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A Roundtable Discussion with Ginna Husting, Lee Basham & Martin Orr
28 Plays4 years ago
Join M, Ginna Husting (Boise), Lee Basham (South Texas College) and Marty Orr (Boise) for a discussion of conspiracy theory in the age of COVID-19. Also, Josh pops at at some point, and there's rather more discussion of the John Turturro classic, "Brain Donors" than you might expect...
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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
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Transcript
Remote Interviews in Lockdown
00:00:00
Speaker
You look suspiciously tanned. What have you been up to? Oh, just interviewing people, Martiore and Jenna Husting and Boise. That's Idaho, right? Sure is. And Lee Basham. Who's in Texas, if my sources are correct. There. Hold on. You have sources checking up on Lee's whereabouts? Yeah, it's immaterial. So, you've been gallivanting, have you? And in the lockdown.
00:00:24
Speaker
No, no, no, no, it was all done of a zoom. Then why the remarkably wind-swept sunburned face then? Answer me that. Pies. Pies? Yes, pies. Notably a very sticky experiment in recreating a pie from the service station. Turns out getting a pie to that weird, just out of the warmer feel is a lot harder and a lot messier than you might think. Pies. Yes, as I said, pies.
00:00:52
Speaker
Well, the pie code requires that I don't ask any more questions, but if I find you've even stepped foot outside your bubble, there will be consequences. Such as? Well, no more pies. Forever.
The Cultural Significance of Pies in New Zealand
00:01:09
Speaker
The podcast's guide to the conspiracy has the following to say about pies in Aotearoa, New Zealand. They are the most important foodstuff ever invented. Although the origin of the meat pies still shrouded in mystery, the classless nature of such pies is extraordinary. Whether you are rich or poor, Maori or Pakea, you do not just eat pies, you love them.
00:01:32
Speaker
And because the pie is effectively a dish that cannot be made hot cuisine, the pie acts as a way to bring the lower, middle, and upper classes together. Or at least, it should. Unfortunately, it turns out that class divisions cannot be solved by meat wrapped in pastry alone. Still, it makes New Zealanders feel superior to the Australian neighbours, who have much lower standards when it comes to pies.
Lockdown Levels and Business Implications
00:02:07
Speaker
The podcaster's guide to the conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Addison and Dr. M. Denton.
00:02:16
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy, or as I like to call it, the only reason I have for trimming my beard. I, of course, am Josh Addison, sitting in Auckland, New Zealand. They, of course, Dr. M.R.X. Denteth, sitting also in Auckland, New Zealand, but in quite a different part of it, because we're still in lockdown.
00:02:34
Speaker
And we are social distancing like we've never social distanced before. Or another way of putting it where social distancing exactly the same way we have before for the last three or four weeks. But that's okay. Woe to broke the illusion. Woe to broke the illusion. I have no idea what my mouth words say.
00:02:51
Speaker
That's okay. The connection just went wonky when you said it, so it didn't make anything worse than it already was. So I guess because COVID-19 is the only thing anyone can talk about at the moment, if you're not listening from New Zealand, the announcement at the start of this week
00:03:08
Speaker
is that starting next Tuesday, New Zealand is moving to level three lockdown, down from level four, which for us doesn't mean a lot, it's more, a bunch more businesses can go back to work, but they're still, if you can work from home, work from home, schools are opening, but if you can keep your children at home, keep them at home. So for us, probably not going to feel particularly different, but at least the country is starting to get back on its feet again.
Fast Food Chains and COVID-19 Concerns
00:03:35
Speaker
I mean, you seem very optimistic about this. I think that the move to level three is going to bring a resurgence of COVID-19 because if every single person I follow on Twitter and on Facebook is talking about how they're going to a midnight KFC or McDonald's self-service line, at which point the virus is going to spread like nothing else on earth.
00:03:59
Speaker
Well, yes, we may in the end all be undone by fast food. Yes, that's one of the things restaurants can open provided they can offer a sort of contactless delivery service or a drive-through option. So everybody's like, I haven't eaten McDonald's slash Wendy's slash Burger King slash KFC for the last month. That's the first thing I'm going to do. I personally plan to wait a few days.
00:04:23
Speaker
and then go and infect myself with a drive-thru. Given there are so few vegan options out there, I'll be waiting forever. Yes. Anyway, as is becoming something of a tradition now, we've got another new patron this
A Mysterious Patron Joins the Podcast
00:04:37
Speaker
week. We do, and they're the mysterious M, which I kind of feel is really treating on my toes there. So you watch our M,
00:04:47
Speaker
If that's your real name, it's even worse. Their longer name is very similar to my other old name. So it's just it's very confusing. Frankly, frankly, I think there's something deeply wrong with the universe.
