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The Port Arthur Massacre
69 Plays5 years ago
Josh and M take a look at the conspiracy theories about the Port Arthur Massacre, the mass shooting where 35 people were killed and 23 wounded in Port Arthur, Tasmania back in 1996.
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Josh is @monkeyfluids and M is @conspiracism on Twitter
You can also contact us at: podcastconspiracy@gmail.com
Watch M’s series “Conspiracism” here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJEp7xTcFU3hc2W0kfdSvAQ
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Transcript
Introduction and Lion King Discussion
00:00:00
Speaker
So you're recording and you've cleared everything? I've cleared everything. I've deleted the deleterizations. You've deleted the abilities to delete things. That sounds dangerous. All right. Then in the words of Bambi, that live action Lion King trailer is weird. It is. Very, very weird. I don't get it.
00:00:18
Speaker
The only way it would work would be if David Attenborough narrates the entire thing and it's just animal shots. I'm glad I got James Earl Jones back as... Dad. But I'm not entirely sure by the person doing Scar. Even though I'm not a big fan of Jeremy Irons these days, his Scar is delightful. He does camp. Whilst this villain seems more...
00:00:41
Speaker
Somber but also low key. This doesn't seem like a particularly threatening case of Joshua. You should really brush your teeth before you go to bed tonight. Yes, Joshua. Run to the bathroom. Run and brush your teeth. Okay. That's as threatening as new scar seems to be. Yep.
Podcast Hosts Introduction and Kickstarter Idea
00:01:03
Speaker
Anyway, shall we do a podcast?
00:01:14
Speaker
The podcaster's guide to the conspiracy, brought to you today by Josh Addison and Dr. M. Denton.
00:01:24
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the podcaster's guide to the conspiracy. I was about to say it's a dark and stormy night here in Auckland, New Zealand but the rain seems to have stopped so we might actually get a nice clear bit of recording which would be nice. It's true although at some point in the next few weeks you are going to get recordings that have
00:01:39
Speaker
Thunder, wind and lightning. Now the lightning will only be effective if you're watching the video version of this podcast slash vodcast. But the wind and the thunder will be exciting because that is Auckland in awesome. Most interesting. At any rate, I, of course, am Josh Addison and sitting next to me, of course, is Dr. M. Dentith. I don't think we have any
00:02:06
Speaker
Any opening remarks do we? Should I just improvise something while you hit the boos? Get yourself in the sauce. Yeah, it is the sauce. Now I should point out no one has given us $500, so I still can't reveal the secret of how I turned my enemies.
00:02:24
Speaker
into this wonderful skull glass oh well 500 smackaroos you know you want to know you stupid idiots out there probably blown more than that on kickstarters for rubbish you've probably blown more than that on kickstarters for rubbish yeah i want to kick started a coffee machine that never got made yeah well these things happen i was really annoyed by that
00:02:45
Speaker
Hmm. I didn't do much kick-starting because I'm cheap, but maybe I should. Maybe you should. Maybe everyone should. We should have a kick-starter for this podcast. What would we kick-start?
News Segment: Anne-Marie Brady Case Update
00:02:56
Speaker
A better version of this podcast. Excellent. Well, we'll think about that. Although we would go through the local version of Kickstarter pledge me. Yes, we would. Because otherwise I know would kick my ass. But anyway, while we think about that, we should probably fly into some news. Although looking at our list, I see it's less news, less new news, and more old news. Old news. Or old, if you prefer.
00:03:23
Speaker
We don't, but we're going to get straight into it now. Update. And retractions.
00:03:34
Speaker
This week, it's all updates and no news. Well, except updates, which are news. And nothing is being attracted. Frankly, this segment only exists because of a sting. But what a sting it is. Now, in local news, we have an update on the Anne Marie Brady case. If you recall, she's the local academic who believes, and it seems with good reason, that not only is she being spied on by Chinese authorities, but also that they've broken into her office, sabotaged her car, and other, frankly, disturbing things.
00:04:02
Speaker
Last time we updated you on this we reported that the New Zealand Police Force investigation into Marie Brady's claims was...
00:04:09
Speaker
Nothing. Having consulted with Interpol and other bodies, the result of the investigation was it was still up in the air as to what had happened and who had caused it. So news this week that an Australian current affairs show has said Australian government sources have confirmed that intelligence assessments identify China's spy service as the prime suspect behind the intimidation of Brady. Well, that's caused a bit of a fuss with even now Prime Minister Wang into say she had been given no such intelligence.
