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Numbers Station
32 Plays6 years ago
This week Josh and M discuss Number Stations (and, for some reason, their favourite found footage films), before tackling Saudi Arabian-dismemberment plots and the curious case of Jami-Lee Ross, MP for Botany!
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Transcript
Conclusion of Number Station Segment
00:00:00
Speaker
12, 18, 7, 66, 153. That old gray mare, she ain't what she used to be, ain't what she used to be, ain't what she used to be. And that concludes the number station portion of this week's episode. We trust our agents worldwide will act on the instructions they have just received.
Episode Preview
00:00:19
Speaker
Meanwhile, we'll get on with the episode proper, in which we discuss cherry ripe, the pip, the buzzer, and the squeaky wheel.
00:00:26
Speaker
We're reviewing sex toys again, because I thought that was for the other... Oh, sorry, I said too much. You have it, that. So, while the rest of you scrub the implications of M's misspeaking from your memories, we'll get on with the show. Sex toy, sex toy. You're my sex toy. It's true, folks. He is my sex toy. Ooh. Like Tom Jones.
00:00:59
Speaker
The Podcaster's Guide to the Conspiracy
Introductions in Auckland
00:01:04
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy located for your convenience in Auckland, New Zealand. It consists almost entirely of Josh Edison and Dr. M.R.X.Tentiff. And of course, the ghosts in the machine. Well, obviously, can't get rid of the pesky things. Yeah, that virus thing we got did not work at all. No, no. Now, if we sound a little different, I hope we sound a little different.
00:01:31
Speaker
because we finally have this lapel mic set up business. What's it getting paid for? I have to lick the whisky off the rim there.
00:01:40
Speaker
Happened all the time. Paid for by the good patron monies of our good patron patreon patronesses. I assume you all have patron- patronesses of some particular kind. That's a Harry Potter reference for those of you who aren't catching up. Or at speed. I have no idea where I was going with aren't catching up.
00:02:01
Speaker
No, I think you stumbled after Patronus. I haven't even started drinking the whiskey yet. This is how things start. Things will just get worse. But yes, because of your kind donations, we've got these lovely lights for those of you who are watching the VODcast version, and these...
00:02:16
Speaker
not so lovely lapel mics they're not the best lapel mics in the world but then again that's because we don't have all the money in the world but we are persevering so if you aren't a patron and you want to help us with this podcast and get that free bonus episode every week where we talk about other bits of the news we don't cover on the show then why not throw a few dollars a month our way i will not spend it on coffee i probably will spend it on coffee
00:02:44
Speaker
I won't spend it on coffee because I don't like coffee. Because Josh is a deeply flawed human being. I have to taste buds of an infant. But that's by the by.
Historical Significance of Number Stations
00:02:55
Speaker
Today we're going to take a break from horrible goings-on and totalitarian states and all the doom and gloom of last few episodes. And instead talk about horrible John Cusack films. Are we? The numbers station. Because we're going to be talking about numbers stations. Wasn't that the one with Peter Dinklage?
00:03:14
Speaker
No, that was the station agent. Quite a different film. Very, very different film. Right, so strap in as we start talking about stations and the numbers they produce. Yep, get your straps on, all your straps in and get ready to talk number-wang. So, numbers stations.
00:03:38
Speaker
Not just bad films starring John Cusack. Actually, I have no idea whether it's a good film or a bad film because John Cusack was one of those actors who was kind of at the top of his game a decade and a half ago and everything he's made in the last 10 years has been basically unnoticed. Doesn't seem to understand how rain works.
00:04:01
Speaker
Really? Tell me about Ray. Just about every film John Cusack is in involves a scene of him standing out in the rain, just getting utterly drenched for no good reason, really.
Humorous Discussion on Movie Tropes
00:04:10
Speaker
Maybe he really likes showers. Maybe he does, yeah. Or maybe he doesn't like showers, and that's the only way to get him clean on set. Because, oh, John, we have to have the downpour scene. In the middle, the computer service scene? Yes. We have a plot point here where... Just do the scene, John. Just do the scene.
