All Episodes
Feb. 13, 2014 - No Agenda
02:58:42
591: Mipster Intercept
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
I just can't see you on a skateboard.
Adam Curry, John C. Dvorak.
It's Thursday, February 13, 2014.
Time for your Gitmo Nation Media Assassination Episode 5, 9 or 1.
This is no agenda.
Vaccinating human resources against mainstream melee in FEMA Region 6 at the Travis Heights Hideout in Austin, Texas.
In the morning, everybody, I'm Adam Curry.
And from northern Silicon Valley, plain and simple, I'm John C. Dvorak.
All right.
Before we say anything, did you purposely, were you late on coming in, or do we have some kind of latency already?
Oh, we have latency?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Big time.
I just waited three seconds for you to reply.
Well, that's funny because we didn't have it the last time we did this.
We're testing a new package.
Yeah, yeah.
That's very weird.
The latency's not good.
You want to go back to mid?
No, I think we should disconnect and reconnect.
I don't think it has anything to do with the quality.
Of course it does.
The higher the quality, the more latency.
That's obvious because of the...
Okay, I'll go back to mid.
Go back to mid.
You sounded fine on mid.
I'm back on mid.
Yeah, okay.
I'm going to count, and you fill in the blank.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
Three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
Oh, that's horrible.
It's really bad.
I'm going to disconnect.
We'll try it one time, and one time only.
Okay, then we have...
All right, go away.
This is John's idea, people.
I just want you to know.
I had nothing to do with it.
Hello?
Hello?
You didn't disconnect.
I sure did.
Did you hit the disconnect button or close?
Disconnect.
Do I have to hit close?
No, you have to hit disconnect.
I'm going to hit disconnect and we should be done.
All right, disconnect then.
Are you disconnected yet?
No one needs to listen to this crap on a podcast.
Are you there?
I just reconnected.
All right, all right, all right.
I'm going to count one, two, three, four.
Five.
It's not going to work.
Well, the laugh after my five came immediate.
I'm laughing because I'm not hearing you.
Oh, you don't hear me at all?
No, I hear you, but I counted one, two, three, four, five.
Five.
All right, fine.
We'll try this.
It may be just as bad as Skype.
I don't know.
What is this thing we're using?
This is called Vavi or Vovie or I have no idea.
It's like movie with a V. Oh, it's a Silicon Valley thing.
We had a meeting.
We need to come up with a name.
I don't know, man.
It's like...
Let's name it after a shoe store.
Yeah, a shoe store.
Isn't that what Mevio was?
No, Mevio, not a shoe store.
I thought it was a shoe store.
What are you talking about?
I thought you said somebody likes some shoes from this place in South Netherlands.
You are making this up.
I've never heard of this.
No, everyone was told at the meeting.
Whatever.
All right.
No, I mean, okay.
How did Mevio come about?
I have no idea.
The domain name was available.
Who cares?
How do I get rid of it is a bigger question.
That's what we want to know.
Anyway, so this is a new package.
I have to say, you sound spectacular.
It's just that you may have a little reason.
Well, you sound good, too.
Okay.
All right.
Everyone's very excited about the new package.
Well, the new package is an alpha, so we use a ways off before anyone can use it.
But we're getting there.
All right.
All right.
Good, good, good.
All right.
Thank you all very much for the 800 emails saying that you believe Victoria Nuland said deets and not deeds.
I got it.
And that actually makes me sadder than thinking that she had some details to work out with the current Prime Minister of Ukraine.
So instead of her actually having some deeds, you know, like oil leases and deeds and something interesting, she's doing hipster valley girl speak and saying deets, which just makes me want to throw up.
That's horrible.
Give us a background on this.
Well, you remember the clip.
This was a clip we played on Sunday, right?
Yeah, and I was trying to figure it out.
She said, oh yeah, why don't you talk to, what's his name, the Prime Minister of Ukraine, and then make sure the deeds stick.
And I thought she was talking about the deeds.
And I don't know, did you not get any emails about this?
Zero?
I got zero about this.
Oh, I got a whole bunch.
I think she said deets, as in D-E-T-S, as in Valley Speak for Details.
Oh, I... Oh, that's funny.
It's not.
It's disgusting.
Our State Department has to speak like that now?
That is funny.
I like it.
My goodness.
Hey, I got some deets for you.
Yeah, it's sad.
I can't even imagine some of these other things you could say.
All my email was people saying, oh, they killed the guy who made the ring.
They murdered him.
We had that on the show.
We said it was the biggest hoax.
Yeah, no, it was just...
My email was, mostly.
Hold on a second.
Let me play the Newland thing, because I didn't realize that you hadn't received a single email about this, which is interesting by itself.
I didn't.
Let me just see.
I'd have to...
Because it was at the end, I think, where she's talking about...
I think it's my snarky responses that have kept people away.
Well, you know...
It's also just your last name.
People don't know how to spell it.
They don't even try.
They just give up.
They don't even try.
I looked everywhere for John's email address.
No, you didn't.
Don't lie to me.
I looked everywhere.
It's everywhere.
Here we go.
Let's listen.
Fuck the EU. Oh, there it is.
Exactly.
And I think we've got to do something to make it stick together because you can be pretty sure that if it does start to gain altitude, the Russians will be working behind the scenes to try to torpedo it.
And again, the fact that this is out there right now, I'm still trying to figure out in my mind why Yanukovych did that.
But in the meantime, there's a Party of Regions faction meeting going on right now, and I'm sure there's a lively argument going on in that group at this point.
But anyway, we could land jelly side up on this one if we move forward.
Even that, we could land jelly side up on this one, which of course was the title of the previous episode.
The way these people talk, who do they really think they are?
The more I hear this, the more...
And she's abbreviating everybody's name, Yats, instead of Yatsukochabachokobov.
Yats.
I got Yats and this guy.
We might land jelly-side up.
Klitsch.
Klitsch.
Klitsch and Yats.
So let me work on Klitschko, and if you can just keep...
I think we want to try to get somebody with an international personality to...
Let's get some heavy guns in here, international personality.
Come on, say deets.
Come out here and help to midwife this thing.
Midwife to midwife this thing?
That's almost as bad as what I said during the test of this software.
I talked about something being baked in.
Yeah, you use baked in.
I can't believe I said, hey, we got it baked in.
All these metaphors, I've got to midwife this, if it gains altitude, we have to torpedo it, it could land jelly side up.
You'd think they were talking in code if you didn't know that they were just morons.
The other issue is some kind of outreach to Yanukovych, but we'll probably regroup on that tomorrow.
Yes, on that, let me talk about that, on that.
So on that piece, Jeff, when I wrote the note, Sullivan's come back to me, VFR, saying, you need Biden, and I said, probably tomorrow for an attaboy and get the deets to stick.
Get the deets to stick.
I guess that's what you said, the deets.
Alright, we got the deets.
Get the deets to stick.
The details.
Yeah, I guess it's details.
I was seriously like, these people are high-ranking officials in the State Department of the United States of America.
Yeah, they sound like a sorority group of freshman girls at some crappy college.
I'm telling you, it's...
Yeah.
Well, indeed.
Indeed.
Just this little...
It doesn't sound right.
It doesn't sound right, jelly side up.
So I started getting a whole bunch of tweets two days ago as the news report came out.
Donald Gregg, my uncle, Uncle Don, arrived in Pyongyang with a...
That's North Korea.
Yes, that's the capital.
Yes, with an envoy.
Now, this is very interesting.
How come I didn't get to go on this trip?
Well, so here's the deal.
So, as you know...
I'd already reached out to Uncle Don and Aunt Meg about hooking up this summer and going to see them, which has actually turned into a little mini family reunion in Armonk, which is great because I get to see all of my cousins who have clearance.
How many is that?
All of them.
Well, Lucy used to be married.
What about Willow?
No, that's my sister.
She has no clearance.
Zero.
She's a relative.
No, wrong side of the family.
But my cousin Lucy, who actually is coming to Austin in April, so we'll see here before then, she was married to Christopher Buckley.
Can you do me a personal favor?
Sure.
Have the place a bug detail come in and make sure that there's nothing planted.
So you know who Christopher Buckley is, right?
When she leaves, after she leaves.
You know who Christopher Buckley is.
Yeah, he's Christopher Buckley.
He's William Buckley's kid.
Kid, yeah, exactly.
And, you know, so there's all kinds of clearances and stuff over there.
And so anyway, I had reached out appropriately because we had discussed on the show that one day Uncle Don's not going to be there anymore.
He's 84.
Yeah.
And, you know, it's going to suck because I just won't have any, I need some deets.
So I basically emailed and said, hey, you know, before this thing lands jelly side up, I need some deets from y'all.
Can we come by?
So it turned into a little mini reunion in August, which is great.
We're going to go.
And I just confirmed this, and then I see on breaking news, CNN, Donald Gregg with several other, and this is great, several other members of the Pacific Century Institute.
Yeah, you've got to look this one up.
The Pacific Century Institute.
Now, I was unaware.
It's pacificcenturyinst.org.
I think, looking at it now, and I've done as much research as I could really get, there was an official envoy from the State Department which was cancelled.
And I guess these guys were going to try and see if they could get Kenneth Bay jacked out or whatever.
And that was cancelled, and then the next day, Uncle Don with a couple buddies from the Pacific Century Institute show up.
And the State Department is very quick to say this is not sanctioned and not there on behalf of the United States.
Yeah, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
Well, I have to think, John.
Now that we know that Uncle Don went on...
He was ambassador to South Korea, amongst many other things.
By the way, he is the...
Let me see.
About...
I've got to read this to you.
He's the chairman of this operation.
Have you seen his bio?
Let me read this.
On this site?
Yes, yes, yes.
This is great.
Following graduation from Williams College in 1951, he joined the Central Intelligence Agency, and it even has to say CIA in parentheses, like we didn't know that.
Just in case.
Over the next quarter century, he was assigned to Japan, Burma, Vietnam, and Korea.
I thought he wasn't allowed to talk about the Japan thing.
Anyway.
He was seconded to the National Security Council staff in 79, where he was in charge of intelligence activities and Asian policy affairs.
In 82, Greg was asked by then-Vice President George Bush to become his national security advisor.
He then retired, wink-wink, from the CIA and was awarded its highest decoration, the Distinguished Intelligence Medal, which means that motherfucker...
I thought you couldn't talk about Fight Club.
Well, when you get the medal, you get the, you know...
I wonder what that is.
My understanding was no one got to talk about the medal.
Distinguished Intelligence Medal.
I wonder what that...
Does that mean he's the best spy ever?
That means he's one of them.
All right.
And then he served as...
They make no mention here of Iran-Contra.
I wonder why they don't put that in his bio.
That would be appropriate.
That's when he became ambassador to South Korea.
But you look down here.
Member of the Council on Foreign Relations...
Recent awards include honorary degree from Green Mountain College, Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service, The Williams College Kellogg Award.
This guy is so elitist, but yet he's cool, which makes it kind of interesting.
I think a lot of elites are cool.
Yeah.
I do know that he once did a talk for Goldman Sachs, and then they sent him stock, and he was so appalled because he wouldn't take any payment.
He gave the stock back.
No, that was a mistake.
It was probably bugged.
No, I think with Don, as he was the one that essentially said, you know, Dennis Rodman the first time around, not this time when he was puking in the hallways everywhere and shitting in the hotel, He said Dennis Rodman basically has the right idea.
North Korea just wants, they don't want armistice, they just want to be a full partner.
They want basketball.
And skiing.
And skiing.
That's because Eun was a basketball nut.
We've talked about this before.
We have all the details of it.
He liked the Chicago Bulls the most.
Which is where Dennis played, at least in one iteration.
And he loves skiing because he lived in Switzerland.
So I send over a note to Meg.
Please don't click that pen.
It's so loud.
We talked about this.
This is different.
This is me.
I'll tell you what I was doing.
I had the keyboard on my lap and I'm pulling out the little legs.
And then I'm pushing the legs back down.
This is what caused me to keep hitting that stupid button.
Well, could you not do that?
I'm fiddling.
I'm fiddling.
Don't be so mean to me.
Well, just do it.
Fiddle with something softer.
No, I put the keyboard on the floor.
Oh, very funny.
It's never that soft, my friend.
Okay, let me write that down.
When is that?
23.
So, of course, this is a very typical cycle for North Korea, where they have this kind of carrot-the-stick thing, like, oh, we're going to reunify the families, but only if you guys don't do military exercises.
With what is being seen as a surprise invitation from North Korea to South Korea to take part in high-level talks in the demilitarized village of Panmunjom.
Yeah, this invite comes as preparations continue for a reunion of separated families later this month.
And we've just had these pictures that have just come in to us within the last few minutes of the South Korean delegation.
Just a warning, there is some flash photography on the pictures you are about to see.
They show the South Korean delegation departing for the talks to be held at the border.
And it has been more than six years since such high-level meetings took place with the North.
Although an agenda has not been set before the meeting, the two sides are expected to discuss the major inter-Korean issues, including the smooth proceeding and the regularization of family reunions.
A news conference there in Geneva, the North Korean ambassador to the United Nations urged Washington and Seoul to suspend their planned annual military exercises.
So it's always the same thing.
It's always, oh, we want to bring everyone together, but you have to stop the military exercises.
Now, I believe that Don is there...
To really make something work, because they don't show him anywhere.
He goes on Fareed Zakaria, CNN, Don says, hey, these guys just want to participate.
Don't be such douchebags towards North Korea.
I haven't seen him on the news since.
This is what, two years ago?
Well, it's because he's obviously not read into whatever script they want to run.
And so I fire off an email to Meg.
I'm like, hey, looking forward to seeing you.
Hey, looking forward to seeing you guys August 16th.
Oh, just saw on CNN that Don's in NK said any info was always appreciated.
I should read you her exact email.
I don't have it in front of me.
It was literally like, great, the reunion's gonna be fun.
P.S. Don Tripp Low Key.
Which is code for shut the fuck up.
Not even Don, just Don Tripp Low Key.
Okay.
And there's nothing, you can't find a single news report about it since.
This is not three days ago.
You spotted the news report.
With a news report, the guy probably was fired.
He's like, hey man, don't do that.
You may not have found out about it.
So we're scouring the news.
So there is some speculation.
Maybe he's going to try and pop this Kenneth Bae guy free.
I don't think so.
I think Don was probably requested by the South Koreans to try and make something work.
He's highly respected in both South and North Korea.
Yeah, not so much so that I could meet with the old man when he was still alive.
Well, we talked about that.
And you recall that he had sent movies over and he at least took a recommendation.
Do you remember this?
No.
Yeah, he was going to send a package of movies to Kim Young-il.
And we had on the show, we did suggestions.
You don't remember this?
Oh, I do remember the suggestions for the movies.
Yeah.
We had some real prize winners.
Yeah, that's what we'd get.
So that was the closest we got to you drinking Cabernet or whatever the old guy is.
Anyway, so here's a Bordeaux.
Here's one last little report on...
This is all I could find on the North Korean situation.
There aren't many ways to relax in North Korea.
Here at the country's new ski resort, fun is accessed via military-style checkpoint and a creaky 40-minute crawl up the mountain.
There's plenty of room on the slopes.
This is a hobby reserved for North Korea's elite.
The thing that's interesting about this is they make it sound like this is crazy ski lift.
The thing is brand new.
It's a creaky, mad...
Yeah, it sounds like a bad report, and it's not probably reserved.
Anyone who can afford or can get there probably can go skiing if they want.
Exactly.
How many North Koreans are interested in skiing?
None.
None.
But yeah, you can go.
You can get there.
I think they're open for business.
And this is something you said years ago.
You said North Korea wants to be a tourist destination.
We nailed it.
It's probably in Red Book number one.
Totally nailed it.
We just have some issues with...
It's like Russia.
It's the same thing.
It takes a long time to figure out how to do things, and they won't listen to anyone.
No, but the way it's being portrayed...
If you walk out on the street and you say, what do you think Russia's like?
I'm sure people are like, oh, it's all locked down.
It's crazy.
They have crap food, drink vodka.
They're drunk all day.
They got nothing but KGB. And the toilets don't work.
And the toilets don't, yeah.
And it's like, yeah, in 1985.
But you'd think that America really does not understand that Moscow, you know, you can, there's Prada stores.
Woo!
They know who the Kardashians are in Moscow and in St.
Petersburg.
Well, if you travel enough, you can, especially in these countries that were developing.
Like, if you go, if you've been, I didn't go to Beijing in the 80s, but I was there in the 90s.
And then within five years, it's like a different city.