00:04:36
Speaker
The assumption being that given we in Australia are both members of the Five Eyes Network, a shared intelligence program, the anonymous Australian government source can't be correct. But given academics working on China's attempts to exert soft power in Australasia continue to be frustrated with the lack of progress into Brady's claims, there's suggestion here either that an intelligence partner is not sharing information with us or that people don't want to upset an emerging world power. Either way, it's not hard to sympathise with the conspiracy theorists on this. Something fishy is going on.
00:05:04
Speaker
It is. I mean, it's a really interesting case in that the media seems to be quite convinced that Chinese authorities in some particular respect are behind the hacks, the burglaries and maybe the sabotage of the car. The intelligence agencies and the police seem to say, no, it's a quite fascinating situation. The question is, are people tilting at windmills for the kind of yellow peril narrative or
00:05:33
Speaker
Are our intelligence
Christchurch Terror Attacks Inquiry
00:05:34
Speaker
agencies letting us down, a la what happened with March 15th down in Otatahi? Or are people covering up things because they don't want to disturb someone? It all seems a bit fishy.
00:05:48
Speaker
Well, yes, and when you've got anonymous sources sort of popping up and saying things that our governments claim not to know anything about, who the hell knows? Well, yes. Now, talking about who the hell knows, more local updates. The events of March 15th, the terror attacks on Otatahi Christchurch is getting a Royal Commission of Inquiry to find out.
00:06:10
Speaker
Who the hell knows? Basically this is the highest level of investigation this country can run, a little like a grand jury in the US. It will be chaired by Supreme Court Justice Sir William Young and is expected to report back to the government in 8 months time.
00:06:26
Speaker
The key agencies taking part in the inquiry will include the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service, the Government Communication Security Bureau, the New Zealand Police Force, Customs, Immigration and other relevant government agencies or departments, and they'll be looking at what these agencies knew or should have known about the terrorist and his preparations prior to the event.
00:06:52
Speaker
The terms of reference largely reflect why we were so concerned about surveilling Muslim communities, but not far right groups at the time. Now, critics are concerned the enquiries both short on time and the terms of reference are rather narrow, looking at only one potential issue rather than asking about the possibility there were systemic failures at work.
00:07:15
Speaker
But this and the new gun laws recently enacted do show that the government is interested in ensuring that this doesn't happen again, which is a pleasant change of tact from certain allies who seem to be back to excuse in white nationalism and white supremacism.
00:07:33
Speaker
Fortunately,
Jamal Khashoggi Compensation Controversy
00:07:34
Speaker
we don't talk about those allies at the moment because we are so damn sick of the sight of them or the sound of them Although we probably could talk more about Australia, but we're going to we are So let's move on for now and finally some good news
00:07:50
Speaker
kind of, for the family of Jamal Khashoggi. Despite a lack of progress in getting behind who and why Khashoggi was killed at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Ankara, his children, at least, are now receiving million-dollar houses and monthly five-figure payments from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as compensation for the killing of their father.
00:08:09
Speaker
It appears to be both compensation for a wrong and an attempt to keep Khashoggi's siblings and children quiet. And they have been notably quiet in their criticism of the kingdom, probably rather understandably given their father's fate.
00:08:23
Speaker
So, I mean, at first glance, it feels like hush money, although the government has sort of said, no, no, this is the sort of thing we do. This is a routine thing the kingdom does in situations of this kind. People and family members of people who've, you know, who have suffered some sort of tragedy. Who have been brutally murdered in our consulates overseas. So, yeah, it's all a little bit, I don't know. I mean, going from the way the story's progressed, the House of Sowde do seem to be used to kind of saying whatever they want and have that believed.
00:08:53
Speaker
And they have been little miffed in the past when they haven't been taken at their word. So yes, they say this is just them doing doing good. I mean, I believe most of the children don't actually live in Saudi Arabia. And so it's not certain whether, you know, it's like their dad didn't want to go back and was, you know, picked up. They tried to get him back to Saudi Arabia and supposedly sort of picked him up in the consulate.
00:09:19
Speaker
So now is it them trying to entice the children back with a new house and free money? Or what?
