Month: June 2023

by Travis Mateer

What the hell do stylized stickers of Andre the Giant have to do with Jeffrey Epstein? I’ll get to that, but first, allow me to establish the NASA/JPL connection to Missoula via our former Councilman, Bryan von Lossberg. Here’s his NASA/JPL bio (emphasis mine):

Yes, that’s right, Bryan von Rocket Scientist is the Missoula link that takes us to Pasadena, California, where Jack Parsons combined sex magick with science to make rockets for the US military. In the show I’m watching, which is based on Parson’s biography, Strange Angel, a wild party at Jack’s “Parsonage” estate to woo a skeptical General ends up compromising the General when Jack catches him getting cozy with his own mother.

While this fictionalized, one-off version of Jack’s infamous house parties makes for entertaining content, I think it hints at an actual FUNCTION of the wild parties, which was to compromise targets in order to have controlling leverage over them. Sound familiar?

We don’t have to make a huge leap to get from Jack Parsons to Jeffrey Epstein, it’s actually more a matter of skipping merrily from Frank Malina, to his son, to his son’s wife, to his wife’s sister, then BANG! We arrive at Jeffrey Epstein. Did you catch all that? Ok, let me slow it down by putting Frank Malina into clearer focus.

This picture is of Robert Maxwell’s brood, the family that Frank Malina’s son married into. And here is some context on Frank Malina (emphasis mine):

We also looked at the family tree of her other brother-in-law, an American astrophysicist whose genius rocket scientist father Frank Malina at the Jet Propulsion Lab in California pioneered what would become NASA before he fled to France with J. Edgar Hoover’s G-Men on his heels.

For Ghislaine, presumably, outer space is not an option. But in point of fact, she does know how to operate a lot of exotic machinery. In addition to speaking four languages and holding a degree from Oxford, she’s a trained private helicopter pilot, a submersible pilot and qualified to operate undersea robots. Much was made of the latter qualifications when she was fund-raising for her now defunct TerraMar oceanic environmental project, which shuttered after Epstein’s arrest last month.

With reports of Epstein’s voracious sexual appetite, and Ghislaine’s known role procuring young women for the Epstein operation, how did she find the time to become proficient with such an array of exotic skills?

I don’t really care about the answer to that question, I’m more interested in the FUNCTION of oceans to the psychopath-class. And this is where the sticker guy comes in.

Isn’t this curious? The guy who made BOTH the famous Obama hope poster AND the Andre the Giant OBEY image ALSO came up with the logo for the Terramar Project. Hmmmm….

Here’s another fun tweet to take this artist all the way up to our current President’s piece of shit son, the one who can do whatever he wants with only the faintest breath of a consequence:

For some context on the sister-in-law, Christine Maxwell, here’s a bit of info from Wikipedia:

Christine Yvonne Malina-Maxwell (born 16 August 1950) is a British Internet content pioneer and educator. She is the creator and co-founder of Magellan, co-founder of the software company Chiliad and the author of several books. She was the Program Manager of Learning Technologies at the University of Texas at Dallas.

In today’s earlier post about Jack Parsons, I mentioned L. Ron Hubbard, a dedicated occultist himself who participated in the “Babylon Working”, which directly preceded the first UFO sighting by Kenneth Arnold near Mt. Rainier. But did you know Hubbard LOVED what being on the ocean’s international waters afforded him?

Here is an account of Hubbard’s time at sea:

In 1967, L. Ron Hubbard was fifty-six years old, the father of seven children and a grandfather several times over. With a loyal wife, a home in England and four children still at school, he was at an age when most men put down roots and plan nothing more ambitious than a comfortable retirement. But he was not like most men.

In 1967, L. Ron Hubbard raised a private navy, appointed himself Commodore, donned a dashing uniform of his own design and set forth on an extraordinary odyssey, leading a fleet of ships across the oceans variously pursued by the CIA, the FBI, the international press and a miscellany of suspicious government and maritime agencies. He had begun making secret plans to set up the ‘Sea Organization’ on his return from Rhodesia in the summer of 1966, shrouding the whole operation with layer upon layer of duplicity. His intention was that the public should believe that he was returning to his former ‘profession’, that of an explorer, and accordingly, in September 1966, Hubbard announced his resignation as President of the Church of Scientology. This charade was supported by the explanation that the church was sufficiently well established to survive without his leadership. In preparation for his anticipated resignation a special committee had been set up to investigate how much the church owed its founder; it was decided the figure was around $13 million, but Hubbard, in his benevolence, forgave the debt.