And then Shanghai just popped up out of nowhere as this huge metropolis, this modern metropolis with all this weird architecture.
And they can turn this stuff, I mean, these, we've done it.
Every place except Haiti.
Right.
We can modernize in the drop of a hat for some reason.
Haiti's jinxed.
Now we rebelized Haiti.
We rebelized Haiti.
We did exactly what we're supposed to do there.
Good.
Good work.
So the Russian thing is bullcrap.
And you see some of the reports from Sochi where they're actually in.
It's a resort town on the Baltic Sea for the Russian elites.
And they're trying to modernize it, in my opinion.
They went through all this effort to modernize and drop to $51 billion in there to keep the Russian oligarchs in the country.
Interesting, yes.
Because they were all going to Saint-Tropez and throwing money away on overpriced bottles of Dom Perignon.
Actually, it's no longer Saint-Tropez.
What is the island down there off of the Italian coast?
Is there some island we're all going to now?
Yeah, that doesn't surprise me.
I think you talked about this before.
Yeah, I just can't remember exactly.
Corsica?
Corsica?
Was it Corsica?
No, I don't think so.
Corsica's pretty big.
It was some other douchebag yacht town.
I can't remember.
Anyway, it's not Saint-Tropez anymore.
It's just not.
However, fascinating to, of course, now we have the gay thing.
And I wanted to state one more time to my lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, questioning, intersexed, Brothers and sisters, you are being misused.
You are being abused by your own brothers and sisters, unfortunately, who are doing anything they can to collect money.
All under the premise of Russia is horrible towards gays.
And this ABC report, which I picked up, Really solidifies how out of touch the mainstream media is with what's really going on.
Apparently, the only gays in Russia they can find are drag queens.
It's offensive.
It's really becoming offensive.
And it's the same club, by the way, that BBC guy went to visit.
We played that clip a couple weeks ago.
He's like, oh, yes.
And now this club, oh yeah, was shot at.
And he's got some shill who's just not even understanding the questions.
Has the club been shot at?
It was.
And there have also been, like, water attacks?
Yes.
Maybe a gas attack?
Gas attacks.
They tore up the roof?
Yes.
Club Central Station, Russia's largest gay venue, is under attack.
A shooting.
Gas attacks.
Vandalism.
Patrons and staff horrified.
And now the manager points out this.
A bizarre morality patrol van that monitors the club videotaping.
Just like someone's Volkswagen bus on the sidewalk.
And it might not even be true.
It's just a ridiculous report.
Shame on you, ABC. Patrons as they come and go.
Of course they're trying to make us uncomfortable to hide, not to go out.
The names of several Central Station patrons have been changed to protect their identities.
Alexei is 20 years old.
Intelligent, soft-spoken.
Here you can't even go outside and say out loud that you're gay.
And it's not only forbidden, it can be dangerous for you.
So, it's not only forbidden, which it's not.
You know, they just got some kid who dresses up and is a drag queen performer to just say some stuff.
And it's very disturbing.
I think the gay community, even the whole idea of gay community, everything makes me mad.
The whole thing makes me mad.
Everything's just, ugh.
Let's see.
I had another great example of that.
I guess Amazon has their new show.
They're trying to compete with Netflix.
So they have a show out called The After, I guess?
I have no idea what it's about, and I was told I should not watch it.
But here is a clip solidifying how wrong, how misguided we are in gay rights, which are just human rights or human rights and rights that you have.
If they're gay rights, it should be lesbian rights and intersex rights and bicurious rights and straight rights.
What is that?
How about just human rights?
And crimes are crimes.
hate crime it makes no sense it's a matter of fucking speaking it's a matter of fucking speaking do you even have any friends?
in high fucking places you twink how do you even know I'm gay?
you gay as fucking Christmas you are just a hateful human being it's some fucking parades I hate you know hate speech in itself is a crime That's what we're teaching people.
Hate speech in itself is a crime.
Well, whatever it takes.
No, it's...
We've got to get to it.
The only way we're going to slam down our freedom of speech is by making everything like, you know, you've got to think through everything.
This is what's going on.
I think that's one of the big news this week.
I did get mail on this, was the drop of the United States, so far as the free press is concerned, to number 46 on the world based on Reporters Without Borders.
Yeah.
And, of course, everyone's all upset about this.
They were number 33.
That wasn't bad enough.
But, you know, when did you start complaining about this at 40, 42?
I'm not sure.
Well, here's the thing that I found interesting.
The Netherlands is number two.
I mean, anyone who's from the Netherlands...
No, they're not.
Yes, number two.
They were number two.
They were like number 10.
Number two behind Finland.
Go look it up.
I have it right here.
I'm going to have to go look at them now.
Number two behind Finland, which made me laugh.
What's the name of their...
Yeah, it is funny.
Yeah.
What do you mean?
Reporters Without Boredom?
Without Boredom?
What's it?
RPG.org or something?
Reporters Without Boredom.
All of a sudden, that's the new name.
Yeah, it's RSF.org.
And yeah, the Netherlands is number two behind Finland.
And I have very close ties with the Netherlands.
That's a Stasi state!
More than 2 million people were eavesdropped on by the...
And this just came out in Dutch parliamentary hearings.
I think it was 1.8 million people were eavesdropped.
That's 10% of the population, by the way.
More than 10%.
1.8 million calls were eavesdropped on by the Dutch CIA and then given to the NSA. Just given to them.
Oh, here you go.
Here's everything we've got.
Here it is.
Finland, 1.
Netherlands, 2.
Norway, 3.
Luxembourg, 4.
The government subsidizes...
Journalists in the Netherlands.
Yeah!
Oh yeah, everything's great here.
Yeah, I'm not going to complain.
How can it be number two?
This is a farce.
Well, if everything you say is true, it is an obvious farce.
Yeah.
But of course, that made room for something very, very weird.
I had not expected this to happen so quickly.
I seriously did not expect...
Glenn Greenwald's first look, the Intercept Media thing, the $250 million WordPress blog.
I did not expect that, the first story out of the gate, to be compromised.
I was blown away.
Really?
They're doing this?
The first story they have is a complete cover for the government?
You saw the first story, I presume, John?
Yeah, the story was, I have some clips about it.
The first story was...
I thought it was very lame.
In fact, I thought the first two stories were lame.
The second one was worse than the first, which was exclusive photos of all the spy locations, Fort Meade and whatever.
Anybody exclusive...
If I take a picture of my thumb and publish it, it's an exclusive photo.
You've never seen it before.
This is a photo you've never seen before.
And it was just a bunch of lame photos.
I didn't even see that it was even remotely interesting.
Well, I'll take it one step further.
And I also have a few clips because this was no coincidence as far as I'm concerned.
And I'm going to...
I just have to...
I have to call these guys.
I'm being corrupt.
So they come out with this first story.
And this first story is about how the NSA... It's apparently by itself responsible for the SIGINT, signals intelligence, which is used for drone strikes and drone targeting.
And it effectively...
The way I saw it gave entire cover to the CIA who actually run the drone program, who have the kill list, who actually kill people with all kinds of intelligence.
It put this squarely on the shoulders of the NSA. In that entire article, there was only one mention of the CIA. The rest was all NSA and NSA and NSA and NSA. And now, what you're saying is you're reiterating a point that we made some time ago, which is that this is a battle between the NSA and the CIA, and you're now saying that this is a...
You're stunned.
I'm going to take it one step further.
You're stunned by this.
Well, I am stunned.
Yes, I am stunned that apparently, I can see it no other way.
First, I'll give you an example.
Here's Brolf.
And this is how the mainstream media, which is what most citizens listen to and watch.
Here's how he's interpreting this news, which should be about the CIA killing people.
Many of those unmanned attacks rely on mobile phone information from the NSA that's not necessarily all that dependable.
Our Chief National Security Correspondent Jim Shudos here has got the details of this new information, this new report.
What are you learning?
Well, this goes right to the core of the drone program because it goes to how targets are selected.
This is very important.
He's talking about the core of the drone program, which is no longer the CIA, apparently.
Glenn Greenwald, of course, the source of the Edward Snowden revelations about NSA mass surveillance.
He quotes a former drone operator.
Yes, and by the way, John, we have now a new unnamed source, a former drone operator.
Gee, I know some of those.
So this is a new source.
They come out on this day, apparently some rush that they have to get something up and going, which is why it looks, you know, their feeds weren't even working for the first 48 hours.
Saying that these targets are chosen really by metadata analysis and phone tracking rather than human intelligence on the ground.
His reporting partner, Jeremy Scahill, called it, quote, death by metadata and entering an era of pre-crime, a reference to the movie Minority Report.
Okay, so while this is taking place, right now we are seeing all kinds of movie clips.
This is another thing that happened in the past 36 hours.
48.
Yeah, 36.
Maybe 48.
We're seeing movie footage, references, they talk about Minority Report.
He's saying death by metadata, which is literally connecting the CIA drone killings to the NSA metadata.
And what this does is it encompasses two of the programs Obama has expanded while in office, both the drone program The NSA surveillance program and, of course, two programs that he's had trouble defending and has had to backtrack a bit now on NSA mass surveillance.
So it's really getting into two of the most difficult areas for President Obama in the national security space.
Now, as I said, the timing of this was very interesting.
They rushed this website out, this WordPress blog.
The feeds weren't working.
A lot of things were wrong.
It was a very...
And the story was, right?
Okay, so the terrorists take their SIM cards, jumble them up in a bag, and somehow then we can't find them, track them.
This is why we kill innocent people.
There's no human intelligence on the ground.
Sounds like bullcrap, but...
It comes out on the same day where we have this news which all of a sudden appears in Associated Press, just out of the blue.
Another report in the AP today, four anonymous officials basically saying the U.S. is currently contemplating a targeted killing action against an American citizen.
This story was strange to me for a number of reasons.
One, why are they talking now?
Two, what is the purpose?
And three, it seemed to kind of bury the lead, which is that we've already done this.
I'm not quite clear what would be new here.
How do you react to that story?
Now, this is MSNBC and Jeremy Scahill, who, of course, there is some timing because the Oscars are coming up and his Dirty Wars is nominated.
But he's on every single show, plugging the Death by Metadata, connecting the NSA to the dronings.
Story.
And we have this story.
All of a sudden, there's some unnamed terrorist, an American, in an unnamed place who we need to go kill.
And for some reason, exactly when this cover story comes out, the Associated Press gets the announcement about this from the administration.
Interesting timing.
Right.
I mean, as you know, because you've talked about this probably more than almost anyone on corporate television, you know, President Obama has admitted that the U.S. has killed four U.S. citizens in a drone strike.
The most prominent, Anwar al-Awlaki, this American citizen.
To me, Chris, politically, this indicates that the White House has already made a decision that they're going to kill another American citizen and they're sort of floating a balloon out to the American public.
This raises very, very serious issues about the constitutionality of the drone strike program.
Whether or not the U.S. believes it can kill its own citizens without even charging them with a crime, where the president has sort of emperor-like powers, should be something that our courts should take up very, very quickly, and that should be the subject of much debate in Congress, and not just from the Rand Pauls and the Justin Amashas of the world.
It should be something the Democrats should actually pay attention to.
Now, I think Scahill is, I think he's just dumb, but I think, at least when he does interviews, he's not the smartest guy.
He always divulges too much.
I think he's right about this, and there is a reason that the administration wants to find out if they can legally kill an American citizen.
Of course, Brolf is on the other side.
He's just doing what he's supposed to do.
It's like a scene out of Homeland.
Elite U.S. forces nabbing an alleged al-Qaeda leader on the street.
This is very important.
Like a scene out of Homeland.
Connecting your brain to Homeland and we're seeing some grainy video footage.
In a matter of seconds.
The remarkable video is surfacing in the midst of a new debate within the Obama administration about its terror-fighting tactics.
The key question right now, should the United States kill?
Kill an American citizen who may be plotting an attack right now against the United States?
Kill!
Kill!
Yeah, kill!
Kill!
Then we have David Martin of CBS, who's going to give us the very short version of what this is really about and why we have this Homeland TV show-like-looking footage all of a sudden popping up with the news that we're going to kill a citizen, with the news that it's all the NSA's doing.
Well, officials confirm that, indeed, the Obama administration is trying to decide whether it can legally launch a drone strike against an American citizen who is working with al-Qaeda in an unnamed foreign country.
In effect, execute him without a trial.
But the Justice Department first has to make a case that this American is actively plotting to kill other Americans and the Pentagon has to determine there is no chance to capture him alive and that a drone strike would not cause civilian casualties.
Okay.
So now we have the...
everything is spread and set.
So we need to prove that we can't capture the guy, and we need to prove that there will be no casualties, no civilian casualties.
Now, the civilian casualties will be covered by the NSA, because we're going to have to change something there, so that the NSA is clearly guilty of killing civilians.
But at the same time while this is happening, out comes this footage from Libya that proves that we know how to capture these guys.
We just can't capture this guy.
In this dramatic, newly released security camera footage...
Newly released!
Just coincidental!
...obtained by the Washington Post, a van pulls up next to a vehicle on the streets of Tripoli, Libya, last October.
Watch as U.S. Army Delta Force commandos jump out and grab Anas al-Libi, an alleged al-Qaeda operative.
In seconds, the suspect is captured.
But raids like this one aren't always an option for terror suspects.
The usual option?
Drone strikes.
So we're set.
So obviously the public now knows we know how to capture guys because you saw the Homeland TV show.
You saw the footage.
You saw the closed caption grainy video.
We know how to do it.
We just can't capture this guy.
Let's talk to some real experts.
BBC has Alberto Gonzalez.
What do we know about Alberto Gonzalez, John?
Well, we know he was the stooge lawyer that okayed the torture.
Torture and warrantless wiretapping?
Yeah, no, he's just all in on everything.
And he actually wrote a large portion of the drone rules of engagement.
And the BBC, unbelievably, asks the right question.
Well, I think that is.
What is the challenge for the Obama administration in terms of the whole process of deeming this person an enemy combatant?
He's an American citizen, but deeming him as an enemy combatant is a process or protocol that involves solely the executive branch.
And it does call into question whether or not this American citizen is being afforded due process in the process of designating him an enemy combatant.
And that's the challenge that I think the president has, the administration has, in the event that this issue ever becomes before a U.S. court.
Which, of course, is exactly what we want, because we want to have the Supreme Court say this is all okay.
Here comes the smart lady from the BBC. You, of course, were in the Bush administration as the drone policy was being drawn up.
It sounds, though, like you have some concerns about the White House targeting an American citizen abroad.
Not necessarily.
I'm in favor of the drone program.
I think it's been very, very effective.
But you're suggesting it might not be able to get through a court of law?
Well, what I'm worried about is that when the program began, of course, we didn't target American citizens, as I recall.
Not sure, but that's what I'm not sure.
Not what I recall.
We had the benefit of Supreme Court decisions that came about after the program began, so we're wiser today.
We now know, I think we have a better understanding and feel as to where the court might go if this issue ever came before the court.
See, they're pushing this, John.
They know exactly what they want.
They need to get this for one reason and one reason only, so we can use drones on American citizens in the homeland.
Wait for it.
So, and I think that prudent decision makers should be cognizant of those decisions and should take those decisions into account in making decisions about how we prosecute the war on terror.
But Mr.
Gonzalez, where does this stop?
I mean, you know, what's to prevent one day the administration making a case that it should take out an American citizen who's actually on American soil?
Well, I think that presents a much different scenario.
There are additional constitutional rights that would attach, and I think the administration would say that's not something we have any interest in doing.
I love how that's pushed under the rug.
No, no, we have no interest in doing that.
We have no interest in killing you in America.
We're not interested.
Interesting.
That's not something that we would ever consider.
We'd never consider that.
However, when you think about the possibility, the very real possibility, that the war on terror will be fought more likely in the future on U.S. soil may involve more likely in the future.
I'm sorry.
This is breaking news to me.
It seems like the war on terror will be fought on our own soil, John.
This seems like everyone's in on this.
We're missing the memo.
This is very easy.
Well, they would love to have this go off like this.
Well, listen to...
I think these people are so deluded.
Oh, no, no, no, no.
As you can witness by these clips, this is ludicrous.
You want to hear deluded?
Erin Burnett, who's had her baby.
Her face looks beautiful, by the way.
After she had the kid.
She's radiant.
Very radiant, but they're only showing neck.
They're not zooming out, which I'm suspicious.
So she had General Marks on, whose name is General Spider Marks.
This would be a clue right there.
He's retired.
Spider Marks.
Whose nickname is Spider?
That's creepy.
And he's going to take it one step further.
Here is the megalomania that is rampant in our government.