00:09:27
Speaker
It is all rather suspicious. And given there doesn't need to be any particular rush to punish anyone, we will have to say. And
Christchurch Attacker's Manifesto Access for Research
00:09:38
Speaker
then one last update. You are exempt. Yes, I am exempt. So I applied for an exemption to hold a copy of the terrorist manifesto relating to the terror attacks down in Christchurch from March the 15th.
00:09:53
Speaker
I applied for the exemption. I have the exemption. I am now one of the few people who was legally allowed to hold a copy of the manifesto in the nation state of Aotearoa New Zealand for one year. I can reapply for that exemption in years time. There's no cost to that.
00:10:09
Speaker
I'll just have to explain why I still need access to it in a year's time. It may be that the judicial inquiry into the classification has been completed and maybe the exemption won't be needed anymore. But given that I'm doing some work which may touch upon
00:10:26
Speaker
needing to at least cite the existence of the document and maybe refer to it during my research, I thought it'd be wise to spend some patron money, your patron money as patrons, to make sure that I can hold a copy for at least a year for research purposes.
00:10:42
Speaker
And I assume, in an academic sense, I mean, I assume you're not allowed to actually quote it? I could, if I wanted to. The question is actually whether I am going to quote it or not. I'm, at this stage, much more content to refer to it and have the document there to make sure that when I refer to things said in it, I'm referring accurately.
00:11:03
Speaker
But at this stage, this close to the event, I'm not inclined to quote it. But who knows, maybe in four or five years' time, quoting the document may make perfect sense depending on what I'm writing. Ah well. So that's it for our updates, and we move into the main section, which is fairly strongly related to this topic, and also a good look at our cousins across the ditch.
00:11:30
Speaker
by which i mean the australians
Port Arthur Massacre and Gun Control
00:11:31
Speaker
not the giant penguins who live in antartica no no not them one day we'll talk about the giant penguins who live in antartica they guard the city of the elder thing and now this
00:11:52
Speaker
Righto, because the thing is, today we're going to talk about the Port Arthur massacre in Australia. You've probably heard about this one. This was back in 1996, from the 28th to the 29th of April. 35 people were killed and 23 wounded in Port Arthur and Tasmania.
00:12:11
Speaker
This was the worst mass shooting in Australia's history ever, I believe, and I think at the time the worst mass shooting in the world. Yes, I believe it's only been bested in the last decade. Yes, yeah, I think you had Utoya and then Las Vegas and now
00:12:31
Speaker
Orlando was there. But certainly at the time, this was a massive, it still is a massive event. And it was the event that caused Australia to tighten up its gun laws significantly in a manner which kind of formed the template for how our government has just tightened up our gun laws in the wake of the Christchurch shootings.
00:12:56
Speaker
And so not only has it been a template for New Zealand in that respect, but there are conspiracy theories around the Port Arthur massacre. And so probably it's fair to expect that they will in some way be a template for the conspiracy theories that end up popping up. And I believe are already popping up.
00:13:15
Speaker
Within hours of the March 15th event, the standard false flag measured in conspiracy theories came up. Now, just a small historical note for people who know something about Sino-Japanese relations. This is not the first Port Arthur massacre. There actually was a Port Arthur massacre
00:13:33
Speaker
back in 1894, in the First Sino-Japanese War, where between, and I want to stress this, between 1,000 and 20,000 Chinese service people and civilians were killed in the coastal port of Port Arthur, which is now known by its proper name, which is Lishunku.
00:13:55
Speaker
Yeah, that's a bit of a margin of error there, between 1 and 20,000. Yes, and actually it's quite interesting to look into this because these numbers, the bigger number comes from the aggressing Japanese forces who wanted to celebrate how many people they killed.
00:14:12
Speaker
As people point out, it's estimated that back in 1894, the population of Port Arthur was only about 13,000 people. So even when you add in a whole bunch of troops, you're probably not going to get the 60k. So they're going, well, it's claimed only 37 people survived the massacre.
