade. Here is some of their commentary from two years ago, when these culture warriors appealed to Missoula’s City Council:

“I am here to ask you not to support the Festival of the Dead in any way and to issue a resolution condemning it,” said David Beck, who believes Missoula’s events show disrespect for indigenous belief systems of Central America and Mexico.

Ekoo Beck said she grew up in Missoula participating in the festival, but was shocked to see its cultural appropriation and what she called racism when she returned from Harvard University.

“Then I realized how wrong it was,” Beck said. “It becomes a racist situation.”

She worries that, if it continues, future generations of Missoula children will grow up seeing the festival as “just a part of the community” rather than a cultural appropriation and show of disrespect.

Rosalyn LaPier, who co-authored “City Indian” with David Beck detailing Indian activism in Chicago between 1893 and 1934, said October marks the start of a time each year when Native Americans feel most maligned – from the observance of Columbus Day to Halloween and Day of the Dead, to Thanksgiving.

“People are dressing up like Native Americans at all these events,” LaPier told council members. “Festival of the Dead is one of these places, with the face painting. Throughout the month, we have this constant disrespect for indigenous cultures.”

With the Festival of the Dead now rebranded and barely in existence two years later, what are these culture warriors going to do next? If they are even still in Missoula, let me suggest the next target: Tad Hilton and Philip Schaefer’s “Mexican-inspired” restaurant, The Camino. Here is how these two dudes describe their culinary appropriation opening downtown in the Merc:

Tad Hilton and Philip Schaefer unveiled the interior of their new Mexican-inspired restaurant and agave bar, The Camino, for the grand opening celebration of the Mercantile business complex in downtown Missoula on Tuesday night for a curious and anticipatory crowd. For the two owner-operators, and for the Mercantile building, the evening’s festivities were the culmination of a very long process.
…
To open the Camino, Schaefer and his team traveled to various regions of Mexico preparing their menu.

“We’ve had a long-time fascination with both the culture and cuisine (of Mexico), and then that turned into sort of a love story once we went down there and experienced it first-hand,” he said. “And living in Missoula, we felt like there was a place for it and that we could do something that was really unique for what our town has.”

Is this cultural appropriation? Tad and Philip aren’t Mexican, yet they are opening a for-profit business hoping to make money selling Mexican food and booze in Missoula. The name alone—The Camino—should have the cultural warriors raging against this exploitive establishment, yet I haven’t heard anything about any protests. How can this clear example of appropriation go unnoticed?

Please, David Beck and Rosalyn LaPier, we need action now so our 90% white Missoula community doesn’t think it’s ok for two non-Mexican guys to open a Mexican restaurant downtown. Please gather another mighty storm of outrage before it’s too late. Thank you.

by William Skink

I’m not a big user of the Twitter, but when I tweet I do appreciate how the character limitation forces one to be as succinct as possible.

The following are two statements I composed on that obnoxious platform yesterday. On the eve of the public spectacle about to be forced down our collective throats tomorrow, maybe it’s worth considering:

1. People need to start wrapping their heads around the idea that Trump committed impeachable offenses AND members of the permanent state committed criminal acts to reverse the results of the 2016 election.

2. Having to choose between a corrupt President or a corrupt deep state is a sure path to civil unrest. Understanding that both are deeply corrupt and unworthy of support is the path to public empowerment.

The kayfabe Congressional pony show won’t get this country any closer to the real reasons why Donald Trump is unfit for office, nor will it stop the parallel push to uncover the possibly criminal origins of Russiagate.

It WILL be hungrily consumed to the exclusion of nearly everything else, like the coup the resignation of Evo Morales in Bolivia.

When one understands the extent of corruption around the globe, one can see how transnational corporations and narco-states engage in organized criminal activity at the highest levels.

What state/corporate media in the US won’t tell you about Bolivia is that its incredibly rich in Lithium deposits, and wouldn’t you know it, earlier this month, Morales cancelled a Lithium deal:

The Morales move on Nov. 4 to cancel the December 2018 agreement with Germany’s ACI Systems Alemania (ACISA) came after weeks of protests from residents of the Potosí area. The region has 50% to 70% of the world’s lithium reserves in the Salar de Uyuni salt flats.

Among other clients, ACISA provides batteries to Tesla; Tesla’s stock rose Monday after the weekend.

Yeah, nothing to see here. IMPEACHMENT! IMPEACHMENT!!!

But don’t impeach Trump for sending US troops to the Syrian oil fields, setting the stage for an explicit transnational corporate raping of Syria’s natural resources.