Stop!
It's also the fact, and people have laughed at this point, but to me it's very important.
That is, if you're going to have a conversation about whether it's okay to kill an American who happens to be overseas, who's plotting attacks against America, suppose that person was sitting in Des Moines or in Washington, D.C. All of a sudden people go, oh, well that would be ridiculous, we would never do it.
Intellectually, it's the same person plotting the same thing.
If we would kill them with a drone overseas, it would only be intellectually consistent to be willing to do it on American soil.
My answer to that is, why not?
Woo!
Why not, baby?
Exactly correct.
In fact, go back to 1996 with Timothy McVeigh in the Murrah Building.
There he is.
There's McVeigh again.
We've heard this several times now.
In Oklahoma City.
And the great tragedy that occurred in that.
Let's assume for a second that drone technology existed.
It did not in sufficient precision and detail back then.
But let's assume intelligence was known about McVeigh.
His rental truck...
We knew and positively identified that he was in the vehicle.
It was ready to explode, and it was moving in the direction of the Murrah building.
Why wouldn't we have used a drone to go after that thing instead of putting a bunch of law enforcement folks at risk to stop that?
Why should we put law enforcement folks at risk?
Instead, just explode this truck in the middle of, I don't know, the highway.
This is truly insanity what this guy's talking about.
Who is this idiot?
General Spider Marks.
I never heard of him.
No, he's a retired general.
M-A-R-X? M-A-R-K-S. He's insane.
Well, while you're looking that up, I'll wind this up with Brolf reiterating once again that it's the NSA droning people and not the CIA. I want to make sure we heard from you correctly about the NSA, the White House, about these allegations that the drone targeting uses...
What?
Cell phones, metadata?
What's going on here?
Well, then it focuses purely on the SIGINT, as they call it, signals intelligence rather than human intelligence sources on the ground.
I was able to reach out to a U.S. intelligence official, also to the National Security Council in the White House, and they said that for obvious reasons, while they can't comment on specific information, They do make this point very strongly that, quote, our assessments are not based on a single piece of information that we gather and scrutinize information from a variety of sources and methods.
They also pointed Wolf to a speech by the president last May when he talked specifically about drone strikes as they relate to civilians.
And he said that we have to have near certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured, the highest standard we can set.
So pushing back very hard on this point that for any strike they're going to rely on any one single piece of information.
There's no doubt the drone strikes have escalated since President Obama took office from the Bush administration.
Absolutely.
Both of these programs he inherited from the Bush administration, NSA surveillance, and the drone strikes both expanded under Obama.
Okay.
So here's how I see the whole thing.
This all comes out at the same time.
We have a rush job of Greenwald's expensive blog, Coming out with a very, not even like a new story, but essentially saying, we've got a new guy, we have a new leaker whistleblower, we can't tell you who he is, he used to operate drones, and he says the NSA is to blame for civilian casualties.
At the same time, when all of a sudden, for some reason we feel we have to announce we're going to kill an American citizen, we need to find out the legality, Well, we can only do that if he's plotting against the homeland.
If we cannot capture him...
Oops, there's the new capture video that shows we do know how to capture, we just can't capture him.
I think what's going to happen...
I think it's a red herring.
I think what they're going to do is they're going to have some kind of congressional hearing about using...
SIM cards to track people, and they'll blame the NSA, and then someone will step up and say, oh, no problem, we fixed it, we're good to go.
And meanwhile, the CIA gets a free pass.
Yeah, I'm not.
It's an interesting...
I can't...
I like what you...
I like the basis for...
I like when you got the spider.
But after that, I'm not so sure that this is going to get anybody a free pass for anything.
I think it is...
Because for one thing, the amount of attention it's getting is only on CNN and Democracy Now!
MSNBC and...
I mean, they play a bit of it.
Nobody cares.
It's not really getting any, you know, it's not getting any real traction.
You're right.
There will be a hearing.
And, you know, the question of this, and by the way, and it's so, it's such nonsense.
One of the claims is that, oh, all these guys get together.
It's like a swingers party.
Yeah.
And they throw it into a hat, and then you grab somebody else.
You grab a SIM, and then you go off your...
That way you can't be.
That's bullcrap, because I'm calling Abdul.
Hello, Abdul.
Is that you?
No, no, it's Mohammed.
It's Mohammed here.
Where's Abdul?
I don't know.
He just grabbed a random SIM. He's just going to have to make a hundred calls.
I know.
That's not right.
I heard this, too.
I was thinking to myself, this makes absolutely no sense.
No, it makes no sense at all.
It's just like, oh, yeah, I want to play roulette.
I might be the guy who gets the bad sim.
Yeah, that's the other thing.
I just keep my phone off.
Yeah.
Well, we know that doesn't matter.
We know that doesn't matter.
Now, this bull crap.
Yeah.
Well, we have, you didn't get any of the, I'm surprised you didn't have any clips, because they, Scahill and Greenwald were on Democracy Now!
talking about this.
And it was interesting because when you watch this, just as a quick analysis, Greenwald and Scahill are not going to get along.
No.
They're two different kinds of personalities.
Greenwald can't stop talking.
Yak, yak, yak, yak, yak, yak, yak.
We can play a little bit of the...
Of the clip, that is.
About him coming to America.
Mike Rogers versus Glenn Greenwald clip.
Okie dokie.
After the hearing ended, he reportedly said, quote, for personal gain, he's now selling his access to information.
That's how they're terming it.
A thief selling stolen material is a thief, said the head of the House Intelligence Committee.
Your response?
Well, first of all, Mike Rogers is a liar.
He's outright lying when he says that I or any other journalist working on this case have...
Okay, I've got to stop.
This is not what Mike Rogers said.
He was very smart about it, and this is now being twisted.
He never said...
I'm not defending the guy, but we played this clip.
He did not say, Glenn Greenwald stole this.
He said, if someone steals, fences, stolen jewels...
Yeah, no, that's what she said.
Right.
That's not exactly what she said.
And now...
No, she didn't say Glenn Greenwald in that clip.
You can back it up and listen again.
Yeah.
Because she read from the transcript.
She insinuates something which is not entirely true.
And Greenwald, he's the liar.
He's lying right now.
After the hearing ended, he reportedly said, quote, for personal gain, he's now selling his access to information.
That's how they're turned.
Okay, she said something else.
After the hearing ended, he reportedly said.
So she has nothing.
That's just made-up stuff.
That's not even from the hearing.
A thief selling stolen material is a thief, said the head of the House Intelligence Committee.
Your response?
Well, first of all, Mike Rogers is a liar.
He's outright lying when he says that I or any other journalist working on this case have sold documents or fenced documents.
The one thing that's missing from his accusations is any evidence, because none exist, and I defy him to present any.
But that's what Mike Rogers does.
It's who he is.
He just lies and smears people With no evidence.
But I think the more important point than the fact that Mike Rogers is a pathological liar is the fact that this is part of a broader campaign on the part of the Obama administration, as Jeremy said, to try and either threaten journalists that they will be criminalized or outright criminalize them by prosecuting us for the journalism that we're doing.
It comes in the context of this coordinated campaign to call us accomplices by President Obama's top national security official.
Which is another thing I do want to point out.
No one has actually called Glenn Greenwald an accomplice.
No one has even insinuated that journalists are accomplices.
I have listened very, very carefully.
And these guys are way too smart.
Yeah, but I don't care how carefully you listen.
This is what the insinuation is.
And I disagree.
And this is the point they're trying to make to the American public, that these guys are part and parcel.
When you ask people, is he a traitor or a whistleblower, that question alone...
It implies something bad is going on with these people, and they're obviously accomplices of some sort.
I mean, I'm not buying your argument here at all.
I don't know how you can defend these guys, because even though they're not saying Glenn Greenwald, they are saying...
Sorry?
They're not saying journalists were accomplices.
That has not been said once.
And I'm not defending the facts, John.
I hate Glenn Greenwald.
No, you can defend it all you want, and I think you're right.
They didn't specifically say that, but that is just parsing what their implications are.
No, no, no.
This is not true.
No, no, no.
The context in which the accomplices' mention was made was in the context of FSB Russia being a traitor, not in the context of giving documents to journalists.
I'm sorry, that's just not the context in which it was said.
Even though I agree that this is now being used that way, And for specific reasons, but that is not the context in which that specific thing was said.
It was in the context of Russia, selling to Russia and China, and that's the context of the accomplices, not journalists.
I'm sorry, that's just fact.
That's all.
So the stuff you played in the last show where Rogers was implying that, not without using Greenwald's name, he was going out of his way to imply that Greenwald or one of these other guys should be arrested.
Yes, he was.
Well, then what are you talking about now?
Because I'm just talking about fact, John.
That's all.
I'm just saying that's not true.
This is two separate instances.
What he was saying, what Rogers was saying, he was making a connection between selling stolen goods and stolen documents.
He did not say anything.
What he implied was obvious.
He did not say what Amy Goodman just said.
Allegedly, there's no transcript of that.
I never heard that.
And I'm saying that the accomplices piece, which was a different hearing, was said in a different context.
It doesn't mean that it's not so.
I'm just saying a fact.
Get over it.
I'm not defending anybody, but fact.
Not a big deal.
Well, I didn't even bring this little clip up.
you For this purpose of debate.
I know!
That's why it shouldn't be a big debate.
Fine.
Yeah, they never mention Greenwald and, you know...
He is...
What I'm saying is, Greenwald is pulling this towards himself...
And he loves it.
And that's okay.
But he's wrong.
That was kind of the point of this clip.
I know.
Because I want to contrast him with what...
Well, no, you're the one that brought all this other stuff up about Greenwald being the liar.
He's lying right here.
He's lying.
That's all.
I just want to point out he's a liar.
He's lying when he says that, what?
What's his lie?
That Mike Rogers called him an accomplice.
That is a lie.
That is not, it's what he wants, and it was not what Rogers implied in that instance.
That's all.
Greenwald is lying, and he knows it, but he likes it.
He wants to be targeted.
If you listen to it again, he's not saying that.
He just says Mike Rogers is a liar, he's a pathological liar, and he harps on it.
Is there anywhere in there that he says that Mike Rogers called him an accomplice?
Yes.
The hearing ended.
He reportedly said, quote, for personal gain, he's now selling his access to information.
That's how they're terming it.
A thief.
So I'd like to know where this came from, because this is nowhere.
Selling stolen material is a thief, said the head of the House Intelligence Committee.
Your response?
Well, first of all, Mike Rogers is a liar.
He's outright lying when he says that I or any other journalist working on this case have sold documents or fenced documents.
The one thing that's missing...
He didn't say that.
We don't know that he said that, but okay.
...from his accusations is any evidence, because none exist, and I defy him to present any.
But that's what Mike Rogers does.
It's who he is.
He just lies and smears people...
With no evidence.
But I think the more important point than the fact that Mike Rogers is a pathological liar is the fact that this is part of a broader campaign on the part of the Obama administration as Jeremy said to try and either threaten journalists that they will be criminalized or outright criminalize them by prosecuting us for the journalism that we're doing.
It comes in the context of this coordinated campaign to call us accomplices.
That's what I'm saying.
That is not factual.
That's all.
President Obama's top national security official, Keith Alexander, two months ago in a speech, raised this idea of selling documents.
When we did our first report in Canada with the CBC, the right-wing Harper government attacked us as having sold documents to the CBC. And so what you're really seeing is the Obama administration has been worse on press freedoms than any president since President Nixon, as James Goodall, the former New York Times General Counsel.
All right, you can stop him.
Because he goes on for another hour.
So Scahill, which is the point I'm trying to make here, Scahill, who will not get along, I guarantee it, over time, I'll give it six months, We'll not be able to get along with Greenwald because Scahill is one of these picky guys who likes to throw out little details and, like you said, talks too much and brings out too much.
This is an example of when Scahill gets back in there, he's asked the question but immediately has to rebut Greenwald before he can answer the other question.
This is the comparison clip.
Jeremy, to the JSOC operator's account.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
Wrong clip.
Wrong clip.
I didn't understand.
Here we go.
Jeremy Scahill, if you'd like to expand on this, the Associated Press has agreed to the government's request to withhold the name of the country where the suspected terrorist is believed to be because officials said publishing it could interrupt ongoing counter-terror operations.
And in a later part of the piece it says, one U.S. official said the Defense Department was divided over whether the man is dangerous enough to merit the potential domestic fallout of killing an American without charging him with a crime or trying him.
And the potential international fallout of such an operation in a country that's been resistant to U.S. action, another of the U.S. officials said the Pentagon did ultimately decide to recommend lethal action.
Right.
You know, I mean, again, I mean, I haven't seen this piece yet, but, you know, there are a number of Americans who we already understand have been cleared at some point over the past several years for being hit in these targeted strikes.
One of them, my understanding, is a guy named Adam Gadahn, who is basically a propagandist for al-Qaeda, who is from the United States, a U.S. citizen, and will...
This is the comparison clip.
Are you playing comparison clip Scahill Bettors Greenwald?
Yes, I am.
That's the clip I'm playing.
It doesn't even sound like him.
But that's the clip I'm playing.
No, it is him, though.
We have another minute and 22.
Okay, what he does in this clip, I mislabeled the clip.
In this clip, he actually identifies the guy.
That's going to be executed, or the guy that's under debate, which I thought was weird, because nobody else has mentioned this guy.
He's saying it's Adam Gadon?
I thought he was already dead.
I don't think Adam Gadon is dead.
I think he would have been mentioned since he's an American if he's been killed by us.
Oh, hold on a second.
I always thought he had already been droned.
Let's see.
I have to consult the Book of Knowledge.
That would be very interesting if it was him.
We'll play the rest of it because he does have a couple interesting tidbits.
He'll occasionally be running his mouth off on videos around the world.
I have no knowledge of what he may or may not be involved with, but we do know that the United States doesn't have a problem with killing American citizens without presenting any evidence against them.
And I think that's the real issue here.
You know, the current guidelines that the White House is using still permit The killing of Americans and non-Americans on a regular basis around the world using these drones.
And I think that, to an extent, the White House has started to believe its own propaganda about how precise these strikes actually are, in part because when they get a cell phone or they blow up someone's cell phone, they're told, well, we got the target.
And in the jargon of the operators who do these missions, you know, when you get the phone itself, it's called the jackpot.
And when you confirm that you've actually killed the target, it's called a touchdown.
So how often are these jackpots being passed up to the White House as touchdowns, as confirmation that they've killed the individuals in question?
But I do think it's chilling that we live in an era where a man who won the Nobel Peace Prize and is a constitutional lawyer by training is streamlining and creating a mechanism for making assassination, including of U.S. citizens, a normal part I agree with you that they will not last together.
And here's the reason why.
Glenn Greenwald is in on this game.
He has been in on it from day one.
He's been in on it since his days being funded by Adobe at Salon, which is a complete Adobe-funded operation.
They must have something on him, I'm sure.
He sent his boyfriend purposely through London.
He leaked his own news to BuzzFeed about his great new venture with Pierre Drive My Car.
The guy is in on it.
And when the script screws up, because believe me, Clapper's not, he's dumb, but he can read most of the script most of the time.
And even The Guardian is drawing all these conclusions, and when the script doesn't go right, then Glenn will pull it towards himself.
And this is ultimately for the media shield law, and Glenn Greenwald will get a license.
But he's in on it.
This guy is in on it.
I'm sorry.
And I think Scahill's not.
I think Scahill, that's his problem.
He's real, and he's going to start messing up and saying too much.
Which is exactly what happened when this whole venture leaked, so-called leak, through BuzzFeed by Greenwald himself.
He's in.
He's in on it.
He's in on it with Snowden.
Call it whatever you want.
Limited hangout.
Whatever it is.
And it's all to rein in the NSA and cover up what the CIA is really doing.
That's all I can see.
Well, I'm not going to disagree with that, because I think that's been our premise all along.
But Greenwald is so good at, and this is the thing that I think is going to get, here's the problem if you're working in this publication, I'm Scahill.
Greenwald's really the editor.
He even has his own little section there on the masthead.
You get, like, everyone else is under news, and he's got his own thing, his own button.
So he's editing himself, which is always a bad thing for guys who got an agenda.
And the latest thing, and what I was getting out of these clips, including this one, the clip you want to play now is, will Glenn Greenwald come back to the U.S.? He is setting himself up as...
Martyr.
I mean, he's not an idiot.
No.
He is setting himself up for a series of...
Sub, but close to million dollar speeches on a circuit in the U.S. He's going to walk away with five plus million dollars on the speaker circuit.
I agree.
Because that's what everything I've watched him do has been leading up to this.
