#810: February 18-23, 2004
Today, Dan and Jordan are forced to stay in the past because Alex has been out of the studio all this week. In this installment, Alex meets The Shrimp Man and swears off coffee.
May 26, 2023 - Knowledge Fight
01:09:16
Participants
| 
| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
I'm sick of them posing as if they're the good guys saying we are the bad guys knowledge fight | |
| Dan and George knowledge fight the bad Andy in Kansas. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| Stop it. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| It's time to pray. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
| Thanks for holding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Alex. | |
| I'm a first time calling in with you, Japan. | ||
| I love your room. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Knowledge Fight. | |
| KnowledgeFight.com I love you. | ||
| Hey, everybody. | ||
| Welcome back to Knowledge Fight. | ||
| I'm Dan. | ||
| I'm Jordan. | ||
| We're a couple of dudes. | ||
| Like, sit around. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Whoa. | |
| What is happening? | ||
| We like to sit around. | ||
| Worse but the altars lane and talk a little bit about Alex Jones. | ||
| Oh, indeed we do, Dan. | ||
| Something was slightly wrong with my headphones. | ||
| I think that threw me off a little bit. | ||
| I gotcha. | ||
| Yeah, I think that's a little better. | ||
| A little bit soft? | ||
| Yeah, I'm not sure what it was. | ||
| There's just something, a strange sound. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think we're better now. | ||
| I think we are. | ||
| We've recovered. | ||
| We could restart, but we just fucking won't. | ||
| This is free behind-the-scenes shit. | ||
| It was too gold. | ||
| It was too good. | ||
| Too solid. | ||
| Indeed we are, Dan. | ||
| Jordan? | ||
| Dan? | ||
| What's up? | ||
| What's your bright spot today, buddy? | ||
| My bright spot, Jordan, is irony. | ||
| Irony? | ||
| Well, actually, I have two bright spots. | ||
| One is irony, which I'll get back to in a minute. | ||
| And the second is I got burned by novelty once again. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh. | |
| I was at the Walgreens. | ||
| Ironically? | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Just unfortunately. | ||
| Well, there is, I mean, there's a slight irony to it. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Which we'll get to in a minute. | ||
| We'll get to. | ||
| So, I was at the Walgreens. | ||
| Picking up some things. | ||
| And I wander through the chip aisle. | ||
| And what do I see but a new flavor of Dorito that was called Hot Mustard. | ||
| No! | ||
| No! | ||
| So it's kind of ironic because I bailed on the year of the mustard. | ||
| Yes, that is. | ||
| There's something to be said. | ||
| So I saw that. | ||
| That might still be coincidental, but okay. | ||
| I was like, ooh, how do I turn this down? | ||
| That is a weird Dorito flavor. | ||
| That is strange. | ||
| So easy. | ||
| So easy. | ||
| Why would they do that? | ||
| You look at that and you go, wrong. | ||
| Wrong! | ||
| So I was on the cusp. | ||
| Uh-huh. | ||
| No, I wasn't. | ||
| I decided I was going to buy it. | ||
| The moment you saw it, you were buying it and you were taking it home and you were like, this is probably pretzels. | ||
| And one thing that got me really over the hurdle easily was that it was buy one, get one. | ||
| So I was like, well, I can get a safe flavor and then it's kind of just free hot mustard. | ||
| You can't hurt me. | ||
| Wow, it was bad. | ||
| Was it bad? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was so bad. | |
| Why? | ||
| It was really, really accurate. | ||
| In terms of hot mustard. | ||
| Alright. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It was as advertised. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But also, you can't really get rid of the corn flavor of the chip. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so you had this corn plus hot mustard that does not go together. | ||
| Which is not pretzel. | ||
| It's not pretzel plus hot mustard, which makes sense. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It just, it was... | ||
| Do not recommend. | ||
| Do you think... | ||
| I feel like there's two competing factions in the Doritos. | ||
| Flavor Factory. | ||
| The corn and the hot mustard. | ||
| No, there's the people who are like, let's make the best tasting chip. | ||
| And then the people who are like, if you're gonna call it hot mustard, it's gonna taste like fucking hot mustard, alright? | ||
| I don't care if it tastes good. | ||
| I don't care if it tastes like anything, it's gonna taste like hot mustard. | ||
| You said it! | ||
| I hate to say this. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Doritos. | ||
| Calm it down. | ||
| You can't do better than the nacho cheese ones. | ||
| You got your nacho cheese. | ||
| You nailed it on Cool Ranch way back. | ||
| You got your Cool Ranch. | ||
| You did it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't like the Cool Ranch ones, but I know that they have their fans. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But those have been around for 20-something years. | ||
| Longer than I've been alive, maybe. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Everything since then has been shit. | ||
| Absolute trash. | ||
| I don't know what it is. | ||
| And I get... | ||
| They must just be bored. | ||
| I keep getting tricked. | ||
| Yeah, they can't just be like, hey, listen. | ||
| We're going to make these three flavors, we're going to be rich forever, and then we'll just keep going. | ||
| I know that there's also fans of the spicy nacho. | ||
| I'm not as much of a fan of that one. | ||
| But, you know, that's kind of become almost within the oeuvre of standard Doritos flavors. | ||
| Whenever they start fucking around, it's a mess, and I will get tricked every single time. | ||
| Every time. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Doritos. | ||
| You see, I can't get out of my head that there's some sort of trick behind it, you know? | ||
| It's a trick to get you to pay attention to Doritos, recognize one of their flavors is bad, and then go right back to Cool Ranch or whatever, you know? | ||
| Well, it's the potential of what could be, and then you realize how good the nacho cheese ones are. | ||
| They're so tricky. | ||
| They're better. | ||
| They're smarter. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They remind you of what you like about them by giving you shit. | ||
| Yes, absolutely. | ||
| Fooled you again, assholes. | ||
| So, the irony, Bright Spot, is... | ||
| So, on our Monday episode, we talked a little bit about how we have a responsibility to cover the present day and stuff. | ||
| I don't think it's any secret to anybody who listens to the show that I think that the present day is much less interesting than the past. | ||
| I think that Alex is not as... | ||
| There's not as much depth to what he's doing. | ||
| The guests aren't really as interesting. | ||
| It's secret the way the Statute of Liberty is a secret. | ||
| The Statute of Liberty? | ||
| Yeah, well. | ||
| So there is a hurdle that I have to get over in order to get to a place where I'm like, you know what? | ||
| The present day requires our attention. | ||
| Let's do this thing. | ||
| And so I was there on Monday. | ||
| You were there. | ||
| I was there. | ||
| And we put out the episode. | ||
| Sunday. | ||
| I was like, I can't wait for Wednesday's show. | ||
| We're going to do some sneaky snake business. | ||
| We're going to cover Sunday. | ||
| We're going to cover Monday. | ||
| Alex is out of studio on Sunday. | ||
| Harrison Smith hosting. | ||
| Monday, Owen's hosting. | ||
| All right. | ||
| He's been out of studio this whole week. | ||
| What is happening? | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| Probably back in Cabo. | ||
| I mean, yeah. | ||
| God damn it. | ||
| Somebody take his money away. | ||
| Why is this happening? | ||
| Why is this happening? | ||
| I mean, put him in shackles at least. | ||
| Like a little bit. | ||
| Like fucking goddamn Christmas Carol ass shackles. | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| I don't want him to be in prison, but I don't want him to be able to enjoy himself. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Cabo. | |
| I was itching to get to work. | ||
| I was ready to do Wednesday. | ||
| I was excited to have a three-episode week. | ||
| I was shadowboxing. | ||
| You were all ready for it. | ||
| Alex was at a studio the whole week. | ||
| Maybe it's a small blessing because I was pretty busy this week. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're here on Friday's episode and we're going back to the past. | |
| That's what we're doing. | ||
| Because we have a choice. | ||
| We get whatever we want. | ||
| So anyway, what's your bright spot? | ||
| My bright spot is a little bit of anime. | ||
| I've been watching some anime. | ||
| Recently. | ||
| Like the pervy kind? | ||
| I've been kind of into a funk. | ||
| No, not pervy. | ||
| Although, I mean, some of it's from the 80s. | ||
| So yes, it's inherently pervy. | ||
| Just all anime in the 80s was pervy. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| In a creepy way. | ||
| And then now, also. | ||
| It's all pervy. | ||
| But yeah, yeah. | ||
| So I rewatched Neon Genesis Evangelion. | ||
| Yep, that's still crazy. | ||
| I've heard of that. | ||
| Still crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Horror. | ||
| Horror. | ||
| Trauma. | ||
| Just misery. | ||
| Horror, trauma, misery. | ||
| Yeah, but giant robots. | ||
| You have sold me on it. | ||
| Giant robots. | ||
| Are they the ones committing the horror and the trauma? | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| Are they miserable? | ||
| They are extremely miserable. | ||
| Miserable robots? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Also, that's another big... | ||