This is long after Jack Parsons died in an explosion on June 17th, 1952. Here is an account of the days leading up to Parsons death from Wikipedia (emphasis mine):

Parsons and Cameron decided to travel to Mexico for a few months, both for a vacation and for Parsons to take up a job opportunity establishing an explosives factory for the Mexican government. They hoped that this would facilitate a move to Israel, where they could start a family, and where Parsons could bypass the U.S. government to recommence his rocketry career. He was particularly disturbed by the presence of the FBI, convinced that they were spying on him.[149]

On June 17, 1952, a day before their planned departure, Parsons received a rush order of explosives for a film set and began to work on it in his home laboratory.[150] An explosion destroyed the lower part of the building, during which Parsons sustained mortal wounds. His right forearm was amputated, his legs and left arm were broken and a hole was torn in the right side of his face.[151] Despite these critical injuries, Parsons was found conscious by the upstairs lodgers. He tried to communicate with the arriving ambulance workers, who rushed him to the Huntington Memorial Hospital, where he was declared dead approximately thirty-seven minutes after the explosion.[151] When his mother, Ruth, learned of his death, she immediately took a fatal overdose of barbiturates.[152][50]

The emphasized parts of this excerpt should speak for themselves, but for me it’s actually the first time I’ve seen this intent to move to Israel alongside the reason that led to the fatal explosion, which was a “rush order” for a film set. Wow.

I think two posts on this fascinating subject in one day is plenty, so I’ll leave it there for now, but will definitely revisit this soon.

If you would like to support my work, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) is one way to do it, or you can make a donation at my about page.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

I’d like to thank a regular commentator for expressing genuine befuddlement at my opinions on climate change and other areas where I deviate from his progressive orthodoxy. Here is the comment from J. Kevin Hunt that inspired today’s post:

This post is NOT one of my usual hyper-local posts–a strategy I’ve developed to keep myself from getting caught up in national/global narrative entanglements–and I’m writing it because I believe our little mountain town in Montana is a microcosm of much larger things happening. How else can I explain running into the alleged homeless grandson of Norris Bradbury, or realizing the most dangerous woman in Montana once worked as a student librarian for Dr. Hynek?

Mr. Hunt is a lawyer by profession, so solid arguments backed by facts that can win court cases is his jam. I am a writer with a keen interest in identifying how my artistic sensibilities have been sculpted by my culture, and in that pursuit I have done some serious deep-diving into the arena of the occult, especially a certain occultist who was ALSO a scientist and one of the original founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where one our own City Council members in Missoula once worked.

Occult books, like the one pictured above, are nearly impossible to find, and when you do find a copy online, they aren’t cheap. But books are where some very important seeds were first planted many decades ago, and those seeds are now bearing strange fruit. And it’s only going to get stranger.

To get an idea of what I’m talking about, episode 514 on Crow777 Radio does a fantastic job of looking at, then breaking down, the origins of “Science Fiction”. After listening to that episode, I suggest watching the series Strange Angel, which is based on the book about the life of the occultist/scientist seen above, John Whiteside Parsons–or, as he was known to his friends and fellow occultists, Jack.

Another VERY important figure connected to Jack Parsons is more well-known, considering his early foray into Science Fiction ended up turning into an actual religion. But did you know this important figure grew up in Helena, Montana?

For those who don’t know about the relationship between Hubbard and Parsons, here’s the gist: together, with a shared love interest named Marjorie, they participated in a months-long ritual called the Babylon Working in Southern California, based on some fucked up magick their predecessor, Aleister Crowley, had tried enacting, with some alleged success, in 1918.

The lore that has grown around this event posits a doorway to another world was actually ripped open by these fucking idiots, and when Jack Parsons blew himself up not long after, the ability to CLOSE this doorway died with him.

A metaphysical signpost I use in my own inquiries was first named by Carl Jung as synchronicity. Here’s a recent example of synchronicity I experienced over the weekend to give you an idea of what I glean from such things.

