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New Year's Eve, 2020
21 Plays4 years ago
M catches you up on the end of year conspiranews!
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction and New Sound Setup
00:00:04
Speaker
Hey! It's the podcast's guide to the conspiracy!
00:00:18
Speaker
Hi and welcome to the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, now in stunning mono-orial sound. Yes, due to the wise work of our patrons who quite happily give us money week in, week out, actually more like month in, month out, to fund this podcast. We now have a new podcasting set up, which allows us to record at the technologically superior specification of mono sound. So now what's coming from the left and coming from the right is exactly the same.
Ending the News Segment: Why?
00:00:48
Speaker
This is a little episode to basically bring us to the end of the year, because what a year it's been! And as you may have noted, if you're a patron, and not so much if you're not a patron, Josh and I think of retiring the news segment-y part of the podcast in 2021, in part because we're a little bit bored of doing the news, and 2020 was a bad year for doing news anyway.
00:01:16
Speaker
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to catch us up with things that have gone on in basically the US but also other parts of the world as well between our last proper episode and the end of the year and then next year we'll only be talking about news when we actually really think we need to talk about the news. The news is passe, the news is old, we don't need the news anymore.
Alex Jones Impersonation
00:01:38
Speaker
Also because I'm recording this
00:01:40
Speaker
Without Josh, I kinda feel like I'm doing my Alex Jones here. I'm gonna be sitting here with my paperwork. You won't believe the amount of paperwork I've got. Sitting here with my paperwork, reading headlines, and then like Alex Jones, not actually reading the story. Simply riffing on the headline, and trying to make some claim about there being a large concerted conspiracy by George Soros and Bill Gates.
00:02:00
Speaker
to cause trouble to the world as we know it. Believe me, it's all going topsy turvy and things are very, very bad out there, although possibly not for the reasons that Alex Jones thinks. Also, I really wanted to talk like Alex Jones. I could put this really useful filter on here to get a nice Alex Jones sound to things.
00:02:20
Speaker
Because basically, when you think of Alex Jones, you often think of a baby-faced killer. And that's what Alex Jones is. Now, that's not me saying that. That's a baby-faced killer making claims about Alex Jones. As you can see, they are legally distinct entities.
00:02:39
Speaker
in the same respect that when Alex Jones talks about dressing up as a frog to say that fluoride terms people gay, well that's just something that other people say. That's not something that Alex Jones is committed to. Or is it?
00:02:55
Speaker
Or maybe I should have said. Or is it? Yes, this is also going to be an excuse to do a whole bunch of experimentation with different filters and things that we have available. Which is why our friend the Puff Board might make an appearance from time to time, but not, not today. Anyway, let us now move on to the new segment with a Sting.
00:03:25
Speaker
isn't that pleasing. That's what your money's been spent on, patrons. Mono recording with stings. Let's play a different sting.
00:03:38
Speaker
Delightfully mono. So let's look to see what's been happening in the news since last we caught up.
Nashville Bombing and Conspiracy Theories
00:03:44
Speaker
Well, of course, the big story is, of course, that Nashville bombing that went on on Christmas Day. Now, Alex Jones has been making a lot of this in InfoWars, talking about how this actually might be a false flag attack committed by CNN.
00:03:59
Speaker
to create some kind of trouble for CNN and also some trouble for Trump. But what's interesting from the perspective of those of us who have been following conspiracy theories for a while is that it turns out that despite what authorities are saying,
00:04:14
Speaker
which was they had no reason to be looking into the bomber themselves. It turns out that over a year ago, the bomber's girlfriend alerted the authorities the fact he was making bombs. And the authorities' response to that was to give a cursory knock on the door of the suspect, who then didn't answer the door, so nothing else was done, and then tell the person who made the report that she needs psychological counseling.
00:04:39
Speaker
So, basically, there was someone saying, you need to keep an eye on this person, they're probably going to do a bad thing. And the authority's response was to say, no, you're suffering from hysteria. Maybe you should just calm down a little. So, that's fun, isn't it?
QAnon: Reinvention After Election Loss?
00:04:57
Speaker
Meanwhile, over on Ars Technica, they have an article called, Ruddlist QAnon May Reinvent Itself After US Election Warns Experts. Now, to turn my Alex Jones on here. Why are we listening to the voices of experts? I mean, really, what have experts done for us in 2020? I mean, those of us in El Tiro and New Zealand have suffered with the expertise of experts throughout the entire course of this pandemic. And basically nothing bad happened. So actually, maybe we should be listening to experts after all.
00:05:27
Speaker
So according to this, people are saying that due to the fact that Trump has lost the... I about to say basically lost the election, I don't know what I was going to say, basically has lost the election. It is very much the case now that Donald Trump is beginning to get used to the notion of defeat, and also the people who belong to the QAnon communities who were pretty much hedging their bets.
00:05:50
Speaker
on the idea that recertification of votes would swing the election in a different direction, are now trying to work out what they're going to do when Biden is president, the deep swamp has not been drained, and all those ankle bracelets have been going on about for quite some time seem to have never existed in the first place.