| You gotta feel... | ||
| You gotta deal with that question watching the anime and you don't want to. | ||
| And when you get to the answer, you don't like it. | ||
| No, it's not good. | ||
| Do electronic sheep take antidepressants? | ||
| No. | ||
| They come from space and also Jesus is involved. | ||
| I mean, man, it's wild. | ||
| I think... | ||
| Here's the thing. | ||
| I think we could definitely do a god-awful movies about an episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion. | ||
| The amount of Jesus imagery in there is absurd at some points. | ||
| I'm out. | ||
| But it's great. | ||
| Okay, I'm preemptively out, though. | ||
| Good call. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| And then Jujutsu Kaisen, and then maybe the perviest anime of all now is Chainsaw Man. | ||
| And that's absurdly pervy. | ||
| Based on the title, that's not how I would assume. | ||
| You wouldn't. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But then you watch it and you go, wow! | ||
| How about that? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Sick-ass chainsaw, man. | ||
| Still gonna do that, huh? | ||
| All right. | ||
| But yeah, it's enjoyable. | ||
| That's my bright spot. | ||
| Fun. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So like I said, we're in the past today. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We're gonna be talking about the 18th to the 23rd of February, 2004. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Part of the reason is Alex is also out of studio at this point. | ||
| We just did our fucking bright spots, and then we were just like, hey, Alex is at a studio in the past and the present. | ||
| I don't know what to do now. | ||
| Well, it is strange, because I am covering over this period, and he's running reruns. | ||
| But, you know, there is an ability to, like, go to the next day, whereas in the present day, you know, the shit hasn't happened yet. | ||
| And I don't have a time machine yet. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| So, we'll get down to business on this here past episode. | ||
| Which is actually really just the 23rd. | ||
| There's only one clip. | ||
| It was a terrible episode. | ||
| But before we do, let's say hello to some new wonks. | ||
| Oh, that's a great idea. | ||
| So first, now I gotta be honest, I'm not super happy about this one. | ||
| You're now a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| That was an attack, but I'm not sure how. | ||
| Anyway, you're now a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a policy wonk. | |
| Thank you very much. | ||
| I think that was a joke that they were... | ||
| They were joking about. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| Because I have said I'm not happy about some of these names. | ||
| You know, when they're dirty. | ||
| Oh, I thought they weren't happy about the... | ||
| Yeah, never mind. | ||
| That's how I took it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| As an attack. | ||
| Yes, you did. | ||
| As usual. | ||
| Next, WAP. | ||
| That's some wonk-ass policy. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| You are now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you very much! | ||
| I'm sure that's a wet-ass pussy attack. | ||
| That's an attack on you, absolutely. | ||
| Next, Karen, it's game time. | ||
| Thank you so much, you're now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you very much, Karen! | ||
| It's game time. | ||
| Karen's from the stream. | ||
| Karen the dragon, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Oh, fun. | ||
| Karen, it's game time. | ||
| Next, let's do it, a da-da-daddy shark. | ||
| Da-da-daddy shark, you're now a policy wonk. | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
| Thank you very much! | ||
| I'm a policy wonk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go home to your mother and tell her you're brilliant. | |
| Someone sodomite sent me a bucket of poop. | ||
| Daddy Shark. | ||
| Bomp, bomp, bomp, bomp, bomp. | ||
| Jar Jar Binks has a Caribbean black accent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's a loser little titty baby. | |
| I don't want to hate black people. | ||
| I renounce Jesus Christ! | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Yes, thank you very much. | ||
| That is a tough consideration, and I actually had a moment like that this week. | ||
| I mentioned that I'm probably going to be moving pretty soon, and so I've started getting some stuff packed up. | ||
| Indeed. | ||
| And I had a box for books, and it just so happened that the top level of that was the Turner Diaries. | ||
| I have a copy of the Turner Diaries. | ||
| And I'm like, I don't want to risk movers or anybody possibly seeing this. | ||
| Let's put something else on top of that. | ||
| That is the most foreshadowing scene in a horror movie of like, you just walk in and it seems like a totally normal guy and then at the top of his bookshelf is Turner Diaries and you're like, hmm. | ||
| I have it for research. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Cut to one hour later, several bodies all the way. | |
| So, Jordan, it's been a while since we've had an Out of Context drop. | ||
| Oh, it has! | ||
| But we've got one today. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And I was about to make fun of the Quakers. | ||
| I decided not to do it, then you brought it up. | ||
| I mean, I shouldn't make fun of them. | ||
| They're very dangerous. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Gotta be careful. | ||
| Don't make fun of the Quakers. | ||
| Of all the inverted reality worlds, that one's just out of left field to me. | ||
| Well, he wasn't gonna do it. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| And then... | ||
| Someone brought up the Quakers. | ||
| The Quakers are very dangerous. | ||
| They're a fellowship of friends, right? | ||
| The Brotherhood of Friends? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes! | |
| I don't know all that much about the Quakers, to be totally honest with you. | ||
| That's a little bit of a blind spot that I have. | ||
| But I don't think that Alex is correct. | ||
| Well, I mean, one, they can only exist on tectonic plates. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| A lot of them in California. | ||
| Ring of Fire, all Quakers. | ||
| Oh. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Didn't know that. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| I'm resisting an oat comment. | ||
| I'm going to keep doing that. | ||
| Good call. | ||
| So here is our one clip from the 18th. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Not really that much going on on this episode. | ||
| A lot of treading water. | ||
| But Alex has a couple of presidential election, 2004 presidential election stories that I thought he would develop over the course of the episode, and he really doesn't. | ||
| Abortion claim hits the president. | ||
| This is out of the mirror, out of England. | ||
| Photographer, pornographer Larry Flint says he has nailed down his claims. | ||
| George Bush, a pro-life campaigner, arranged for a girlfriend to have an abortion in the 1970s. | ||
| Flint, 61, a failed California governor candidate, said, I've talked to the woman's friends. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I've tracked down the doctor who did the abortion and the Bush people who arranged for it. | |
| I've got the story nailed. | ||
| That's how Flint talks. | ||
| He said he would publish his claims in a book at the height of the election season. | ||
| Flint's mudslinging comes amid what promises to be one of the dirtiest battles for the White House ever. | ||
| Alarmed aides of President Bush want 130 million pounds for a campaign to derail the runaway success of Democratic hopeful John Kerry. | ||
| Republicans are trying to portray Kerry, a Massachusetts senator, for 19 years as a hypocrite and a political puppet. | ||
| Well, you're both puppets. | ||
| And yes, Mr. Kerry did use his Purple Hearts to get out of Vietnam. | ||
| Yes, Mr. Kerry did a protest with Jane Fonda. | ||
| Yes, Mr. Kerry is a whitewasher in a bunch of different committees. | ||
| But it doesn't matter. | ||
| They're both pieces of work. | ||
| And you can forget about the presidency. | ||
| We better work on getting our country back at the county, the city, the state level. | ||
| As Hutton Gibson says, we need to have a couple states secede to send the message that we're not putting up with this martial law tyranny. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yikes. | |
| That's quite a message you're looking to send. | ||
| Is that a plan? | ||
| Warning shot. | ||
| We're gonna leave this country. | ||
| Now you better sit up and fly right. | ||
| Like, what? | ||
| We'll come back if you guys behave better. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| You're gone, man. | ||
| Yeah, go. | ||
| Go away. | ||
| Good luck. | ||
| Honestly, love it or leave it, I guess. | ||
| As far as, like, a state seceding. | ||
| The ramifications are going to be much worse for you. | ||
| That's on you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Figure out your fucking trade routes, I guess. | |
| So, that's weird. | ||
| But also, if you look at this, the stories about both candidates don't feel right. | ||
| So, Kerry first. | ||
| Alex, a couple days before this, had responded to a caller talking about John Kerry and recognized that he was a war hero, or at least was somebody who served and went to Vietnam. | ||
| And now... | ||
| Yeah, because that's one of the more interesting... | ||
| From a non-morality standpoint, like stepping back, there's no such thing as good or evil. | ||
| That's one of the most compelling political strategies that's been pulled off, I feel like, in my lifetime, is the way that they... | ||
| Just perfectly took what should have been a true strength for this political candidate or whatever and hung it around his neck like an anchor. | ||
