Holy Basil
18 May 2019
Combat-Veteran Congresswoman and Army Major Tulsi Gabbard appeared on Joe Rogan this week to confirm her candidacy for President of America, proving to be the only candidate articulating the vociferous anti-war sentiments of war-fatigued American soldiers. During her 16 years in military service, Major Gabbard has deployed twice to the Middle East as a combat medic, and today continues to serve in the Hawaii National Guard. Unlike virtually everyone else running for the Oval Office in 2020, Tulsi understands from first-hand experience and sacrifice what it actually means to be in war. She has also served for over 6 years on the Foreign Affairs and Armed Services Committees, working intimately on issues related to National Security and Foreign Policy. It seems only logical that anyone tasked with the responsibility of serving as Commander-In-Chief of the most powerful military in the world should be required to be a veteran of the military they command.
Sublime Madness
25 May 2019
Hope has two beautiful daughters: Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are and the Courage to change them. Whether it be the looting and pillaging of Wall Street, the war profiteering of the arms industry, or the corruption of health care and educational institutions, it is time for the oppressed to build movements that are unrepentingly antagonistic to every aspect of corporate power. Every action must be directed to dismantling the structures that oppress us, and that will come only by building movements that grasp that it is not our job to take power. Power is the problem. The question is not, “How do you get good people to rule?” Most people attracted to power are at best mediocre or venal. The question is, “How do you make the powerful frightened of you?” That is the only question, and as Fredrick Douglass understood, that is the only way power responds. Every leap toward justice and equality throughout American history was made by movements that frightened the powerful.
Publishing Is Not A Crime
08 June 2019
Until now, the Justice Department has always distinguished between government employees who leak classified information and outlets that publish it, due to protections guaranteed by the First Amendment. The purpose of the First Amendment was never to lionize The Press into a privileged institution. It protects all persons in their right to print, speak, write, report and publish what they will. But the DOJ’s unprecedented decision to indict Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange for violating the Espionage Act seeks to penalize Assange for simply “Encouraging and Inducing” Chelsea Manning’s disclosures. Despite rampant innuendo from the corporate media, the charges against Assange have nothing to do with Wikileaks’ publication of Emails from the DNC and Hillary’s private server, but for revealing the war crimes of the Bush Administration. The Espionage Act has always been used as a weapon used to attack free speech and dissent, but now threatens to finally bring about Orwellian censorship.
You’re Saying It Wrong
15 June 2019
Words have the power to shape thought. They form the basis of society from everyday interactions to our highest ideals. Since our ability to think and communicate clearly is what most directly separates egalitarian nations from totalitarian dictatorships, attacks on language always constitute attempts toward authoritarian overreach. The Corporate mercenaries running our world get away with their pillaging by burying their crimes in euphemism and convoluted sentence structures, thereby making terrible atrocities sound acceptable. The word “Torture” becomes “Enhanced Interrogation”; Theft becomes Civil Asset Forfeiture; Genocide becomes Ethnic Cleansing. Such deliberate irony corrupts the very ideas our words refer to, leaving us in a hypnotic state of cognitive dissonance in which we are compelled to disregard our own perception in place of the officially dictated version of events. The result is a world in which even the privacy of one’s own thought process is violated.
Tertia Optio
14 September 2019
Investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen has authored six books addressing a military-industrial complex gone berserk and desperate to cover up its actions. But her book on Area 51 seems to have made the biggest splash, expressing a very different and far more disturbing story of the infamous Top Secret base. The consensus history regarding the 1947 crash in Roswell, NM indicates an extraterrestrial mishap seized and covered up by government agents who stashed all the evidence in the Nevada desert. But Jacobsen’s investigation leads into a far darker territory, demonstrating how far government bureaucracies are willing to go to preserve their supremacy in military and intelligence operations. The overall thrust of her work encourages us all to sharpen our own media literacy and learn how to better read between the lines of disinformation and doublespeak.
Dreamland
14 September 2019
21 year-old Matty Roberts didn’t think his “Storm Area 51” facebook page would result in a visit from the FBI, but 2 million online RSVP’s prompted an emergency response from authorities. Though the organizers of Alienstock announced the cancellation of the festival, curiosity regarding Deep Underground Military Bases (DUMBs) continues to grow. Well-known installations like Area 51 are only the tip of a monumental iceberg. At least 129 DUMBs occupy the United States, constituting a subterranean empire that costs trillions of dollars per year, reaches miles below the earth’s surface, and employs an army of contractors, soldiers and intelligence personnel. What is taking place at these bases that is so secretive it must be kept underground? Researcher Richard Dolan describes the level of technological inequality enjoyed by the military-industrial-complex as a “runaway civilization” so far ahead of known industrialized capabilities as to be unrecognizable by most American citizens today.