And this clip kind of, to me, gives it away that he's got some plans ahead.
Our lawyers, they obviously want to keep us in a state of uncertainty, and this recent escalation of rhetoric and accusations obviously makes that concern more acute.
At the same time, just on principle, as an American citizen, I refuse to be kept out of my own country for the crime of doing journalism.
Absolutely will come back.
I'm going to pick the time to do it when I feel like I understand the risks and am as protected as I can be.
But under no circumstances will I allow this intimidation campaign to succeed, either in deterring me from doing the journalism I do or returning to the country of which I'm a citizen.
Yeah, yeah.
He's going to get detained, and he'll be tweeting about it.
He'll be detained like you were.
Yeah, of course.
And like Laura Poitras says she's been, and like Jacob Applebaum says he always is, and all these people.
Yeah, where's the videos?
Yeah.
So Greenwald is just in on it.
He's just in, and he's shwarmy, shmarmy.
He's icky.
And that opening piece on The Intercept was shite.
Nothing new with your anonymous source.
No, no, no, no, no.
I'm not buying any of this.
So play this clip because I thought this was the clip that you already played.
Kill a third American clip.
On a piece that has just come out from Associated Press, U.S. suspect possibly targeted for drone attack.
It's by Kimberly Dozier, AP intelligence writer.
Just the first paragraph says, Actively planning attacks against Americans overseas, U.S. officials say, and the Obama administration's wrestling with whether to kill him with a drone strike and how to do so legally under its new stricter targeting policy issued last year.
Your comment.
I haven't seen the article yet, but that first paragraph should be shocking to every American, and yet at this point I think we're probably all kind of accustomed to it, despite how radical it is.
What's that?
No, I just wanted to, that's good.
You're mumbling.
Oh, you're mumbling.
The last one, I just want to play this because, again, Scahill's trying to one-up.
This is the thing that's going to really cause some problems.
Scahill shows that he actually has some connections besides just a bunch of papers that Snowden handed over to Greenwald.
A tar ball from a recursive curl, yeah.
So he keeps throwing this kind of thing, and this is the Scahill track-em-whack-em little tidbit.
In this discussion, which went on forever, mostly with Greenwald talking, every time Scahill came in, he'd throw in some, I don't know, uninteresting but kind of interesting inside baseball, the Star Trek-y guy fact that was, you know, he must know somebody to get this, even though it could be bullcrap.
Jeremy, to the JSOC operator's account.
You quote in this first piece for TheIntercept.org, Brandon Bryant.
Talk about the significance of his experience and who he is.
To follow up on what Glenn says, the teams from the NSA that are involved with this program are called GeoCell, geolocation cells, and their motto is, we track them, you whack them, meaning that the NSA will find these individuals, and then the military or the CIA will actually conduct or carry out these hits.
And as to the other question that we were talking about, about the relevance for people in the United States...
Yeah, this is not new, by the way.
We already heard this.
This is all old news.
Yeah, well, he's not going to let Greenwald blather on for hours.
Right.
With no facts, just bitching and moaning, which is what he does.
I don't know if you listen to Greenwald, there's actually nothing in what he says.
And he's on the satellite, and when someone, you know, there's always that satellite delay, and he'll be talking.
So I'm going to talk, and then you're going to pretend like you want to, you're going to go, uh, uh, Mr.
Greenwald, okay?
Okay, here I go.
So yes, and of course we've been named accomplices and Clapper is an incredible liar and everyone's just a big liar.
That's how he does it.
Have you ever noticed that?
He raises his voice.
To shout over you on the satellite delay.
He's got to stop doing that.
We actually have to find some examples of that.
Oh, we've played examples of it.
What were you laughing about?
Yeah, I know, but we didn't think of it in those terms.
He just likes to be on, he just likes to yak.
The guy is a chatterbox.
Yes, this is exactly what he likes to do.
And so someone sent me the Guardian.
And so here is, Clapper called on Snowden and his accomplices to return the documents the former National Security Agency contractor took.
And now the Guardian, of course, wants to rectify or clarify this.
And Clapper spokesman Sean Turner clarified, Director Clapper was referring to anyone who was assisting Edward Snowden to further threaten our national security.
But, you know, it's drawing the attention to himself, is what he does.
And he does that through his incessant yakking, and it's all so horrible.
And yeah, it is.
Absolutely.
If it really was, and everyone loves Glenn Greenwald, where was everybody on the day we fight back?
What happened there?
That was February 11th.
I found out about it the day after it happened.
Me too.
The day we fight back.
And of course the reason is that Wikipedia and Reddit and Google and no one participated.
They put a little banner because they really don't want to stop what's going on.
That's what's happening.
This was supposed to be the big, oh, this was supposed to be Sopa Pippa 2.
Yeah, well, it wasn't...
I don't even know who was behind it.
EFF, I think, was the main...
Well, it was supposed to be Silicon Valley.
It was supposed to be...
Here we go.
EFF, Demand Progress, ACLU, Reddit, Credo, Greenpeace, WebWeWant, ThoughtWorks, DuckDuckGo, Mozilla, Tumblr, the Wikimedia.
Where was everyone shutting stuff down like the last time?
They didn't do it.
Why?
Why?
Because they don't really want this to stop.
That's why.
TheDayWeFightBack.org So I went to an event last night.
I got out of the house.
I went to an event.
And it was supposedly, they said, can't do any reporting on this, although you could tweet about it, which I figured, well, this is the same thing doing a podcast, so I can report on it.
But all the data is publicly available.
So it was Richard Edelman, the head of the large public relations company, the largest independent public relations company.
And Edelman came out from New York to present this thing, which is the annual trust survey results.
And it's actually, I'll set you up with a link to the slideshow because you can get most of it from that.
But it's about how various publics trust or distrust their own government with a list of all the countries that are highly trusted and the ones that aren't by their own people.
And then there's cross-references how many people trust other governments and how we don't trust the Chinese to do business with them or the Russians and it goes on and on.
But he's been doing this for 14 years, and the one thing that really showed up as the most important thing that I learned by listening to this, and especially listening to somebody giving PowerPoint slides and talking about it is a little different than just looking at the slides, because they will point things out.
It began when he first started doing this and it's just been growing.
The most trusted source of information, I'll just ask you, what do you think the most trusted source of information, where does it come from?
And this is in the United States for American citizens or for the world?
This actually turns out to be worldwide, but it is in the United States profound.
The most trusted source of news?
Yeah, if you've got some news coming, is it just your guy across the street that's tweeting something?
Is it broadcast news media?
Is it TV? Is it Howard Stern?
I would say the most trusted news is worldwide CNN. No.
What is it?
No news organizations.
Okay, take news organizations out and now give me one.
Twitter.
No.
The most trusted source, period, and this, when you think about it, because of the way we've noticed this on the show, but we've never actually seen any data about it, are NGOs.
Oh, yeah, of course.
Yes, non-governmental organizations.
Yes, of course.
Of course.
Like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, all these State Department-funded operations.
Yeah.
And until you see the numbers and realize that, oh, because it is obvious, it's the way you reacted to it, it's the way I reacted to it when I saw it.
And I said, yeah, this is the whole idea.
This is why these things are so popular.
And this is when we start breaking them apart, we find the usual suspects.
This is why, exactly, like Mother Jones and ProPublica, which is the same thing.
And at all of these non-profits, you can say, I think NGOs is almost a misnomer.
Because people don't even look at them as NGOs.
Well, it's a non-profit organization.
They're for human rights.
I mean, obviously.
Greenpeace.
No, NGO is an inside baseball buzz term.
It is a term, yeah.
Nobody calls them NGOs.
No, they call them, by what they are, Human Rights Watch.
Well, obviously, they're non-profits.
Amnesty International.
They know what they're doing.
Yes, of course.
They've been doing this for years.
Obviously.
Yeah.
So what we notice on this show is that because they're so co-opted, they're co-opted.
Southern Poverty Law Center, another great one.
Edelman first spotted this trend, and it's growing, by the way, but he first spotted it 14 years ago, which would be the year 2000 or so, when he started doing these presentations.
And I think what happened is that, because the people that are at this presentation is a real weird mix of public relations folks and journalists and CEOs.
It's kind of like a weird club.
How did you get invited?
What happened there?
Yeah, well...
One of, yeah, there's more stories to be told.
But somebody gave me, said, you can come.
And then they told me late and said, oh, you know, I didn't realize it, but there's not supposed to be anybody reporting on this.
And I said, well.
I'm not reporting on it.
I won't report it.
I just want to get the facts.
And then I went to and I said, and my response to nobody can report on it was, what's there to report?
I mean, they put the slideshow out in the public domain, which is available, and anyone can just Google it and get it.
There's nothing to report, really, and so I thought that was kind of weird.
It was just like, I don't know, make it seem more secretive than it is.
It's bullcrap.
So I figure when they started spotting this 15 years ago or so...
That's when the co-opting began.
Because the smart money is sitting there saying, huh, we can't seem to get our message across as a company.
We can't seem to get our message across as a government agency.
And by the way, the government numbers are down in the toilet for believability.
They just don't believe anything the government says, the worldwide public.
It's like 14%.
The number is ridiculous.
So what you do is you take a look at this and you go, I got it.
Why don't we just create these, because there's thousands of these things, and we find one link to another.
You start looking at one, oh, it's the head of the other one, and they just get a lot of government money or corporate money, and then they tell this corporate story through the NGO, and it works like a champ.
The public laps it up.
I saw this.
I saw this as the media.
I saw this firsthand in 1996.
Reebok was my client of the company Think New Ideas, and we built PlanetReebok.com.
And you may recall at the time, of course, there were bulletin boards and the internet was just kind of exploding.
People were learning that they had a voice.
And all over the Reebok, PlanetReebok.com site, people were saying, yeah, you know, you guys, you use like child labor to put together your stuff.
It's all children are dying of your glue.
And they were really freaked out.
And I don't remember who their...
It might have been Edelman.
They're big enough to hire Edelman.
They made a sizable donation to Human Rights Now.
I didn't know that outfit still exists.
And Human Rights Now put together a delegation, and they went down, and they all checked it out, and everything's all good, and we took pictures and some videos, and we put that on the web, and the little kids looking all happy with no glue on their hands.
And Human Rights Now took care of it.
And that's just another one of those bullcrap organizations.
Unfortunately, a lot of them, you know, there is some, not all of them, some actually do some good things.
I wonder now.
The other little trend that kind of got my attention, even though I knew this, I kind of knew this, but I didn't know the numbers or see it in action.
They had a series of slides and they did a bunch of studies on, if you, say you're a company, and you're trying to get your message across, who is the best person within that company that can actually get people to believe you?
Bono?
Bono.
That would be close, but that's actually on the list, but it's not it.
It's not Bono.
It's not the CEO. It's not the public relations company.
There's a whole bunch of things.
It's the guy on the factory floor with the hard hat.
Right.
It's the employee.
So the idea is, so we can see this coming down Broadway.
In fact, I think a lot of this stems from what Adam Curtis did when he did that documentary showing that the news sources are going to the man on the street.
Yeah.
This is an extension of that, where you just had a thing blew up.
Right, right, right, exactly.
And you say, what do you think happened?
I don't know, but it's bad.
Wow.
And this is a news report.
So we're doomed here.
The only people that are going to...
This podcast is one of the few things that's an outlier because it's not falling for any of this crap.
And for that very reason, I want to thank you for your courage and say in the morning to you, John C. Dvorak.
Well, in the morning to you, Adam Curry.
In the morning to all the ships of sea, boots on the ground, feet in the air, subs in the water, and all the dames and knights out there.
I feel kind of bad.
We're late on our opening credits.
In the morning to all of our artists.
Thank you, Sir Nussbaum, for the album artwork on episode 590.
Thank you, chat room, in the morning to you, human resources there, who pointed out it was Sardinia, where all the Russians are going these days.
And...
This conversation that we've been having today is heated at times.
Sardinia.
Sardinia, yeah.
Sardinia.
Yeah.
Heated at times as it is, would not be possible without the only way this type of program can be financed, which is through your support.
And these are our executive producers and associate executive producers.
Anything over $200 for each episode, you get credit as such on the homepages everywhere.
You get the credits.
And we will start today with our executive producer, Sir Frank, I guess.
Yeah, we want to thank a few people.
Starting with Sir Frank Azenstadt.
He's in Australia, $557.39.
It was a...
I have to make another serious contribution, he says, over my monthly 11-11 amount.
$357 of this contribution takes me to Baronet.
An additional $200 to celebrate my son's 21st birthday, Rohan.
My wife, Michelle's 50th birthday.
I don't see that on the list, interestingly enough.
I'll put Michelle on there.
Well, I have to do his son, Sir Frank.
None of that's on the list, by the way.
Rohan?
I thought I saw Rohan on there.
Nope.
Not on the birthdays.
Well, that's interesting.
Okay, Rohan and wife Michelle.
Okay, I got it.
Send Eric a note.
He's not doing anything.
Hi.
We'd love to hear from you.
It's time for our review, Eric.
Yeah, we want to review your performance here at the company, at the organization.
And, yeah...
Yeah, it's a little unfortunate when we're on the air, you know, like live, and we're catching things that are wrong.
Keep up the incredible work goes on, Frank, that you both deliver.
Okay, thanks, Frank.
Sir Frank, as a matter of fact, now are coming up.
Sir Philip Mison in Welshpool, Pows, UK, at 333.33, and he does have a note that he emailed in.
First he's complaining about his different email accounts.
He did send us an interesting thing about the guy who was moaning that Christians have difficulty contributing to this show, saying that he doesn't see the conflict, and he put up a webpage, which we'll link to at some point.
I think the nucleus of his message was, if you're a Christian, you have 10% tithing, then you need to make sure that you have food on the table for your family, shelter, and then you need to pay your utilities, Netflix, and no agenda.
I think it was in that order.
Yeah, something like that.
I thought it was very cute.
So here he says, please, could I request some lost dog karma from my friend Julian, the evil flanker, whose 15-year-old Staffordshire Bull Terrier has gone missing in Newport, Wales?
The dog has been Julian's companion since a puppy and has been constant companion for my friend Julian.
Can producers in the Newport area please keep their eyes out for the dog?
There are flyers with his picture and contact information posted around parts of Newport.
Here's some finding your dog karma.
Come on back, buddy!
We've got karma.
Those aren't the friendliest dogs to walk up to.
Jordan Goodfellow33321, which is the reverse of 12333.
I'm catching you.
I got you, Jordan.
I like it a lot.
Thank you for always producing a great show.
Guys, your courage is appreciated.
Today's my 33rd birthday.
I knew that it was time to get off the boner wagon and become a donor.
I've always enjoyed having my thinking challenge while increasing my critical thinking skills and knowledge as I listen to the show.
I've all but stopped listening to Twit because the No Agenda show is just plain awesomer.
And I think you can listen to both.
There's no problem there.
I don't think that you can...
Why do you have to stop listening to one?
I don't understand.
Well, you know, people have only so much time in the day.
There's that.
I would love a jobs, no conflict, two to the head, karma.
Okay.
So we have jobs, two to the head, and then no conflict.
See, normally when John is reading this, I'm reading a little bit ahead, and then I can do it.
So here we go.
Jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs.
Let's vote for jobs!
There's no real conflict!
We've got karma.
All right.
Also, if any listeners out there in need of end-to-end live event support, I would love to offer the services of my company, The Rare Experience.
We design, produce, manage corporate events, concerts, rock shows, and non-profit events.
Yes, your NGO is in.
Anyone can get started at therareexperience.com.
Barry Kroger, $333 in Greeley, Colorado.
Hello, Adam and John.
This is my ninth donation, 333, my third year of donating.
A lot of threes there.
Does it mean something?
Hopefully it's good and should complete my first knighthood.
My birthday is this Friday, so a birthday wish would be great.
Thank you for all the work you guys do and some accounting, which is great.
Ra Rachel Anderson, 21414 in Covington, Louisiana.
Thank you both for your courage and happy Valentine's Day to my very smart, funny, and handsome boyfriend who told me about your show on one of our first dates.
Several months later, he now says he regrets it because you've sent me off the deep end.
And I suppose he's right.
I am the crackpot in the relationship.
Keep up the good work.
Eat more kale.
And please, send us both some wealth karma so we can someday hire a fancy British butler and call him Parmesan?
Parmesan?
You get that?
I don't know.
There's a joke in there.
Barry Kroger's also not on the birthday list.
Do I have the wrong birthday list somehow?
Did I do something completely wrong?
This is very weird.
Well, maybe you do have the wrong birthday list because I thought I saw Zohan on the list.