| It's very fascinating how humanity can be swayed into just being like, oh yeah, that's stupid now. | ||
| It is strange. | ||
| And it is something that I really look forward to seeing through the prism of Alex's coverage. | ||
| And unfortunately, it did not happen just yet. | ||
| But you do see little indications that some of this stuff is starting to become the mode of conversation in the right-wing media. | ||
| Now, second, the thing about Bush I got even more excited about because I was interested to see how Alex would cover this. | ||
| There is an obligation that Alex has. | ||
| To not attack him very harshly. | ||
| Because Alex has, in theory, paid for at least ten abortions at this point. | ||
| Right! | ||
| And he has a position that being involved in abortion in the past is not indicative of your, you know, you can repent of that and stuff. | ||
| You can still be a fully... | ||
| Pro-life person or anti-abortion person. | ||
| He's an exemplary of that. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| So for Alex, someone attacking Bush on that front, he's not truly anti-abortion because he's participated in abortions. | ||
| Alex has to be against that. | ||
| You would think. | ||
| And so I was excited to see if he would defend Bush on this front. | ||
| Nope. | ||
| Well, there's not a yes or a no. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| There is legitimately the only conversation that happens in this episode is basically him saying that Larry Flint is making this claim. | ||
| It's just descriptive as opposed to any real conversation about it. | ||
| And that was a bummer. | ||
| Yeah, that is disappointing. | ||
| Maybe it'll come back up because Flint is saying he's going to write this book, so maybe he'll continue to talk some shit. | ||
| I'm not sure. | ||
| I was going to say, did he write that book? | ||
| I don't know, but it's certainly not sketchy that you're planning to release it at the height of the campaign season. | ||
| That has the ring of talking shit. | ||
| It has the ring of profit motive. | ||
| And also, I'm not actually going to write this book. | ||
| It's a lot harder than just making pronouncements like, oh, when it matters most, the book will be there. | ||
| I think when you're in that kind of space, you can have someone else do it for you. | ||
| That's a fair point. | ||
| I've never considered that. | ||
| So, I was a little disappointed, and overall this episode is just quite disappointing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And so Alex is gone until the 23rd. | ||
| He comes back into studio, and it turns out he had fallen ill. | ||
| Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| Thank you for joining us. | ||
| It is Monday, the 23rd of February, 2004. | ||
| Two days until The Passion of Christ comes out. | ||
| I'll be there on Wednesday afternoon watching it and giving you my report on Thursday. | ||
| I apologize for not being here last Thursday and Friday. | ||
| I normally do the show when I am sick. | ||
| I'm rarely sick. | ||
| I thought I had a cold last week. | ||
| It turned into the flu, 104 temperature. | ||
| Let's just say I was not a happy camper, so I could not do the show. | ||
| But I am here totally recuperated. | ||
| In fact, there were some good side effects. | ||
| I'm off coffee. | ||
| I said, hey, I haven't had coffee in three or four days. | ||
| Why drink coffee now? | ||
| So I'm off coffee. | ||
| So I guess the only drugs I use now are occasional Tylenol. | ||
| And I lost 10 pounds while I was sick, so I'm even more handsome now. | ||
| And he never touched substances again. | ||
| I was going to say. | ||
| And he gave up all accelerants and the like forever. | ||
| He had no vices past February 23rd, 2004. | ||
| Demarcation point. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's a teetotaler. | ||
| I would enjoy, of all the things that our show has done over the years, we've accidentally stumbled into a lot of interesting events worldwide. | ||
| I think it would be fun to discover if time travel was real through this show when Alex from the future gives Alex from the past his first hit of Coke. | ||
| He just walks in like, hey, buddy, let me show you something. | ||
| And then he has a vision. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know. | ||
| I think it's kind of gross. | ||
| I lost 10 pounds because I was sick. | ||
| Because you realize it's like... | ||
| Vomiting or diarrhea, probably. | ||
| And, you know, those kind of mental images Alex bringing up is not that great. | ||
| Although, I mean, it is... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| He always says that he never gets sick, but he's sick a bit. | ||
| Quite a bit. | ||
| I seem to notice, like, there are times he's sick, he had COVID three, four times, probably. | ||
| Almost dead. | ||
| Some of these vacations very well, maybe not really vacations. | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| Yeah, it seems like his self-image requires an immunity to all disease. | ||
| I think he has some of that. | ||
| Some, like, his toughness is built into that. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| But then especially once he starts selling supplements that are supposed to boost your immunity and all that stuff, if he's taking those things, it would be bad if he was sick. | ||
| That's a good point. | ||
| It's bad for the business if you're sick. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So Alex has a guest on this 23rd episode, and it's a name that I know, but not from InfoWars. | ||
| Okay, I've never had more to talk about. | ||
| Just an absolutely gigantic, ultra-massive show coming up in the next hour, folks. | ||
| You're not going to want to miss this. | ||
| We have a very interesting individual coming on the show, Michael Shrimpton. | ||
| A national security barrister. | ||
| He's written for the Journal of International Security Affairs. | ||
| He has briefed the United States Senate Committee on Intelligence. | ||
| And a lot more. | ||
| Lengthy bio. | ||
| So at this point in time, in 2004, Michael Shrimpton is in fact a licensed barrister in the UK who isn't necessarily the most highly placed source Alex could be talking to, but is someone who is at least a British lawyer. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Shrimpton is a conservative, but his party identification has wobbled all over the place over the years, but he's a critic of the EU, so he and Alex can find some common ground on that front. | ||
| You may notice that I said that he's a barrister at this point in time in 2004, which implies that he's not anymore. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's because he's not anymore. | ||
| Yeah, that was foreshadowing. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| And the lead up to the 2012 Olympics to be held in London... | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| Of all the ways for a, this guy's no longer a lawyer story to start, I'm a big fan of it starting with the fucking Olympics. | ||
| The London Summer Games. | ||
| That's the way you stop being a lawyer. | ||
| So at that point, Shrimpton made a big deal of publicizing a conspiracy he believed he'd uncovered. | ||
| It was his belief that the Nazis had reactivated their intelligence organization, the DVD, and were planning on detonating a stolen nuke during the summer games. | ||
| This was very much not true, and he ended up getting arrested for perpetrating a bomb hoax. | ||
| Because he spread this information to conservative organizations and made incessant calls to MPs, including the then-Defense Secretary. | ||
| Wild. | ||
| In the course of questioning, it turned out that he believed that this group, the DVD, had taken over Al-Qaeda and had, quote, penetrated MI5 and MI6, which explained why he was the person with this intelligence as opposed to the country's normal intelligence community. | ||
| You see, they were in on the cover. | ||
| Yeah, obviously. | ||
| No. | ||
| In an article in the Bucks Herald about his arrest, they say, quote, Shrimpton refused to reveal his sources, but said they included, quote, someone in Munich who lunches with the Pope. | ||
| So, high-level stuff. | ||
| The court found that he was not, in fact, an intelligence specialist, though he presented himself as one, and conveyed this nonsense bomb threat to the government and the public under the guise of one. | ||
| Ultimately, he would be sentenced to a 12-month period of incarceration for this misadventure. | ||
| Damn! | ||
| He got a full year for this shit? | ||
| However, in the course of the investigation, the police found child exploitation material on a memory stick in his home. | ||
| Motherfuck! | ||
| Yep. | ||
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He was charged for possessing this and was put on the sex offender list. | |
| He attempted to appeal his conviction but failed, and as a combination of these two things, the Olympic bombing hoax and the child exploitation material, he ended up losing his life. | ||
| ...and is no longer a barrister. | ||
| These days, you can find Michael Shrimpton on outlets like Project Camelot, spouting nonsense conspiracy theories, which actually was what he was also doing before. | ||
| The Olympic bombing hoax wasn't his first foray into conspiracy bullshit, it was just his highest stakes one, and the one that ended up ruining the veneer of credibility his job title gave his shit. | ||
| You could probably tell by listening to him that Shrimpton wasn't someone you needed to take seriously, but Alex is a real sucker for someone with an official title who says the stuff he wants to hear. | ||
| Also, Alex is blinded by accents. | ||
| Either way, you're probably asking yourself, why is Shrimpton here now? | ||
| Since 2004 is so much before he cracked open the nuclear bomb story at the Olympics. | ||
| Before the Nazis had taken over both MIs. | ||
| Well, you don't know. | ||
| Maybe they had already at this point. | ||