The Irony of Harold Holt Swim Center
00:05:02
Speaker
Which brings us quite nicely to something which is deeply wrong with Australia, the Harold Holt Memorial Swimming Centre, which we failed to note last week because we weren't even aware of it. Yes, but it turns out I assumed the irony was commented on at the time and continues to be so.
00:05:20
Speaker
Well no, it's named after he died. Right. So it was a swimming centre that's existed since I believe the late 1920s, early 1930s. And after Harold Holt died, it then became the Harold Holt Memorial Swimming Centre. So it wasn't a, it was a swimming centre and then he died. It was he died and then they named the swimming centre after him, which just seems, in my mind,
00:05:50
Speaker
Icky, insulting, and so very Australian. Yeah, I mean, yes. Would you send your children to be taught how to swim at the Harold Holt Memorial Swimming Centre? Well, I mean, yes. No, you wouldn't. You wouldn't send your children to learn to swim at a centre named after someone who died of drowning while swimming in the sea. It is not the appropriate name for a swimming centre.
00:06:14
Speaker
I'm kind of in two minds because he yes he did I mean he quite literally died doing what he loved he was famous for enjoying the conspiracy theories if you don't accept the conspiracy theories yes so I mean yeah yes it is it is the way he died but it's also the way he lived kind of okay you've got me there yeah they've made it's no I think he enjoyed doing so much it killed him yeah yes no yes I do see the um the slight echiness there but yeah
00:06:46
Speaker
Now, now we're going back to another staple of this podcast that we haven't done in a while.
Evolving COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories
00:06:53
Speaker
You've gone and recorded yourself an interview with some of your contemporaries, your confederates.
00:06:59
Speaker
Confederates, yeah, that's all right. Confederates it is. Yes, I recorded it. Did I say confederates or confederates? Because they... So you may have said confederates, but what came across on the call was confederates. And frankly, confederates, it should be from now on in.
00:07:17
Speaker
That's probably closer to the original French or something anyway, so I'm going to stick by it actually. So your various partners in what I loosely term crime, you and the bunch of them have had a bit of a chinwag this very morning.
00:07:33
Speaker
Indeed. So yes, I have a conversation with Lee Basham, who's in Texas, and Marty Orr and Jenna Husting, who are in Boise in Idaho. And we had a discussion that started off as a look at COVID-19 conspiracy theories and ended the way this podcast always ends. With the discussion of popular culture,
00:07:58
Speaker
Why are their voices pounding down the hallway? Is your house infested with ghosts? Probably. Or it could be my children. You never know. They do do these things. Your ghost children? Yes. Josh, when did you kill your children? I saw a thing on Twitter the other day completely sidestepping that question. A reporter genuinely wanting to hear from people who are currently forced into quarantine in houses that they genuinely believe are haunted.
00:08:24
Speaker
Yes, I must admit that when I saw that tweet, I went, that's a really good question. How are the haunted coping with the lockdown? But I guess we'll even know because neither you nor any of your co-interlocutors live in haunted houses as far as I know. And you, of course, are sidestepping the issue that you killed your children recently and now being haunted by their corpses.
00:08:56
Speaker
So I am joined by three esteemed colleagues who are currently in various states of lockdown in the northern hemisphere. We've got Marty Orr, Jenna Husting and Lee Basham. We're all conspiracy theory theorists and all of our work has been discussed on the podcast in the past. I thought it'd be interesting to talk about how we're dealing with our conspiracy theory theories
00:09:19
Speaker
in the age of COVID-19, especially since, like the authors of the various stories of the camera on, we're kind of stuck at home thinking about our plight and the civilization we live in and trying to work out what do we do next. Hello, everyone. Greetings. Hello. Hi. So we've got two people in Boise and one person in Texas. How are things going in your relative locations?
00:09:48
Speaker
We'll start, we'll start with Lee. There's no virus. And there's a, they do have a curfew. Yeah, yeah, we have a curfew here. It's from, let's see, you can go around from five in the morning until 10 o'clock at night, but then everyone's supposed to be back in their little hidey holes and homes.
Resistance to Lockdowns in Boise
00:10:07
Speaker
But where I live, there's no sheriff. Just, it's it.
00:10:13
Speaker
You might see them down the highway once in a while. So people around here do pretty much what they please. They travel when they wish. Unless you're going to get on the highway. Then you might get sued there. But we're so far back, totally at the end of the road. You're not just my neighbors. 300 meters that way, 500 meters the other way.
00:10:34
Speaker
Well, is Martin, Jina and a slightly more populous location? How are things going in Boise? There are a few, I think we are under what they're calling a stay at home order. Essential services, as described by the governor, are available. I haven't gone farther than I can walk, but there still seems to be a fair amount of traffic from what I can tell.