00:04:30
Speaker
It's like Tom Cruise running or Tom Hanks urinating. John Cusack just gets rained on. So Tom Hanks, you get the Tom Cruise and running, right? I've got no qualms about Tom. He runs in everything. The number of films that Tom Hanks has been in that features him taking a piss.
00:04:52
Speaker
for no really, I mean obviously you have the green mile where the whole point is his character has a urine reinfection that the magical guy fixes. But then like Castaway or whichever it was called, the one where he's, where Robinson Crusoe won, features scenes of him pissing into the ocean, a league of their own I'm pretty sure, he's introduced at a urinal in the toilet scene, just he for some reason.
00:05:16
Speaker
Right now, I want to point out the reason why I don't know about the Tom Hanks urination thesis. Those are three films I've never seen.
00:05:24
Speaker
Look, we've probably got way off track right at the start, so maybe we should just just define terms so we know it's number stations, stations with numbers. Tell me more. Alright, so number stations are a phenomena which get talked about in conspiracy theories an awful lot. So a number station basically is a radio broadcast, which usually starts with an introduction, some music, an array of numbers then going back to music and then silence until the station starts up again.
How Number Stations Operate
00:05:54
Speaker
And people have been quite curious as to exactly what these stations are and what they mean. Now the usual story is, around about World War I, it was decided that a really good way to pass information from one power to another, or from one agent or agency to another, was by encrypted communications.
00:06:16
Speaker
Now, of course, the problem with encrypted communications, if you're ferrying them by person, is you have to get from point A to point B. So people went back to the time-honoured classic, which is the phrasebook, which is someone has what's called a pad, and that pad has a number of pages
00:06:36
Speaker
and on each page is a random selection of words and then what you do to get your encrypted communication from one place to another is you tell which page of the pad to start with, say
00:06:51
Speaker
page 27 and then words 13 88 62 409 pi that's number one and what you then get was someone would go through those numbers and go ah the message says you are an asshole love the enemy oh we've been caught out so basically
00:07:19
Speaker
Number stations are taken to be examples of World War One to around about the end of the Cold War, transmissions of spies or agencies passing information from one point to another. Now the reason why number stations are so fascinating here and now is that even if we accept that story of the origin of number stations,
00:07:43
Speaker
number stations still exist. And the thing about the Cold War, right?
00:07:50
Speaker
It's over. So, why are people still using Cold War technology and what are they using it for? Well, indeed. So, I mean, it appears to be for the same function as they were used before. The sorts of broadcasts you hear from number stations are still the same sorts of things, which presumably means that there's still some sort of cryptography thing going on. It is interesting to sort of the way
00:08:17
Speaker
It kind of goes in the opposite direction from how you would normally, if you want to secure something, you try to make it as obscure as possible. This goes the absolute opposite route of just broadcasting it absolutely everywhere, which sort of makes it harder to determine
00:08:36
Speaker
I suppose you can determine the source, of course. Trangulation works for radio broadcasts. But the source in terms of what agency or who's behind it and so on, it's not security through obscurity. It's exactly the opposite of that. I don't know what the phrase for it is, but it's an interesting way to see the technology work. But as for what it's being used for now,
00:09:03
Speaker
I kind of don't know really. There are lots of ideas. So there are certain things we do know. For example, North Korea has started using number stations again. I think from around about 2016 they've had a number of broadcasts.
00:09:18
Speaker
And it looks as if the actual rationale behind the broadcast is to format fear and distrust, i.e. they're broadcasting what might actually just be completely random messages so that people in South Korea will go, oh, what are they trying to say?
00:09:35
Speaker
Is this a warning sign of something that's about to occur? So some number stations may exist now just to make people paranoid about what might be going on behind the scenes. Some number stations may
00:09:50
Speaker
exists now because of actual spying. So there's been at least one case prosecuted in the US of recent note where the US has prosecuted Cuban dissidents of using a number station for getting information from Cuba to mainland America. So the notion is there are still governments using number stations as a way of engaging in encrypted comms. I am thinking
00:10:16
Speaker
I've got some number station audio. For the podcast, I should properly insert that audio right about here.