| That's possible. | ||
| This is a bit earlier. | ||
| Weird. | ||
| What's he doing here? | ||
| Right. | ||
| So, okay. | ||
| So when did the Nazis take over Al-Qaeda is my first question. | ||
| And how? | ||
| That's the key to the whole mystery right there. | ||
| Hold on, I gotta call a guy in Munich who lunches with the Pope. | ||
| Gotta find out. | ||
| What's that meeting like? | ||
| Oh, the Nazis show up with Al-Qaeda and they have fucking lunch? | ||
| What are we talking about? | ||
| Yeah, with the Pope. | ||
| That'd be weird. | ||
| Well, the Pope would have to negotiate that for sure. | ||
| So there's a very familiar bit of conspiracy that Shrimpton is on to talk to Alex about. | ||
| He's traveled all over the Western world and given speeches and consulted on terrorism. | ||
| Guess why he's joining us on the show? | ||
| 9-11 trutherism? | ||
| Well, last week you may have seen a story floating around that somebody inside the British government had sources that said that they could confirm that Dr. David Kelly had been killed. | ||
| We've already got all these top doctors and scientists coming forward and saying that. | ||
| We've got all the evidence and even mainstream headlines saying, is this what happened? | ||
| Well, he's got sources inside MI5, MI6, and from the information he has, he knows how they killed him, how they killed Dr. David Kelly, and why they killed Dr. David Kelly. | ||
| I wonder if this was while MI5 and MI6 were infiltrated by the Nazi folk. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| Or maybe because this didn't work out for Shrimpton, maybe that was how he learned that they were infiltrated. | ||
| That could be. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Michael Shrimpton doesn't know shit about any inside information about David Kelly. | ||
| He knows as much about this as he does about the nukes at the 2012 Olympics, which is to say the stuff he knows is horse shit that he's probably making up or someone else is workshopping with him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Part of what makes me confident about this is that in 2007, Michael Shrimpton says he knows that Dr. Kelly was assassinated because of his extensive | ||
|
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intelligence contacts. | |
| That is the red phone, and if that phone goes, it could be anybody from the White House to the President's administration in Russia to the CIA to whoever. | ||
| It's not usual for me to pick up the phone and have Henry Kissinger on the other end, but that has happened. | ||
| He actually has that number, but he doesn't have that number. | ||
| That gives me a direct line through to Vice President Cheney's office. | ||
| Okay, buddy. | ||
| This guy was made for tricking dumb Americans. | ||
| That's the voice you need to be... | ||
| A lot of confidence. | ||
|
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CIA? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, boy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, you aristocratic fuck. | ||
| It's not usual that Kissinger just rings me up out of nowhere. | ||
|
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Fuck off! | |
| So also, I will say that this clip from the show did no favors for Shrimpton. | ||
|
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Michael Shrimpton is also a fan of espionage fiction from Frederick Forsyth to Tom Clancy. | |
| Yes, he's one of my favorite authors, yes. | ||
| One of Tom Clancy's books, The Teeth of the Tiger, concerns an off-the-books team of U.S. government assassins who avoid detection by killing their victims with succinylcholine. | ||
| There is a reference to succinylcholine in this book, and I think that follows the assassination of David Kelly. | ||
| Tom Clancy has very good contacts in the national security community. | ||
| It may be that Tom Clancy picked up a reflection, if you like, or a... | ||
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A loopback from the Kelly assassination. | |
| But if the suggestion is, "Oh, I got Tuxel Kelly from a Tom Clancy novel," then, sorry. | ||
| That won't wash. | ||
| I'm not convinced. | ||
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Yeah! | |
| I mean, this is obviously going to make it sound like this idea I got from the Tom Clancy novel. | ||
| My conspiracy is weirdly similar to the plot of this book. | ||
| Now, what you won't know is that I have read the book, of course. | ||
| And I have dog-eared many pages. | ||
| But here's the thing. | ||
| Tom Clancy, ah, he sees the future. | ||
| Also, that was one of his lesser novels. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| I was waiting. | ||
| God, I would have given anything for that British voiceover to be like, Tom Clancy and Steve Pchenik, both co-authored. | ||
| That would have been amazing. | ||
| I mean, think about this, though. | ||
| This guy's got a lot of big brags. | ||
| And it's Pchenik-y in its nature. | ||
| It is very Pchenik-y. | ||
| And there's a connection to Tom Clancy. | ||
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It is. | |
| And as much as his conspiracies appear to be inspired perhaps by the works of Pchenik's one-time collaborator. | ||
| These two could get together and really fuck some shit up. | ||
| Steven and the shrimp man. | ||
| Yeah, man, they could end up on a weird panel on Project Camelot any day now. | ||
| Yep, that could be a day and a half. | ||
| So if I got shanked like that by a TV show, I would probably sue them. | ||
| And that's basically what Michael Shrimpton tried to do. | ||
| After the show aired, he filed a formal complaint with Ofcom, the UK's communication regulatory body. | ||
| He thought the program had done him dirty and portrayed him in a negative light. | ||
| The BBC said that they had not, and in fact the footage that was included was representative of what Shrimpton said in their interview, and he even claimed that he'd been misled about the nature of the program that he'd agreed to participate in. | ||
| Ofcom reviewed evidence including correspondence between I can't believe you answered the phone again. | ||
| Congratulations. | ||
| So Shripton's just mad that he acted like an idiot who was captured in a documentary program, and I would guess that he just didn't like the image that he saw in the mirror. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That wasn't the BBC's fault. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He acted like a real dick. | ||
| Yeah, you really shouldn't go on camera and be recorded through somebody else's eyes if you've never looked at yourself through somebody else's eyes. | ||
| It's a dangerous proposition. | ||
| True. | ||
| So he's going to be on later to talk some shit about David Kelly's death. | ||
| And it's actually not that interesting of an interview. | ||
| There's only a couple clips that I decided to pull that were kind of laying out a little bit of his conspiracy. | ||
| But for the most part, it's just kind of standard. | ||
| Alex talking shit. | ||
| You know, for a guy... | ||
| See, that's the thing, though, with the big swing. | ||
| You can't take... | ||
| You know, you gotta take big swings. | ||
| But maybe nuclear bomb at the Olympics. | ||
| Too big. | ||
| Too big a swing. | ||
| That was a number of years after this. | ||
| I was! | ||
| That's what I'm saying. | ||
| He got bored. | ||
| He may have learned the wrong lessons from not taking a big enough swing here. | ||
| Well, he got bored with these sort of low-level games. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| He got burned by the BBC. | ||
| And then a couple years later, he decided to go for it. | ||
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Yep. | |
| Blew up. | ||
| Pretty bad. | ||
| Pretty bad in his face. | ||
| O 'Keefe's too close to the sun. | ||
| True. | ||
| So, David Kelly has a lot of titles. | ||
| He's a weapons inspector, you know, and what have you. | ||
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Sure. | |
| But apparently now he has a new job title that Alex has given him. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| An intelligence agency of a country will use its sister intelligence agency that it works with in another nation to do hits for them, and that happens vice versa. | ||
| That happened at Waco, according to the Fort Worth Star newspaper, where they used MI5-controlled special air services people out there doing some of the wet work. | ||
| So this is done over and over again, where they use foreign troops, foreign individuals, to kill their own people internally, because it's very dangerous to use your own intelligence people to kill fellow intelligence people, like Dr. David Kelly, who was a top spy. | ||
| Of course, head of Fortin Down Bioweapons Lab and the head British inspector. | ||
| He's a top spy now. | ||
| He's a top spy? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Where? | ||
| For what? | ||
| For the UK, I guess. | ||
| To whom? | ||
| For MI6? | ||
| To spy for what? | ||
| Spying on... | ||
| I mean, is weapons inspecting spying? | ||
| I mean, I suppose that that's the most open and obvious form of spying there is. | ||
| Excuse me, may I please spy on you? | ||
| If that counts as a spy, I guess, but I don't know. | ||
| I don't know any evidence that he was a, like... | ||
| The spy? | ||
| Yeah, I feel like you have to be incognito to be a spy of some sort. | ||
| Yeah, there's a clandestine element to it. | ||
| And I did not... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't know where this is coming from. | ||
| You can't knock on the front door if you're a spy. | ||
| You know, you can't knock on the front door and be like, hey, I'm from the UK here to inspect your weapons, as the world knows. | ||
| Right, I mean, I think what Alex is trying to evoke is that David Kelly operated in some fairly... | ||
| Uh, official and touchy areas. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| And that, I can go along with. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But saying he's a top spy is a little bit ridiculous. | ||