00:14:35
Speaker
which means you have 13,000 plus however many troops there are which would get you somewhat close to say 16k but as people say no one really knows what the records are at the time so it's a bit up and near as to how big the massacre was but it was big
00:14:54
Speaker
So there you go, if you wondered how murderous we are as a species, we human beings, you can talk about the massacre of people at Port Arthur and people will say which one. Yeah. But anyway, yes, so it's
00:15:09
Speaker
Basically brought up, Port Arthur and Tasmania is usually brought up as sort of the counter example in the American gun debates, where people will say, you know, enacting gun laws, it's not going to do anything. And people say, well, look at Australia, they had this event in 1996. They passed gun laws straight away. There hasn't been a mass shooting on that scale since there have been mass shootings in Australia, but considerably smaller in scale.
00:15:34
Speaker
And I mean, in New Zealand, we had the Aramuana shootings in 1990, where, I mean, where I think 13 people were shot. Yeah, so David Gray shot. And that was, I mean, that was very much a case of, he was diagnosed schizophrenic. And it was
00:15:55
Speaker
There was at the time, I think there was there was talk of Rambo style military weapons, which we had some legislation against at the time, but it was very much I think it was like from what I've read, it was more based on kind of what they looked like, you know, sort of the shape of the weapon rather than what it actually did.
00:16:13
Speaker
Although it did result in the Thorpe Inquiry, which was a massive inquiry into our gun laws at the time, the Thorpe Inquiry came back with basically all of the recommendations that have just been passed by our parliament now to enact gun control.
00:16:28
Speaker
and the government of the time kind of blinked and passed the ball to mix their metaphors. Yes. Yeah, I mean, and that's sort of the thing. I think I've seen people saying governments are generally reactive. They don't do precautionary stuff because that will piss too many people off saying, hey, we're going to enact this war, enact this law, curtail your liberties in some way because of a hypothetical situation that would be bad if it ever happened, but hasn't yet.
00:16:56
Speaker
They don't tend to do that. And so the sad fact is that it takes an event like the events in Christchurch to really... Or in Port Arthur. Or indeed in Port Arthur. And that's one place where the conspiracy theories start because apparently there had been, as in New Zealand, there had been inquiries and looks into maybe doing something about
00:17:19
Speaker
gun control laws in the past, and particularly there was a summit in 1987 in Australia. And apparently at the time, basically there's this gun summit. I believe nothing really came of it. They didn't tighten up gun laws in any way. And the former premier of New South Wales, Barry Unsworth, apparently said at the time, it will take a massacre in Tasmania before we get gun reform.
00:17:44
Speaker
And wouldn't you know it, nine years later, there's a massacre in Tasmania and they get gun reform. I think nine years is probably stretching it a little bit. To be very slow. I mean, I should point out, I believe Barry Antwerth actually lived in Tasmania. So when he was saying in Tasmania, he was talking about the place he came from, as opposed to just randomly pointing at him at Tasmania.
00:18:09
Speaker
Now, recently, conspiracy theories around Port Arthur have been in the news. Pauline Hanson, who is the leader, is she? Leader of Pauline Hanson's One Nation. One Nation party in Australia. Their reign pretty much gives it away, yeah. So she'd been talking about a little bit on the news very much in the context of the, oh, there are unanswered questions. I'm just asking questions.
00:18:34
Speaker
This kind of skips to the end slightly, but the reason why this all came up is that Al Jazeera decided to do a documentary about how the NRA tries to control the narrative around guns, particularly the NRA's work overseas.
00:18:52
Speaker
So Al Jazeera kind of set up a sting operation where they contacted various politicians in different countries, including Pauline Hanson in Australia, and organized a meetup saying, look,
00:19:06
Speaker
And they were pretending to be the NRA. Look, what could we do to help change the narrative around guns? Knowing that the NRA actually does proactively do this. There's been other news in Australia recently about people getting drunk.
00:19:23
Speaker
and then contacting the NRA to ask for money. And Hanson basically goes through and talks about how what she really needs is about 10 to 20 million Australian dollars so that she can run a campaign to get more parliamentarians and senators into the Australian political system so that then they can start looking at loosening gun control.
00:19:48
Speaker
And while she has this conversation, she brings up Port Arthur and goes, look, it's very suspicious. There are unanswered questions. Those shots were very, very accurate. Then her chief of staff out of nowhere goes, yeah, and look at 9-11. That was probably an inside job.
00:20:07
Speaker
And then the Al Jazeera footage got out because the documentary showed. And Pauline Hanson made some really interesting claims. First, she refused to appear on camera to discuss what she had said, because apparently her face had been paralyzed by some kind of insect sting. And then she claimed that Al Jazeera had employed voice impersonators and overdubbed her.