Let me go back.
Anyway, I'm going to hand out the karma here.
There's your money.
You've got karma.
Eat more kale, indeed.
Okay.
I'm just waiting.
What is this?
You know?
Anthony Colangelo.
I think you're right.
Yeah, you got Jordan Goodfellow, Anthony Colangelo, Dame Andrea for Sir Dallas, Joe Van Scott, and Greg.
Yeah, Barry Kroger and Sir Frank were not on the list.
Barry Kroger.
Yeah, who writes in and says, it's my birthday on Friday.
Huh.
Yeah, that's another one.
I don't know how, he must be, I don't know, I have no idea.
I would send a, you should send a note.
Since you're in constant contact.
Okay, where were we?
Anthony Coangelo of 213-14 Mount Laurel, donating 213-14 to match today's date, which happens to be my birthday.
Shows have been great.
Thank you for your courage.
And you're now breaking up.
Did you do something?
Are you doing something on that computer?
Because you're breaking up now.
I was probably going online, maybe.
Am I still breaking up?
Yeah.
I'm just breaking up?
Breaking up.
Huh.
All right.
Well, let me drop the quality down one notch.
No, don't.
Please don't do anything.
Just leave it as it is.
We'll see if it shakes out.
I think you were doing something and it happened.
So anyway.
Sir Richard Haraznick.
Haraznick.
I wanted to celebrate the arrival of my No-Agenda Night Ring and my new job in the petroleum industry by donating.
Yay!
I was encouraged by a colleague to read Petroleum Refining in non-technical language.
On page 36 under DeSalting, it said the following.
As crude oil comes into the refinery tankage, it generally contains trash...
Contains trash, not the people, but sand.
It says not the people in this text?
Really?
That's pretty funny.
It generally contains trash, not the people, but sand, minerals, and salts.
When I showed my colleagues, expecting they would find the humor that I found in that statement, he said, yeah, those people are generally trashy.
I would like to ask for continued job karma.
Yeah, keep it up.
Jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs.
Let's vote for jobs!
And that was $200.30.
And finally, Taffon, I think it's pronounced that way, Madison in Brooklyn, $200.
Gentlemen, for too long I've been a boner.
After the last newsletter, I could no longer bear the shame of not donating.
I encourage all the listeners who have listened to every episode of the show, such as myself, to remove their death grip hold on their wallets and start donating, you cheap bastards!
Ha!
I would like to request a de-douching and some getting laid karma in honor of the soon approaching Bogative Valentine's Day.
Thanks for the spot on news analysis.
You've been de-douched.
You've got karma.
So those are our executive producers and producers for show 591.
And I want to thank them for contributing.
And remind you to go to devorek.org slash NA, channeldivorek.com slash NA. Also, noagendashow.com and noagendanation.com.
Both have donate buttons.
Hit them and you can help us out for the next show, which is 592.
And indeed, in a quick PR mention, Sergeant Fred did an interview with me.
You can hear that at boomersforstartups.com, where he prominently features the No Agenda show and everything we do in our Value for Value model, which is exactly what we just went through with our executive producers, associate executive producers.
These are real credits, unlike the phonies in Hollywood.
We'll vouch for them.
People can call us up.
We'll say, yes, if you really are an executive producer.
I'm looking at you, kid.
Then we'll be happy to vouch.
And, of course, you can put them on your LinkedIn account, all other places where credits are accepted.
And, of course, we'd always appreciate you going out there and propagating our formula.
Our formula is this.
We go out.
10.40. We hit people in the mouth. Order. Order.
Shut up, slay.
Shut up, slave!
Well, the Ministry of Truth is becoming even smaller now as Comcast is going to acquire Time Warner Cable.
Is that good or bad for you?
I think it's bad for everybody.
Yeah, but is it good or bad for you?
In terms of the quality of your connection.
It's not just that.
It's who is the gatekeeper.
Comcast will pretty much...
What do we have left?
If Comcast and Time Warner Cable...
Charter.
Yeah, Charter's small, though.
They're not that big, are they?
They actually tried to...
In fact, they're the ones who triggered this purchase.
Yeah, they offered $130 a share, I believe.
And this whole thing is...
I would strongly advise our administration to not allow this to happen.
Yeah, I know.
How silly am I? And the only thing I care about is the connectivity.
Because all we'll have...
Well, Austin is an interesting town for this.
Comcast is competing against AT&T. AT&T is competing.
They're really trying to jump the gun on Google's Fiber thing, which is apparently coming this year.
And they're offering their Giga Maximum Fluckum Luckin.
They're doing it well because they've got all Austin celebrities, kind of musician types, and people you'd recognize with crazy hair.
Oh, there's that guy with the dreadlocks.
Yeah, I've seen him play at the market on the corner.
Seriously.
And some models that Mickey has actually used for some photography.
They're local Austin people, and they're doing a good job, but man, that's all we're going to have.
We're going to have AT&T, Time Warner slash Comcast, I guess, and then whatever Google comes up with.
But Google, it won't really be fully rolled out for years to come before it's all over Austin.
Yeah, then they'll sell it to somebody else.
Yeah, but the whole thing is, you know, that's what I'm worried about.
It's about the internet.
I don't give a crap about the television.
Yeah, you have one gatekeeper.
You can only subscribe and even get a connection if you only watch NBC. Yeah.
That's pretty much what it comes down to.
I don't see how they can get away with all these conflicts of interest and monopolies positioning.
It's ridiculous.
I don't think they care.
No.
They care if they were told no.
Yeah.
So the president took his pen and phone campaign on the road.
Which, very interesting what he's doing.
This, by the way, is what Barack Obama does best.
He loves going out with a message, something simple, and communicating that to the sheeple.
And he did something, there's a lot of mind control going on.
So this is really, really quite interesting.
So we had an executive order.
He already announced this in the State of the Union.
He was going to raise the minimum wage of federal employees and contractors, I believe, to $10.10 an hour.
The 10-10 rule, which I guess is put in because it's easy to remember.
And this is so Atlas Shrugged, what he does here, where he's going to connect A great company being Costco to working for the government because they pay a lot and they care about you and they'll keep you employed for 20 years or more.
This is true mind programming going on.
And there's another little gotcha in here which is just hilarious to show that anyone who applauded and laughed at this is so out of touch with reality.
And, you know, when I was over at the Costco store, I was meeting folks who had started off as...
Bullcrap!
When I was over at the Costco store, I was meeting folks who what?
They started the cash register.
Okay, hello.
Mr.
President, when you start at Costco, you are not at the cash register.
That's a premium job, dude.
You do not start at the cash register.
You start stacking.
Which is a dangerous job.
So you're wrong.
You know, now we're in supervisory positions.
Oh, the supervisory positions.
I'm supervising you.
Had been there for 20 years, and you could see the kind of pride that they had in the company because the company...
When did he start talking like this?
That's right.
That's right.
Wait until you hear what he says next.
When did this happen?
I don't remember this two years ago.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, he'd had different...
That was different.
No, but now he talks like this.
He talks like George Bush.
No, it's a little more, there's a hipster thing to it.
He goes, man, I don't want to.
You got to talk like this.
It's kind of an up talk with a back flip.
Caring about them.
I even received a letter the next day from a woman who saw my visit on TV. She decided to apply a job for Costco.
Oh, okay.
Let me get this straight.
So the woman's sitting at home and she has no job and she sees you on TV and went, I think I shall apply for a job at Costco.
That seems like a great place.
Is he going to get a board seat or something on Costco?
This is ridiculous.
But to insult the millions of jobless Americans who I think stand in lines five deep to get a job at Costco, opening the door for people, and to say some lady just saw him on TV. Oh, I'm going to go get a job over there.
There's so many jobs!
It's really, really insulting.
She said, let me apply for a job at Costco.
Why apply anywhere else?
There's plenty of jobs.
So across the country, owners of small and large businesses are recognizing that fair wages and higher profits go hand in hand.
It's good for the bottom line.
Okay.
It's good for the bottom line, which is exactly not true.
Let me see, more expenses, good for the bottom line.
As America's chief executive, as he's the runner of the corporation, as the CEO of the United States of the Gitmo...
I agree.
So, while Congress decides what it's going to do, and I hope this year, and I'm going to work this year, and urge this year that they actually pass a law...
Today, I'm going to do what I can to help raise working Americans' wages.
So, today...
Do you hear the shill in the back trying to get everyone going?
That's pretty funny.
Yeah, it's like one of those guys in a TV studio.
Yeah, and then no one did anything, and it goes again.
Raise working Americans' wages.
So, today...
So, today...
So remember now, you've just heard how Costco is so great, people are running to go work for them because they pay more.
And now...
So today I'm issuing an executive order requiring federal contractors to pay their employees a fair wage of at least $10.10 an hour.
Woo!
These are obviously the people who are going to get this raise.
applause This will make a difference for folks.
Folks.
Right now there's a dishwasher at Randolph Air Force Base in Texas.
Now this is where he gets a little messed up because there's a lot of numbers on the prompter.
And it's very complicated to read all of them when you're excited.
Making $7.76 an hour.
$7.76 an hour.
You can just see how it was in the prompter.
Someone did 776, or there was no decimal, or something was wrong, and he couldn't figure it out?
It may have been written also, like they'd like to do.
So it said 776, and then it was 776, and he just plowed through it.
So he got to the second part of 770 in the read, and he said, wait a minute, I just said this.
Yeah, it was on a second line.
That's right.
It was $7.76 an hour.
$7.76 an hour.
There's a fast food worker at Andrews right down the street making $8.91 an hour.
There's a laundry worker at Camp Dodge in Iowa making $9.03 an hour.
Once I sign this order, starting next year, as their contracts come up, each of them and many of their fellow co-workers are...
Oh, sorry, and it ended there.
I got bored.
As their contracts come up, when they sign that, doesn't you just have to go to that immediately?
No.
What do you mean as their contracts?
What kind of contract are we dealing with here?
Yeah, I don't know.
Who's making minimum wage?
Hey, sign this contract!
Yeah, sounds a little sketchy, doesn't it?
No, I think he doesn't know.
He ad-libbed that.
This is like, he doesn't even know how it works.
I think he means when the contracts come up of the contracting corporations, they're the contractors and they're subcontractors.
Okay, you're right.
So it's 1010 an hour starting January 1st, 2015.
And then beginning January 1, 2016, and annually thereafter, an amount determined by Secretary of Labor, the amount should be published.
Oh, that's interesting.
I didn't see that part.
They're going to start at a regular increased rate.
What is your view, John, on a minimum wage at all?
Do we actually have a federally mandated minimum wage?
Does that exist at all in America?
I'm unclear if that's state or federal.
I always thought it was a state priority because we have it in California.
I think it's 11 or 12 bucks.
As we speak, it's gone up.
And different cities have a minimum wage.
I don't know that there is a federal minimum wage.
So federal contractors in California, it'll go down for them.
It'll go down to 10-10.
State trumps federal.
Or should.
I don't think that there is a federally mandated minimum wage.
It's all by state.
That's the way I've always understood it.
Well, we can look it up.
Keep playing, Al.
Look it up.
There's nothing left to play on that.
No.
I found it.
What is it?
I just found it to be...
What is this?
Application to tipped workers.
For workers covered by Section 2 of this order who are tipped employees, the hourly cash wage must be paid by...
Oh, this is interesting.
Oh, this is very, this is, I hadn't, oh man.
Section 3, application to tipped workers.
For workers covered by Section 2 of this order who are tipped employees, which means you make no money except for tips.
So I guess that's, if you're working at the, where the dishwasher's making nine bucks and you're just working for tips.
Pursuant to 29 U.S. Code 203T, the hourly cash wage must be paid by an employer to such workers shall be at least $4.90 an hour.
Well, I have a U.S. Department of Labor site.
It says the minimum wage, there is one.
Federal minimum wage provisions are contained in the Fair Labor Standards Act, 725.
Here's how they get around the state trumps federal.
Listen to this.
I love this wording.
Many states also have minimum wage laws.
Some state laws provide greater employee protections and better price.
Employers must comply with both.
So if the state says it's going to be 11 bucks, you have to comply with that.
So why didn't the president...
Because you have to comply with both.
Why didn't the president just make the federally mandated minimum wage 10-10?
Is he a pussy?
What's wrong?
I think this was passed by Congress or...
I don't know.
Maybe this is done within the Department of Labor.
I don't know.
I thought that's what he was trying to do.
No, this is only for federal workers.
So this is why you want to go...
Oh, that sucks.
You want to go work for the government.
This is the whole thing.
Yeah, that totally stinks.
It should be for everyone.
No, this is only for government workers.
The federal minimum wage provision, maybe this is only for government workers.
It is only for government workers.
That's what I'm telling you.
$10.10 an hour for federal...
No, but maybe the $7.25 is only for government workers.
Oh, that's possible.
Yeah, that has to be the case.
That's the only way that would make sense what he's up to.
Visit to employers.
I'll have to look or read this thing over.
Huh.
Okay.
Well, screw him.
Yeah, I'm not thinking this is a very...
I have my problems with...
It's not very aggressive for a big talker.
No, I have my issues with the idea of a minimum wage.
I think it actually hurts.
You know, I'm not an economist, and people can and will argue.
And please, just don't send me email about this.
I don't need to hear your...
You know, I get enough grief from John on the show.
I don't need to hear about, you know, that you know it better.
Unless you're Paul Krugman, and I'll argue with you.
If you have a Nobel Prize in economics.
I like the minimum wage.
I don't think it's a big deal.
Everybody makes a big stink about it.
Mostly the Republicans.
How am I going to pay my illegal alien Mexican person to clean my yard?
No, that's...
No, you use a contractor and they'll screw the guy over.
No, they...
I like markets setting prices.
I think that makes more sense.
I'm pumping my own gas and there's less service everywhere, which is because there's less jobs because you don't have college kids working for tips anymore.
Or just running around, you know, checking your oil, wiping down your windshield.
Nobody does that anymore.
What's the last time you...
In Oregon, by the way, it's required by state law that you cannot pump your own gas or check your oil.
Right.
Well...
It has to be...
Somebody has to come out and do it for you.
Yeah.
And...
It's a jobs program.
Yeah.
And I think that minimum wage hurts...
A lot of job opportunities.
I'm not an economist and people argue about this all the time, but my gut tells me that that's kind of the case.
Yeah, you would be that way.
After listening to Tom Perkins' thing, I can see where you're coming from.
Very interesting that you bring that up, seeing as Scott Adams completely agrees with me.
He wrote a very interesting piece called Nerds Are Taking Your Lunch Money.
And it's in the show notes.
He even had to say, because probably people like you were yelling at him, warning, this blog is written for a rational audience that likes to have fun wrestling with unique or controversial points of view.
It is written in a style that can easily be confused as advocacy for one sort of unpleasantness or another.
It is not intended to change anyone's beliefs or actions.
If you quote from this post or link to it, which you're welcome to, please take responsibility for whatever happens if you mismatch the audience and the content.
That's exactly what happened to me.
Well played.
Well played.
Throw a Scott Adams essay at me.
Why don't you play the douchebag thing and aim it at me?
Is Perkins sort of a dick?
Yes, but I have some respect for the fact that he's not trying to be a phony and based on what I've read online, most of his critics are ignorant dicks.
That seems one level worse than being a well-informed dick.
The Nazi analogy wasn't politically correct, nor was it brilliant choice because all analogies cause fights, and when you throw in some Holocaust references, you're just asking for trouble.
My verdict is Perkins' point about escalating contempt for the rich potentially leading to violence is legitimate, in large part because the media contributes to economic illiteracy and highlights the bad apples in the top 1%.
He's totally agreeing with my point about Perkins.
Okay.
I'm glad that he...
Well, you know, he's worth millions.
I can see why he would do that.
I like Scott.
Nice guy.
Oh, yeah.
Well, of course.
But, you know, this is also happening in...
I guess the people are protesting the Microsoft shuttle in Seattle.
I didn't know they had one.
Oh, yeah.
Let's see.
Well, they throw eggs.
The big thing in San Francisco now is to throw eggs at the bus.
Really?
Yeah.
Yeah, that's like a big deal.
So if the bus is in your neighborhood, I saw one yesterday, by the way, in San Francisco, just sitting there, parked, illegally, it seems to me.
But anyway, they, yeah, supposedly when the bus goes by, you find out what the times are, and then you toss eggs at it as it goes by.
The war on chicken.
That's right.
Similar theme brought back.
It's the war on unborn chicken.
Well, in that case, I guess it is.
So here's, I have one clip here.
I got a couple of miscellaneous clips I want to get out of the way.
