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Conspiranews for February 2020
24 Plays4 years ago
In this episode Josh and M discuss all the news they deigned fit to spit: the tragic death of a Flat Earther by rocket; eugenics; COVID-19 (AKA the Coronavirus) conspiracy theories; a corporate conspiracy to aid the spread of opioids in the US; George Soros discussing conspiracies; problems with Julian Assange's extradition to the US; and the sentencing of Roger Stone.
—
Josh is @monkeyfluids and M is @conspiracism on Twitter
You can also contact us at: podcastconspiracy@gmail.com
You can learn more about M’s academic work at: http://mrxdentith.com
Why not support The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy by donating to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/podcastersguidetotheconspiracy
or Podbean crowdfunding? http://www.podbean.com/patron/crowdfund/profile/id/muv5b-79
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Transcript
Revisiting 2015 Topics
00:00:00
Speaker
Back in 2015. Are we still doing this? Oh yeah, no. We keep getting to do these little retrospectives. But, well, I made that sting. Yeah, fair enough, fair enough. Yes, okay. In February 2015, we talked about the Celtic New Zealand thesis. Oh, we did that February 2020 as well.
00:00:17
Speaker
We also talked about suppressed inventions, conspiracies involving political elites, and a listicle from infowars about false flags. Whatever did happen to Alex Jones?
Grimes on Conspiracies
00:00:25
Speaker
Alex Ho? Anyway, in 2016 we discussed Grimes' view on the viability of conspiracy theories. Yes, that was before she got in a relationship with Elon Musk. Hilarious! Because it wasn't actually that Grimes.
00:00:37
Speaker
Way to overexplain the joke. We also talked about conspiracy theories about the deaths of Antonin Scalia, and I outdated you on my time in Latvia. You globetrotting agent of Mr Few.
False Flags and Notable Deaths
00:00:49
Speaker
Now, in 2017, we discussed yet another false flag listicle, the utterly fictional Bowling Green Massacre some Republicans insisted really happened, a conspiracy Richard Nixon helped to uncover, and the mysterious death of Kim Yong-nam.
History of Theories and Key Figures
00:01:02
Speaker
2018 saw us question the history of history, introduce you to the man we call the nunster, Devin Nunes, and Jordan Peterson. He likes meat. He does.
Targeted Individuals and 9-11 Inquiry
00:01:15
Speaker
He really, really does.
00:01:19
Speaker
Now in February 2019 we updated you on the whole targeted individuals thing, discussed a new 9-11 inquiry. We should inquire into that. Discussed the life and death of Lyndon LaRouche and did a filler episode which was basically an excuse for you to be vainglorious. And I don't need excuses to do that. But that was then, this is now, this is a Conspira News.
Meet Josh Addison & Dr. Denteth
00:01:50
Speaker
The podcaster's guide to the conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Addison and Dr. Indented.
00:02:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. I am Josh Edison, sitting next to me as always, Dr. M.R.X.
Dr. Denteth's Hamilton Adventures
00:02:06
Speaker
Denteth. Back on the whisky, I see. It is the evening, it's a reasonable hour, no more afternoon records for us. And I've recovered from the drunken excesses of my trip down to Hamilton. Well, Hamilton. Earlier this week. You have to drink to survive down there. You do. It's the chlamydia capital of the country. I heard that's not true.
00:02:24
Speaker
Really? I saw that by students. They were very proud of it. No, I saw local comedian Ben Hurley, who being a stand-up comedian, tours all around the cities. And knows about chlamydia. And knows all about chlamydia. He claimed that apparently Rotorua has taken the chlamydia capital off of Hamilton.
00:02:43
Speaker
What do they have left? The will to live, but only barely. Interesting. I'll investigate this because I am moving down to Hamilton for the next four to five months, as I'll be teaching down there. So we'll be returning back to the glories of an internet broadcasting system. But we're not using Skype this time round because Skype is awful. It just turned to crap. It was a bit depressing, really. Yeah, it used to be so good. And now it's just so, so, so I think is the issue. It's not bad. It's just
00:03:13
Speaker
Not good. Is that because they want us to use stuff that's not free? Basically, yeah. Damn you capitalism slash Microsoft slash whatever. We've only got 12 years left, so everything's going to be fine. Now a bit of an update.