00:20:31
Speaker
Yes, so that brings brings in there. There are two threads of conspiracy theory around Port Arthur at the moment. I thought you're gonna say around Pauline Hanson. No, that would be odd. So we have the conspiracy theories about the massacre itself, which tend to follow the same sort of false flaggy narrative that we're sick to bloody death of.
00:20:53
Speaker
in this podcast by now. But there are also the conspiracy theories coming from the gun reform time attempts that we're seeing right at the moment, where organizations like the NRA have been trying, it seems covertly or not so covertly, trying to influence legal decision making in other countries. And here, our Minister Judith Collins, former Minister of Police in the National Party,
00:21:20
Speaker
uh was in the news for basic for telling the NRA to bugger off her words um and to keep things very formal in this country and uh and that that's sort of that's been the tenor of most discussions that i've seen sort of when there's been any suggestion of the NRA sticking their noses in here the response is very mean as very much being you know get get get out of our country you don't
00:21:45
Speaker
You know, you've screwed up your country, don't come over here trying to export your brand of crazy to us. But that's been when it's got out amongst the general populace, but amongst people who would be fellow travellers of the NRA, possibly things have gone a little more smoothly, but more covertly.
00:22:04
Speaker
It's important to note that the NRA does have a vested interest in the gun laws of countries overseas. As NRA spokespeople have said in the past, the problem with Port Arthur is that because Australia enacted gun legislation so quickly, many people's reaction to mass shooting events in the US is to go, well,
00:22:26
Speaker
Australia could do it, why can't we? So it is in the NRA's interest to weaken those kind of narratives if they can nurture, oh but these things can be rolled back. And the NRA has spent money both in Australia and in Aotearoa New Zealand trying to fund gun clubs to get them to be proactive about loosening our gun regulations here. And there's nothing hidden or
00:22:51
Speaker
conspiratorial about that, they do that openly. It's more of a question when they start trying to manipulate politicians to change these laws, that things become slightly more awkward because we don't have the same kind of lobbying rules that the US has for these kinds of organisations.
00:23:12
Speaker
And even if we did, we consider that kind of lobbying to be highly suspicious, if not outright immoral. We certainly do. Yes, I mean, as we said at the start, Port Arthur is sort of one of the key counter examples against the likes of the NRA, saying, look, gun control can be done and it works, see?
00:23:36
Speaker
But I find it interesting that it's it was really, I mean, mass shootings have been around for as long as there have been firearms, I guess, that wasn't really Columbine was kind of the first one in the states that really got people's attention. And that was 1999. So that was so Port Arthur actually predates all the sort of more recent noteworthy mass shootings, especially in the states.
00:24:04
Speaker
as does the major conspiracy theory about Port Arthur, because Pauline Hanson and her claim there are questions that must be answered about what really happened at Port Arthur is all due to the existence of
00:24:19
Speaker
one book. This book is called Deadly Deception at Port Arthur, which was written by Joe Vials, a self-described independent investigator with 30 years direct experience in international military and oil field operations. And in Deadly Deception at Port Arthur, Vials basically puts forward the thesis
00:24:41
Speaker
Port Arthur was designed to enact gun control in Australia. The interesting thing about this conspiracy theory is that it actually happens
00:25:01
Speaker
And with our complaint always about the American, the false flag conspiracy theories is, you know, this this mass shooting was a false flag by the Democrats and Obama and George Soros and what have you so that they can bring in gun control and disarm the citizenry. But it never works. They never do bring in gun control. And yet Port Arthur, they did straight away. So for one thing, it surprises me a little bit that it's only sort of referred to by one side of the of the
00:25:31
Speaker
of the argument saying, you know, as an anti-gun or pro-gun control argument, saying, look, you know, look at Port Arthur, the Australia-Australia reactant that worked. I'm surprised it hasn't been more, you know, look, this thing happened and straight away they enacted gun control. So, you know, that's the this shows that it's what governments are up to. I don't see the pro-gun people pointing to Port Arthur. I wonder if that's just because it's another country and also 20 odd years ago.