00:11:01
Speaker
We've actually had people challenging these stay at home directives in a number of different ways. But we aren't leaving. And so I guess it's a little bit hard to say what others are doing. But from what I can tell, I can see the arterial.
00:11:23
Speaker
from my house, so there's still a fair amount of traffic. And Gina? Yeah, same thing. It seems like we've got some organized resistance to staying at home, sheltering in place, and it's organized, and it's meant to be political, and so really kind of
00:11:47
Speaker
in surprising ways, protests, occupying playgrounds, and then expecting to be arrested when arrested, setting up a protest against the arrest, stuff like that. A lot of people in Boise are out and about. The weather here is beautiful, and it's getting warmer. And I think the idea is this doesn't really exist, or it's been,
00:12:16
Speaker
and this is unnecessary. So it's odd. And then I've heard from some friends in places like Florida and Georgia, which are both having similar and probably worse issues, where there's even less concern about staying home.
New Zealand's Sovereign Citizen Movement
00:12:38
Speaker
I think Georgia hasn't been able to slow it spread down at all.
00:12:42
Speaker
It's still on that J curve. Well, we're discovering that we have a small but litigious sovereign citizen movement here in Aotearoa, New Zealand, who have gone to our Supreme Court to sue the Prime Minister.
00:12:58
Speaker
for putting everyone into home detention for the last three and a half weeks and arguing that for home detention to work there must have been a writ of habeas corpus sent to every single citizen in the country and the prime minister is actually acting on orders of our own local version of Bill Gates or George Soros, a man by the name of Stephen Tindall who basically runs our equivalent of Kmart.
00:13:29
Speaker
Now, no one had told me that Stephen Tindall is the billionaire who funds liberals and the liberal agenda. Otherwise, I would have been asking for money for him for quite some time now. Well, yeah, yeah, you should probably, right?
00:13:44
Speaker
It turns out that the group that are making this claim are related to the group that opposed our recent tranche of gun laws in this country, who tried to argue that your Second Amendment applies to our loose-knit constitutional system. Well, obviously it would. When we take you over, be sure. Yeah.
00:14:11
Speaker
Well, actually, on that notion of you taking us over, this is an amusing little, well, amusing or disturbing, depending on how you want to think about it. So, one of our corporate CEOs, a man by the name of Rod Jure, who runs an organization called Xero, which basically produces accounting software.
00:14:33
Speaker
is trying to persuade the government that we should reach out to 200 billionaires around the world and offer them a bolt hole in this country as long as they commit to living here and also investing 50 billion US dollars in our economy. And this was the man who managed to get Peter Thiel of Palantor citizenship in this country.
00:15:00
Speaker
So yes, there is a distinct possibility that your 1% will come to this country and take over through beneficial investment. I mean, given we have closed our borders for the next probably 12 months at this stage, being a billionaire might be the only way to come and visit Hobbiton in this country now.
5G and COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories
00:15:27
Speaker
I'm sure.
00:15:28
Speaker
So did any of you hear about in terms of conspiracy theories and the virus other places? There were a few stories about, I think it's a radio tower, a 5G radio tower that somebody burned down. This has become a very popular sport in the UK for some reason.
00:15:54
Speaker
Yeah, no, I just I don't have the details on it. And I'm wondering if if anybody knows them, what was what was the logic? What's the story? It's a simple logic, which doesn't mean it's logical, and certainly doesn't mean it's factual. But the claim is that 5G destroys your immune system, especially close proximity because of that coronavirus spread much farther. And if we can get rid of the towers,
00:16:18
Speaker
Burn them down and then people will be much safer and they have a much Much more likely chance of not getting it or not dying from it. That's what the people
00:16:32
Speaker
Interesting. I mean, there is also a variant of that which is coronavirus is in fact the result of the 5G rollout. So there are two kind of hypotheses. The one which is it weakened our immune system, which is why we're falling ill. And the other one is no, there is no COVID-19. It's simply the effect of 5G radiation in the atmosphere. Burn the towels down and COVID-19 will disappear completely.
00:16:58
Speaker
What I'm wondering is why it's possible to burn one of these towers down. They they seem not pretty indestructible, but right now with enough with with enough hate, you can destroy anything. You just need a super soaker full of gasoline. The way you go just right all the way from the top, from the bottom to the top. Okay. Give it a few more. And then at least that's how we've been doing it here. Okay.
00:17:27
Speaker
Oh, okay. That's how it was done in West Texas, okay. But Lee, Lee, jet fuel can't melt 5G must-hows. Really? That's what I thought. That's what I thought, yeah. I just, I've heard that somewhere before. No, no, I completely made that up. It's completely new.