| I mean, well, who else would they trust to inspect nuclear weapons? | ||
| They're not gonna send, like, a regular guy. | ||
| They're gonna send the top spy! | ||
| Hell yeah, man. | ||
| So, um, one of the things that really was weird for me was, uh, I didn't realize that Alex was sick. | ||
| Immediately. | ||
| When I'm listening to these episodes, sometimes I'll listen to a couple minutes before I realize it's a repeat. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so Thursday's episode I turned on, and Alex is like, wow, we got Hutton Gibson coming in. | ||
| I'm like, again? | ||
| Oh, goddammit! | ||
| And I wouldn't be too surprised for him to be back again, and so it seemed like it could have been, and I'm like, oh, this is the same episode. | ||
| But it turns out that Alex has been getting a lot of heat about the Hutton Gibson. | ||
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Interesting. | |
| Maybe not a ton of heat, but enough heat. | ||
| Enough to make people secede from the union? | ||
| No. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| But because of his Holocaust denial. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| There's some issues with that. | ||
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Sure. | |
| And so Alex will not talk about it. | ||
| But maybe he will. | ||
| But he's not going to talk about it. | ||
| Courageous. | ||
| And I'm not going to get into Hutton Gibson. | ||
| I've talked to Hutton Gibson many times. | ||
| He is not anti-Semitic. | ||
| He says he doesn't like Nazis. | ||
| He doesn't like Zionists. | ||
| He doesn't like the corrupt Catholic Church. | ||
| I mean, there's not a lot of things... | ||
| Because he thinks they're all Jews. | ||
| He's the winner of Jeopardy, and he knows history, and he's a pretty smart guy, and he does think the Holocaust happened. | ||
| He just debates the numbers and says that people should be allowed to debate those numbers, and he says these interviews have been taken out of context, and so we'll see what happens. | ||
| I had MSNBC call me. | ||
| I had a CNN call. | ||
| I had a bunch of other people call. | ||
| And I'm not doing interviews. | ||
| I'm not going to go on national TV and talk about Hutton Gibson. | ||
| Alexander Emmerich Jones doesn't do that to his friends. | ||
| I can care less about being on MSNBC or CNN or something like that. | ||
| I'm just not going to do it. | ||
| I mean, I thought about going on and defending Hutton, and yet... | ||
| You know what? | ||
| I'm just not going to get involved in it. | ||
| I'm just not going to get involved in it. | ||
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Smart. | |
| Who knows? | ||
| I might have a change of heart and do it. | ||
| Oh, for God's sakes. | ||
| God damn it. | ||
| God damn it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Strong defense, by the way. | ||
| He thinks the Holocaust happens. | ||
| He just debates the numbers. | ||
| He just thinks it's okay to debate the numbers. | ||
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Yeah, he just thinks it was like maybe 5,000. | |
| 6 million, 5 million, 10. Whatever. | ||
| We're just debating numbers. | ||
| Yeah, you gotta ask yourself sometimes. | ||
| Why? | ||
| You know what, Dan? | ||
| What motivates you to do that? | ||
| Let me tell you something. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| One is too many. | ||
| Uh-huh. | ||
| Now, he doesn't care about any. | ||
| So, I don't know why he's debating the numbers. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Strong defense Alex could provide were he to go on these shows. | ||
| Now, I like the position that he has of, like, I'm not going to go on and allow myself to be used to trash a friend. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| You know, just from the standpoint of, like, how friends treat each other. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, that's solid. | ||
| Looking out for your people kind of thing. | ||
| Flash forward just a little bit to Charlie Sheen and Alex going on The View. | ||
| Trying to make that media circus all about himself. | ||
| He's totally fine behaving like that. | ||
| And that leads me to believe that these outlets aren't calling him and asking him to come on and talk about it. | ||
| He'd do it in a second. | ||
| Maybe. | ||
| On the other hand, I'll throw this out at you. | ||
| Going on TV and talking about your friend having a manic episode and yelling about tiger blood and stuff is a little bit different from going on TV and being like, no, here's why it's okay to deny the Holocaust. | ||
| Maybe you don't want that one on TV. | ||
| Maybe, but here, yeah, you know, I don't think that's maybe the distinction, but I think you're right in that there's something different. | ||
| There's like a flashiness in a media circus around Charlie Sheen, whereas this... | ||
| It has religion attached to it. | ||
| It has the passion of the Christ attached to it. | ||
| There's a lot of weird potholes Alex could step into. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| That maybe the Charlie Sheen situation didn't have nearly as many. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, listen. | ||
| It was less risk for Alex to turn on his friend. | ||
| Denying the Holocaust, undeniably bad. | ||
| Denying that a guy denied the Holocaust, I mean, not equally bad, but still up there? | ||
| Kind of suggests that if the latter, maybe the former also. | ||
| Yeah, it is dicier territory for Alex. | ||
| So a lot of people love to talk about Alex's predictions and how great he is at predicting things, and here's one for them. | ||
| House votes for ignition interlocks on every vehicle. | ||
| They're out of control. | ||
| Sounds interesting. | ||
| Do you know what that's fancy doublespeak for? | ||
| Well, what I told you they were going to do, and again, I hate to say it because I told you, because I told you, because I told you, but I have their official plans. | ||
| New Mexico has passed the law out of the House, it's in the Senate, to make everyone blow a breathalyzer to start your car. | ||
| Everyone guilty until proven innocent. | ||
| Why, if it just saves one life. | ||
| And then they're going to say that this doesn't work because people have others blow, so oh, we're going to have to retina scan you, and it'll decide if you're drunk. | ||
| And this will be the new law. | ||
| A retina scan? | ||
| Now, how do I know that? | ||
| Because I saw the federal plans four or five years ago. | ||
| I read Houston Chronicle articles three years ago. | ||
| They have a system that they're already putting into businesses all over the country, and the feds are using a retina scanner that also reads microscopic movement of the eye, and it'll decide if you're on drugs or drunk or tired, and they want to put all these in the cars, and so they're going to make you use the breathalyzer, then people are going to cheat, and they're going to say, okay, you've got a retina scan to start your car. | ||
| Now, that's the official plan. | ||
| You want to put up with it? | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| And then if you're not a good globalist, they turn your car off, and they're going to have infrared cameras in all the cars by 2005, quote, as a detector if there's a child in the car when it's too hot. | ||
| But again, the federal plan is it's really a camera. | ||
| Hashtag Alex Jones is right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yikes. | ||
| That is... | ||
| A little off on some of that. | ||
| Quite a bit of that. | ||
| That is a lot of work to expect a lot of car manufacturers to take on in a very short period of time. | ||
| He's also doing a flagrant misrepresentation of, like, they don't want people to have to blow to, like, start their car. | ||
| It's like when you have a second DUI. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, that's part of that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's not... | ||
| Everyone. | ||
| It's not everyone. | ||
| No, because... | ||
| You're not guilty until you're proven innocent. | ||
| Not drive drunk. | ||
| You're talking about somebody who has, at the very least, two DUIs. | ||
| So Alex, I am sure, believes that everyone is going to be affected by this law. | ||
| Everyone named me. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Oh, goddammit, they're going to have to put a thing in my car. | ||
| I mean, if it were what Alex is describing, I would be against it. | ||
| Everyone has to blow to start their car. | ||
| I mean, I think that that's... | ||
| You're making a face where you're thinking like maybe that's okay. | ||
| I'm thinking maybe Alex wouldn't be able to go to work. | ||
| Maybe not. | ||
| Or at the very least, you wouldn't be able to drive home considering what we've seen on the cameras. | ||
| Well, see, here's where I'm coming from. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think that that is inappropriate for everyone. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Just all cars you have to do. | ||
| Because as we learned from Seinfeld with the poppy seed. | ||
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Sure. | |
| You know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's all kinds of things. | ||
| Could be anything. | ||
| What if you have a screwy machine and it won't start? | ||
| You're not drunk, but it thinks you are or something. | ||
| Then you need to get somewhere, you get fired. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| Or if there's a medical emergency, you need to get somewhere. | ||
| It's just not appropriate. | ||
| But for people who drive drunk, perhaps it is appropriate because you're going to end up killing somebody. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it is that kind of intervention kind of stuff where it's like, oh, well, you clearly can't stop yourself. | ||