00:11:11
Speaker
Yedna, Yedna, Yedna, Yedna, Yedna, Yedna, Yedna, Yedna. Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti, Shasti,
00:11:40
Speaker
Nol vassum sedum shest vassum yedina sedum yedina sedum yedina tsi nol deviet stiri yedina tsi nol deviet
00:12:01
Speaker
So that is an example of a number station broadcast. And as you'll admit, it's kind of weird sounding. Yes, I mean it makes fertile ground for the imagination of conspiracy theorists. And indeed for fiction, they've shown up apart from the numbers station, which again, neither of us have actually seen, but I assume it's John Cusack investigating
00:12:28
Speaker
I didn't once drunkenly try to get in contact with John Cusack whilst in Prague. Didn't work.
00:12:34
Speaker
No, his agent got back to us but we never got to speak with the actual man himself. Ah well there we go. True story. It's amazing what happens when you've been drinking the Kraken. Now Lost of course famously had had the numbers that when they showed up on the island they fairly quickly found this mysterious broadcast of numbers going off but it turned out to be a different thing and did they ever actually find out what the numbers signify? I lost interest in Lost for
00:13:00
Speaker
The numbers we use to input into the computer that stops an electromagnetic anomaly from going off. So it was both a Dharma initiative experiment. Can you get someone to put a random string of numbers into a machine on the notion if they don't, something bad will occur. And also something bad will occur if you don't put the numbers into the machine.
00:13:23
Speaker
The Dumber Initiative had really, really weird ideas as to how to run experiments. This is an experiment of psychology. Also, if you don't put the numbers in, everyone is actually going to die, for real. Yeah. What else? Fringe? Good old fringe. Much more enjoyable show than last, I thought. And, I think, a much better show than The X-Files.
00:13:42
Speaker
That last season was truly awful. That was an unfortunate case of a show unexpectedly getting renewed and suddenly having to pull an entire plotline out of its arse. But otherwise they did a numbers station episode. Welcome to Night Vale had a numbers station plotline for quite some time which was actually quite disturbing because the usually robotic or pre-recorded voice appeared to be completely self-aware of their role as a numbers station and didn't like it.
00:14:11
Speaker
And the Banshee chapter. Oh yes, one of our favourite films. It's a good film. Imagine doing an HP Lovecraft story as found footage with Hunter S Thompson as a main character. Then you have the Banshee chapter. That is basically quite a good explanation of it. It's a good found footage film, which is rare enough as it is. Have you seen The Borderlands? Yes. That's also a very good found footage film. Although like most found footage films,
00:14:38
Speaker
the who's edited all this stuff together that toy is a problem with found footage material yeah i mean and and they had the decency at one point when they're venturing through labyrinthine tunnels underground to show the guy putting some sort of a wireless repeater somewhere yes so that their their signals could be the very first found footage film which actually predates the player which project by about a year
00:15:03
Speaker
and it's about two guys going into the woods I think to look for evidence of Bigfoot or some cryptozoological character and it has the clever explanation as to who edits the footage because there's no monster in the film it's one of the two is actually luring someone in to die and of course he's the one who then edits the film together afterwards so the very first film solves the issue of who actually edits the footage together
00:15:33
Speaker
together but normally it's a case of is there a department somewhere that just goes through found footage and goes we've got 800 hours we have to get an hour and a half film out of this i'm going to be here all week god these jump scares are so annoying
00:15:52
Speaker
But anyway, number stations. So because they can be picked up by basically anyone who tunes their radio to the right frequency, there have been some kind of more famous ones, ones that have got a bit of a following, I guess, if it is possible to be a fan of a number station. Well, I mean, there are communities online that collect and disseminate number stations recordings, because you have to remember they're not broadcasting all the time.
00:16:18
Speaker
So if you're the kind of aficionado who's interested in numbers stations, you may have to be searching the wavelengths.
00:16:26
Speaker
to find them on the notion they might be broadcasting once or twice a month. So it's quite a rare occurrence to hear one when most people record their searches and then disseminate it. So yes, there is a fandom for number stations online.
The Lincolnshire Poacher Station
00:16:43
Speaker
It's the hippest musical trend you've never heard of. Yes. So one such famous number station is the Lincolnshire Poacher.
00:16:55
Speaker
so named because it starts by playing the first two bars of an English folk tune called the Lincolnshire Poacher. The lyrics go, oh tis my delight on a shining night in the season of the year when I was bound apprentice and famous Lincolnshire twas well I served my master for nigh on seven years. I assume there's no significance to that, it's just the equivalent of clearing one's throat.