Digital Viruses and 5G Theories
00:03:28
Speaker
Last week I talked about the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on conspiracy theory, which features me quite heavily.
00:03:36
Speaker
I mistakenly said it was hosted by the University of Texas, Martin. Actually, it turns out it's Tennessee, and I believe Texas and Tennessee are different places. Not quite the same thing. No. They are essentially the same. I mean, America is a very small country, so I assume that Texas and Tennessee are kind of 20 metres apart. Yeah, probably. Maybe even 10. I assume you can wave at someone in Tennessee from Texas fairly easily.
00:04:02
Speaker
One of those big gridiron glove things they have. With the pointy fingers. Yeah. That's what you do. Anyway, it's the end of the month and that means news. So we're going to be taking you through some stuff that our patrons have already heard in the various patron updates. Some stuff that nobody's heard unless you have listened to the news somewhere else, I suppose. Yeah, I mean, because we got the news from SARS somewhere. We don't actually invent the news, although maybe we should.
00:04:30
Speaker
I think one month we really have to. And just a reminder that if you want to be a patron, that'd be peachy. We're still using our swanktastic... Hang on, we were supposed to not use that word anymore. No, I was not meant to use it. You didn't want me to use it. No, that's fine. I can. Our swanktastic is a bit hypocritical that you get to say swanktastic was I have to flinch every time I say it because you're going to hit me.
00:04:56
Speaker
Fine. Our attractor professionally designed new graphics. Paid for with funds from our patrons. So, yeah, if you'd like to join us here.
Community and Patreon
00:05:05
Speaker
And design someone who is now a patron, which is kind of ironic in that, James, we paid you. Now you're going to pay us back in installments very slowly, but we're going to get that money back from you. Eventually. Yeah. So I don't think you've thought this through, but thank you. Thank you very much for becoming a patron of our podcast. Anyway,
00:05:25
Speaker
uh i think that's all the admin and and what have you so we might as well get straight into the news the news we will get straight into now breaking breaking conspiracy theories in the news
00:05:41
Speaker
Let's start with a bang, Joshua.
Flat Earth and Mad Mike Hughes
00:05:42
Speaker
Yeah, well, it's actually that's quite kind of an off-colour joke. Yes, noted flat earther Mad Mike, Mike Hughes, or Mike, Mad Mike Hughes, I think he gets called in every news article, has died. Unfortunately, Mr Hughes' claim was that he was going to get in a rocket that he had built himself.
00:06:03
Speaker
fly it up to the Karman Line, which is basically 100km up and supposedly where the terrestrial becomes the extraterrestrial. It's obviously... It's where space begins. It's kind of an arbitrary point, but anyway, he was going to fly up to that point and from there take photographs illustrating the fact that the Earth is indeed flat and not at all round.
00:06:24
Speaker
Now, this wasn't quite a madman doing stuff in his backyard. He had built these rockets, he had launched them successfully before. Unfortunately, this time things went wrong. He rode the rocket up quite successfully from the sounds of things, but his parachute failed on the way back down and unfortunately he died.
Eugenics Debate
00:06:45
Speaker
I haven't seen, has there been any word from the Flat Earth community to suggest he was killed for getting too close to the truth or something?
00:06:53
Speaker
No, as far as I'm aware at this stage, it's simply he was trying to support a conspiracy theory by doing an experiment, which has gone disastrously wrong. What is interesting is that we have footage of the accident because Mike Hughes was being profiled as part of the Discovery Channel's TV series, Homemade Astronauts. Now I want to stress that Discovery Channel appears to be making a TV show,
00:07:21
Speaker
about amateur astronauts trying to launch themselves into space. And I think that says a lot about our culture as a whole. It's also interesting that in the build up to the show and or the advertising of the show, Mike Hughes does not talk about trying to prove the earth is flat. He simply talks about how it's exciting to go up and try to enter into space.
00:07:47
Speaker
Yes, I think the Discovery Channel wanted to say, oh, no, we are sort of a scientific channel and didn't want to be openly promoting flat-earth theories. But because of that, we've got quite a lot of documentary footage of the build-up to the accident and the accident itself, which is probably going to curtail the round earthers tried to kill and succeeded in killing Mike Hughes, because actually we can see all the setup and we know what went wrong. The parachute did not deploy.