The Horse’s Mouth
21 September 2019
In 1989 a brilliant young technician named Bob Lazar snuck some friends into a top secret test flight at a classified military base no one had ever heard of. The juvenile mistake infuriated his superiors, and would lead him to become one of the greatest whistleblowers of all time. Lazar’s legendary television appearance with George Knapp made “Area 51” the household name it is today. He told of an underground military base deep in the Nevada desert where science fiction becomes science fact: corporate military operations involving the back-engineering of captured flying saucers. Many dismissed the story as a hoax. The trouble with Bob is, the more you look into his story, the more obvious it becomes that he’s telling the truth. Several proofs haunt skeptics, and additional evidence continues to corroborate what Bob said from day one: that he worked on “an anti-matter reactor that allows spaceships to produce their own gravitational fields.” A technology that could change the world.
Oppressed cultures always see through the illusions of their authoritarian masters eventually and upon realizing their enslavement, revolt. But clever oligarchs all too often maintain their power by anticipating rebellions and controlling their flow. Ineffectual protests that fail to inconvenience the levers of power have become the norm, as have the “protest permits” that accompany them. With hundreds of competing ideologies, it is clear that everyone has a different idea of what the next world should look like. But we risk repeating history if we continue to impose individual utopian ideals onto each other by force. No system will work for everyone, which is why returning to an Iroquois Nation model of harmoniously coexistent factions can only manifest in the absence of centralized authority. The only unacceptable outcome would be for present trends to continue. Let us resist the temptations that ruined the Baby Boomers who bailed on the revolution for houses, cars and stair-masters.
The Drugs Have Won
12 October 2019
With more incarcerated citizens per capita than any other country on the face of the planet, America’s prisons depend on draconian drug laws to maintain a steady stream of cheap labor for the world’s most powerful corporations. While altering your own perceptions and perspectives seems like a human birthright, such experiences also stand in direct threat of the careful programming our masters have spent billions instilling into our nervous systems through decades of obligatory advertising, television propaganda, and public school indoctrination. The corporate forces who took our social systems hostage don’t want you thinking too much. To control orthodox thought they legally mandate what drugs are allowed to influence consciousness. In this way the Drug War has become a war of religious suppression. Meanwhile, government agents repeatedly smuggle hundreds of tons of cocaine and opiates into America while major banking institutions like HSBC launder the profits of major drug cartels.
Lemme Hit That TIF Pipe Again
19 October 2019
It seems the controversial Riverfront Triangle decision was fast-tracked this week by Missoula Mayor John Engen, who precipitated the vote nearly a week early of its scheduled time. Engen’s decision effectively raids Missoula’s public coffers for Nick Checota’s private gain. $16.5 million of Missoula’s tax money will be diverted to constructing yet another downtown hotel as well as yet another concert venue, owned by the same entertainment monopoly that owns most of the others: Logjam Presents, owned by Wisconsin millionaire Nick Checota. Railroading public meetings to deliberately exclude taxpayers who pay for these monstrosities smacks of the despicable crony-capitalism Americans have grown to hate. Engen and Checota succeed in turning an already controversial project into a scandal. As Checota attempts to Jam the Log of his monopoly down our ear holes and into our pocketbooks, many wonder if the city really has workers best interests in mind. Can’t that money be better spent?
Go Jam Your Log Some Place Else
26 October 2019
Desperate to retain capital investment, cities now entice developers with “geobribes” like Tax Increment Financing (TIF); a development incentive wherein cities designate areas “blighted” and issue bonds to pay for upgrades before handing it all over to private developers to build condos and theaters. Missoula awarded $1.5 million to Stockman Bank in TIF money. But since Missoula didn’t have the money in hand, Stockman Bank loaned Missoula the $1.5 million at 3.8% interest, to be given back to Stockman Bank as a subsidy they didn’t need at taxpayer expense. Now Mayor Engen threatens to further line the pockets of Wisconsin millionaire Nick Checota with more than $16 million in TIF. It turns out that all the controversial TIF developments have one thing in common – their owners contributed to Mayor Engen’s campaign. Just pay John and you can screw the taxpayers all you want. If we can afford to give Nick Checota $16 million, we can afford to fix our potholes and address poverty.
Keep Missoula Affordable
02 November 2019
The sudden closure of the Old Post American Legion Hall this past Thursday illustrates the heartbreaking reality of our desperate economic climate. Dozens of other Missoula staples including the Uptown Diner, Palace Lounge and Stage 112 have been forced to close their businesses in recent years, but so too has it gone with homeowners who could no longer afford their property taxes. A huge proportion of these local establishments and citizens are squeezed out of neighborhoods they grew up in, while wealthy, out-of-state developers take advantage of our generosity and dramatically gentrify entire districts of the city at our expense. Controversial TIF projects have exploded the cost of housing in Missoula, pricing locals out of their own neighborhoods and saddling the City under decades of debt. Tax monies are being used to subsidize the rich while our schools and roads deteriorate. All this has contributed to one of the most heated City Council elections in the city’s history.