And don’t impeach Trump for rewarding Acosta with a Cabinet position after Acosta gave Trump’s (And Bill Clinton’s) pedo-pal, Epstein, a sweet heart deal for sexual assaulting underage girls.

Raping and destroying countries is no different than raping and destroying the lives of young, often poor girls hired to give massages at Mar-a-Lago. Trump can be credibly accused of both, but that’s not why impeachment hearings are beginning tomorrow.

What, you don’t remember the sudden cancellation of the woman who claimed Trump raped her when she was 13? This is from the Guardian, and the date of the piece is important–Thursday, November 3rd, 2016:

A woman who is suing Donald Trump for allegedly raping her as a child abandoned a plan to speak publicly on Wednesday, citing death threats.

The woman, known by the pseudonym Jane Doe, hid from media who were invited to her lawyer’s Los Angeles office for a press conference in which she was expected to reveal her identity.

Instead, her attorney, Lisa Bloom, cancelled the event in a brief, apologetic statement to a phalanx of cameras.

“Jane Doe has received numerous threats today as have all the Trump accusers that I have represented. She has decided she is too afraid to show her face. She has been here all day, ready to do it, but unfortunately she is in terrible fear. We’re going to have to reschedule. I apologize to all of you who came. I have nothing further.”

Hours earlier Bloom, a prominent attorney, stoked such anticipation with the announced press conference that her firm’s website crashed. With just six days to the election and polls showing a tightening race the stakes could scarcely be higher.

For anyone who has looked into how these allegations connect to Jeffrey Epstein, the idea that it was “anticipation” that crashed the firm’s website is absurd. It was a major denial of service attack.

But going down that rabbit hole is such a bummer. No, grab the popcorn and get ready for IMPEACHMENT!!!

If you’re looking for a different kind of analysis on what’s wrong, this post, titled Now That We’ve Incentivized Sociopaths–Guess What Happens Next from Charles Smith at Of Two Minds is worth checking out. Here’s a taste:

If the system incentivizes conscience-free sociopaths more than it incentivizes those creating real value, the system will eventually fall into the equivalent of Gresham’s law (“bad money drives out good money”): the con-men and fraudsters will drive out entrepreneurs with a conscience who create real value for customers, investors and society at large.

Enjoy your Congressional hearings tomorrow everyone!

by William Skink

After Trump’s shocking election, his supporters claimed a “deep state” was working against his efforts to enact policy, like removing troops from Syria. The idea of a deep state was at first mocked and ridiculed, but an interesting phenomenon at the New York Times has occurred over the years.

Thanks to the German blogger who runs Moon of Alabama, the transformation of the New York Times from dismissing that a deep state exists to embracing this deep state is well documented.

Here is how b ends his post:

If the deep state is allowed to make its own policies against the will of the elected officials why should we bother with holding elections?

The Democrats are stupid to applaud this and to even further these schemes. They are likely to regain the presidency in 2024. What will they do when all the Civil Service functionaries Trump will have installed by then organize to ruin their policies?

Personally, I think Trump is a terrible, dangerous president, but unlike those who have come down with TDS, I don’t think the ends justify the means in taking him out.

Democrats seem to have taken a Vietnam-era mentality that in order to save America from Trump the results of an election need to be destroyed by unelected military personnel and the technocrats of the permanent state.

by William Skink

America is great. We may not have a corporate media willing to tell us, the public, about a prolific sexual predator, but we do have a brave brewer of beer willing to capitalize on the widely held assumption that Epstein didn’t kill himself by printing that statement on the bottom of their cans.

Tomorrow is Veterans Day and our great isolationist President, Donald J. Trump, has amazingly dropped any lingering pretense that US imperialism has an altruistic bone in its cyborg body. American troops will remain in Syria to protect oil from…the Syrians? Does it even register in the collective American mind how fucked up this admission is?

by William Skink

When it comes to the weekly pacing of news, Fridays are good days to put something out that needs to be reported, but for some reason warrants a low-readership Friday data-dump.

I’m not saying that’s the case in the Missoulian reporting the death Linda Bolin, a 58 year old woman who apparently drowned last Sunday in the river behind Imagine Brewery, but I will say I find some things about location and timing to be curious about whatever happened.

First, the report:

Linda Bolin was found downriver from where she fell into the water, possibly from a wheelchair, said Missoula County Undersheriff Rich Maricelli.

In a text on Thursday, Missoula Police Department spokesman Travis Welch said she was reported to have fallen near the 1100 block of West Broadway. Maricelli said she had been behind Imagine Brewing drinking with friends.

There could be some dots to link up here somewhere, but it is Friday night, so let’s just forget about this for now and get on with the weekend.

Good night.