00:08:17
Speaker
Yes, so I mean, that's a bit sad, I guess, really. A fella died doing what he loved, I guess. Yeah. And what is probably actually a really, really horrific way. So something less horrific.
00:08:33
Speaker
No, actually. It's actually quite worse. Eugenics. Yeah. So you may be aware that there was the whole Richard Dawkins controversy that occurred, was it last week? No, the week before. Yeah, Richard Dawkins is kind of becoming everyone's crazy grandpa, isn't he?
00:08:50
Speaker
Dawkins tweeted the following. It's one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological, political, moral grounds. It's quite another to conclude it wouldn't work in practice. Of course it would. It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs and roses. Why on earth wouldn't it work for humans? Facts ignore ideology.
00:09:12
Speaker
Which is a weird thing to say, so yes, eugenics would work perfectly as long as you didn't take into consideration any sort of morality or the fact that human beings have free will and are not breeding stock. But Josh, I will stop you there, because it still doesn't work. As biologists and people who work with roses, which I assume are going to be rosologists,
00:09:36
Speaker
have pointed out, the problem is the selective breeding we've engaged in for things like cows, horses, pigs, dogs and roses have actually made many of those species unviable, unless humans are around interfere with them. So roses now need to be pollinated by human beings. We've bred cows into distillity. Horses have a whole bunch of genetic diseases now.
00:10:02
Speaker
dogs with, yeah. Pigs also have a whole bunch of issues due to the way that we've selectively bred them. It turns out that eugenics doesn't work, because it's actually not obvious A, what characteristics you're selecting for, and B, what confounding factors are also going on genetically when you're engaging in that selective breeding.
00:10:23
Speaker
So Dawkins is wrong on all counts here, but the reason why we're bringing this up in a conspiracy theory podcast is actually because of the role of eugenics in the Boris Johnson government. Yes, so Johnson's chief advisor Dominic kinds hired a man called Andrew Cebiski to work
Andrew Sversky's Controversies
00:10:45
Speaker
in the government and
00:10:45
Speaker
Now, Sversky is a self-proclaimed political forecaster. Not a futurologist, at least. I suppose that's some small mercy. But yes, he's basically said some severely eugenicist stuff. He's argued that forced long-term contraception might tackle the problem of a permanent underclass. And he's also done a bit of the dodgy race scientists. Certain races, hint not the white ones, have lower IQs than others. He said black people have lower IQs.
00:11:15
Speaker
Yes, so, yeah, a person who you would hope would not get anywhere near the levers of power, and yet kind of did, until his views came out and then he was, well, he resigned. Yes, so when it was pointed out the kind of views he had put forward and how they seem to be incompatible with the so-called caring Tory party that is in control of the UK at this particular point in time,
00:11:42
Speaker
The Johnson government was remarkably silent on the issue and did nothing. So, and this is a weird sentence to say, Sibiski, to his credit, resigned to take the heat off the government. Because the government wasn't going to do anything, they were just going to wait it out. But Sibiski went, yeah, maybe I'm actually a bit of a thorn in your side, I'll go.
00:12:04
Speaker
But it is raising questions as to why is Johnson and his chief advisor selecting people like this to help run the Tory government? Yes, how did he get there in the first place? Yeah. Yeah, so it's all a bit, a bit of a pickle. Now we have, okay, is this a new
COVID-19 and 5G Conspiracy
00:12:22
Speaker
thing? COVID-19. That's what I'm hearing all over the place now, which from the brief bit of reading I did seems COVID-19 is the disease that the coronavirus causes.
00:12:32
Speaker
Yes, so now people are saying we should refer to the Wuhan virus or coronavirus as COVID-19 because it's the particular strand of it, because coronavirus is a very generic term for a whole bunch of illnesses, including what's suspected to be the cause of the common cold. And so when we talk about the threat of coronavirus, actually, coronavirus is already in the human population.
00:13:00
Speaker
It's that this particular strand that was associated with bats is not, and it turns out that's the strand that we're trying to desperately control at this particular point in time. Right, so that's why I've suddenly started hearing newsreaders referring to COVID-19 and so on. I keep on hearing it as COVID-19 and saying that now this is the 19th Crow film.