Lab Origin Theory of COVID-19
00:17:47
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. You like jet fuel melting things.
00:17:54
Speaker
See, so it seems we are getting a fair number of conspiracy theories about COVID-19, about its origin. So it does turn out that the US security apparatus is investigating the possibility that COVID-19 was accidentally leaked from a lab somewhere in Wuhan, and that the Chinese government is covering up its true origin. They're not necessarily investigating the claim it was developed as a bio weapon.
00:18:22
Speaker
and then of course you've got your 5G conspiracy theories and there's a whole bunch of conspiracy theories about good vibrations and the like. Is this new or novel or are we simply seeing the same old things through the lens of a current crisis do you think? Well the idea of a cover-up is absolutely normal and natural especially in a crisis. So in that sense it's very continuous with the usual conspiracy theories that we we analyze
00:18:53
Speaker
I've heard some really strange ones, some really, really strange stuff. It's actually... Please give us some examples. It's an American virus that was originally designed at Chapel Hill, the university, I believe. Let's say Chapel Hill is in North Carolina.
00:19:12
Speaker
North Carolina. Yeah, North Carolina. And so then what they did was it was part of this like weapons project with China. And they gave this virus to the Chinese. And so the Chinese could play around with it and experiment with it. And then either it was purposely moved into the population to do just a sort of
00:19:33
Speaker
test of what a real killer pandemic would look like, which this isn't by comparison to what it might be. And it's actually part of an American Chinese plan to release this, track it around the world, and then share our data. So it's sort of like a 21st century global Tuskegee. Yeah, right. Those globalists,
00:20:04
Speaker
That's right. Oh well. I mean this does sound like the plot of a very bad made-for-TV thriller where the good-hearted scientists came up with a plan but it all went disastrously wrong when someone leaked the virus two days too soon. Yep. We shall see. We shall see.
00:20:24
Speaker
Yes. Actually, I was also thinking about movies. A student of mine had just before class about two weeks ago had just seen a movie that I believe is called Epidemic. Marty, have you seen it?
00:20:42
Speaker
No, or it might be even called pandemic. It's a documentary from the early 2000s that predicts some of this that makes some moves toward like, this is how it would happen. This is how it could happen. This is why it would be very bad globally. What sort of structures aren't in place to to manage such an outbreak. And it's a matter of time.
00:21:09
Speaker
Yeah, please. I'll try to look it up for that. I'd enjoy it. Have any of you seen the movie Contagion? It's a hollow. Oh, a while back. Really, really credible attempt to project. That may be the movie. It's a great movie and it's not a documentary. It is a drama with some extremely. Oh, oh, we have Lawrence Fishburne and really heavyweight actors. I believe it's 2007. It was released. It's a good movie.
00:21:37
Speaker
I recommend it. Nice. I'll look for it. I've received several emails from people claiming that Michael Crichton not only predicted this but had inside information about this because of the plot of the Andromeda strain. Everything Michael says in his books on the infinite horizon eventually comes true. Just like Alex Jones.
00:22:03
Speaker
I mean, eventually those come true. I was told that. I mean, it's true because because Alex Jones says a lot of things, some of them are bound to come true eventually.
00:22:16
Speaker
Yeah. Right. Anyway, I recommend the movie. You'll enjoy it. It's touching and it's getting good plot. That's good to know.
Empty Hospitals and Exaggeration Theories
00:22:24
Speaker
Oh, one of them. I'm not sure which of these it is. I'm going to put things in chat, but one of them is called Unseen, and I think that's the one my student had seen. And she was a little surprised and was getting sort of conspiracy theorist-ish.
00:22:43
Speaker
conspiracy theorists, can we say that, about COVID having watched the movie. Another student, and I'm wondering if any of my Northern Hemisphere friends, either you know about this, or maybe Em, you do, because you may have seen it or read about it. Apparently, and I had someone who I spoke with who asked me, well, is this
00:23:12
Speaker
What do you say about the arguments that this isn't really that serious? I mean, we're shutting the economy down and it's not that bad. And I said, what makes you think it's not that bad? This goes again about two weeks ago. And she said, so I've seen pictures of people walking out of the Brooklyn hospitals showing that there's nobody in these hospitals in New York. There's no problem. They're empty. There's nothing going on. And there's no trouble.
00:23:41
Speaker
Where did you see these images and there was a sort of a well of friend and I was like, well, could it have been box news? You know that just make sure you see you look at where your news is coming from. But it was an interesting moment to talk about how do you know what's real? What's not with somebody who.
00:23:59
Speaker
Are these the photographs of the Jarvis Center in New York City? Wasn't sure. Because it is largely deserted. The Jarvis Center in New York City. Yeah. Mainstream media has been reporting that. But not as the non-existence or the massive exaggeration of the virus, but just as a success story. But would be interpreted in your students way. Right.