00:17:18
Speaker
and that it's the same tune every time, but... Yeah, so I suppose there is a... there'll be a rhyme and a reason as to why that tune. And also, presumably, it allows people to go, oh, this is a broadcast from a particular group or person. Yes. So, apparently, it repeats that 12 times, moves on to messages read by the disembodied voice of a woman reading groups of five numbers in what is apparently a clipped, upper-class English accent.
00:17:47
Speaker
I would like to point out that every radio broadcast technically is a disembodied voice. Yes, I don't know quite why they felt the need to add that detail in there. And there was something about the, of the five numbers, the fifth one is at a higher tone or something, her voice goes up at the end, which maybe she's action means she's actually Australian and just pretending to put on an English accent.
00:18:13
Speaker
Or Kiwi. Well, yes, no, we do do that. What do they call it? The rising terminal or what have you. And yeah, I mean, so that again, I don't believe anyone ever sussed out exactly, you know, who who was behind it or what it was for other than the obvious appearing to be, oh, my my tablet is making interesting noises. Let's tell you to be quiet.
00:18:33
Speaker
What's the number station you can contact? Wasn't it broadcasting from an RAF base at one particular point in time? Um, Cyprus, apparently. I don't know if the British Air Force has a presence in Cyprus, but supposedly that one came there.
00:18:52
Speaker
It went from the mid-70s apparently until June of 2008 was the last time someone heard a recording from it. But then there was another station that went by the name of Cherry Ripe because it played the bars of another folk song called Cherry Ripe. The world's most disgusting chocolate. That was actually what I was thinking. I don't know if they have them in other countries by the same name but over here, especially you get the box, it's favourites isn't it?
00:19:22
Speaker
You get a box of little bars of chocolates and they have the chocolatey ones and the minty ones and the caramelly ones and so on. Then they have the fucking cherry ripe that every good-minded person pulls out straight away and throws straight in the bin because they are disgusting filth.
00:19:38
Speaker
unless you know someone who likes them and then you just give them all to them and eat all the other chocolates. Although that person is also a disgusting filth. If I like Cherry Ripe and you listen to this podcast, you know where to go straight to hell. But anyway, so Cherry Ripe was another one which was seemingly sort of a sister station to the Lincolnshire Poacher
00:19:59
Speaker
It appeared to start sending signals, the same sorts of signals, after the Lincolnshire poacher went off air. But then it also apparently hasn't been heard of since December 2009. And so there's a bunch of these around the world. But then there's the slightly weirder ones. Tell me about the weird ones, Joshua. Then there are the ones.
Introduction to The Buzzer
00:20:18
Speaker
So there's UVB76, also known as MDZHB, also known as the buzzer.
00:20:28
Speaker
So this is a shortwave radio station broadcasts a short monotonous buzz hence the name Repeating at a rate of approximately 25 tones per minute 24 hours per day according to now These are often called noise stations by members of the number station listening community Yes, because it doesn't it doesn't appear to do this sort of What do they call they're not scratch pads the paddy pad pad things what do they called?
00:20:57
Speaker
Cryptological things that you're talking before pads. I thought I thought there was a fancier name than just pad But it's not doing that thing anyway for seemingly cryptological purposes It just makes these buzzers and then every now and then The the buzzing is interrupted by a voice transmission in Russian
00:21:18
Speaker
So sometimes it tends to be just a few snatches of just random words, just, you know, not a sentence, just a bunch of words in a row. Every now and then, other background noises are heard, at one point, once or twice.
00:21:37
Speaker
snatches of conversation have been picked up, suggesting that rather than being some sort of setup whereby, you know, a machine or whatever is generating this tone and broadcasting it straight onto the ear, it sounds as though you have some sort of permanently open microphone into which these noises are being played, and occasionally it's picking up things that's been heard, things, noises in the background.
00:22:00
Speaker
It's still going, as far as I know. Given the Russian language showing up, it does originate from two locations in Russia, apparently one near St Petersburg and one near Moscow.