| So somebody has to stop it before it can happen. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That kind of thing. | ||
| And I imagine for somebody who can't stop himself... | ||
| You can tell you that your license is taken away, but you're still going to drive. | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| So mechanically, we must solve this somehow. | ||
| Yeah, we have to do this where talking does not work. | ||
| It's not like... | ||
| Yeah, we can't leave something to a choice because the choice will be bad. | ||
| Yeah, you no longer have choices. | ||
| You have a medical condition, more or less, that is overriding your decision making. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I imagine that for somebody who is filled with unstoppable compulsive needs, Alex would take this very personally. | ||
| Here's something that you're not considering. | ||
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What? | |
| He was sick recently and he's off coffee. | ||
| Oh, that's a fair point. | ||
| That's a fair point. | ||
| That's a fair point. | ||
| Well, now he can't even perk himself up after he's been driving drunk for a while. | ||
| No good. | ||
| So, Shrimpton comes in and here is a bit of his theory about who killed David Kelly. | ||
| Essentially, well, I'll let him describe. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| No, again, I've got to be obviously careful on air, but the indications are that the tasking for the assassination came from within the UK, so I can't name any individual official or minister. | ||
| Convenient. | ||
| The tasking was generated in the UK, went to Paris, was then okayed in Paris, and on the information available to me, the operational agency for the assassination was DGSE. | ||
| Now, there are also indications, and I'm, again, obviously, Alex, you appreciate I'm expressing myself with caution here. | ||
| There are indications that DGSE, in order to false flag the assassination, should their team be discovered, used Iraqi intelligence assets from the Iraqi Mukhabarat Agency that were available in Damascus after the fall of Baghdad. | ||
| And I have one source suggesting that an Iraqi team... | ||
| That's to say, an ex-Mukhabarat team recruited in Damascus with the assistance of the Syrian intelligence operation, also the Mukhabarat, were flown into Corsica in the seven days prior to the assassination of David Kelly. | ||
| Yeah, so this is his complicated conspiracy theory. | ||
| The UK government put out the hit. | ||
| They okayed it. | ||
| Through some organization that he doesn't know and can't name. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So they okayed it. | ||
| And in order to give, like... | ||
| You don't want to have your spies killing your own spies because they work together. | ||
| Yeah, it'd be rude. | ||
| So you have French people take care of it. | ||
| So they reach out to France. | ||
| France is like, we're on it. | ||
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But... | |
| To be careful, we're going to subcontract this out to a group of Iraqis. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so the Iraqis were the ones who did it, and now the French, I don't know if you know this, I learned this from a very reputable source named Michael Shrimpton, the French never, you should never take on a contract from the French intelligence, because they will just kill you once it's over. | ||
| So these Iraqis are dead. | ||
| They are good. | ||
| The French know how to do it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Which raises the question, Why does anyone take a contract from a French intelligence? | ||
| And his answer is they must not know the very clear reputation that the French intelligence agencies have to the point where you know about it. | ||
| I think that maybe that Iraqi intelligence group might have been aware of that, that they're just going to die after they carry out this mission. | ||
| But it's all fine because none of this is real. | ||
| I'm going to throw this out at you. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| While I respect the idea that, like, oh, you don't want your own agency people killing each other, right? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Because they work together, there'll be a personal connection. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| Right? | ||
| That's why you bring in corporate to fire someone as opposed to doing it yourself, you know, or something like that. | ||
| Yeah, but then it's like you're in intelligence and now you know that your boss just involved two other countries to kill your buddy. | ||
| I feel like that makes me hate my boss more than if my boss was like, hey buddy, we gotta kill your buddy. | ||
| Is it hate or is it fear tinged with respect? | ||
| Well, I can't answer that question. | ||
| But I mean, he's writing a compelling Clancy novel here. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| Here's what I'm going to do. | ||
| If I'm going to assassinate somebody, I'm going to try and get as many people involved as I can. | ||
| Especially ones who I know are in the intelligence service who all talk to each other and have information that often finds its way down to this shrimp man over here. | ||
| Now we have a situation too now where you have a lot of dangling threads. | ||
| Because you have the UK people. | ||
| You have the French people. | ||
| The French people have now killed the Iraq people. | ||
| So they're the only ones who have cut off one thread. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But the French are still a thread. | ||
| Anybody who knew these Iraqis is now a threat. | ||
| Absolutely! | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I find this hard to believe. | ||
| Now, okay. | ||
| Now, okay, but now we're talking about the... | ||
| But who kills the French? | ||
| You know what I'm saying? | ||
| Like, the French kill the Iraqis. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But who kills the French for knowing too much? | ||
| Well, if the French need to get rid of someone, I would assume that they would call the UK. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And then the UK would get someone from Brussels. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Some other country. | ||
| False flag them? | ||
| I mean, you know, this is the problem with middlemen. | ||
| I mean, even our intelligence services aren't like they used to be. | ||
| They don't even kill each other anymore. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's just terrible. | ||
| It's unions. | ||
| Not in my day. | ||
| Not in my day. | ||
| It's so impersonal. | ||
| Anyway. | ||
| Shrimpton. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He doesn't like lone gunman theories. | ||
| It's never that. | ||
| It's always got to be more complicated because a lone gunman story wouldn't make for a good Clancy novel. | ||
| That's true. | ||
| We've had a lone gunman, a classic example of a lone gunman assassination theory in Europe with the assassination of the Dutch politician Tim Fortu, which is blamed on a lone gunman. | ||
| An explanation which doesn't carry much weight with me since the photographs of the assassin that I saw. | ||
| There was what appeared to me to be a very thin wire leading up to an earpiece in his right ear. | ||
| And normally, Alex's lone government don't run around with radios and earpieces, particularly high-tech ones. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was the same thing with Yishak Rabin. | |
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| I mean, Netanyahu's giving speeches about... | ||
| Somebody ought to get rid of this guy, and then Rabin's security steps back and they blow him away. | ||
| Well, there are certainly those, certainly respected commentators, General Thomas is one, who would say that the Rabin assassination was definitely knocked down to a lone government. | ||
| I can totally settle this for them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Steve Pachanek has confessed to killing Yitzhak Rabin on Alex's show in the past. | ||
| That is true! | ||
| That is true! | ||
| So this case is closed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Holy shit! | |
| What a dumb fucking world we live in. | ||
| It was a lone gunman who was named Steve, who also arrested the Pope and single-handedly took down the Soviet Union. | ||
| So this mystery is solved. | ||
| Also, the guy who killed Pym Fortune, they said he is a lone gunman, and by they, I mean him. | ||
| The person confessed. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I'm always weirded out by the assassinations whenever they're brought into real life because I feel like in my experience it is either a lone gunman and everybody knows about it because, you know, they killed the person and we move on. | ||
| Yeah, these wild kind of fluke situations that people are able to pull off something that generally you would just think is impossible and it turns out it's not. | ||
| Or it's like a flagrant state assassination that basically they want everyone to know. | ||
| You know, like the Novichok situation. | ||
| There's like messages that are being sent. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| It's like, I am telling the entire world I can just poison this motherfucker whenever I want and then he's going to die in my prison. | ||
| You know, that kind of assassination. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That does seem to cover most of it. | ||
| Yeah, I don't feel like, I feel like clandestine, like true, like, oh, we made it look like a suicide shit, almost, I mean, never happens? | ||
| Well, I mean, I think all you're arguing is that they're that good at it. | ||
| See, that's the problem with this argument about clandestine shit. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Anything could be if it's good enough. | ||
| You kind of hit a dead end where absence of evidence is evidence of how good the conspiracy is. | ||
| You just can't live in that world. | ||