00:24:24
Speaker
right so that things get sort of the story you know or the visual of that gets attached to a different storyline that's like there's no virus there and this is all yeah hyped yeah we we have a version of that locally we have an opinion piece written by the name of mike hoskins who at this stage depending on the day of the week either thinks that the government has acted
00:24:48
Speaker
inappropriately because they haven't done enough or inappropriately because they've done their overreacting. But one of his continual attack lines of the government is, look, there aren't that many people in ICU at the moment. Obviously, the pandemic isn't that bad. And the response is, well, there aren't that many people in ICU because our elimination strategy seems to be working.
00:25:14
Speaker
If it wasn't working, there'd be people in those ICU beds. But he's taking this evidence that no, we've overreacted because look, no one's getting sick.
Economic Conspiracy Against China?
00:25:23
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's exactly what's happening here. And it's sort of a weird logic that I think is underneath a lot of the stuff that the organized protests in the US and the push to stop the shelter in place orders.
00:25:45
Speaker
Would you like to hear another conspiracy theory? I'd love to. Yes. Okay. This one is focusing on this new movement to bring massive lawsuits against China. Let's seize their assets throughout the Western world, including the United States, Western Europe, obviously, and then make them pay, cripple their economy for a decade, literally put them back maybe 20 years.
00:26:09
Speaker
And in this way, the Chinese will be destroyed. His sister had this habit of ending his speeches with, Carthage must be destroyed. Delinda is kathago. Exactly. You've got it. So this is what we did. We purposely let the virus in, usually in the form of allowing American citizens from China to return and not properly quarantine them. Knowing it would get loose.
00:26:36
Speaker
We know that would cause not catastrophic, but terrible damage, and then we can use that to drag China's economy down and retake for America an uncontested place in the world order.
00:26:53
Speaker
That's nice. I've kind of tried to reformulate it so it doesn't sound completely wacko, but yeah, that's one of the ideas going around right now. Popped up a couple days ago. And then where are people supposed to find the iPhones?
00:27:09
Speaker
We're going to make America great again. Surely the point is, once you've taken over China, you can take over Shenzhen and then you can produce the iPhones yourself in the new 53rd state of the US, Shenzhen, China. I thought we'd do that in Australia and New Zealand.
00:27:36
Speaker
Right, so New Zealand wouldn't work because we actually don't have enough natural resources to actually have a high-tech sector like that. But Australia has all the mineral resources you need, so focus on Australia. The official story is New Zealand does not have the resources you need, so please don't come and find us. Oh my God. Yeah, so that's another fun one.
00:28:03
Speaker
And it will be interesting to see how this sees the assets and make them pay dearly for what is being argued by the states at this time here in the United States. And they use the word conspiracy, a clear conspiracy to hide the virus, to lie about its infectability, its transmission mechanism person to person, and then to shut the world out.
00:28:32
Speaker
So we couldn't find out how bad it was until it was too late. And for that, there's our damage, there's our negligence, and all of that was a conspiracy. And for that, we will make them pay dearly, legally. That's the kind of argument you'll be seeing in court, the kind of arguments being made right now in several state legislatures here in the United States.
00:28:56
Speaker
And actually, that gives a nice little window into talking about the possibility of a cock-up versus a conspiracy.
China's Response: Cover-up or Error?
00:29:03
Speaker
Because I don't think anyone denies that China, Beijing, probably knew more about what was going on in Wuhan and Dubai than they admitted to, say, back in December or January.
00:29:17
Speaker
January. And so the question then becomes, is it a case that they were covering up this particular bit of health data? Or is the nature of the authoritarian state in China, where social media is basically banned, and no one wants to speak out against administrators or people higher up in the chain of command? Was that actually hindering information getting to the right sources?
00:29:45
Speaker
So it's a cock-up due to the administrative nature of the way the Chinese government works. Or is it both a combination of there was a cock-up and then it became a cover-up as officials went, we can't admit that we filled up the initial reporting. So now we've got to cover up the fact that we knew things before we did and only started revealing information after we knew the crisis was actually already in bed. Yeah, it's both.