00:13:21
Speaker
Mmm, oh, if only, if only. That second film was pretty bad. Well, yes, they all were, really, apart from the first one. The first one is good. The first one is a good film. People hated it at the time. I read reviews that were, like, actively hating on it, not just, we don't think... Yeah, actually, I did read something about that recently, and people are going, there was probably quite a lot of opprobrium towards the film because of the Brandon Lee death, and the fact that it was a
00:13:51
Speaker
a tragic accident on set that could have been prevented with a with better stage hands etc etc so many people went into the film or approached it from the perspective of this is a damned production and look it killed a rising star and now people are looking back on it going
00:14:10
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really, really good film. What a shame that Alex Price's career has gone... Gods of Egypt. Yeah, but even that McCage film he did... Oh, I never even watched that one. That was also terrible. That was actually where the rot started. I see.
00:14:28
Speaker
We can't justify talking about all of this, of course, because we have gone through the Brandon Lee's death in an episode on dead celebrities and so on and various conspiracy theories around Bruce Lee and Brandon Lee and was it a conspiracy? It actually was quite interesting because it's one of the few cases where it's not was it a conspiracy or just a cock up. It's was it a conspiracy, a cock up or an evil curse? Yeah, we don't get to say that often.
00:14:49
Speaker
No. Anyway, back to Coronavirus slash COVID-19. So, I mean, there's been a lot of good old fashioned racism in terms of anyone's Chinese looking getting avoided like.
00:15:06
Speaker
I like the plague. Lots of conspiracy stuff around where's it coming from? Who's spreading it? Is it real or is it a bio-weapon and blah blah blah blah blah blah. But there's been a bit more esoteric stuff. 5G got a look in I believe. Yeah, so this is a really interesting theory so you'll have to actually bear with me. There are some people claim that the Wuhan province
00:15:34
Speaker
is where 5G as a technology was birthed. This is false, but for the sake of the conspiracy theory, we will accept that is a possibility.
00:15:45
Speaker
and that the COVID-19 virus is actually a digital virus. Now, once again, I remember viruses on the Omega 500. I don't ever remember those viruses jumping, not just the species gap, but the technology gap. But there are lots of science fiction films out there where this does occur. So we'll bear that in mind.
00:16:13
Speaker
Apparently what happened was that humans have had a digital virus uploaded into them at stages over time and what 5G the technology does is turn the virus on and off.
00:16:28
Speaker
So the argument is A, 5G is causing COVID-19, but B, you can never be cured of COVID-19. Basically when doctors treat you, because they're working for the government, they use a device to turn the virus off, but they can always turn it back on. And this is of course part of population control of the human race.
00:16:52
Speaker
Yes, by Bill Gates, again. Not the first time he's been accused of population control. And not the last time. No, probably won't be the last. And then we had, yes, one of Alex Jones' guests, a man called Steve Pichinick. Also that.
00:17:09
Speaker
He claims to have been the first patient with coronavirus and also claims to have got better. So it's like, I mean, to be fair, the coronavirus has like a 2% mortality rate or something, doesn't it? Yes, although it does, it gets dramatically worse the older you get. Yes.
00:17:25
Speaker
There you go. Someone Alex Jones knows says it's all going to be fine. So if you can't trust someone Alex Jones knows, who can you trust? Although what's fascinating is that Alex Jones is very confused about COVID-19 at this particular point in time because you get his friend Steve who claims, I got it and I'm fine.
00:17:43
Speaker
and then you get Alex Jones the next day talking about how it's the greatest threat to human civilization and it's all been bio-engineered by the Chinese to wipe us all out. So Alex Jones is kind of trying to have it both ways at the moment because it turns out that Alex Jones does not have much in the way of consistency in his interior or external monologues. What's he broadcasting on these days anyway?
00:18:07
Speaker
Oh, he's always had his own broadcasting system. Things were basically reposted or streamed live to YouTube. But if you go to infowars.com or prisonplanet.com, you can easily opt in to enjoy Alex Jones.
00:18:24
Speaker
But there's more. There's more. We've also, I believe, in Patreon episodes, talked about how Russia appears to be getting in on the coronavirus conspiracy game and that Russian TV, now was it, we talked about this last time and I've forgotten, is it the Russian language, Russian TV broadcasting within Russia or is it the English language Russian TV? It's the Russian language, Russian TV broadcasting in Russia.