00:06:11
Speaker
And we are seeing, at the moment, a notable drop-off of Q activity in social media platforms. Although, of course, this is a double-edged sword here in that we are seeing a drop-off of QAnon posts on social media at the same time that Trump has lost the election and at the same time that social media platforms have decided to crush QAnon presence on their platforms. I said the word platform there twice. It works. So we have the situation, basically, where
00:06:41
Speaker
We can't really tell, I would say, exactly what's going on with QAnon because it might be the activity is going down for the sheer fact that Trump has lost the election and people who belong to these movements are now trying to find out where to go next. Or that activity may have gone down for the sheer fact that, well, actually, they can't really do much online these days anyway due to social media giants just not being very happy to work with them. So it could count both ways.
00:07:11
Speaker
But, you know, that is that, as Alex Jones would probably say. It's all a conspiracy, baby. Ooh, nice baby voice. We've got some local New Zealand news, the 1981 Springbok tour, new revelations of serious security breach. Now, people may be aware that the major sports conspiracy theory in this country is that of what happened to the All Blacks on their tour of South Africa back in 1981.
00:07:41
Speaker
where it was suspected the all blacks were given not got food poisoning thus leading to a disastrous showing in the game of rugby a game of two halves in which the best half always wins and now it turns out that there was some other
00:07:58
Speaker
Crank That Backfired, which calls a team doctor to do something in particular, something, something conspiracy, something ramifications, bomb squad, poisonous gas, something, something, something, stuff like that. And Stolfberg, that's basically that article in a nutshell. As you can tell, I'm really, really into sports and thus really want to get into the minutiae of that particular story.
Navalny's Poisoning and Putin's Immunity Law
00:08:25
Speaker
Unlike, say,
00:08:26
Speaker
stories about Russian poisoning. So the Alexei Navalny story has taken a rather bizarre turn in that Navalny has apparently contacted a member of the FSB, the successor to the KGB in Russia, pretending to be another FSB agent,
00:08:48
Speaker
And during that process got that agent to admit that they put the Novichok in Navalny's underwear. So this story is kind of bizarre for the sheer fact that apparently we now do political associations, political assassinations and associations by dropping chemical weapons into the underwear of opponent figures.
00:09:10
Speaker
And then it's quite easy to get people to admit to this by pretending to be another FSB agent trying to get to the bottom of how the failed assassination attempt worked. It's one of those things where if it weren't for other reports coming out about how the FSB isn't very good at acting in the digital age,
00:09:29
Speaker
does kind of sound suspicious, and yet it also sounds in keeping with the way in which it seems FSB just isn't very good at comms, both internally or externally. So kind of weird, I have to say. Kind of, kind of weird.
00:09:49
Speaker
Actually, and sticking with Russian news, this isn't such a conspiracy theory story as it is bad things going on in Russia. Vladimir Putin, the current president of the Russian Federation, has signed a bill granting lifetime immunity to former Russian presidents.
00:10:08
Speaker
So basically, if you commit a crime whilst in office as a Russian president now, you are immune to prosecution for those crimes for the rest of your life. Now some people have gone, doesn't this indicate that Putin is thinking about retiring? But Putin also helped sign into law just a few weeks ago.
00:10:28
Speaker
a bill which will allow him to remain president for another few decades or so, so it's probably more about feathering the nest than it is protecting himself from leaving the presidency in the short term. Now, talking about presidency, let's move all the way back to the US, and the fun, the excitement, and the brilliance of one Rudy Giuliani, friend of the show and person who likes to sweat black goo from the top of his head.
Dominion Voting Systems and Legal Threats
00:10:56
Speaker
He's in a little bit of legal issue because you may well be aware that one of the lines that Giuliani has been pushing with respect to the election fraud attempt in the US, music attempt there very loosely, is the claim that the Dominion voting machines created by Dominion voting systems were hacked or controlled by Venezuela and were just generally unreliable.
00:11:23
Speaker
Now it turns out that Dominion Voting Systems is one of those large-scale corporations that doesn't really like people saying bad things about them publicly and is now threatening to sue Rudy Giuliani and co. and has thus told them look you need to keep all your documentation about what you've been saying and the evidence behind what you've been saying because we're going to see you in court.
00:11:50
Speaker
It turns out that actually making baseless allegations of fraud in a public setting involving private actors such as Dominion Voting Systems may not have been the best idea that the people in the White House and the associate to the people in the White House could have engaged in.
00:12:09
Speaker
So, yeah, that basically, oh, actually, one more story.
Monolith in Christchurch: What's the Buzz?
00:12:14
Speaker
Monolith, monolith, monolith, it turns out that, as usual, Aotearoa New Zealand is not able to let this go alone, and that Utah Monolith version of that has appeared at a Christchurch Adventure Park, and no one knows where it came from, apart from the fact that it's probably very likely to be a copycat act.
00:12:37
Speaker
But apparently children love the monolith, and that sounds like the kind of thing that's going to be the theme for 2021, loving the monolith, and children loving the monolith for us. All worship, all hail the great monolith.
Hope for 2021 and New Year's Wishes
00:12:55
Speaker
And with that, that's basically a short update for news at the end of the year. Hopefully there'll be absolutely no news in 2021, and thus Josh and I will never need to talk about the news ever again. But you never know, there may well be news next year. I mean, January 19th, January 20th, that could be exciting. January 6th, that could be exciting as well. There is going to be news coming up, but whether we report on it is another matter entirely.
00:13:26
Speaker
So with that, a Happy New Year's Eve for those of you listening to this before the New Year comes to pass, and a Happy New Year to those of you who survived the cataclysmic events of December 31st, 2020. It's going to be quite the ride. How do I know? I just, uh, doodly-pip.