Salute to Armistice
09 November 2019
Monday the 11th of November 2019 marks the centennial of Armistice Day. The observance originates with the close of the First World War, which ended after a cease-fire, or armistice, between Germany and the Allied Nations that eventually paved the way for the formal peace negotiations at Versailles. The initial cease-fire that started it all was affected on the 11th of November, 1918. One year later President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed November 11th 1919 as the very first official commemoration of Armistice Day. So at 11 am on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the nation halted all business activities and transactions for two minutes in a symbolic gesture to acknowledge the fallen and honor veterans. Former Air Force drone pilot Sergeant Brandon Bryant joins us alongside Army Sergeant Lee Adler, who serves now as part of a special team working directly under Montana’s adjutant general, tasked with outreach and support to prevent veteran suicides.
Ready The Pitchforks
16 November 2019
Experimental evidence from UC Berkeley strongly confirms that rich people are more likely to break the law while driving, cheat in a game of chance, lie during negotiations and endorse unethical behavior, including stealing at work. Conversely, take someone who is rich and make them feel poor, and they become more generous. But clever fat cats merely exploit the window dressing of charity to further enrich and empower themselves. Nick Checota’s LogJam Foundation is a good case in point. While Checota’s $50,000 Public Library wealth transfer is being framed as a “donation”, the real incentives for parking money in foundations involve huge tax benefits. And despite Logjam’s claim that they are “committed to the sustainability of the community”, they demonstrate an utter contempt for said community by depleting the Missoula Redevelopment Agency piggy bank by $16.5 million. This week’s $50k “donation” seems little more than a public relations smokescreen to obfuscate the biggest taxpayer giveaway in Montana State history.
First They Came For The Homeless
23 November 2019
While panhandlers and “transients” rapidly become a more common site on our streets, many municipalities nationwide are vying to criminalize homelessness altogether. They forget that while today its “them” tomorrow it could be us. 70% of Americans are just one paycheck away from becoming homeless. 20% of American children live in poverty. And 1 out of every 6 Americans now depends on anti-poverty programs like SNAP. There are now more than half-a-million homeless Americans wandering our streets everyday. But wealthy business owners continue to propose punishments for being poor in a system with ever-fewer income opportunities. How long do we need to travel down this road before we see where it leads? With human labor becoming increasingly obsolete, it is only a matter of time before the rest of us find ourselves unemployed and in-turn homeless. Our system has deteriorated into a ruthless game of musical chairs, lending itself to the mentalities upon which concentration-camps are born.
The Antidote To Despair
30 November 2019
America is plagued by an array of pathologies that arise from hopelessness, despair, and the seizure of civil society. The suicide epidemic is a direct manifestation of a society ravaged by corporate pillaging. Neither of the two corporate-owned political parties address our systemic problems, and the obscene concentration of resources in an incredibly small number of hands reveals America’s greatest hypocrisy. Competition disappears before our eyes as Amazon secures total monopoly over online commerce and distribution. If Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods and the Washington Post didn’t frighten us, their wider move into the global business of law enforcement and security certainly should. Our antitrust commissions abdicate their responsibilities by allowing this level of consolidation of power to continue when 70% of the population can no longer generate enough income to afford basic necessities. Until our corporate coup d’état is reversed these diseases will only grow.
Voluntary Confinement
07 December 2019
Cloudy with a Chance of Gentrification
14 December 2019
The influx of suburbanites into the Rocky Mountain region has created a process of rural gentrification in which long-term residents are increasingly being displaced. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s 2019 report, the average worker in Montana needs to make at least $16 an hour, working 75 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, just to be able to afford a modest, 2-bedroom apartment. A University of Montana Bureau of Business and Economic Research study from 2018 reported that when median wages are compared to median home prices, Missoula housing is already less affordable than Denver, Seattle, Portland and Miami. Missoula’s housing crisis is now so nationally recognized that WBUR Boston featured it as part of their coverage on western cities struggling with housing. Missoula is even ranked 33rd in the US for income disparity. Is this the kind of Missoula we want to leave for our children? A technocratic utopia where the wealthy spit on the locals who built this town?
America’s Only Prohibited Religion
28 December 2019
Western society has only recently begun to accept the merit of indigenous wisdom that stretches back to time immemorial concerning psychedelic plant medicines. And though psychedelics have become trendy throughout pop culture in recent years, the psychedelic experience itself remains a mystery still for society at large. But the psychedelic experience is as central to understanding our humanness as having sex or birthing children or accepting responsibilities. And yet it is illegal. This prohibition deliberately thwarts our collective potential, renders the citizenry infantile and undermines America’s freedom of religious expression. Our culturally immature empire allows its inhabitants to wander the sanctioned playpen of ordinary consciousness, but boundary-dissolving hallucinogens that provide a sense of unity with our fellow humans are somehow forbidden. If we are not sovereign to make free choices over our own consciousness then we are not free in any sense of the word.
Outer Limits Radio Show 
Abolish Wall Street
22 June 2019
Cold Water
29 June 2019
The Lunar Set
20 July 2019
Flaw or Feature?
27 July 2019
Abandon the “I”
03 August 2019
We Are The Music Makers
10 August 2019
Data Pheromones
24 August 2019