In the show about Jack Parsons, a scientist working on the jet-fuel-problem says what’s needed is something that can be both a liquid AND a solid substance. The non-visionaries who don’t engage in Crowleyian sex magick are stumped, but NOT JACK! Nope, according to the show’s interpretation of the book, Jack has a beast-inspired vision while his shop is burning down of a substance that can act as both. And the substance? Asphalt.

Now, here’s a copy of the Missoulian’s Sunday edition. The synchronicity is pretty obvious:

I take a few things from this synchronicity. The first is the train derailment aspect of the asphalt story, which brings to mind the Ohio train derailment and all the absolutely bizarre synchronicities around the book/movie White Noise. Then there’s the image of Zooey Zephyr, Montana’s now FAMOUS trans-actist and State Representative.

For me, the correlation is with a subject I find disturbing, and that’s the idea of Transhumanism–a subject Zephyr is supposedly interested in. Who else is interested in Transhumanism? Oh, you know, just people with BILLIONS of dollars and a deeply deranged fear of death.

Which brings me to an early work of “fiction” by L. Ron Hubbard, titled Death’s Deputy, and how it relates to a miracle experienced by Sean Stevenson’s father, Dr. Kenneth Stevenson. Are you ready?

As I was getting to know the family of the man murdered in Missoula under mysterious circumstances, I was told about a defining moment in the life of Dr. Kenneth Stevenson in the skies over Vietnam. This highly accomplished fighter pilot, who graduated from the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs (where I lived for 9 months), was a goner and he knew it. The enemy missile was locked-on, and with the few remaining seconds of his young life counting down, Ken Stevenson prayed.

The missile hit, but didn’t detonate, and a man of faith was born during those moments in the skies over Vietnam, while the military conveniently lost the footage of what they couldn’t conventionally explain.

Now, here’s the plot of L. Ron Hubbard’s book (emphasis mine):

For more context on Dr. Kenneth Stevenson and how synchronicity functions in my research, this post about the movie Southland Tales is worth checking out. I also recommend my post Welcome To The Weird Northwest.

I’ll leave it there, for now, but later today I’ll have ANOTHER post, titled Six Degrees Of Jeffrey Epstein, Missoula Edition, Featuring Submarines, Stickers, And A Crazy Occultist Who Dreamed Of Making A Moon Shot!, so stay tuned! I’ll also note that the just-announced candidate for the Senate, Tim Sheehy, is a Navy boy, like Hubbard, and the CEO of Bridger Aerospace. Interesting.

If you appreciate my unconventional research methods, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) is one way to support my work, while making a donation at my about page is another.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

When I hit record on the south side of the California bridge, I didn’t know today was scheduled for Lion’s Park to be cleared out. This area, right next to Youth Homes, is where the “lion’s share” (sorry, couldn’t help myself) of people relocated to after the encampment on West Broadway was shut down and fenced off, and THAT encampment was the one that reemerged after the Russel bridge area was cleared out. Here’s the footage:

https://vimeo.com/840990656?share=copy

This bridge is the one where Forrest “Clay” Salcido was murdered by two teens many years ago, a crime that main assailant received a 100 years in prison for in March of 2009, just one year after I started working at the Poverello Center in Missoula. This is also the bridge where Buck gave me a blessing that I truly found heart warming.

Who is Buck? He’s the guy someone asked me on Twitter if I knew just a few hours after I recorded this footage. Because that’s how things go for me Zoom Town.

Another person I am VERY familiar with–both when she had housing, allowing her to enable her criminal brood, and after–was recently pictured by the Missoulian. Before I get to her sociopathic son, here’s the image I’m sure tugs on plenty of well-meaning heart strings who don’t actually know the history of some of these “victims”.

I actually turned off my camera before I intended because I say Kathy ahead of me and I wanted to talk to her more than I wanted to keep filming my brief bike adventure. I’m sure someone eavesdropping would have thought that I am a terrible and very cruel person as I cut her short before she could get the sob stories going. Why? Because I just wanted to let her know that her son, John Skinner, is SO infamous that even the Sheriff of Mineral County, Ryan Funke, perked up when I said his name.