00:26:00
Speaker
There is this rather horrible notion that maybe the land where most mass shootings occur, the US, isn't particularly up to date with politics outside of the continental United States. Well, indeed. Well, as it turns out, we are very up to date. While doing research for this, I ended up coming across
00:26:19
Speaker
a perennial bugbear in JFK scholarship, which is kind of brought to light by the film, JFK by Oliver Stone, the Christchurch star in newspaper in Ototahi Christchurch, published one of the first stories on Lee Harvey Oswald shooting JFK.
00:26:39
Speaker
basically
Conspiracy Theories Discussion
00:26:40
Speaker
a roundabout midday New Zealand time, which was not very long after the event in question. And Susan, JFK conspiracy theorists in the US get very suspicious about this going, look, look, this overseas newspaper has this full page story about Lee Harvey Oswald.
00:26:59
Speaker
Why would a New Zealand newspaper have that story? That must have been part of a press kit sent out by the Deep State to prepare people for this event. And the editor at the time, back in 1963, went, nah, it didn't happen that way.
00:27:14
Speaker
Lee Harvey Oswald was a person of interest to the world generally, because when he defected to the USSR, that made news all around the world. It was reported in a variety of big newspapers in the US. We subscribed to those. So we have all of those things on file. We have photos of Oswald and his wife arriving back in the US when he defects from the USSR back to the US, which is a photo we used in the news story.
00:27:42
Speaker
We have wire services that told us about the news rather quickly. There's nothing suspicious about the fact we ran this story other than the fact that Americans don't think that we pay any attention to their politics because Americans don't pay any attention to ours.
00:28:02
Speaker
Yes, a slight worry on that front. When it comes to the book, though, the deception at Port Arthur. So what's the thrust of his argument then? What evidence does he bring up? So it's 117 pages. You can download it from the internet.
00:28:19
Speaker
It's basically a whole bunch of here's some suspicious things that happened in the lead up to that event. So as commentators at the time and commentators to this day say, there's no smoking gun in deadly deception at Port Arthur. There's no one piece of evidence that says this was a conspiracy.
00:28:41
Speaker
What there are is a variety of different bits of evidence which taken together might suggest the existence of a conspiracy. But many people go, kind of doesn't, because you can't find a unifying form as to what went on there. But some of the kind of evidence that he's
00:28:59
Speaker
concerned about and this comes from a pracy of deadly deception which was written by someone who claims the following expertise. I have had much experience with officials over the last 10 years mainly writing to them right up to the governor general and logging their resolute non-replies so you can be sure I do think it was officialdom that ran the entire event. I do not understand that sentence.
00:29:25
Speaker
I've written to MPs, they haven't responded, episode facto, I'm now a political expert. But the pre-c here is that there's kind of
00:29:34
Speaker
12 things which are odd about Port Arthur. There were three meetings on that day. So we're looking at things you get with 911 and the London bombings. Isn't it convenient that the police were doing operations on this day? So he points out that there was a meeting of surgeons that day, a meeting of me as a conference for the media in a local hotel and other health personnel nearby.
00:30:02
Speaker
In the year prior, there had been a lot of preparation for the potential for accidents and emergencies, including people being trained to handle bodies, the purchase of a mortuary truck, and preparation of large embalming supplies. There was also the fact that more helicopters and things had been bought in the years prior to the event.
00:30:25
Speaker
There had been two big adjustments in the political situation in Australia, a federal election which brought in a new prime minister, the one who enacted gun control, and a voluntary stepping down by the premier of Tasmania at the time. And then there were things such as the cafe in which it occurred, the broad arrow cafe had been bought by the government a year prior.
00:30:52
Speaker
There was a change in workers' compensation to eliminate PTSD coverage, and there had been a change in the Coroners Act to restrict the coroner's scope because Australian nationals and foreign nationals were killed in the attack.
00:31:09
Speaker
Previously, under the coroner's attack, there would have to be an official coronal inquiry if a foreigner was killed on Australian soil. The Coroner's Act changed that so that that didn't have to occur in event of this kind. And he goes, taken together, these 12 things strongly suggest conspiracy.