00:22:15
Speaker
Supposedly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it started broadcasting more frequently, which is odd, that as you said before, these things tended to be a Cold War sort of a thing. And yet after the Cold War, this one stepped up its actions. And so nobody really quite seems to know exactly what the hell it is. It doesn't appear to be a numbers station in the way that the other ones were for.
00:22:42
Speaker
So some theories go a little more apocalyptic, perhaps you could say, that the idea is perhaps this is some sort of a dead man switch sort of a thing, that as long as this continues to broadcast, everything is fine. But should the broadcast cease, say, because St. Petersburg and Moscow have been destroyed, this will automatically trigger a retaliatory nuclear strike.
00:23:07
Speaker
Which seems a little extreme, and there isn't a way for them to support it. Yes, and I mean these kind of fail-safe mechanisms, of course, are incredibly fraught if they're being used for that particular thing. Because if someone just forgets to make the broadcast, or there's a power cut which means the broadcast can't be made, then the entire world is reduced to ashes because a light bulb went out in St. Petersburg.
00:23:35
Speaker
So another theory is simply that it's just reserving the frequency that by sending out noise on a regular basis at this particular frequency, it kind of means no one else can broadcast on it. So maybe they're just making sure that this frequency belongs to them essentially and that maybe there's some, who knows, emergency broadcast system, some particular
00:24:01
Speaker
extra redundant communications channel for who knows what or whatever just make sure that should at some point in the future they ever decide that they need to use that channel they can be sure no one else is going to be cluttering up because they've effectively bagsied it.
00:24:15
Speaker
And of course people have tried to analyse the static or the noise itself to find out whether it is itself a form of encryption. And the results thus far have been, if it is a form of encryption, no one's quite sure how it works.
00:24:31
Speaker
So there you go. And so this is not the only one. There's one called the pip and another called the squeaky wheel. Again, I believe both just named after the weird noises that they broadcast out there. That not number stations are something else. And nobody's really quite sure what.
00:24:50
Speaker
Now, the reason why these get kind of subsumed under the number station phenomena is that because we're not entirely sure what number stations are doing now, other phenomena of this particular type, which are quite definitely human in all.
00:25:05
Speaker
origin, not to suggest the existence of alien broadcasts, but i.e. someone is generating these tones. People are going, well, it's kind of the same phenomena in that we don't know what they're doing.
00:25:21
Speaker
So we're going to assume they're all part of the same kind of purpose. And then, of course, conspiracy theories abound because we know for certain that number stations, at least, were used by secret agencies doing secret things, the very definition of conspiratorial activity. So it doesn't take much of a leap to assume that whatever's happening at the moment with these things
00:25:48
Speaker
It is some people acting in secret towards some sort of a goal and that spells conspiracy. Yes and people do try to correlate these broadcasts to events in the world but then we get to that particular problem we have with correlation not being causation which is depending on what you're interested in you can probably find a salient event
00:26:14
Speaker
which correlates with a numbers station broadcast somewhere in the world. But just because you've got a correlation there, which is temporally related, doesn't actually tell you that it was causative or being reported upon by the numbers station.
00:26:31
Speaker
because we don't know what's going on it's easy to infer meaning to these broadcasts but once again we just don't know what's going on yeah i mean we saw way back when a long time ago when we looked at the good old harp station that was the sort of thing we saw there wasn't it when people knew that these broadcasts it was it was shooting electricity or whatever it was up into the ionosphere and if you're if you're convinced that
00:26:58
Speaker
For instance, an installation like Harp was affecting the weather and causing extreme events. There's a lot of weather happening all around the world, pretty much all the time. So you can always find something to map to something. But yeah, it doesn't really tell us a lot. No. And in the case of these numbers that were unlike Harp, which actually published results and told us what it was about, these things remain secret. So we really don't have a lot to go on. And I don't know that there's much more to say.
00:27:27
Speaker
No, apart from 12, 16, 23, 42, 66. And that's number-wang. It is number-wang. Congratulations, you've just won pie.
00:27:43
Speaker
If you're not aware, that's a Michelin web sketch about a phony game show that just involves people reading out numbers, and then someone will identify one of those numbers as number-wanging. The rules of number-wanging are so vague. Is it the right number? Is it the sequence of numbers?