| You just can't. | ||
| Alright, fine. | ||
| Boo. | ||
| So anyway, how would you like some third-level, third-hand intel from Shrimp Man? | ||
| I love it. | ||
| Continuing with what we were discussing and just briefly recapping, you have a source who, in intelligence, talked to his other sources and It was widely known in intelligence that there was an order to get rid of Kelly even before he died. | ||
| My source learned after the assassination that others in Whitehall were aware of the assassination in advance, yes. | ||
| And that source had spoken to, obviously he was a friend of David Kelly's, knew him well, had worked with him, and... | ||
| Clearly once his friend was found dead in a wood, made investigations, and when he made investigations, he discovered that this assassination was known about in advance. | ||
| This is meaningless, as in tell. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So we have this guy, Michael Shrimpton, who I have good reason not to trust as a source. | ||
| He's the only actual known figure in any of this, and is the only person whose credibility is possible to assess. | ||
| Behind him, he has an alleged source who's anonymous, but who knew David Kelly. | ||
| This person may or may not exist, their credentials may or may not be accurately conveyed, and whatever they did or didn't tell Shrimpton may be relayed correctly or may not. | ||
| Behind this anonymous source, there's an unspecified number of unnamed people at Whitehall who told the anonymous source that they knew that there was a plan to take out Kelly prior to his death. | ||
| These people may or may not exist, and the message that may or may not have been relayed to this anonymous source may or may not be accurate. | ||
| Even before this information gets to Shrimpton, it's second-hand. | ||
| Now Shrimpton is relaying third-hand information to Alex, and there's just no way to look at this as reliable. | ||
| The allegation that there was foreknowledge of a plan to kill Kelly is being made by some number of secret intelligence people at Whitehall, but Trimpton hasn't even talked to them. | ||
| When the rubber meets the road, he doesn't even really know if these people exist. | ||
| All he can possibly know is that this anonymous source told him they exist and said what they said. | ||
| It's all sensational and attention-grabbing, but it's just not something that rises to the level of being worth taking seriously. | ||
| We know now that Trimpton is someone not worth giving the benefit of the doubt, but even in 2004, he's at best an unknown quantity. | ||
| Accepting this narrative from him based on his untested credibility would require a staggering amount of faith, or in Alex's case, it's what he wants to hear so he just accepts it no matter what. | ||
| It's just, yes, hooray. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| You're technically a barrister, and you're saying what I want to hear. | ||
| Now top lawyers are coming out and saying that, you know, it's just, it's convenience. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, you know, this guy would really make sense wearing one of those powdered wigs in a court. | ||
| That would be, I feel like... | ||
| He was not in the BBC special, I will say that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| I will tell you that for sure. | ||
| He also got pissed that they called him a barrister. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| But then he proceeded to basically act like it and talk about his connections and stuff. | ||
| So when he complained about it, that was another thing that Ofcom said. | ||
| You don't have any right to complain about this. | ||
| No, you kind of show off. | ||
| So we have one last clip of Shrimpton before he takes off. | ||
| And it's just Alex and Shrimpton discussing who's the worst prime minister in UK history. | ||
| That's a good question. | ||
| Probably Tony Blair. | ||
| Have you ever had a prime minister this bad? | ||
| Well, that's a political question. | ||
| Chamberlain? | ||
| The answer is probably, but I can't remember when. | ||
| It's a close toss-up between Tony Blair, John Major, and Lord North, who lost the American colonies. | ||
| But from your point of view, Lord North is probably quite good to have in Downing Street. | ||
| Funny. | ||
| Neville Chamberlain. | ||
| I think that without being disrespectful to my Prime Minister on the air, I think it's a close call between Tony Blair and Neville Chamberlain. | ||
| You know, you could have ten different politicians and economists and military strategists sit around a table and come up with ten different answers as to whether Neville Chamberlain surrendered more of Europe than Tony Blair and whether Tony Blair surrendered more to France and Germany than Neville Chamberlain did. | ||
| Well I think it's clearly Tony Blair if he gets what he wants. | ||
| Yeah, I have to say, having met Tony Blair, he's quite a pleasant, personal individual. | ||
| He's not a monster when you meet him. | ||
| Well, they said that about Adolf Hitler, too. | ||
| Did they? | ||
| Real nice. | ||
| I feel like they did. | ||
| I really feel like even the personal reports from people his best friends were like, that dude is unhinged. | ||
| You know what they say about Hitler? | ||
| Charming. | ||
| Smooth talker in person. | ||
| Just like, you know, you want to hate him, but then you talk to him and you leave like, hey, that guy's pretty... | ||
| I hate what he stands for, but man. | ||
| You know what? | ||
| You could get a bunch of economists and prime ministers and military men around a table and they will argue for days about whether or not Neville Chamberlain or Hitler was more charming. | ||
| That's the main question that they figure out. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, Hitler, what he would do is he'd always start with a compliment. | ||
| And that really was disarming to people. | ||
| Fuck. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| So yeah, who's to say whether Tony Blair or Neville Chamberlain will history reveal to be a worse prime minister? | ||
| I do, I do. | ||
| The appeasing of Hitler. | ||
| I mean, not to minimize the involvement in justifying the war in Iraq. | ||
| That's bad. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| That's bad. | ||
| Totally. | ||
| I don't know if it rises to Chamberlain levels. | ||
| I mean, I love a good hyperbole. | ||
| You know me. | ||
| Yeah, you do. | ||
| I do, but this might be a little bit much. | ||
| Might be a little bit much! | ||
| It seems like a... | ||
| I understand where the conversation comes in. | ||
| You know, I do get that. | ||
| Sure, sure, sure. | ||
| But I think saying it's a toss-up is maybe... | ||
| That's hard for me to accept. | ||
| That's an interesting toss-up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So, shrimp leaves. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He goes to get a cocktail. | ||
| Shrimp man, get a cocktail. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| But Alex takes a number of calls. | ||
| Uh-huh. | ||
| And one call is someone from Indiana who has an interesting question for Alex. | ||
| Let's talk to Pat in Indiana who's really been holding patiently. | ||
| Pat, good to hear from you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's all right. | |
| I just had two things to say that I went to a meeting with my friends and I went to Earlham College for a meeting. | ||
| About what's going on in this global situation. | ||
| And I asked Mike again about the Patriot Act 1 and 2 and the Victory Act 1 and 2. And I asked him to elaborate on 802. | ||
| This is your congressman? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, Pence. | |
| And he said he helped write the whole Patriot Act. | ||
| And he couldn't elaborate on 802. | ||
| And he said there was no Patriot Act No. 2. Okay. | ||
| Aha! | ||
| I'm not sure how much direct involvement Mike Pence had in drafting the Patriot Act, but he was in the House Judiciary Committee at the time of its drafting, which is where that would have happened. | ||
| Yeah, he would have been there. | ||
| Further, Pence did say in a committee meeting about reauthorizing the Patriot Act that he'd helped draft the original. | ||
| It does seem plausible that he had some hand in it, and at very least, he's been a huge proponent of extending the act and keeping it in place over the years. | ||
| This is just another really funny thing to think about in hindsight about Alex's support for Trump. | ||
| He was potentially rallying all of his supporters to help elect a vice president who helped create the Patriot Act, one of the biggest pieces of evil legislation that Alex built his career out of about. | ||
| Now, that's irony. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It is. | |
| That is definitely irony. | ||
| And I don't think that's ever something I've heard Alex wrestle with or grapple with the idea of like, you know, because I could see a sincere actor saying like... | ||
| I think that Trump is such an important political figure that I will accept the fact that he chose as a vice president someone who takes credit for creating the Patriot Act. | ||
| I could see really struggling to make that decision and showing your work and being like... | ||
| I think that the benefits outweigh, you know, Pence is going to have some ideas, but he's going to be sidelined by Trump. | ||
| Trump wouldn't have let him do some Patriot Act-ass shit on his watch. | ||
| Something, but I don't really know that I've heard that. | ||
| Do you know, here's what I'm feeling right here, is like the reverse of a Mighty Duck scenario, right? | ||
| So, we've got our opening character. | ||
| They are, you know, salt of the earth, kind of, like, hanging out with... | ||
| The Bad News Bears kind of style person, right? | ||
| Then they get pulled away by this glossy, ooh, look at this new fangled electoral politics. | ||
| He takes the electoral politics out of the fire in a barrel. | ||