00:31:30
Speaker
And yet you kind of have to argue for taking them all together, don't you? You can't just... Yeah, it has to be at least, and I mean, other pre-presses go for two dozen or 36 of similar events, going to take them all together, and then and only then do you get a story which seems amenable to a conspiracy theory, as opposed to there were some legal changes, the state of Tasmania did some preparation in case there was an emergency,
00:32:00
Speaker
there was an emergency and things played out the way you'd expect them to. And I believe there's a bit more of the good old discrepancies that we tend to see all the time. Discrepancies in times and locations, eyewitness statements, and that's something that we've seen show up over and over again. One of the surviving victims of the Port Arthur attack
00:32:25
Speaker
has made the claim that Martin Bryant, the person who actually was responsible for the Port Arthur massacre, wasn't the person who shot him in the back. And as people have pointed out,
00:32:41
Speaker
How is he identifying someone who shot him in the back? The thing about being shot in the back, human beings aren't owls. Yes, we cannot see directly behind ourselves. No. Yeah, that is an odd claim to make. It is. And that's one of the discrepancies. One of the victims claims that the person who was prosecuted for the crime wasn't the person who shot him in the back. Now,
00:33:07
Speaker
There's also, as we mentioned before, the whole precision shots thing, which, I mean, that seems a little bit low on substance as well, that people were shot. What's the difference between a regular shot and a precision shot? And remember, of course, these shootings, they started in a cafe. They ended up going all over the place. Some of them were at distance. Some of them were close range executions. I think the most horrific
00:33:31
Speaker
event in the massacre was a woman approached him thinking he was someone who could get her out of there and he killed her and her two children point blank range right in front of him. So it seems a bit odd, it seems a bit hard to justify, you know, do they mean people were shot in the head or what? Or the fact that people were shot at all if he was aiming from a distance? I don't even know.
00:33:54
Speaker
exactly what that means. And the thing is, people running away from someone with a gun, most people do tend to run in a straight line. It's unfortunate to say, but people running away from you in a straight line are much easier to shoot. I mean, the more interesting discrepancy, and this is not necessarily a discrepancy, there is the question of motive with the Port Arthur massacre. So with the March 15th event, we have a very clear motive.
00:34:22
Speaker
Someone wants to start a race war, basically. But Bryant's motive continues to be elusive, if not politically non-existent. I mean, you know, no motive has ever been released into the public sphere. The only person who might know exactly why he did it is his lawyer, who was bound by confidentiality, not to actually talk about it.
00:34:50
Speaker
There's also, similar to what's happened over here, there's been very, very limited coverage of Bryant, at least his name is known, but they've made a point of sort of covering him as little as possible. Apparently there is one time when journalists came to talk and took photographs, they were made to take the film out of their cameras and destroy it in front of him so that, you know, so it was clear to him that his image wouldn't be getting out.
00:35:20
Speaker
He's not allowed to listen to the news at all. He has a radio playing music only because they didn't want him to ever hear about any news, any coverage of his deeds. Because apparently the only thing approaching a motive that has come out is that he was apparently very interested in hearing about
00:35:39
Speaker
exactly the effect that he had. He was very keen to know exactly how many people had died. So it sounds like he was just in it for the infamy. He just wanted to be known as having killed lots and lots of people at the time, indeed more people than anyone had ever shot in a single mass shooting. So that's a definite point of difference here in New Zealand.
00:36:01
Speaker
I think another one perhaps is, again, we have the manifesto documenting motive. We also have the video stream, which makes it a lot harder to basically talk crap about it. Except, of course, it actually doesn't, because it's someone who's looked into this. There are a lot of conspiracy theories about that video as to what's in it or not in it.
00:36:26
Speaker
And to a certain extent, to be able to debunk some of these conspiracy theories requires you to have viewed that video to confirm or deny claims being made about it. So
00:36:42
Speaker
If you want to watch a snuff film, you can then go around going there, although you actually can't here. That is objectional material where there is no exemption whatsoever. But you can, there are still conspiracy theories about it, because A, people don't want to watch snuff films, and B, it's a highly compressed, low frame rate video,
00:37:06
Speaker
Where details are murky and hard to distinguish anyway. Well, yes, I suppose. In practice, yes, probably harder to use. But in theory, at least, there would have to be at least some claims that could be refuted by saying, look, the video shows this is obviously not true. Where is it that there is nothing whatsoever? Yeah. Yeah.
00:37:25
Speaker
So in terms of Port Arthur being a template for conspiracy theories here, and I think conspiracy theories the world over, is it? Do you think? Well, so researching this episode I was going, is Deadly Deception at Port Arthur the book?