00:30:15
Speaker
I think that's the argument they're making. The cover-up was the consequence of what you would say in the Northern Hemisphere of a Chinese screw-up, whereas you would say in the South, a cockpit. And I want to take this path right now, but I think thinking about rumor and sort of gossip or rumor as attempts at news gathering and newsmaking right now is also really interesting. And I'm thinking about
00:30:44
Speaker
over the past month, information that has circulated that turns out not to be true or that people thought was true and wasn't. The CDC has conflicted with the WHO over and over again and been behind the curve if we think the WHO is right on a bunch of different stuff and they've made some bad calls. And I think that
00:31:13
Speaker
that it's interesting to consider at least speculate on how many people know that, knew that, and how they're making decisions. Because I hear a lot of people in the US still sort of, they're just absolutely, if the CDC said it, then that's true. And it's not that CDC was saying things that were absolutely knowably false. It's that with the use of masks, for example,
00:31:43
Speaker
the CDC was telling Americans not to use masks that they were useless, no point, right? Unless they were N95. But then they said we should put on, we should look like bandits. We should put on bandanas around our face. Right. Are you kidding? Yeah. And you know, people of color are like, are you kidding me? Right. Um,
00:32:07
Speaker
Yeah, that's great. So yeah, and I mean, that was really interesting. There were a series of conversations where, you know, I suggested people could actually wear masks and there would be this, oh, the CDC says no. And I would say, oh, the WHO says yes.
00:32:24
Speaker
There are other sorts of forms of unclear things. I and my housemate have been trying to figure out exactly what there've been reports. No, first it was absolutely no cats, dogs can't get it. Then it was like, oh, wait, a tiger got it. Oh, wait. And so there are varying degrees of, because the information where it comes from, how good it is, all of that is,
00:32:51
Speaker
is unclear, right, and it's difficult to evaluate truth claims. It's always a lot easier to evaluate things well after the fact than it is in the midst of a crisis, especially in a situation where there's a lot of information being produced by a lot of different agencies, and such agencies aren't necessarily talking to each
00:33:13
Speaker
other.
Confusion from New Zealand's Health Ministry
00:33:14
Speaker
Correct. So we had a situation here when we went into the level four alert system which was basically our our extreme lockdown where the Ministry of Health was making particular claims and the government official about the lockdown was making claims that weren't contradictory but were somewhat contrary to the Ministry of Health
00:33:35
Speaker
And people were going, so which one is it? Do we take the government spokesperson at their word as we do X? Or do we take the health ministry at its word and we do X? And in the government, we're, ah, no, sorry, actually, we're a little confused as to what's going on here at the moment, because we are developing policy on the hoof. And unfortunately, that sometimes means that some people are working with yesterday's memo, but are talking at the podium today.
00:34:05
Speaker
Yikes. I was about to make a joke. This is where having Stalin in charge, where Stalin makes all the decisions, suddenly makes a lot of sense.
WHO's Alleged Bias Towards China
00:34:20
Speaker
I know unified authority. One man, one blame. What do you think about the communist WHO World Health Organization theory, which has been
00:34:35
Speaker
Well, it's been pushed pretty hard around here. Oh, I don't know it. Oh, well, it's part of that general hatred of the United Nations that characterizes large swaths of American politics. The theory is that the director of the World Health Organization, which is part of the United Nations, is actually
00:34:56
Speaker
He's a puppet for the Chinese government. And one of the reasons this is because in fact, the man is a self-identified communist. And so the thought was that what the World Health Organization was saying for a while, simply what China was feeding it. And the CDC actually did a much better job. That's right.
00:35:20
Speaker
Yeah, I did hear that. I forgot about that early on. That was something that was I think shared or at least floated across the political spectrum, which made it interesting, right? Because often there's not, but that there were questions about whether the WHO was complicit in Chinese suppression of data or Chinese sort of governmental face saving.
00:35:43
Speaker
No, if I remember right, this is perhaps the first non-European WHO director, though. So there is that. He is an opposition figure to the NATO North Atlantic sensibilities. Right. So like a lot of these things, there's some basis that he is not
00:36:10
Speaker
He was not at all the preferred candidate of many. Right. And of course it fits in quite nicely with the fact that when a government thinks that a global body like NATO, the UN, or the WHO is doing excellent work, then we take everything they say as being gospel.
International Politics and Conspiracy Theories
00:36:29
Speaker
But as soon as it goes against, say, some local politicking issue, we suddenly go, well, why would you listen to those particular people? There's a nice example here in Aotearoa, New Zealand. The UN keeps on telling our government
00:36:46
Speaker
that we are not treating our indigenous people correctly, that we should be doing more in the way of reparation and trying to heal the divide in our country. Whenever the UN says that, no matter who is in government, the government goes,
00:37:02
Speaker
The UN should keep their sticky beaks out of our local politics. But as soon as the UN will say something, say, about the handling of the Middle East crisis by actors overseas, our government goes, yep, that's precisely the kind of wisdom that we need to adhere to. It does turn out that these global organizations are very useful when you want to go around doing a little bit of the old whipping. Didn't you once tell me
00:37:30
Speaker
I believe in 2015 that the Māori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, had kind of an act of amazing forgiveness given the country to the Europeans that had come in there.