00:18:48
Speaker
There's been a bunch of sort of conspiracy theories on the state, Russian state television, saying stuff like the corona and coronavirus refers to the crowns Donald Trump used to give out on beauty pageants. I believe the corona is actually because the virus itself is slightly crown shaped. Well, you're just buying the conspiracy. Well, maybe I am. There's been a bunch of relatively wacky conspiratorial claims which are sort of presented as
00:19:19
Speaker
Here's a weird thing. Obviously, normally, we wouldn't pay any attention to this, but someone said it. Maybe we have to take it seriously. It's very huge. And things like utter nonsense, you'll say, and I'd agree with you, if it not for what to now correspondent special report. Now, people have pointed out the correspondent special report in no way in these situations actually backs up the wacky claim.
00:19:46
Speaker
But if you're only just listening to the news and not paying much attention to it, you're probably going to spend more time on the introduction to a story than listening to an expert drone on for five minutes, at which point the takeaway is, oh, maybe there is something weird about the story after all. And it's fairly clear from the way this is going down. This is Russia engaging in yet another disinformation campaign designed to make the West look as bad as possible.
00:20:14
Speaker
Now, it must have been last month's news episode we talked about the fact that supposedly a biotechnology lab in the Wuhan province had a company logo that looked almost identical to the Umbrella Corporation logo from the Resident Evil zombie computer game. Look, Josh, I think you can find that. Resident Evil. Yes, if you're going to do it properly. But I'm not.
00:20:34
Speaker
And so people, and it was sort of all spooky, but it did kind of look like this lab, which did have an umbrella-ish logo, appeared to be from a completely different part of China, so that wasn't... It was from Dubai. Yeah, somewhere quite different. Well, it was Shanghai, I think, it said on the... But it certainly wasn't Wuhan, anyway.
00:20:57
Speaker
And yet, there's a site called Zero Hedge, who are pro-Trump. Are they sort of an alternative newsy thing or a political thing? What's the... They tell the truth, Josh. It's not alternative news. They're telling the truth about the goodness of our own Donald Trump. Right. Well, at any rate, they said a scientist from Wuhan, who apparently they named... They gave out a phone number.
00:21:19
Speaker
Yep. Had created the coronavirus as a bioweapon, which a plot that they referred to as being like a real life version of Resident Evil. So people really seem to want this to be Resident Evil. Resident Evil.
00:21:35
Speaker
But unfortunately, it does not appear to be the case. No. The scientist is a real person. The scientist does actually work on the family of coronaviruses. The scientist works on this particular version, COVID-19, and wanted to know why it is that bats transmit the virus amongst each other and suffer no ill effect.
00:21:58
Speaker
so was doing work towards that and looking at potential vaccines because it turns out that because coronavirus is something that's already in the human population anyway people are concerned about other versions like COVID-19 jumping the species gap
00:22:15
Speaker
So people have been proactively working on potential vaccines to this family of viruses for a long time. And Zero Hidge either mistakenly thought he was part of a bioengineering effort to make the virus jump the gap, or they just didn't care. They just wanted to smear a scientist in China.
00:22:38
Speaker
But anyway, they've been removed from social media because of this. Turns out that doxing a scientist is one thing that Twitter doesn't like you doing.
00:22:47
Speaker
Well, that's something. Now, moving on, this is one we have talked about in a patron update, but it's quite an interesting story. It's sort of the intersection of medical conspiracy theories and corporate conspiracy theories. There's a company, a San Francisco-based company called Practice Fusion, who write software for sort of managing medical practices.
00:23:12
Speaker
And the department, the US Department of Justice has basically, has convicted, if that's the right word, has ruled against them and ruled that they participated in a scheme to basically increase the rate of opioid prescriptions across the US within which is a crisis in America at this particular point in time. So working with, I believe, unnamed opioid manufacturing companies,
00:23:41
Speaker
They tweaked their software so that essentially it would pop up recommendations to doctors and the practices that run their software saying, yes, it sort of has automated things. I think essentially where the doctor will have entered certain symptoms, what's going on, and it would pop up these reminders saying, you know, based on these things, you should probably be prescribing opioids. Do you want to do that?