00:37:46
Speaker
kind of an urtext for the mass shooting thing. You'd think it would be. Kind of need to actually look into earlier examples of the form as to whether Vals was basically aping something or whether he kind of came up with the form almost immediately because we are talking
00:38:06
Speaker
just at the era of the internet becoming a big thing in 1999, making it fairly easy to disseminate these things on websites. And there is a website devoted to Deadly Deception at Port Arthur, and it does look like a Geocities site from the late 90s.
00:38:24
Speaker
And so maybe this is, although there probably are going to be earlier pamphlets and the like, but which would not have had the same kind of spread as this particular text did at that time. So there is a very open question here, and it's something which haven't quite got to the bottom of yet. Yeah, it does seem like, because I mean, talking about the
00:38:47
Speaker
the sorts of things you see in Deadly Deception. It did remind me of, say, James Tracy's early things about Sandy Hook, where there seemed to be very low on substance, but high on insinuation and lots of, you know, why would this happen? This is a bit odd, isn't it? And taking a whole bunch of things together to make it look like a bigger thing without actually arguing that it's valid to take them all together.
00:39:14
Speaker
and talking about Sandy Hook that gets us back to our good friends at the NRA because it came out rather recently in a Huffington Post article that a NRA official contacted a prominent Sandy Hook truther just after the events of the Sandy Hook massacre to go, you should call in to question the official theory here. There are unanswered questions. We don't think the official theory is the complete story.
00:39:44
Speaker
which was the NRA weaponizing conspiracy theories about Sandy Hawk to further their own anti-gun control campaign.
00:39:56
Speaker
Yeah, and I mean, at the end of the day, these things, they all sort of turn back on themselves and feed into each other. We've said before about how false flags, false flag conspiracy theories tend to rely on all the previous events also being false flag conspiracy theories, which rely themselves on previous events, and they all sort of feed into one another. So any conspiracy theories that are coming out right now about our own local version of events,
00:40:22
Speaker
as well as having the more local Port Arthur massacre to rely on have Tweety Year's worth of this sort of false flag theory stuff, providing a template for them already.
00:40:35
Speaker
So, bugger, I think is all I have to say. So I think that's depressing enough for now. It is. So after the break, for patrons who pay a little bit of moolah to hear more of our prevarications on conspiracy theory, you're going to find out about an interesting pathological aspect of Princess Diana's death that might shed new light on the conspiracy theories around her death.
00:41:04
Speaker
Or it might not. You'll find out about an instant to what appears to be Satanic Panic here in Aotearoa New Zealand. And an interesting story here just to read the headline. Twitter suspended dozens of Hebrew language accounts run by a strange Chinese religious sect. Now what that about?
00:41:22
Speaker
I don't know. Not the best headline I've seen today. Obviously the best headline I've seen today was the one about doctors finding bees living inside a woman's eye, drinking her tears. See, for a long period of time I refused to click on any links because I thought that has to be poetry. But actually it turns out to be true. They're not to be real, they were tiny bees in her eyes feasting on her tears. That's basically what the internet has brought us to. That's basically what the internet is, really. The internet is an eye bee feasting on our tears, I think.
00:41:51
Speaker
It's sad because it's true. But what's not sad, well actually what's not sad is that it's the end of this episode, but it is a little bit sad. We have to say goodbye for now. Then we'll say hello to our patrons. Hey guys. Yeah. And then we'll say goodbye to them as well. But then in the week's time, we'll say hello again and the cycle of life continues. Were you going to break into
Conclusion and Farewells
00:42:13
Speaker
a Beatles song? I was thinking of The Exponents.
00:42:17
Speaker
Oh, you say hello, I say, yeah, I was thinking, yeah, they say goodbye, even though I'm, anyway, I'm not drunk. And exponent songs are made by and for drunk people. So we won't sing them right now. Instead, we will say goodbye. Hello! And goodbye. Hello! You know, I quite see the hang of the saying goodbye business. Hello! Right, I think we'll just have to leave it at that. Hello.
00:42:46
Speaker
you
00:42:52
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.
00:43:53
Speaker
And remember, Soylent Green is meeples. When you speak, you sound a little bit like... Like this. I have my microphone upside down to guard against those accursed... Pelosives. Pelosives. No, I see that didn't peak at all. Nancy Pelosi. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled... Penises. Yes, we both knew it was... It was kind of the same job.