Here’s the picture I circulated in the fall of 2021 after writing up this post about John’s self-admitted meth dealing:

While I was biking around, I made sure to stop and say thank you to a young guy working for Parks and Rec. I also thank law enforcement from time to time, which I know leaves some of my more liberal friends a bit confounded.

The guy I’m thinking of, J. Kevin Hunt, recently provided the inspiration for TWO posts already scheduled for tomorrow about a scientist who also an occultist. I guarantee they will be fascinating reads.

If you appreciate the tenacity of my local reporting, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) is one way to support my work, while making a donation at my about page is another.

I don’t normally put out this much material in one week, but there’s a lot of crazy energy in the air, so I’m finding it kind of unavoidable. Sunday’s post is ALSO nearly done, and features an excerpt from the book about that scientist/occultist you won’t want to miss, so stay tuned!

And, as always, thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

This week the death certificate information regarding the death of Joey Thompson has finally been released. Why did it take nearly 2 months? Possibly because the court process I’ve been calling the HAMMER OF MANDAMUS had a hearing coming up this week, so I think preparing for that was taking up a lot of Sheriff Funke’s time.

Here are the very unsatisfactory results, along with the lackluster response from the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office (emphasis definitely mine):

Thompson’s death certificate, filed last week, lists his cause of death as drowning in a period of minutes in the river. However, in a space on the certificate for an explanation of how the injury occurred, it says “undetermined.”

The manner of death (i.e. whether it was an accident, homicide, suicide or natural) is also listed as “could not be determined”.

According to a news release from the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office sent out in April, detectives followed information on the events leading up to and after Thompson’s disappearance. They believe no criminal activity was suspected in his disappearance, the news release stated. 

Mineral County Deputy Coroner Jack Hughes directed questions about the “undetermined” language on Thompson’s death certificate to the Missoula County Sheriff’s Office.

When asked for more information on Thompson’s disappearance, Missoula County Sheriff spokesperson Jeannette Smith said, “We have released all available information regarding Joseph Thompson,” but confirmed the investigation is ongoing. 

When I spoke with Sheriff Funke last Friday, I acknowledged that, being a journalist and all, there might be a good reason why I haven’t received a call back from Detective Deibert after my initial phone call/voicemail on May 4th, but if there IS an investigation happening, then maybe some communication with Missoula County Commissioners would help.

In other cases, if there are person(s) of interest who have disappeared, or have otherwise made themselves unavailable to investigators, appeals to the public can be made through local media. Just a thought.

I had another thought about the claim that ALL AVAILABLE INFORMATION has been released, and that thought was along the lines of kinda sounds like bullshit, so I sent off an email:

If you would like to know more about this case, this post from last Friday has links to 7 additional articles I’ve written since Joey went missing on April 11th. I’m sure there will be more to report as CITIZENS do the investigative work DETECTIVES should be doing.

If you’d like to help, Travis’ Impact Fund (TIF) is one way to support my work, or you can make a donation at my about page.

Thanks for reading!

by Travis Mateer

The picture above is a “leaning bench”, one of two that exist ONLY near the Poverello Center on West Broadway. I wrote about this idiotic response to bad behavior around public bus vestibules when they were first introduced 4 years ago. Earlier this week I revisited that blog post, along with a few others, as Mountain Line was back in the news celebrating acquiring a bunch of money to build a NEW HOME for buses.

Because public buses need homes to!

The first comment I made on Wednesday, though, wasn’t about buses and benches. It was during the Budget and Finance Committee meeting, and had to do with County vs. City political rhetoric and the failure of homeless programs, like the Salcido Drop-In Center and the Authorized Camping Site. Here’s the comment:

https://vimeo.com/840566667?share=copy

One thing I said that was NOT completely accurate is that TWO teens were involved in the lethal assault against a homeless man over the weekend in Kalispell. While that might be technically true, more reporting indicates the assault was allegedly committed by just one of the young men, while the other young man was actually trying to intervene. From the link (emphasis mine):

A witness at the scene showed law enforcement a short video and officers identified the two suspects as Fleck and 18-year-old Wiley Meeker of Somers. Fleck and Meeker later admitted to police in separate interviews that they were inside a truck at the gas station when a man approached the vehicle.