| Right, right. | ||
| And then in the Disney movie, though, because of the way the resolution is set up... | ||
| When they start chanting, hang Mike Pence, that's his Mighty Ducks moment where he's returning back to the fold of being like, yeah! | ||
| But he was not. | ||
| No, I know. | ||
| But he didn't do it. | ||
| Like, he screwed up the Disney movie. | ||
| He lost to the Russian team. | ||
| He's the worst Air Bud. | ||
| He's the worst Air Bud. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I've seen a number of those. | ||
| They're not great. | ||
| There's that one where the dog wrestles. | ||
| Oh, that's true. | ||
| Russell Mania, I think was the name of it. | ||
| That's not really, yeah. | ||
| You know, you could get a lot of economists and military men around a table, and they'll tell you. | ||
| You never know which is the worst airplane. | ||
| Did they make one where he plays baseball? | ||
| Because that would be silly. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They totally did. | |
| I could see a dog in the outfield, but batting? | ||
| No, that'd be tough. | ||
| That'd be tough. | ||
| I mean, obviously... | ||
| Dogs are made to play catch. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Well, I mean, basketball seems ridiculous, but you can hang out. | ||
| Pinch hitter, though, you get somebody... | ||
| He could run the bases like crazy. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| I mean, I don't... | ||
| Now, listen. | ||
| There are not explicit rules saying that dogs can't play baseball. | ||
| I know this. | ||
| I've been through the rulebook. | ||
| Right. | ||
| What if you had a team? | ||
| What if you had a team? | ||
| Eight dogs and Shohei Otani. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Do you think they stand a chance at the pennant? | |
| Not the pennant? | ||
| No, but I think they could go 40. I think they could win 40 games. | ||
| I think they could win 40 games. | ||
| That's a bad record. | ||
| 40 and 120 is a bad record. | ||
| With dogs, it's not bad. | ||
| With eight dogs, it's not bad. | ||
| I don't know what other sports. | ||
| Bowling? | ||
| Dogs can't bowl. | ||
| I feel like soccer is right at the dog wheelhouse. | ||
| Trick shot pool. | ||
| In what fashion would they perform a masse shot? | ||
| That's what I'm saying. | ||
| It'd be difficult for dogs to play pool. | ||
| It would be. | ||
| I saw a painting of them playing poker, so I know they could do that. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| Well, I mean, that's like horses can count. | ||
| You know, you just have to signal them to play the right card. | ||
| You get an octopus to coach the team. | ||
| They're really smart about sports, from what I hear. | ||
| Sure, sure. | ||
| And they can fit into real small places. | ||
| So that's a double threat. | ||
| So anyway, the point is that, Alex, you're a fucking idiot. | ||
| You elected a vice president who created the Patriot Act. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| In another great instance of him, I think his... | ||
| Present and like recent present self totally invalidating the basic tenets of his career. | ||
| It is astonishing the amount of like, it is almost brick by brick. | ||
| The thing that he built, he tore down brick by brick. | ||
| For money. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| For money, and actually I think probably almost as much of a motivation as acceptance. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, totally. | |
| And being seen as somebody who's credible and who you want to have around, as opposed to somebody who's like, ugh, fuck this guy. | ||
| He wants worship, for sure. | ||
| Yeah, and to feel like he belongs and is accepted and that stuff, which are human desires, but, you know, fuck him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So we have one last clip, and it's an instance of this thing that happens in the past that I enjoy, and that is that sometimes the callers don't really respect Alex that much, or they can kind of steamroll him a little. | ||
| And so this caller does that in a way that I enjoy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yesterday on Meet the Press, Ralph Nader announced he's running for president without a party. | |
| The Green Party refused to let him be its candidate or anyone else, and Nader demanded the immediate impeachment of Bush. | ||
| He said Congressman Conyers is sponsoring a bill to impeach Bush before the election. | ||
| I have a clip of Nader's demand for impeachment. | ||
| It's exactly two minutes long, and I have it queued up if you want me to play it on the radio. | ||
| Two minutes long? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Two minutes long is the clip of him discussing impeachment with Tim Russell. | |
| Well, the audio's okay. | ||
| I might play it, John, but really, we can get the clips ourselves. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's on the transcript if you go to meet the press. | |
| Okay, go ahead and start rolling it if you want to play this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You can cut it off when you get tired of it. | |
| Yeah, I will. | ||
| You very strongly get the sense that Alex does not want to do this. | ||
| Absolutely not. | ||
| What? | ||
| He's like, all right, fine, play the fucking clip. | ||
| That's unreal. | ||
| That actually would be the one moment where I'd be like, I'm not playing a two-minute clip, dude. | ||
| Dude, 15 to 30 seconds? | ||
| Totally in the wheelhouse. | ||
| Two minutes is too fucking long. | ||
| I will say, just for the sake of being above board and everything, he does cut it off fairly quick because the sound's terrible. | ||
| But, you know, lest for that, his caller was just like, I'm going to play it. | ||
| I'm amazed. | ||
| I'm amazed. | ||
| Why, why, why would you call into a show? | ||
| To play them a clip of another show. | ||
| Because they're not doing a good enough job of corralling clips. | ||
| Alex doesn't cover stuff, really. | ||
| You know, like you are someone who's listening and believes in the quote-unquote info war. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And so you see Alex kind of just like... | ||
| Talk to Sean for a while. | ||
| Take pointless calls. | ||
| Blah, blah, blah. | ||
| You know, all this. | ||
| And you're like, hey, there's information that the people need to know. | ||
| Let's get some substance in here. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so you believe that you can bring that to the table. | ||
| And so you decide to bring out your soundboard and force it on Alex. | ||
| It's great. | ||
| I mean, play in a clip. | ||
| Over the phone is just... | ||
| Alex would never put up with that these days, I don't think. | ||
| No, absolutely not. | ||
| It feels like this is a very much pre-head being too big Alex, which I enjoy. | ||
| I enjoy. | ||
| There's a human element to it. | ||
| This is a bit garage-rocky. | ||
| Yeah, this is behind the music. | ||
| He's in his garage. | ||
| He has to play two-minute-long clips from some asshole who calls him. | ||
| I feel it, yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I get you. | ||
| And maybe it's a part of me that has a romantic feeling about... | ||
| That kind of radio? | ||
| I won't say I don't, yeah. | ||
| Even though it's Alex, it triggers something in my brain of like, this is fun. | ||
| Yeah, wow. | ||
| A guy desperately trying to do a show and having just everything kind of go off course. | ||
| Yeah, that is the high wire act that is entertaining. | ||
| You know, that like at any moment this could really go off the rails. | ||
| And that is in an interesting and exciting and unexpected way. | ||
| That you just don't get now. | ||
| Now, if it's going to go off the rails, it's not even off the rails. | ||
| The rails are, like, part of it. | ||
| There aren't rails. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| But, I mean, like, that's part of it. | ||
| Is that the idea of there aren't rails. | ||
| There aren't rails and the cart is barely moving nowadays. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| What's going to happen if something goes off, like, slightly is Alex is going to hang up on somebody and then just start screaming for a while to reset. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And then it's just like, meh, all right. | ||
| And then that is seen as going off the rails. | ||
| Exactly! | ||
| It's actually just like... | ||
| It's programmed in! | ||
| It's just part of the game! | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| So anyway, we come to the end of this 2004 episode, and I did sincerely mean that I was going to try and stick around in the present. | ||
| I know, I believe you. | ||
| Maybe on Monday, Alex will have put out something where he's back in studio, or, you know, who knows? | ||
| Hopefully. | ||
| Fingers crossed. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Hopefully he didn't get COVID for the sixth time. | ||
| Oh, if only. | ||
| We'll see. | ||
| Probably just Cabo. | ||
| Probably. | ||
| Or Court. | ||
| Anyway, we'll find out and we'll tune in and check with you later. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| But until then. | ||
| That one. | ||
| That one we cut out. | ||
| That one I keep. | ||
| We have a website. | ||
| We do indeed. | ||
| It's knowledgefight.com. | ||
| Yep, we're also on Twitter. | ||
| We are on Twitter. | ||
| It's at knowledge underscore fight. | ||
| Yep, we'll be back. | ||
| But until then, I'm Neo. | ||
| I'm Leo. | ||
| I'm DZX. | ||
| Clark. | ||
| Oh, you know what? | ||
| And now here comes the sex robots. | ||
| Andy in Kansas. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
| Thanks for holding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello, Alex. | |
| I'm a first-time caller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm a huge fan. | |
| I love your work. |
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