00:28:02
Speaker
Is Robert Webb simply so excited by the numbers? He yells out Number Wang! That's Number Wang. Yes, I assure you it is actually funny. And it does include the line, Number Wang, the Number Wang format has been broadcast in all sorts of different, in countries like Australia, such as New Zealand, and also Australia. But anyway, that's all for now. For Number Stations, it's an interesting topic.
00:28:27
Speaker
It is one of those slightly spooky kind of things that if you actually look into it, it makes a person go, hmm. And as we say in this podcast and people go, hmm. Conspiracy theories will abound. So do look into them if they sound interesting. But for now, I think we'll call it quits and just get on with the news. 7 and 16.
00:28:54
Speaker
Breaking, breaking, conspiracy theories in the news.
00:29:01
Speaker
Well, last week we discussed and to an almost insulting degree mispronounced Jamal Khashoggi. Well, you did. You'll note that I strictly try to avoid saying anyone's name on this podcast. Yes, that's true. Last week I insultingly mispronounced Jamal Khashoggi's name. Khashoggi, you will recall, was the Washington Post journalist who went into the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul and never came out. Now,
00:29:28
Speaker
We may have jumped the gun there, because as this week's drawn on, this case has just become more and more fascinating, horrifying, and indeed conspiratorial. It's hard to know where to start. There have been claims that Mr Khashoggi recorded his own murder with an Apple Watch synced to his iPhone. Although some have claimed that this is just Turkey covering for the fact that they actually had the embassy bugged.
00:29:55
Speaker
There have been various theories as to the nature of his death. Yes, earlier on there were claims that he had been captured and drugged for questioning with his captors inadvertently killing him via an accidental overdose, but more recently have claimed that the aforementioned recordings reveal him being tortured or possibly even dismembered while still alive.
00:30:19
Speaker
pretty chilling. More details have emerged of the alleged Saudi agents who flew from Riyadh to Istanbul and back again on the same day. Mr Khashoggi disappeared. Yes, Turkey released scans of seven of their passports, which were then published by the Washington Post, with faces obscured though, and we were treated to the claim that a bone saw was among the gear they brought with them.
00:30:45
Speaker
Well, I wish I was my bonesaw. And Saudi Arabia's response has continued to evolve, with announcements that they are preparing to make an announcement, admitting that Mr Khashoggi did die, but accidentally, and due to the actions of rogue agents, or something, because rogue agents in an embassy is a staple of 80s and 90s action film fiction.
00:31:08
Speaker
Yes, and one gets the sense that there's still more to come. So for now, we're just going to keep our ignorant mouths shut, and wait until at least some degree of conclusiveness has been arrived at before we talk about the affair anymore.
00:31:23
Speaker
But now, some local news. Yes. What's the MP Jamie Lee Ross? Hang on, sorry, I thought you were trying to avoid saying people's names. Yes.
Accusations in New Zealand Politics
00:31:33
Speaker
Yeah, but you just said Jamie Lee Ross. Well... You just don't like saying foreign names, do you? You're a name racist. Look, it's true that European names are easier on my tongue than non-European names.
00:31:47
Speaker
And by European names, I mean Western European names. Don't get me started on all the issues I had in Romania.
00:31:55
Speaker
And actually by Western European names I mean English names. And probably only names from the south of England. Maybe the town's off the white clips of Dover. That sounds a bit dodgy. Look, it's speech disfluency and the fact I was largely deaf as a child due to someone's parents not noticing my ears were filled with wax. I find pronouncing any new word to be an almost insurmountable task.
00:32:24
Speaker
Fine, I'll write the details, you can say the names. So Botany MP Jamie Lee Ross has come out and charged the leader of the National Party, a Simon Bridges, with corrupt practices. Now it's important to note that both Ross and Bridges belong to the same party. So this isn't the usual crossbench style of allegation. Indeed it's worse than you might think because
00:32:53
Speaker
Ross was the senior whip and the numbers person in the national party until very recently. He literally was the person counting the monies and keeping MPs in the party in line. So for Ross to start claiming his own party leader has been hiding electoral donations is pretty big news, especially since it is not only suggesting a cover-up of how national's finances work,
00:33:20
Speaker
but has come with allegations of even more conspiracies in the National Party. Yeah, the gist of the story is this. As mentioned earlier this year, Simon Bridges' travel expenses were leaked three days before they would have become public knowledge anyway. Suspecting that someone in the government was trying to embarrass him, Bridges demanded an investigation into who leaked and why, however.