Court documents state Fleck admitted to getting out of the truck and assaulting Bryan. Meeker told police he pulled Fleck away from Bryan and then left the scene. A search of a home where Fleck was found turned up a pair of boots with suspected blood stains in the garage.

After making this comment, which was less than 3 minutes and mostly tone-appropriate, I went to get some food and ended up in a tone-inappropriate conversation with a former client from the old Poverello days. My escalated tone was NOT directed at the former client, but it inspired a staff member from Worden’s to come make sure everything was ok.

Part of my LOUD conversation entailed what I’ll call “hostile nostalgia” over the previous owner of this business, Tim France, and how France refused to stop selling gut-rot booze to street people 8 years ago. I mentioned this effort in another post recently, but here’s a Missoulian article from 2015 for some better detail about how the Mayor’s Downtown Advisory Commission attempted to get Worden’s and other alcohol retailers to voluntarily stop selling gut-rot booze. From the second link (emphasis mine):

With warmer weather just ahead, the Mayor’s Downtown Advisory Commission may ask retailers to voluntarily remove certain alcoholic beverages from their shelves – a move supporters believe would help reduce problematic behavior in the city’s core, including intoxication, aggressive panhandling and disorderly conduct.

If the commission’s proposal to curb the sale of single-serve containers wins support – along with a plan to create a no-sell list naming the worst offenders – it would join a slate of tools advocates are now using to improve downtown Missoula’s reputation.

As presented to the Downtown Business Improvement District’s board of directors last week, the Responsible Alcohol Retailer Program would ask merchants to voluntarily remove Steele Reserve, Colt 45 and Natural Ice from the shelves.

And how did Tim France–who was ALSO a board member for the Business Improvement District at the time–respond?

As proposed, the program would take place downtown, where the problematic behavior is largely focused. Within the district, employees would be trained to better deal with potential issues that could arise by not selling liquor to those on the list.

Tim France, owner of Worden’s Market and a BID board member, likened the training to the state’s serve-safe program. He voiced support for the no-sell list, though he remains skeptical of the proposed single-serve guidelines.

While the spirit of the proposal is good, France said, it may penalize retailers in the central business district who sell the listed items. It may also penalize those who obey the law and simply want to grab a beer to take home after work.

Worden’s was sold to someone else in 2019, so I’m not sure who the owner is today, but the staff member who chastised me for being loud wanted me to know there were kids inside his establishment, and GOD KNOWS we want our kids to be insulated from BAD THINGS, which I guess is why this dad wasn’t happy about Missoula’s drug crisis.

From the link (emphasis mine):

The officer spoke to the 911 caller who stated he observed a female “shooting up.” He said the incident was upsetting to him because his young child had witnessed it from inside the vehicle. He also forwarded several photos of Stephenson injecting a white syringe into her left arm to the officer.

On the spectrum of disturbing things witnessed by kids, this is bad, but not as bad as seeing a masturbator on the bus.

Yes, that’s right, the ZOOM TOWN bus service called Mountain Line was the focus of my SECOND comment of the day, and it was delivered at the Public Works and Mobility Committee meeting. Having vented and snacked, I was ready for round 2. Here it is:

https://vimeo.com/840580305?share=copy

After this comment (which I hope “CEO” Corey Aldridge sees as an opportunity to be accountable to his public shareholders) I went walking east, on Broadway, to verify if the “leaning benches” were still there and, guess what? They were!

In an attempt to provide a dramatic reenactment of a potential scenario involving someone with a medical condition that requires a sudden need to SIT DOWN, I recorded myself attempting to use a leaning bench. I don’t think a camera on a phone held at arm’s length provides the best angle, but here it goes anyways!

https://vimeo.com/840648772?share=copy

Do these leaning benches look like they’re adhering to our community’s JEDI principles? If these benches DO NOT promote justice, equity, diversity, or inclusion, then they GOTTA GO, right?

I would think the answer would be an enthusiastic RIGHT! Unless, that is, we’re living in Double-Standard Town, in which case I’m sure some kind of bullshit rationale can be devised. Or maybe a survey can be conducted–something to create the IMPRESSION that public opinion matters and principled consistency exist, even if they don’t.

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Thanks for reading!