One of them is kind of disgusting, and the other one is just silly.
Do you want disgusting or silly?
Dealer's choice.
Well, let's start with silly.
I've said it before, I'll say it again.
This woman needs to go to a speech coach.
She needs to get out of the office and do some work.
I used to be a big fan of Janet Yellen.
I thought that she would be a great head of the Fed.
Hold on, hold on.
Were you part of the Janet Yellen fan club?
Yes, I was.
I was the treasurer.
And I... Never heard her talk.
That's the problem.
She sounds like an old woman from Brooklyn.
It's just a really horrible, horrible speech pattern that she has that she needs to fix immediately.
My colleagues on the FOMC and I anticipate that economic activity and employment will expand at a moderate pace this year and next.
The unemployment rate will continue to decline toward its longer-run sustainable level, and inflation will move back toward 2% over coming years.
Okay, now, what did you say?
She sounds like a what?
Sounds like an old battle axe from Brooklyn.
Or Long Island.
No, man.
That's not at all what this is.
What is it?
This is an old Jewish lady.
Oh, here we go again.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
That would be Brooklyn.
Okay, Queens.
Queens.
No, Brooklyn too.
There's a little Italian in Brooklyn, but it could be Queens.
But when she said, we talk like this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Gotta go.
And she talked for six hours?
Did you watch any of that?
I couldn't even watch Bernanke when he was doing these things.
It's so dull.
Yeah.
As opposed to this story, which I thought was interesting and for some reason rubbed me the wrong way.
Burgers in France.
Yeah.
Now, when I think of France, you think perhaps beautiful mountains, beautiful beaches, and of course, very important for me, beautiful food.
The French are famous for their traditional steak frites, perhaps, or a rich foie gras.
But what is France's favourite food?
Yes, it is the humble burger, with sales going up by around 40%.
In fact, McDonald's says that France is even its second biggest market after the US. Here's Siobhan Silk.
Meat on the griddle, sauce on the bun, a few lettuce leaves and a slice of cheese.
The burger is ready in one minute flat, and it has to be.
How many do you make every day?
5,000.
At lunchtime, this Paris branch of the fast food chain, Quick, is always packed.
It's just a part of our lives now.
There are fast food chains everywhere.
Like traditional brasseries, it's just a part of France's food landscape.
The burger has well and truly conquered France.
In 2007, one out of every seven sandwiches sold was a burger.
By last year, that figure was one out of every two.
French people chomped through almost a billion burgers in 2013.
In the country where gastronomy is king, traditional brasseries are keen to tap into that market and offer a better class of burger.
When we opened the restaurant, we tried to do a classic varied menu, but people just kept ordering burgers, burgers, burgers.
Now 75% of French restaurants offer this quintessential American dish, but with a French twist.
I definitely prefer ordering them in a restaurant or brasserie.
That's where you find something a bit more original.
Not the basic burger you find in the chains, but something with a local touch.
It's far cry from the days the burger was denounced as malbouf, bad food, by French activist farmers.
Okay.
You didn't think that was horrible?
The horrible development?
Half the sandwiches sold in France are burgers?
I don't believe it.
This doesn't bother you?
I don't believe it.
I think, if anything, that was a native advertising for McDonald's.
I don't believe it.
Quick.
Quick.
Oh, is that their thing?
That is their thing, isn't it?
That was the one they slipped in there.
That was the advertisement.
It's possible.
I just don't believe it.
Okay, that's fine.
I don't care.
You don't have to believe it.
There was, did you know that Holland, Holland, Holland, Holland was in, you know, he went to a state, one of the seven state dinners they put on just the other day?
Yes, I have the guest list.
And then he, would you have, you know, who is at the head table then?
Bradley Cooper.
One of them?
Mm-hmm.
Ken Ehrlich.
Okay.
Who's the horrible producer of all these stupid award shows and needs to be replaced.
Mary J. Blige.
She was the singer.
Yes.
She wasn't at the head table.
Christine Lagarde.
I would say she'd be at the head table.
She was.
And Ahmad Rashad, who is dating Valerie Jarrett.
It's true.
Yeah, I know.
I have a report.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who was sitting next to Biden, I bet, because that's really funny when you get the veep next to the veep.
That would be, yes.
I don't think Biden was at the head table.
You have a report along to part one?
I have a couple of reports.
The first one is, if you want to hear this, the short, well, that's actually too long.
Here's the, or the long one is the part two.
Play the part two, which is a little discussion of who showed up.
And there was, I thought, a couple of surprises at the head table.
There have only been seven of these state or official visits during the whole time that Barack Obama has spent in the White House.
Now, what this brings together is the great and good of this world, all sorts of fascinating juxtapositions of politicians and celebrities.
First of all, let's get this out of the way, the dress worn by Michelle Obama by Carolina Herrera, if that's the kind of fact that you're interested in.
But in terms of The guests.
Well, look at this.
Stephen Colbert, for example, the comedian at the head table.
He's the author of one of the most stinging attacks on François Hollande on his relationship status post-split with Valérie Trierweiler.
He was put at the head table.
The actor Bradley Cooper there as well.
The likes of the IMF head Christine Lagarde, a lot of cabinet members.
As well, and interestingly enough, the head of the NSA as well, Keith Alexander.
Now these state dinners, always the chance for a bit of joking around to show how friendly the relationship really is between these two heads of state.
Here's a quote from François Hollande speaking directly to Barack Obama saying this, we love the United States and you love the French, although you're sometimes too shy to say so.
Yes, it is a little bit dangerous for a U.S. president to get that little bit too close to a socialist president.
A little bit of dancing as well in the end, by the way.
The White House delegations and the French delegations all dancing a little bit in that room, too.
Mary J. Blige, by the way.
She was the entertainment part of this state dinner here in Washington.
It's good to be the king, man.
How come we don't get invited to these things?
I got an invite from Hillary Clinton once.
I still have the invitation.
And the invitation, it went to the MTV, it was MTV days, it went to the MTV offices and some bitch sat on the invitation and, oh, like three days after the event, oh yeah, this came for you at the office.
Yeah, so I didn't make, and of course, once you stand them up.
You were beloved there at MTV. Oh no, once you stand them up, then you never get asked back again.
No, you didn't even RSVP. That's why.
Yeah, you're obviously a dickhead.
The First Lady requests your presence.
I didn't respond to the First Lady, and now I'm persona non grata.
What was it for?
A big dinner or something?
I don't remember.
A fundraiser?
No, it was some...
I'm sure it was some internet-related thing.
You know how that goes.
Well, you got to meet the queen.
Which was also when she relaunched her website.
That's when I was invited there.
Oh, yes.
This is how we have this American chap here.
It has something to do with the internet.
Put him on the list.
So that's how I got on that list.
Well, the reason it seems that Olan, when they gave a couple of speeches at the beginning, I have a clip, but I can just summarize quicker.
He made the point, he says, the one good thing about our two countries is that we respect...
Tell me what you think this message was.
We respect each other's sovereignty.
They put Keith Alexander at the head table.
I think that also may be a little bit about the Central African Republic.
It's a little confusing what's happening there.
The French are supposed to be in charge and they're not really doing a great job.
And then we have Christians now killing Muslims reportedly.
That's the key here.
That's reportedly.
I have a couple of clips on that since we were talking about it.
Play U.S. and Africa with French.
This is interesting.
It has several military bases.
So looking at the map then, Armand, just remind us where they've cooperated so far and where they may cooperate in the future.
Well, they cooperated a lot in Mali because the U.S. had just set up a drone base in neighboring Niger when the French took on the jihadists in northern Mali.
So those drones helped France with its intelligence.
U.S. also helping with air-to-air refueling.
That was very important.
More recently in the Central African Republic in that conflict, we've seen the U.S. provide African forces with big transport planes, C-17s.
In terms of future hotspots, one place that we definitely need to keep an eye on is southern Libya.
And last week, a government minister in Niger...
Said that this was the new breeding ground, essentially, for jihadists.
So I think we can expect that high-level French-US group that you mentioned in your introduction to take a very close look at southern Libya.
Okay.
Hold on a second.
Now, Niger.
Isn't that the Djibouti base in Niger?
Yeah.
No, no, no.
Djibouti is its own country.
I'm sorry.
Where's Niger?
Is that West Africa?
Yeah, it's West.
It's West.
Yeah, it's West.
It's part of that whole group of West African countries.
Right.
Ghana, Niger, the whole slew of them.
Well, so they have a...
I had not heard a lot about that drone base.
I didn't hear about that.
That was the first time I heard about it.
Here's a report I have about the Djibouti base, which is huge.
Well, the Americans have got an enormous and extensive intelligence and satellite intelligence gathering operation, very much centred here in Djibouti.
There is, within this camp, and this is a huge sprawling camp, it's got helicopters that fly long-range missions.
They're able to refuel using those long pylons out the front.
They can fly deep into Somalia.
They can even get their planes as far as the borders of South Africa, Mozambique.
South Sudan.
They even deployed to South Sudan recently.
But essentially, what they're doing is they're cooperating with local countries in the region, countries like Kenya very much, of course, which suffered the Nairobi attack, training their soldiers to join AMISOM and go into Somalia and carry the fight out for them and giving them that technical expertise.
This is my third visit, Nick, to this country.
And unlike in the surrounding countries, I've detected very little resentment against this camp.
Now, it is probably going to make Djibouti a bit of a target.
The foreign minister said, we feel we are a target for al-Shabaab here, he said.
And there was another one of these congressional scripted hearings with Clapper and who else?
A couple other of these guys.
And they were talking about the terrorism.
And of course, we always are told that Al-Qaeda has been decimated.
But depends.
Right.
Well, that's exactly right.
On the convenience of the assertion.
Right.
So here's Jay Johnson.
He's our new Secretary of Homeland Security.
Who kind of explains how we're weaseling out of this with all these fuzzy words.
Government's counter-terrorism efforts in both the Bush and Obama administrations.
We have put al-Qaeda's core leadership on the path to defeat.
He's reading a prompter, by the way.
So, al-Qaeda's core leadership on a path to defeat, but...
But the threat has evolved.
Ah, the threat has evolved.
Since about 2009, we saw the rise of al-Qaeda affiliates...
such as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which has made repeated efforts to export terrorism to our homeland.
Our government, working with others, must continually deny these affiliates a safe haven, a place to hide, train, and from which to launch terrorist attacks.
Okay, so what he's saying is my job is safe because we have all these affiliates who are training and will send them to the homeland here, that's America, to kill people.
it Inhofe asked the question specifically...
At Clapper, who was supposed to know everything about all things intelligence.
I keep hearing these things that different people in the administration is talking about.
Al-Qaeda is on the run, on the path to defeat.
If you look at this chart up here, it depicts that the Al-Qaeda and its allies have a presence and are now operating.
And to me, it's just the opposite of that.
Yes or no, each one of you, is Al-Qaeda on the run and on the path to defeat?
No, it is morphing and franchising itself, not only here, but other areas of the world.
Yeah, it's going to be quick in France.
Al-Qaeda on the quick.
Franchising everywhere, John.
Well, McDonald's, look out.
Then Clapper gave us an incredible new number.
How many terrorists do you think there are out there?
And of course, this would all be kind of in the African region, which is where we're moving out of Afghanistan.
I want to hear your poppy thing as a part of this.
How many terrorists do you think that are in the continent of Africa?
30,000.
Looking back over my now more than half a century in intelligence, I've not experienced a time when we've been beset by more crises and threats around the globe.
Thanks to you.
My list is long.
My list is long.
It includes the scourge and diversification of terrorism, loosely connected and globally dispersed, to include here at home, as exemplified by the Boston Marathon bombing.
Show us the video!
It's attraction as a growing center of radical extremism and the potential threat this poses now to the homeland.
Let me briefly expand on this point.
The strength of the insurgency is now estimated at somewhere between 75,000 to 80,000 on the low end and 110,000 to 115,000 on the high end, who are organized into more than 1,500 groups of widely varying political leanings.
I love this!
1,500 groups!
These guys set themselves up.
Why don't we just start firing them?
If there's that many of them, they must be in large...
You should be able to just drone them by the hundreds.
Yeah.
There's an ant invasion in the kitchen.
Niger is very interesting.
It seems like there's...
If I just look at the map, it looks very brown.
Just like no green.
Doesn't look like an attractive place to be.
Nor does Libya.
Where do you think the best place...
They go out of their way to...
You know, I did this little thing in the newsletter about the ease in which you can move the poppy fields to parts of Africa.
And there's lots more room.
And so I'm looking at the Central African Republic.
I said, but everything I've ever seen, you watch the news, it's just some guy walking down a dirt road and a bunch of shanties and it's just dusty and everything's...
All that's missing is the tumbleweed.
And you go and you look up Central African Republic.
Agriculture, and you start, and then you just hit the images, and you get this lush green.
It's always raining.
There's plenty of water.
It's more like Myanmar in terms of you can grow poppies and don't have to worry about irrigation like you would in lots of other parts of Africa.
And it's just like, in the image that we have, West Africa is not the Sahara Desert.
No, in fact, if you look on Google Maps, you'll see the CAR is beautiful.
It's under Chad, Chad.
And it's green.
The only greener piece would be the Republic of the Congo.
That's where you get your jungle green.
Kale.
It looks like kale.
It probably is kale.
A lot of kale.
Yeah, it looks to me they grow pretty much everything in the Central African Republic.
They've got strawberries and all kinds of stuff.
It looks like you could have a good meal there if you found someone who could cook.
What is frustrating to me is this continuous loop.
And I think people are getting very literally physically ill from what is happening, the way we're being inundated with these messages non-stop.
And we're killing Americans, and we have everywhere, everyone's crazy, and they're all terrorists, and there are hundreds of thousands of them.
When will someone say, hey, why do they want to kill us?
Because they don't like our way of life, Adam.
They don't like our freedoms.
Yeah, they don't like our freedoms.
They've already made this claim.
Yeah, but I think it needs to be revisited.
They don't like our freedoms.
They don't like our way of life.
They want to kill us.
They don't want to take on our way of life or our quote-unquote freedoms.
They want to kill us.
Okay.
It makes sense.
Well, I just wish someone would revisit the question from time to time.
It would help people rationalize what is happening.
It's not in anybody's interest.
No.
There's no money to be made by asking that question over and over like you just did.
No, I understand.
There's no profit in it.
I understand.
JF Carey made a weird comment during the Munich conference, the security conference, where all the, I guess, security guys go hang out.
And it was interpreted very strangely and aggressively, mainly by Israel.
You see, for Israel, there's an increasing delegitimization campaign that has been building up.
People are very sensitive to it.
There are talk of boycotts and other kinds of things.
Are we all going to be better with all of that?
Now, the way this has been interpreted by a lot of Israeli elites and leaders is, hey, shut up, Kerry!
Are you threatening us with a boycott?
But that's not really what's happening.
And I've been following a couple of our producers who have Israeli...
I think it's IsraeliCool.com and...
There have been some interesting boycotts from musicians.
Scarlett Johansson has boycotted some soda company.
She was promoting their drink.
Roger Waters, I think, is being very politically outspoken.
And what's really happening is explained here by Rob...
What did you say about Scarlett Johansson?
She's boycotted the drink company she was promoting, SodaStream, I think.
SodaStream?
She's not working for him anymore?
No.
I don't think so.
I think she said, oh, I... Because...
Man, there is talk of...
The manufacturing in the Palestinian areas.
Although, apparently, if you went back to the 67 borders, it would still be within those borders.
I'm not quite sure, but there is some talk of a boycott, and that's really what Kerry was referring to.
And he's really on Israel's side, which is what's very interesting, as Robert Wexler explains.
His former Florida Congressman Robert Wexler, he's president of the Abraham Center for Middle East Peace.
Whatever that means, sounds like another NGO to me.
Congressman, good to see you.
Good morning.
You know, this first popped up on my radar, I get a lot of Israeli newspapers, we get a whole thing, but this first popped up on my radar, Haaretz did a story about this during the Mandela funeral, about saying that there is fear in Israel among the Israel business community, that there's a tipping point, that what happened to South Africa in the 80s could be globally what could happen to Israel now in 2014 and 2015.
That's really interesting.
By the way, I think Scarlett Johansson quit Oxfam or some other thing.
Yeah, now here's what happened.
Because I actually had a bunch of clips about this we never played.
Scarlett Johansson went to work for SodaStream for a huge amount of money.
And then they got a bunch of flack from the Palestinians because I guess SodaStream is making some of these devices in Palestine areas and they don't want the money.
I have no idea what the real basis was.