00:37:47
Speaker
So yeah, so basically this is the, the, the Iwi in Auckland, basically when look, you took most of our land and you haven't really given us reparation, but at the same time, we're going to forgive you for doing that. And we're also not going to charge you rent on the land that we've suddenly got back. Okay. Yeah.
00:38:13
Speaker
which, yeah, was taken to be a, that's really, really kind. And Māori went, well, you know, we're at least trying to heal the divide. Come to the table. They should have kept the damage deposit though. Even if they didn't charge red, I would have.
00:38:30
Speaker
Oh, believe me, the way that we have modified the waterfront, those bonds would be well exhausted by now. What fun. So the Australians and the New Zealanders, they have the same kind of, if only transient, loathing for international bodies like the United Nations, which is very popular here in the United States.
00:38:59
Speaker
I mean, in Australia, it's probably more so because Australian politics resembles American politics a lot more. There's a lot more
00:39:08
Speaker
alignment on the right when it comes to politicking in australia with the rights in the us outside of new zealand has always kind of prided itself as not being particularly australian but it does seem that our at least our political right is beginning to is beginning to sing from the same him book and that's the him book which we're seeing in australia and the uk because it turns out if you follow the money
00:39:38
Speaker
everyone is being advised by the same political advisors operating out of Australia. Interesting. There's a warranted conspiracy theory, theory for you.
Globalist Conspiracy Speculations
00:39:51
Speaker
The right is coalescing behind very successful messaging platforms in one policy and then going, how can we make this apply in a country which is relatively similar and get the same results?
00:40:05
Speaker
So eventually this is gonna lead us into the conversation of the globalist conspiracy to conquer all nations and organize them under a sort of antichrist-like director, head director of the United Nations. And that perhaps this was, the coronavirus was an attempt to make this happen and then it backfired against the globalists.
00:40:32
Speaker
That's a theory I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear somebody start peddling. Well, I mean, especially given all of the claims about the building of the temple on the Temple Mount and actually the surprising
00:40:47
Speaker
coalition between the religious right and the notion of establishing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. So you can bring about the apocalypse so that Jesus comes back again. I can imagine
00:41:04
Speaker
two versions of that theory, one where the UN is aiding and abetting that, or the other one which is the UN is being led by, as you say, the Antichrist to stop this momentous event from occurring in our time. And in fact, if we're talking about films, there's a sequence of two films.
Christian Films and Conspiracy Narratives
00:41:24
Speaker
One is called The Omega Code. The other one is called The Omega Code Megiddo.
00:41:31
Speaker
And they were both produced by Christian filmmakers back in the late 90s, early 2000s. They both start Michael York as the Antichrist. And it's all about a Jewish conspiracy to install Michael York as the head of the U.M. to bring about the apocalypse to stop Jesus from returning for a second time. I love it.
00:42:00
Speaker
Great. You're welcome. So the first film is, it's a bit humdrum, but the second film, the second film is actually quite spectacular. And you kind of feel that the second film was given to a director who wanted to make a really big spectacle action film and was then told in the last scene you have to have a Bible quote. The same authors that cooked up the Left Behind movie series,
00:42:30
Speaker
If you're reading, yeah. A city comes from the same genre. A very similar doomsday. Satan comes back in the form of the antichrist, and then they have this big fight over who's gonna rule the world. And of course, God wins. But it's put on the classic Christian conspiracy theories that they lifted out of the book, the revelations. And it is a conspiracy theory. So this has a supernatural dimension.
00:42:58
Speaker
Right, right, right, right. And there's also a film starring Nick Cage. I will. Yeah, so there are actually two left behind film series, one of which is five films long and is incredibly low budget. And then they decided to try and reboot that with a Nick Cage-led version of the first book.
00:43:18
Speaker
And it's very much a Nick Cage film. It's a very Nick Cage film. Gotta see it. Just for fun. Oh yes, yes. And so I wouldn't recommend it as high art. I actually even wouldn't recommend it as low art. I simply recommend it for if you enjoy Nick Cage, this is a film with Nick Cage in it. Yeah. I like Nick Cage.
00:43:44
Speaker
Oh, I mean, he's kind of wonderful, especially when he truly commits to the whole bug nut crazy Nick Cage portrayal, which no one else can do. Nick Cage is kind of the master of spiraling out of control in a scene in a way which is just astounding to watch.
Nick Cage and Memorable Film Roles
00:44:03
Speaker
Isn't Nick in raising Arizona, the Coen brothers? That's a good one. He is. Yeah. It's their best comedy, I think.
00:44:10
Speaker
Yep, no, I'd agree. I'd agree. I don't know about best, but it's it's it's amazing. It's it's way up there. Yeah, it does. It does stand the test of time. Wasn't he in the Big Lebowski?