00:33:46
Speaker
it soon became clear that the likely leaker was someone in Bridge's own party who wanted to either embarrass or even possibly change their leader. But Bridge's continued to demand an investigation, even if it would actually make things worse for him rather than better. Yes, in this week that investigation concluded and pointed the finger at...
00:34:08
Speaker
Jamie Lee Ross. Although it should be pointed out there's no direct evidence he was the leaguer, just circumstantial evidence which puts him in the right place at the right time. Yes, Ross's reaction to the report was to claim that not only had he been framed, but it was a political hit job on him because of a falling out between him and Bridges. Not just that, but Bridges was corrupt, which led to a rather extraordinary press conference the next day.
00:34:37
Speaker
Over the course of an hour, Ross detailed what he took to be corrupt practices by Bridges and other members of the national executive. In short, Bridges hid a New Zealand $100,000 donation by knowingly having it broken up into smaller donations which would not have been needed to be publicly declared under our country's electoral finance laws.
00:35:06
Speaker
This is, as Ross pointed out, a corrupt practice, which would not only make bridges corrupt, but also ineligible to be in Parliament if convicted. Ross then promised to take these allegations to the police, and then released recordings to the media which confirmed his version of the story.
00:35:29
Speaker
Things then got dark when Ross claimed that Bridges and his deputy, Paula Bennett, had trialled to blackmail him with sexual harassment allegations a few months earlier, but not only would not provide details as to what those allegations were,
00:35:44
Speaker
but also said that if Ross didn't step down more such allegations would appear. This press conference occurred whilst the National Party were in a closed session deciding the fate of Jamie Lee Ross and thus Simon Bridges had to address the claims without much briefing later that afternoon. His denials were
00:36:07
Speaker
Vague, frankly. He basically said I'll wait until I've heard the recording before I say much more about this. Which seemed a bit worrying at the time. But then it gets more interesting. It turns out there were allegations against Ross according to Bennett. But they weren't of a sexual nature. Rather they were workplace bullying claims. Bennett said Ross was just trying to make himself look old.
00:36:38
Speaker
But the next day, four women released an anonymous report about their harassment by Ross, some of which was actual sexual harassment. Bridges and Bennett are shocked by the revelations, revelations which Ross told the country about the day before, which he only knew about due to Bridges and Bennett.
00:36:58
Speaker
which looks like a cover-up by the National Party to hide the fact they had credible claims of sexual harassment against one of their own MPs, but refused to act upon them. Not a good look, but then... Ross? Release the media.
00:37:14
Speaker
recording of the conversation he had with Bridges, which didn't actually show a donation being laundered illegally, although it did show that National's recent push for a more diversity of MPs is entirely predicated on which ethnic groups donate the most money to the party. So that's interesting. Yes.
00:37:35
Speaker
All in all, the lesson this week in Aotearoa is that ego amongst our politicians is rife, and even if the main opposition party is not laundering donations, it is willing to cover up sexual harassment. And with that terrible moral out of the way, I think we spent just about all the time we have this week on news. Join our patrons, if you dare, for more news in our patron bonus episode!
00:37:58
Speaker
where we will be talking about Facebook's purge of independent media affecting both the left and right, the rise of NPC accounts on social media, and Volkswagen once again getting caught cheating out, getting caught out cheating, on their emissions. Finally, this week's winning lottery numbers. If you happen to still be listening in the Andy Bishago alternate universe. Eight.
00:38:23
Speaker
13. 17. 23. 34. 145. Pi. And that's Number Wang. Goodnight Seattle! You've been listening to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy.
00:38:38
Speaker
It is written, researched, and performed by Josh Addison, a.k.a. Monkey Fluids, and MRXtenteth, a.k.a. Conspiracism on Twitter. This podcast is available where all good podcasts can be found, as well as iTunes, Podbean, and Stitcher.
00:38:59
Speaker
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00:39:22
Speaker
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