00:24:02
Speaker
And apparently these things were popping up more often than they perhaps needed to, and supposedly the software was designed that way after input from the opioid companies. So the opioid companies were just telling the provider,
00:24:18
Speaker
Can you make our drugs occur more frequently in recommendations? They were helping design the software to ensure that their drugs were the ones that had been recommended when a GP or some other specialist went. Well, with these symptoms, you should probably, oh, opioids. You should have a round of opioids. In fact, I think I'll join you.
00:24:41
Speaker
The Practice Fusion had to pay $145 million to settle... That's US, Makaru. US dollars to settle criminal and civil claims. Umm, after it was judged that some of what they did went against medical standards. Yeah, some. Some of that, as it turns out, is not on.
00:24:58
Speaker
America, why is your health system so utterly borked?
Soros vs. Facebook
00:25:03
Speaker
Now, George Soros. George, I'm going to open with the same gag I did when we talked about this in the Patreon one. George Soros, what wacky things are people saying about George Soros now? Allow me to take a large glass of water while you tell me.
00:25:16
Speaker
Well, actually, it turns out that George Soros is not being made claims against. That was bad grammar, but rather George Soros is making conspiracy claims himself. Unfortunately, I don't really have listeners a glass of water, so I'm unable to spit it in him's face in surprise right now.
00:25:35
Speaker
Which is good because then the recording would probably splutter to a hole. Probably. So yes, George Soros has decided that he really needs to get involved in the whole Trump thing and wants to accuse Facebook of working with President Trump. So Soros released an open letter which I'm going to read to you now.
00:25:54
Speaker
Mark Zuckerberg should stop obfuscating the facts by piously arguing for government regulation. Mr Zuckerberg appears to be engaged in some kind of mutual assistant arrangement with Donald Trump that will help him to get re-elected.
00:26:10
Speaker
Facebook does not need to wait for government regulations to stop accepting any political advertising in 2020 until after the elections on November 4. If there is any doubt whether an ad is political, it should err on the side of caution and refuse to publish. It is unlikely that Facebook will follow this course.
00:26:31
Speaker
Therefore, I repeat my proposal. Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg should be removed from control of Facebook. It goes without saying I support government regulation of social media platforms. So, I mean, I kind of agree with him, but on the other hand, I'm not comfortable with the idea of billionaires just casually saying how they think the world should run or, you know, buying their way into the democratic primaries and so on and so forth.
00:27:00
Speaker
And also, it is somewhat amusing that George Soros, who has so many conspiracy theories levelled against him and is interfering with things behind the scenes, would then so openly...
00:27:13
Speaker
write that letter. Yes, no, he's possibly a rod for his own back, but on the other hand, he is ridiculously wealthy, so probably he's going to be okay. The interesting thing here is the allegation that Zuckerberg is basically working with Trump to help Trump get reelected. Now, there's been a lot of suspicion about the way that Facebook is policing political ads and their unwillingness to do something without the government stepping in as a regulator.
00:27:40
Speaker
So you can kind of see that maybe under one way of looking at it, that Zuckerberg going until such time the Trump administration tells me to stop doing this thing, I'm going to do this thing which aids and abets the presidential candidate from the Republican party. At the same time, you do kind of get the impression that Facebook doesn't really know what it's doing at the best of times.
00:28:07
Speaker
and is scared of fiddling with its algorithm which may be losing it money now because people just aren't joining Facebook and people are also leaving it. That said, I had one of those spooky things just today where a thing that I don't even think
00:28:26
Speaker
I had made a Facebook post almost vaguely related to it, but then an ad that was exactly a thing I'd been looking for popped up in front of me just today. Quite odd. I've had Netflix recommendations for me when I've been talking about it in front of the television, which does have a microphone because you can give voice commands to it. So that was, yeah.
00:28:55
Speaker
It's creepy when that happens, is all I'm saying. It is very creepy.
Netflix's Recommendations Uncanny?
00:28:59
Speaker
And as the... Is it good to sort of do the algorithms work better than we imagine? I mean, it's one of those things... It's probably a coincidence. And although that being said, the algorithm is based upon a very, very, very long term data mining operation.
00:29:15
Speaker
So it's also possible it is, it's not you talking immediately, it's more over time you're going to get these moments of synchronicity because the algorithm is pretty good at suggesting what you want 80% of the time and sometimes that 80% of the time is going to be really, really spot on. Anyway, you mentioned Trump.