But then Oxfam got all bent out of shape because it was somehow anti-Palestinian and they're so hooked in there.
And she was one of the board members.
They asked her to quit, and she said, I quit easily, gladly, and she left.
That's the story.
So she's still working for SodaStream.
Okay.
So this sounds like...
That would make sense.
...what is happening.
I like what Wexler just said, that there's now this noise that, I'm sure it's all NGOs, everyone's getting all upset and saying, hey, we can turn Israel into what South Africa was with apartheid.
Which would mean the whole world against Israel.
Are they...
Is there something to this?
Well, of course there is, because large European institutions, financial institutions in particular, have begun to adopt policies that are punitive with respect to Israel, and Europe is Israel's still biggest trading partner.
Prime Minister Netanyahu made an extraordinary speech recently at the Davos World Economic Conference in which he...
Outline this remarkable innovation nation.
I mention it because after he was done with the speech, he then did an interview with a European journalist, which I assume the Israeli government chose.
And all the journalists wanted to talk about was Israel's settlement policy.
Prime Minister Netanyahu went back to Israel, called an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss what's happening in Europe.
That's what Secretary Kerry was referring to.
And what's important...
Three people on this earth in the last four years have done more to stop the boycott effort and mitigate its disastrous consequences.
President Obama, Secretary Kerry, and Secretary Clinton.
Interesting.
That's our special relationship.
But it seems like Europe is having none of it.
Oh, wow.
Did I lose you?
Oh, John, hold on.
I think somehow we blew up.
Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.
And we're back.
Okay, good.
Yes, you were saying, which we understood nothing.
The clip started breaking up and you're going to have to...
Oh, okay.
I'm sorry.
Just to summarize for me.
Essentially, the only three people who have really tried to stop a boycott of large European countries and companies are Obama, Kerry, and Clinton.
Hillary Clinton.
But I didn't know that Europe was also...
that this was really a big deal.
I didn't either.
I don't know.
I have to think about what Oxfam's up to.
Well, these are all these organizations, man.
It's tough.
Very, very hard.
I don't think you can get a...
There is Oxfam USA. I can get a Form 990 from them, but it's very hard to get anything.
No, it really won't help.
No, this whole NGO thing, which we mentioned earlier, is scandalous.
I mean, there's no way that we can get a handle on a lot of the things going on until we get a real handle on these operations and what they're up to behind the scenes.
The only thing you can do is you can follow the money.
You can see which NGOs are handing money to which other NGOs.
And you can follow that down the line a little bit.
But when you get 501c3s and there's a lot of things they don't have to talk about and don't have to disclose who all their donors are, you kind of lose track.
But it is interesting that that is exactly...
So maybe we should just call ourselves an NGO. I was thinking of forming one.
Yeah.
The sole purpose of the NGO is to promote the No Agenda show.
Yeah.
It's the N-A-N-G-O. N-A-N-G-O. Yeah, there's a song in that.
Yeah, there is.
I'm going to show my support by donating to No Agenda.
Imagine all the people who could do that.
Oh yeah, that'd be fab.
Yeah, on No Agenda.
So what was the record time on that breakup of the product?
Oh, uh...
Is there logging the...
Oh, I don't know.
It'll be like 2.17 or something.
No, it'll start at 2.
I knew it at 2 hours.
Okay.
We want to thank a few people who helped us out on show 591, including Dame Andrea Garnier.
In the Rocky Mountain House of Alberta, Canada.
Also known as...
$123.33.
Dame Andrea checking in with the executive order.
We have a couple of the...
Apparently, Sir Dallas can now legally drink all the booze, beer, rosé, single malt scotch, chardonnay, vodka, bourbon, sparkling cider, cabernet, and mead he wants.
Nice.
In the great state of oil-berta.
Ooh, I can use that.
Maxwell Thin in Seattle, Washington, $111.11.
I do not have a list of call-outs from him.
Krokata Computer Services, Pacifica, California, $100.
Maxwell, Matthew Livingston, Sudbury.
Lay, lay, lay, lay!
A hundred dollars.
Graham Scott, nine, nine, nine, nine.
Can I just say about Matthew Livingstone?
I'm just reading the note.
The donation is in memory of his mother, Sandra Livingstone, who passed away December 13th, 2013.
She loved what you guys talk about and expose.
Love you, Mom.
Aw.
Nice.
Or not nice in one way, nice in another.
Graham Scott in Boyinup.
Boyinup in Australia.
99, 99.
Brian Williams, 7373, Streamwood, Illinois.
Dwayne Parker, 69, 69.
Minot, North Dakota.
Eric Thorson, Bergen, Hordaland in Norway.
And that is the end of the 69, 69.
It might really be the end, too, only today.
Let's hope.
Kristen Smith in Blyton, Lincolnshire, UK. Ryan Van, Mesa, Arizona, 5555.
Hold on.
Christian Smith.
Oh yeah, she has a nice note.
As I said last show, my 13-year-old daughter started listening to the show.
I can't believe I forgot to put her name on the note.
If you could do a shout-out to Lauren, I'm sure she would appreciate it.
There we go.
Hey, Lauren.
Hey, shout-out.
Gregory Waskiewicz.
Waskiewicz.
There we go.
5206 in Lost Wages, Nevada.
And we have a birthday.
Greg W., he says we can call him.
Warren Taggart in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 52.
Daniel Stammett in Stockton, New Jersey, 51.
Kevin Payne, 5069 in Chantilly, Virginia.
Brandon Savoy.
50 bucks.
These are all $50 donors.
Brandon Savoy.
Mike Westerfield.
Parts Unknown.
Although I think they are known.
Walter Grant IV. Moreno Valley, California.
Jennifer Langston in Huntsville, Alabama.
It is a Valentine's gift for her husband, Jeremy.
Without him, I would not know the awesomeness of the No Agenda show.
Could you please send some karma his way?
We'll do that at the end.
But thanks.
Robin Hawk, Anna, Illinois, 50.
Also, to honor my awesome hubby, Raleigh, Happy Valentine's Day.
Hey, Raleigh, you know, we could have done a Valentine's Day.
No, it's too late.
We're not going to do it.
If the show fell on Valentine's Day, we would have been more gimmicky about it.
Yeah, but why would we participate in the commercial bogativeness of it?
There's a couple of reasons.
Yeah.
Jason Fortune in Geneva, Illinois, 50.
Antonio McMullen, Parts Unknown, also 50.
And finally, the last 50-ers is...
I just moved up and lost my place.
Bart Hochmoot?
I was on McMullen.
Bart Hochmoot.
Hoogmoot.
In zwag.
In zwag.
And he says, long-time boner, first-time donor.
After the last newsletter, I realized my excuse for not donating.
Being a student is totally ridiculous, considering the value you guys provide.
Wow.
A student.
A student.
Sokovi Alexander in Moscow, Russia.
John Strag in San Antonio, Texas.
And finally, last but not least, Scott Soltis in Minneapolis, Minnesota Nuts.
I want to thank them and everyone who's helped us produce this show, 591.
And we remind you to go to Dvorak.org slash NA when you can.
That's right.
Dvorak.org slash NA. We're good to
go.
Yeah, that's right.
He can enjoy everything now.
Graham Scott says happy birthday to his son Joven Scott and Gregory W turns 33 tomorrow.
Happy birthday from all your buddies here at the Best Podcast in the Universe!
And we have Sir Frank Agenstadt becoming a baronet today.
And we have one knighting to do.
That would be Barry Kruger.
Let me see if he has any special requests.
Do you have a special?
No, I don't think so.
So if you can just grab your blade.
Here.
Thank you.
Barry Kruger!
Come on down, my friend.
Yes, as you gave the proper accounting, and we recommend everybody maintain their own accounting, you have donated to the best podcast in the university of out of $1,000 or more, and therefore, I'm very proud to pronounce these.
Sir Barry Krueger, Knight of the Noah General Roundtable.
Sir, come on down for you.
We've got...
Hot librarians and Jagerbombs.
We've got Cuban cigars and single malt scotch.
We've got hookers and blow.
Renboys and Chardonnay if you swing that way.
Hot pants and booze.
Ruben S. Wellen, women and rosé.
Vodka in the middle of bong hits and bourbon.
Or mutton and mead.
And go to noagendanation.com slash rings.
And pick up your rings, your sealing wax, and your official certificate of being a knight of the Noagenda Roundtable.
Welcome to the family.
Thank you very much for your support.
And make sure to deliver some karma for those who asked for it.
Absolutely.
Here's the karma for everybody.
You've got karma.
Thank you for supporting us.
We'll have another show on Sunday.
And there will be more analysis.
And quite an analysis we've got to do.
My goodness, it's hitting one after another these days.
Well, I'm telling you, I think we've got to start following the Mipsters.
The Mipsters?
Yeah.
The Mipsters.
Hmm, let me guess.
Is this a clip?
They describe themselves as Muslim hipster women, and their Mipsters movement has been making waves online.
Social networks are abuzz with pictures of Muslim women who coordinate their hijab, the Islamic veil, with colorful and trendy outfits.
The Mipsters trend became something of a talking point after this video was released online.
Entitled Somewhere in America, it features young women across the U.S. having fun, skateboarding in high heels to the sounds of Jay-Z. The clips intended to challenge the stereotypes surrounding the Islamic veil, often associated with oppression, and to show stylish, edgy, and fun-loving women can also practice the Muslim faith.
Mipsters share a common philosophy and describe themselves as at the forefront of the latest music, fashion, art, whilst continuing to seek inspiration from the sacred texts of Islam.
Where do these mipsters live?
I have no idea.
I've never seen one.
Muslim hipsters, the mipsters.
And they all wear four-inch heels, five-inch heels, all these women.
And let me just check some.
And the veil, you know, and they're all looking cool.
So I have the clip, I think, my favorite clip of the day, even though it's not a clip of the day by any means.
But, you know, you wonder why in the Central African Republic in these places, why, you know, these troops probably aren't accomplishing a lot.
The WTF clip is what this one is.
You hear this clip and then you say, oh, I get this.
It's just too ridiculous.
Well, French and African troops do have a mandate from the United Nations to use force if there's direct threat to the civilian population.
So if, for example, a Muslim is being lynched by an anti-Balaka mob, they could step in.
When they've been asked, why aren't you doing that?
They answer, well, we can't be seen to be taking sides.
Okay.
Because of what?
Religion?
So let me get this straight.
You're a cop.
Yeah.
And you're in downtown Oakland and guys are shooting at each other.
What are you going to do?
You're going to shoot at one of these guys maybe to make them stop?
But you don't want to take sides.
This is too much of a commitment.
Why don't we...
You take sides one minute and the next minute somebody else.
It's too much work.
Don't take sides.
We really don't understand.
So what are they doing there?
We really don't understand how this works at all.
What are they doing there?
They're just standing around?
I really don't know.
There was a warning.
Let me see.
Embassy warning in Kampala, so that's Uganda.
They're expecting a terrorist...
Let's see.
Threat information indicates a group of attackers possibly in place ready to strike targets inside Kampala in February or March.
That's a coincidence.
Yeah.
Why?
Our economic hitman happens to be headed toward Uganda for some reason.
Damn.
Yeah, it's...
We do not have...
You know what we're really missing?
We just are missing more people who understand what is really happening in Africa.
And I don't even know if people who are in Africa and work for the State Department or...
I don't even know if they understand.
The whole thing is messed up.
Yes, I would say that's true.
I have a question for you.
Okay.
Here, play this clip, the Syria barrel bomb clip, and then I'm going to ask you something.
All righty, here we go.
Now, a new video from Syria appears to show the moment a barrel bomb has fallen in the northern city of Aleppo.
Activists say the images uploaded online are of the bomb landing just after two other bombs exploded nearby.
Columns of thick smoke seen rising in the sky where the bombs were dropped before local people carried the injured to safety.
Okay.
All right, I've noticed I didn't pay full attention to this when it first cropped up, so I missed it.
But what is a barrel bomb?
When did this barrel bomb meme show up?
And what's got to do with anything?
I mean, are they throwing these bombs?
Are they using giant slingshots?
Are they dropping them from planes?
What are they?
I don't know exactly.
I do know that three of them exploded on, was it the day of the opening ceremonies, I think, of the Olympics?
I think is when they first came into the lexicon.
What do you have on barrel bomb?
Do you have any research on it?
No, that's what it says right there.
Ask Adam, because I figured you'd know.
I don't know.
All I know is that all of a sudden, barrel bomb, barrel bomb.
Oh, it's a barrel bomb.
Is that worse than like a one-ton bomb dropped from a plane?
It's a barrel.
Um...
Interesting.
Barrel bomb.
There must be something to it.
There must be a reason for it that we're not figuring this out.
Are Syrian barrel bombs really worse than weaponry?
There you go.
Newsweek asked the same question.
And let's see what Newsweek came up with.
It's oil drums filled with explosives dropped from helicopters.
Really?
Hmm.
I think that there's a couple things going on which are to be noted, particularly as it comes to Aleppo and Homs.
Now, both of these places, which are north of Damascus and west, both of these places are major intersections for the pipelines.
The Homs-Tartus oil pipeline was blown up February 3rd.
And then right after that they start evacuating people from homes, which is not a lot of people, it's a thousand people or whatever.
I feel there's...
There's something about the strategic location of this, particularly when we note that Turkey has now opened negotiations to take Iran's natural gas via Iraq.
It would seem like they are trying to take away some of the business that was supposed to go through those actual pipelines in Homs and Aleppo.
None of this, it's not just a bunch of people hurling barrel bombs.
If anything, the barrel bomb is probably to distract from what's really happening.
Just another thing to get NGOs all pissed off about.
Oh, they're throwing barrel bombs.
It's, I don't know, I just found it to be completely baffling.
No, I agree with you.
So I ran into this group, or this was a report on one of the, again, foreign source, about these kind of weird African hipsters called Sapo that are all addressing clownish in some native form.
And this report I just thought was kind of, I don't know, it's another weird distraction, another trend in Africa.
Africa's going to be, by the way, a big part of our news coverage in the next year.
No doubt about it.
Now, they are called LASAP, which stands for the Society for Partygoers and Elegant People.
Sounds fun, doesn't it?
Well, in fact, it is a social movement centred in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which was created 30 years ago and now has some 50 clubs.
Despite their modest means, they spend hundreds on shoes and clothes.
and they're now turning even more heads than usual, taking pride of place in a popular television act.
These are the famous sapeurs, or the Society of Elegant People.
Initially, under authoritarian ruler Mobutu, wearing bright clothes was a gesture of defiance.
Thirty years later, the movement is no longer political.
In SAP, you have four rules.
You don't become a sapper.
You were born one.
You will honor SAP like your father and mother.
You will never betray SAP, whatever the situation.
And you will die as a sapper, like Stervos Nyarkos did.
The first rule of Fight Club is, you do not talk about Fight Club.
What?
The second rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club.
Have you been editing again, John?
That's what it sounded like.
It sounded like Fight Club, yeah.
Another thing we have to kind of...
I feel like I'm going to be spending a lot of time today and tomorrow Really going as deep...
We have a couple of people.
Obviously, we have our economic hitman in Africa.
I have one person who's involved with the legal profession in Kenya.
We have one of our knights in Accra.
Right.
He never checks in anymore.
Well...
I got an interesting note from producer Patrick about the Panama Canal and Nicaragua.
As well as Costa Rica, which this was very interesting.
We, of course, keep our eye on the Chinese and what they're doing.
They are without doubt a source of much chagrin for the imperialist leaders of the United States and France and the United Kingdom.
We need to kick the Chinese out of Africa and take over and just get everything we can.
Patrick says, the first time I heard about the Nicaraguan Canal was while I was living in Costa Rica, which borders on Nicaragua to the south.
And apparently, Daniel Ortega, he's back?
Good.
He's always been entertaining.
He's been president in the 80s, of course.
This was the whole Iran-Contra scandal.
He was a part of that.
But he was recently elected president again in 06 and re-elected in 11.
Seems to be pretty comfortable in his position.
But here's what's interesting.
Nicaragua has threatened to take Costa Rica to international court to dispute Costa Rica's claim to Guanacaste, which is a province that shares the border.
And what's interesting about all this is that the Chinese are in Costa Rica.
They've built a national stadium.
They've built some roads, donated a bunch of police vehicles, which our producer says is hilarious because they actually have a Chinese flag on them and they're driving around in Costa Rica with a Chinese flag on the police cars.
A few years back...
In the grandiose scheme by Ortega, the canal started to get some backing.
There was talk of Japanese backers for a while, then out of nowhere, sizable backing from the Chinese.