00:44:23
Speaker
No, you made me think you have John Turturro. I totally think you've John Turturro, you're exactly right. Also another great actor, who's actually one of my favorite comedies of all time, a film which was meant to be called A Night at the Ballet, because it was very much a Marx Brothers style comedy, but ended up being called Brain Donors instead. And it's the finest modern day Marx Brothers style comedy ever made.
00:44:52
Speaker
Wow, Brain Donor? Yeah, Brain Donors, plural. Oh, Brain Donors, you know, look it up. John Turturro, Mal Smith, and I can never remember the name of the third guy, and it's truly astounding, truly astounding. 1992. Yep, that's the one. I've never heard of it. It didn't do, it did very well on video, it didn't do particularly well in the cinema. Right. Can you grab your phone quickly and
00:45:22
Speaker
help me with this cognitive dissonance I'm having. Could you effect on the big Lebowski and see who the Lebowski was? Because I'm having this feeling at someone else, but I'd love to be corrected. As in Jeff Bridges, the dude. That's the guy I'm thinking of. Oh, you meant Jeff Bridges. I thought you meant... I thought you meant the other Lebowski. Yeah, the dude in the wheelchair Lebowski.
00:45:46
Speaker
The rich Lebowski, as opposed to our Lebowski, the dude.
Broader Film Discussions
00:45:52
Speaker
Well, it seems that now that we've moved away from talk of conspiracy theories to films we have watched, this is probably a natural place to bring this particular conversation to a end, but hopefully we'll be doing this again very soon, forgetting updates as to what's going on with COVID-19, because who knows what the world will look like in a week's time or two weeks' time.
00:46:14
Speaker
As I was, a friend of mine, well, I made the mistake back in February, a friend of mine sent me a text, do you think this whole coronavirus thing is going to be a big issue? And I said, no, like SARS, it'll blow over. In a month's time, we won't even be talking about it. My friend keeps on sending me that text back to go, you were wrong. You were wrong.
00:46:37
Speaker
I will never commit to anything ever again. Right now, I still have my money on. We don't need everything in the fall, we'll see. Well, I mean, I would like to think that's true. But the question is, do you mean your fall or our fall? Because if it's your fall, it's soon. If it's our fall, it's a year away. The fall here. When does fall start, Lee? It's kind of October.
00:47:03
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I mean, that's cause that, that, that's our spring. Well, it's on to the X files. I'm going to watch some reruns. That's great. There you go. All right. Well, thank you very much. And I will talk with you all. Anon. Bye guys. Bye.
00:47:27
Speaker
And there you have it, your sultry steamy four-way interview with respected members of the community theory theorist community. Conspiracy theory theorist. So any comments, feedback, or anything you want to add to that conversation, Josh? Not really, to be honest. It was pleasingly amiable. Nice sort of friends having a chat atmosphere.
00:47:51
Speaker
Um, some of you seem to be more up to the play with with conspiracy theories around covid 19 than others, but I don't know if that's just
00:47:59
Speaker
Some of you pay more attention to wacky news and some of you focus on other things or not, but it was interesting to see. It points the swapping of stories and also that, oh, I hadn't heard that one. But no, there we go. That was 43 minutes or something. So it's probably taken up all the time we have for this episode. So let's not deli. But we should, of course, before we go, talk about what our patrons will get to hear in the bonus episode, which we are about to stop and
Bonus Content Teasers and Contact Info
00:48:26
Speaker
record. What have we got this week?
00:48:27
Speaker
Yes, let's not deli but deli on the bonus content that's coming up. So we'll be talking about the grave danger that Kim Jong-un may be suffering. We'll be mentioning, ever so briefly, those mole children we never discussed a few months ago.
00:48:44
Speaker
will then be moving on to a minor COVID-19 story, which claims LPM has got the entire country under an illegal lockdown. And then mentioning the fact that, well, you know that drug that President Trump's been talking about? It's a bit of a bust when it's been tried. And finally, the US appears to be investigating whether COVID-19 was actually started in a lab in China.
00:49:11
Speaker
So if you want to hear more about that and you're one of our patrons, good news, you're about to. If you'd like to hear more about that and you're not one of our patrons, then you can just become one. That would be awesome. You could do that. It would be. Do that by going to patreon.com and searching for the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy or by going to conspiracism.podbean.com, the site where this podcast is sort of officially hosted and using their patronage system.
00:49:38
Speaker
And that, I believe, is all we have to say this week. Indeed. To quote NBC, that's murder she wrote. But not the murder of my children, which didn't happen, because I didn't do it. Allegedly. That's good enough for me. Goodbye.
00:50:03
Speaker
You've been listening to the podcast'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.
00:51:04
Speaker
And remember, they're coming to get you, Barbara.