00:29:39
Speaker
We do have some Trump news. We have a specific sting for Trump news, don't we? We do. Which we're going to put in right about here. And I want you all to know that we are fighting the fake news.
00:29:55
Speaker
So in Trump news, so is the first thing we should talk about is Julian Assange. Yeah, that's been the sort of the most notable, I think, claim in terms of Russian interference, WikiLeaks, all of that and so on and so on and so forth. Last week, was it? I think it was just last week. There was the story that the US supposedly offered Julian Assange a pardon if he would publicly confirm that the DNC hack did not originate in Russia.
00:30:23
Speaker
Yeah, so this came out during the depositions about the extradition of Assange to the US from the UK. And Assange's lawyer said, look,
00:30:34
Speaker
Back in 2017, a California Congress member by the name of Dano Rohabaka came to the Ecuadorian embassy in London and basically told Julian Assange, if you go on the record and say that you did not get the DNC emails from Russia,
00:30:55
Speaker
Trump will give you a pardon and things will be fine. Now this is being put forward in the court because America's claim that they need to extradite Assange, they need to prosecute him in the US court system for charges of espionage.
00:31:14
Speaker
Now if it turns out there's a pardon sitting there, if Assange is willing to testify that actually hexted why, then basically the British courts might go, well there's no need for you to extradite someone that you're going to give a pardon to anyway, just give them the pardon now. It kind of weakens the Americans need to extradite Assange to the US.
00:31:36
Speaker
And so the lawyers putting this forward is a wrinkle that will actually cause the UK courts to go no extradition, who will then allow Sange to then take refuge somewhere else. Now, Mr Orobaka has confirmed in an interview with Yahoo News that
00:31:53
Speaker
He offered to broker this pardon. It's not known whether he was actually acting under instructions, you know, whether this had come down from Trump, hey, go and offer Julian Assange a pardon. Or if he'd if this was sort of something that he or someone had come up with as an idea that they were going to take and then and then maybe bring back to Trump if it turned out it was going to work out. We're not quite sure about that yet.
00:32:16
Speaker
Yeah, so what we do know is that he suggested this course of action to General Kelly, who was then Chief of Staff in the Trump administration. And Kelly said, yeah, OK, go.
00:32:31
Speaker
to go do it and we'll deal with Trump afterwards. But there's no indication that Kelly then went off and actually told Trump about the plan. But at the same time, just not something you should have been doing. No, no, it's not something you really want to hear. And just in any case.
00:32:50
Speaker
It fits into a whole bunch of conspiracy theories about the DNC hack because, as you may well be aware, Republicans are really pushing hard on the Ukraine-did-the-hack-not-Russia-did-the-hack hypothesis. But also they saw that lingering Seth Rich was murdered because he's the real source of the DNC email stuff going on in the background.
00:33:14
Speaker
Now Rabaka is a very famous defender of Vladimir Putin. He was often joked as being Putin's agent in California at that particular point in time, back when he was a member of Congress there. And so people are concerned that he had a very vested interest to defend Russia by getting a sign to say it wasn't Russia in this particular case.
00:33:39
Speaker
But yeah, there are all these other Ukrainian Seth Rich conspiracy theories circulating in the background, which kind of feed into the story as well.
00:33:48
Speaker
And finally, in Trump adjacent news, of course, we have to talk about the Roger Stone verdict.
Roger Stone and Trump's Interference
00:33:53
Speaker
So Roger Stone famous for among many things, having a tattoo of Richard Nixon on his back. That is not a joke. No, it actually did occur. It's a real thing. He was sentenced to 40 months in prison. And as you probably know, the initial, was it the initial sentence or the initial guidelines before he was sentenced?
00:34:13
Speaker
The guidelines from the prosecution was that he be sentenced to seven to nine years, and Trump said no, that's no good at all, should be less, and lo and behold, it was reduced a fair bit. And then we had William Barr
00:34:34
Speaker
tweeting what appeared to be sort of saying Trump stop don't interfere. But then the subtext seemed to be don't interfere because you don't have to because I'm already doing what you want. And if you interfere, it just brings it into the into public and makes it bad. And the numerous people resigning in protest at this interference. And we have more than apparently more than 2,000 now former Department of Justice officials calling on William Barr to resign. Yeah.