And what he's saying is it's very interesting to see that we have U.S. companies in Costa Rica, which I always thought was very U.S.-friendly, Intel, HP, Microsoft, but the Chinese are taking over.
And I think we've taken our eye off the ball there.
And you do not want the Chinese to have control of Costa Rica and Nicaragua and building their canal there.
I think this is a mistake.
Well, I don't think it's a mistake as much as it is of an oversight.
Oversight, yes.
Oversight.
I don't think they mean to be doing that.
You're right.
They're distracted in one way.
Hey, look at this.
What?
Say what?
I don't see nothing.
Huh.
Well, that's what he's looking into.
Mm-hmm.
Now, who does this come from?
Patrick.
He doesn't want to.
He lives there.
Okay.
He wants to remain a little anonymous.
We need more reports.
Yeah, I'm sure he'll be sending it.
Just the Chinese, it's just, mm-mm, okay.
They'd love it there.
That'd be a good little landing spot for them.
It'd be perfect.
I mean, they got California targeted, but they're not building roads here.
Although that would be useful.
Hey, you know what?
If only they would.
It would make you happy.
Yeah.
One of my little roads over here is now a bunch of potholes.
It's not even a road.
It's jarring to drive down this little street.
Bang!
Bang!
Do I need new struts?
Looking at the Turkish situation...
Fethullah Gulen has been challenged by the Prime Minister of Turkey.
He says, hey, if you're such a brave guy, why don't you come home and form a political party and run against me like a man?
That's not going to happen.
That's not going to happen.
No.
It's crazy talk.
A writer...
Of the Hizmet Movement, which is the Gulen Movement, that's another word for it, Hizmet, has come out and said, yeah, we're pretty much all part of an anti-government plot to overthrow the current government.
This guy's name is, this is part of the problem.
What is his name?
Etienne Mahupian.
And he's been writing for some Gulenist publications.
They have a lot of them.
They just opened a Dutch language magazine in the Netherlands and Belgium, also run by the Gulenists.
I don't know if we'll be hearing from this guy much longer, but he said, hey, yeah, well, this is really what we've been doing.
And, of course, at the same time, we have...
Something that we love to talk about here and we can just pretty much wait for the NGOs to show up and start talking about how draconian it all is.
In Turkey, riot police used tear gas and water cannon to try and disperse protests in Istanbul.
The crowds were demonstrating against plans for new legislation which would give the government even more control over the use of the internet.
Now, I thought this was interesting.
I've not been able to find a copy of anything of what the actual law is.
But I liked the way the Prime Minister of Turkey explains it.
This, by the way, it's just fireworks, this protest.
There's no Molotov cocktails or anything.
Literally, they're just throwing bottle rockets, and it looks very suspicious.
Smoke from fireworks and tear gas fills the air as demonstrators and riot police battle it out on the streets of Istanbul.
Water cannon are brought in to try to disperse the crowd, but the protesters are not going anywhere.
They're furious about a new internet law that's been approved by parliament.
If it's ratified by the president, internet sites could be blocked within hours without a court order.
It will also force internet providers to keep the browsing histories of users for up to two years and make it available to the authorities.
Now, when I heard this, when you hear what they're doing, what is the first thing that comes to mind?
What?
Sounds like us!
Yeah, oh, I thought it was.
Yeah, no, this is Turkey.
Like, oh, this horrible draconian measures.
Like, that's pretty much the way it works here.
The Turkish Prime Minister insists that these regulations are the same as the US and several European countries already have.
We're already keeping your browsing history.
We can shut down a website in seconds.
Well, it's the way you...
If you do it with drama, it makes it sound worse.
Yeah.
With fireworks.
That's what you gotta do.
The only other thing I have is we had...
And this is all this very under-reported...
At least I didn't get a lot...
I didn't find a lot on it about the Osama bin Laden pictures apparently being destroyed by the Pentagon.
What was interesting about this report, which I believe is Brawl on the CNNs, the report, of course, they have no video of everything, but they have these great animated pieces, which they still had on file, of how this attack went down, which they still had on file, of how this attack and then they cut to zero dark 30.
And meanwhile, and if you really just listen to the report...
You hear what they're trying to program you with, but really the programming doesn't work unless you're watching the video where you're seeing this scene, which may not even have happened because all we have is a movie, literally a Hollywood version, and we have an animated version which shows little stick guys getting out of a helicopter and walking around.
We really don't know if any of this happened at all.
And...
The thing that annoys me to no end is they talk about UBL and not OBL. I still think that there's two different guys or something.
It could be just code for something you don't know about.
No, we don't know.
But the idea here is to paper over the destruction of evidence and just...
You know what?
We don't need to see that anyway because it could just incite violence.
And it's so well produced.
The cover-up.
Brian Todd has been investigating this part of the story.
What are you finding out?
The cover-up is actually this news report.
This information just getting out two and a half years after the bin Laden raid.
A Freedom of Information Act request finally bringing it to light.
This sensitive email from the commander of the SEAL raid saying to subordinates, if you've got the photos, get rid of them.
Gentlemen, all photos should have been turned over to the CIA. If you still have them, destroy them immediately or get them to the blank.
Whoever that was, still classified.
If these records were indeed destroyed, there may have been crimes committed.
Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch believes it shows a cover-up, the possible suppression of key documents from maybe the most famous raid in military history.
There's laws that prohibit the mutilation and destruction of government records.
It shows contempt for the law and it shows contempt for the people's right to know.
The Pentagon wouldn't comment on those assertions or the McRaven email.
A spokesman for Admiral McRaven wouldn't comment, nor would the CIA or the White House.
But in the days after the Bin Laden raid, President Obama told CBS's 60 Minutes why he believed the photos of a deceased Bin Laden should not be made public.
This is very good, by the way, this piece.
And again, you're seeing the visuals.
Of, you know, Hollywood fabrication, and then, boom, back to this.
It is important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence.
It's not...
You know, I really love how we can have photographs of G.I.s pissing on corpses...
Yeah, there's no incitement there.
And I didn't see anything really, any increased violence anywhere.
But this just brings you back to the bull crap that we've been fed, and I'm glad that Brolf brought this back in his report, that it makes no sense whatsoever that we're not allowed to see this proof, but it's now going to be papered over.
Clear whether any photos of bin Laden were actually destroyed.
Could any of the SEALs depicted in the movie Zero Dark Thirty have taken personal photos?
CNN military analyst General James Spider-Marx says it's likely they were ordered not to by their commanders.
That wouldn't be surprising if they shook them down.
We don't know that.
And they said, okay, I want to make sure you don't have something that's hidden away someplace.
Why?
Hold on a second.
Stop.
Why would that happen?
Why would there be...
What would be the point of that?
Of having something hidden away?
No.
What would be the point of a command order not to take photos?
Because it's not true.
Yeah, that's the point.
It's just bullcrap.
Yeah.
They wouldn't say that.
These guys are on their own once they're in there, and there's no commander barking orders.
They're just saying, you know, the whole thing was scripted.
Come in there and grab the guy.
A guy.
And people, I'm sure, were taking photos.
A guy.
These guys have GoPros.
They got everything.
Yeah, there's a movie of the whole thing, I'm sure.
Well, yeah, the movie is called Zero Dark Thirty, and that's what you're supposed to believe, you see.
This is how it works.
And they said, okay, I want to make sure you don't have something that's hidden away someplace.
But Mark says the SEALs would have designated some member of that team to take official photos and video for posterity and training purposes.
He believes that if Admiral McRaven ordered photos destroyed, he was trying to protect operational secrets, sources and methods, and trying to protect American troops in dangerous areas.
Wolf?
I love the sources and methods.
Okay, first we crash the helicopter.
Oh, shh.
This is hard.
Sorry.
Our highly secretive stealth helicopter, which looks like it couldn't fly in a million years with all that metal hanging off of it.
Yeah, we crash that and then we go in and we go get him.
He's watching T-Satellite.
We shoot him in the head, and we don't take a picture, and then we dump him in the ocean real quick.
What about photos of Bin Laden buried at sea?
Could those be made public?
Well, Judicial Watch says that it has asked for that as maybe some sort of compromise.
If you're not going to release the photos of Bin Laden himself, at least give us those.
Be on the lookout for a sheet being dumped into the ocean photo.
The Obama administration has steadfastly said it is not going to release those.
It is very concerned about incitement to violence.
Now listen to Brolf wrap it all up.
You're rather afraid it wouldn't...
Incite a new generation of terrorists who would be outraged by seeing those pictures.
Alright, thanks very much, Brian, for that.
That's right.
It would incite a whole new generation of terrorists if that were to come out.
So, let's just not do that.
Wasn't one of our original theses on this at the beginning when it happened...
Mm-hmm.
Actually, even before it happened, because there's a lot of reports of them already being dead.
Yeah, years before.
This was not an assassination because that SEAL team was an extraction team.
It wasn't an assassination team.
We isolated that piece of information.
And this was just an extraction of an asset because we've always...
Thought it's possible this guy was a CIA plant in the whole operation that was, you know, he ended up leading.
And this was just getting him out of there.
And the guy shaved, you know, to give him a shave and a haircut and a little new nose job, and boom, he's a professor someplace at Georgetown as we speak.
We discuss that as a possibility.
Well, the thing that interests me is why has no one put in a Freedom of Information request For the live helmet cam video that everybody was watching in the Situation Room.
Everyone was in the Situation Room.
There's been a thousand of these requests.
I had never heard of one.
You know, I can guarantee there's a whole bunch of guys that do nothing but just crank out these Freedom of Information requests and they get the same form letter back.
We can't do this because of one thing or another.
You never get the information.
It doesn't mean it works.
Some guys have waited a decade to get some stuff, the old crap from the 60s.
It's a bogus system.
You're not going to get the helmet cam.
Ben Laden turning around saying, what takes you guys so long?
Hey, did you bring my M&M's?
I love those M&M's.
I love them with the peanuts.
They're the best.
Right.
You want us to bring this device?
Nah, it's bullshit.
It says dialysis machine.
Alright.
What was the dialysis machine?
There's a little tidbit that got lost in the shuffle.
Why even bother?
People ask us all the time, you should revisit that.
He was on dialysis in 2009, I think.
No, no, no, I'm sorry.
Way, no, no, way earlier than that.
I'm crazy.
No, no, like...
It was right after 9-11.
I thought it was even before 9-11.
No, I think maybe, maybe it could be.
I'm a little fuzzy on that, but yeah, you know, yeah.
And there's always, remember all the ridicule from the media?
How come they can't catch a guy who's 6'5 and has to bring a dialysis machine everywhere he goes?
You can't find that guy?
Yeah, and then that went away.
Yeah, that went by the wayside.
Somebody in the office of propaganda went, oh man, this is getting on our nerves.
Can we get them to stop talking about the dialysis machine?
Okay, let's see.
There seems to be trouble in Bitcoin paradise, which is, I don't know if you've been following that.
Yeah, a little bit.
It appears that you can DDoS something, and then the Bitcoins, it'll look like it wasn't confirmed and taken out of the wallet, and then you can do it.
It seems like a flaw in the system.
Right, which will destroy the system.
Yeah, which if that's not fixed very soon, well, the system is kind of destroyed.
No one's paying out anymore.
And the current price, according to Mt.
Gox, I guess, they're at $617.
But, you know, we've always kind of been waiting to see what happens, and it looks like here it is.
You know, here's the issue.
But, of course, you know, I don't know.
I'm reading this from Forbes, who claim that we have a subscription app.
So, I don't know.
Who knows?
You know, Forbes is not the best source of this stuff.
You know, this is...
I don't think I was...
They're loaded with native advertising.
Yeah, I don't think I was asked, or you were asked, to comment on this Forbes piece, which was about podcasting, and I guess the crux of the article was you don't need ads to make it in podcasting.
And it was a huge bit about Patreon, It was like a native ad for Patreon.
Yeah, it seemed like a native ad for Patreon.
And then we were kind of lumped in down at the bottom saying, you know, other people sell subscriptions and apps, of which we do neither, I might add.
No, we don't sell anything.
No.
Except the show.
Yeah, so I found that to be interesting.
The same time, both you, I, and the gay crusader were, and God, I hate this, were asked by Russia Today to comment on, to come on Skype and comment on the LGBT laws in Russia.
Did you do this?
No, I'm declining this.
I'm not going to do this.
Oh, I thought you were going to do it.
First of all, Brian the Gay Crusader should be on.
He wrote the white paper, and if he's nice, he'll give us a plug.
The problem, here's what I don't like.
So the producer reaches out to all three of us independently, not on one email, but all independently, and it's for an edited piece, and we want to talk to you for 30 minutes, and then we're going to make it.
Like, no.
I'm not going to do anything that's edited.
If it's not live, I'm not interested.
This is how they screw you.
Yeah, they can do that.
Yeah, but I want no part of that.
Okay.
This should be Brian the Gay Crusader anyway.
I think you're dead on.
Right.
I thought they were going to talk to him and you.
Yeah, but why would I do that?
Why would I talk to them for 30 minutes when he wrote the whole white paper?
All I'm going to say is, yeah, I had it translated.
Yeah, he's right.
Yeah, exactly.
I had it translated and it looked like it was bullcrap.
He's going to make the points.
It's his piece.
Yeah.
I'm just skeptical.
So where is this?
Where is this in the process?
Hopefully Brian's going to do it, but the producer keeps bugging me, and I'm like, I really don't want to do this.
Yeah, well, when they asked me, I said, you were the man.
No, you didn't.
I think I said you were.
I BCC'd you, I think.
You were even better than that.
You're like, we're available for comment for all types of issues.
Yeah, well, no, I plugged the show.
Yeah, I know, I know.
I know.
Alright, we should definitely get out of here.
There's a lot of stuff I've got to catch up on.
Let's see, what else do we have?
Oh, man.
On Sunday's show, more cultural Marxism, more gas stuff to look at.
I will be looking at the Cybersecurity Framework, which has just been released.
The background briefing, which I only got.
Oh, man.
Don't you love it when you get a document and it says, Hi, good morning, everyone.
We're delighted to launch a cybersecurity framework.
Just so you know, all the information on this call is embargoed.
This is the government.
Does the government get to embargo information?
That's interesting.
This call will be...
That's a good question.
That's a good question I can't answer.
Just as a reminder, the information on this call is embargoed until that event begins.
Well, I think they do that with speeches.
They give you Obama's speech in advance, but you can't, like, put up some black guy and have him read it in advance of the speech.
As if he was Obama.
Just some random dude.
It's a funny idea.
That's what would happen, you know.
Yeah.
The Onion.
I could just see him doing it.
All information is attributable to senior administration officials on background, really.
So you don't even hear who they are.
But this cybersecurity framework, this is what we've been waiting for.
And this is how...
This truly is the fascistic government at work.
How commercial companies and the government will be working together to share your information.
And the standards are being written by NIST. And the framework is going to exist of standards and practices to help organizations understand, communicate, and manage their cyber risks.
And that reminds me...
Wow, that's kind of interesting.
It reminds me exactly of this douchebag Intelligence work takes place within a strong legal framework.
Legal framework.
Operates under the rule of law and are accountable for it.
In some countries, secret intelligence is used to control their people.
In ours, it only exists to protect their freedoms, protect their freedoms.
You gotta love it, man.
The framework.
The framework, the core, the profiles, the tiers.
Reinforcing the connection between business drivers and cybersecurity activities.
Oh, yes!
I'll be pulling that apart for everybody.
What'll you be working on, John?
Oh, I'm gonna take a nap.
Work on the vinegar book.
Maybe go up to Leo's at Petaluma.
Today?
Check out the local news feeds, and then...
Probably nothing.
I don't have any plans for Sunday.
You're not going to...
Oh, no, but okay.
You're going to be on the Twitch show.
I think we're going to work on the Poppy story a little more.
I still think there's more to this than meets the eye.
I'm totally convinced that Africa's going to be the...
Now that I saw this report about this central called the Sahel or something, which turns out to be a strip all the way across Africa, which has a bunch of illegal drug activity and criminality, and it's this weird strip, and it matches perfectly an actual climate zone.
So this climate zone matches a criminal strip of Africa, That apparently is uncontrollable, and I believe this may be the area where they're going to put the little poppies.
All right.
That and more.
Coming to you from FEMA Region 6 in the morning, I'm Adam Curry.
And from northern Silicon Valley, which I believe is FEMA Region 9, although it could be changed, I'm John C. Dvorak.
We'll be back on Sunday right here on No Agenda.
Five, four, three, two, one.
Thank you.
Adios, mofo.
The best podcast in the universe!
Export Selection