00:35:03
Speaker
And what's interesting is that Barr is going to testify in front of the House Judiciary Committee next month, and this is bound to be a very big question. What was Trump doing? And are you basically acting as Trump's personal lawyer now?
00:35:20
Speaker
And then I still haven't got this straight, but I've heard suggestions because people have said, you know, here's Trump supposedly interfering in the sentencing. Why not just let him be sentenced and then pardon him, as is one of his powers, constitutional powers, not superpowers. I should point out Trump, as far as I'm aware, has no known superpowers. Does he have superrogatory powers? Don't think so.
00:35:44
Speaker
Well, she fairly sure does, but anyway. People say, you know, why not just pardon, why go through this rigmarole? Why not just pardon him? And there is an argument, the details of which elude me that it would not be to his advantage to pardon stone because then stone would be able to testify in other matters or something like that. But I don't quite understand the technicalities. But there's yet another conspiracy theory out there, essentially, that Trump did this because he wants to get his buddy off the hook, but doesn't want to pardon him because that could also backfire.
00:36:13
Speaker
And there's also the possibility that Trump can pardon Stone of a federal crime, but it also seems that what Stone did was actually a criminal activity at the state level as well. And so he just could be re-prosecuted at the state level, and then Trump can't do anything about that because the presidents can pardon people of federal crimes, but not state level crimes. That's separation of powers, people. So he separated those powers.
00:36:41
Speaker
Now, that's all we have in terms of this news update. So there you go, everything that's been happening in the month of February, more or less. Almost everything. Patrons did get slightly more news over the course of the month. But you know, that's what happens when you're a patron of the podcast's Guide to the Conspiracy. You get more news, whether you like it or not, and we hope you really like it.
00:37:02
Speaker
Now, yes, so usually during the month, the patron bonus episodes will be a bit of a newsy sort of a catch up. But because the main episode at the end of each month is a newsy episode, we make sure that the patron bonus content is not a newsy. Well, actually, this is kind of current events, but it's a particular interesting story, not
00:37:22
Speaker
Just more, more news. Yeah, it's a story which brings in things we've said about hobby, lobby in the past. Brings in a paparologist from Oxford University. Paparology. Brings in ancient Egyptian mummies. Art forgery. Famous historical forgery. Famous historical lesbians. I mean, it's basically a story for the ages. Indiana joins with lesbians. Let's sound it like that.
00:37:51
Speaker
I'm fairly sure there was a canon film of that particular type. I don't know. I'm fairly sure Canon Globus probably did do a film of that particular type. Anyway, patrons get to hear this exciting story starring a character who sounds like he's come directly out of the Dirk Gently novel. Or possibly by way of Dan Brown, but not as
00:38:15
Speaker
Not as urr, not as voom, not as va-va-va-voom. Have you read a Dan Brown novel? I've read bits of Dan Brown novels. There's no urr or va-va-va-voom. But they're page turners, there's action, there's excitement.
00:38:34
Speaker
Or car chases. Exactly. Not as far as I'm aware, no actual car chases in this story. Not yet. Not yet. So if you're interested in hearing that and you're not a patron, then belly well become one. What what? Yep. All you need to give us a dollar or more a month and you too can hear exciting stories about paparologists. That's the study of papyrus, I should say, not people who pronounce paper weirdly. Isn't papyrus a weird way to pronounce paper? Well, it probably is a little bit.
00:39:03
Speaker
But anyway, to you our regular listeners who are not patrons, thank you for listening anyway. Because you're our audience and without you, we're just two people kind of talking into a couple of microphones for no reason, like a pair of chumps.
Podcast Closing
00:39:22
Speaker
Don't make us chumps. Yes, don't make us chumps. Podcaster's guide to the conspiracy says, don't make us chumps. Good luck.
00:39:34
Speaker
you
00:39:40
Speaker
You've been listening to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy, starring Josh Addison and Dr. M.R. Extended, which is written, researched, recorded and produced by Josh and Em. You can support the podcast by becoming a patron, via its Podbean or Patreon campaigns. And if you need to get in contact with either Josh or Em, you can email them at podcastconspiracyatgmail.com or check their Twitter accounts, Mikey Fluids and Conspiracism.
00:40:41
Speaker
And remember, silent green is meeples.