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May 29, 2014 - No Agenda
03:11:33
621: Gun Extremists
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Time Text
I have to admit, I listen to each show repeatedly, probably four full-time start to finish.
Wow!
Adam Curry, John C. Dvorak.
It's Thursday, May 29, 2014.
It's time for your Gitmo Nation Media Assassination Episode 621.
This is No Agenda.
Waiting for the engine light to come off in FEMA Region 6 here at the Travis Heights Hotout in the capital of the drone star state, Austin Tejas.
In the morning, everybody, I'm Adam Curry.
And from northern Silicon Valley, I'm waiting for the engine light to come on as I'm gunning it.
I'm John C. Dvorak.
This is a real problem with American automobiles, I've found out.
What?
Well, I need...
Engine light comes on, it just doesn't do, you know, just in case.
No, no, it's...
Better to be safe than sorry.
When the oil light comes on, you've got to be careful.
Did I mention on the last show that my truck got broken into while we were away?
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
And they tried to rip out the, you know, the radio, and it must have been interrupted somehow.
The cheap radio.
It wasn't a stock radio, but believe me, it was nothing...
Maybe 20 bucks you can get for it.
If you're lucky.
But I took it to my guys around the corner and they said, oh, you know, you also have to have an inspected.
I said, yeah, I know.
My inspected for what?
State inspection.
For what?
You need a state inspection sticker.
And what do they do?
It's, you know, emissions and a couple of, like California, it's very similar.
California thing is a total scam.
Well, so here's the problem.
So they do all the work and there was like some, I don't know, something wasn't, the engine light was on.
And, of course, that's an automatic fail, and so they had to, you know, fix whatever pump or tube was leaking.
And then, you know, he's like, okay, you can pick it up, but here's the problem.
With this model, of course, this is the 2002 Ford Ram.
A fine, recent...
There is no such thing as a Ford Ram.
Dodge Ram.
Why do I think of Ford?
See, this is how much I care about cars.
The Dodge Ram...
At this particular model, you have to drive at least between 40 and 100 miles before the computer resets, and they can get a full reading.
Okay.
And he's like, well, so there's two ways we can do it.
One, we can fail you, and then you have 15 days to come back, and you'll have a piece of paper you can show the cops if you get pulled over.
I said, yeah, 100 miles for me in 15 days?
Are you kidding me?
What am I going to do, ride around the block for a whole day?
I don't drive anywhere.
You say, well, then you can just come back when you think you've hit your hundred miles.
Anyway.
One of those.
One of those.
Oh, well.
Wow, I had a lot of stuff.
Oh, breaking news, John.
This was the big thing.
I couldn't believe it.
Holy moly, everybody!
Yeah.
Brad Pitt attacked by fan.
Oh no.
Why would anybody attack Brad Pitt?
To promote Angelina's movie.
Oh, okay.
It's happened on the red carpet.
It happened on the, oh really, with all the security they have around those events.
This is that guy who is apparently a Ukrainian television guy, and of course I've never seen his television show.
He's a goofball?
Yeah, he's the one that popped up.
He's a goofball show?
I've never seen the show.
I don't know if it's true if he has a show.
He's very reminiscent of Borat.
And for a Ukrainian show, he's got a lot of budget because he was in Cannes looking underneath someone's dress.
On the red carpet.
The guy's hilarious.
I think this is just a guy you can hire if you want some promotion for your movie.
Hey man, do some weird crap for me, will you?
And then, of course, the other news that is just everywhere, more important than anything else that you will hear on this program, Kate Middleton's butt photographed an outrage World War III about to break out between Germany and the UK. Was it a German that photographed her butt?
Yeah, Built Magazine.
She was walking to the helicopter.
And the dress flew up?
Yeah!
Did she have anything on?
Was she walking bare-butted?
Yeah, well, string or whatever.
You can't really see that.
Listen, believe me, Kate Middleton should be very happy with this picture.
Any woman would be happy with this picture.
So she has a good-looking butt?
Oh, hell yeah!
Huh, I'm gonna have to Google this one.
And this is not the first time she's exposed her butt here and there.
It's in the show notes, John, obviously.
Well, that's the new British thing.
Showing your butt?
I think so.
It makes sense to me.
They did it with the UKIP. Oh?
I don't know how that's even funny.
I just said it.
No, that didn't work out.
After bare butt.
Oh no, Kate Middleton.
You have to go to built.de.
Everyone's showing it censored.
Like my god, we've never seen a butt.
This is so insane.
Give me a better URL. You put build.de, you get Dubai Luxury.
B-I-L-D? I put B-I-L-T. This is interesting.
Go to B-I-L-T. Oh, we found something interesting.
You can go rent and buy, I guess, places in Dubai.
Oh, yeah, DubaiLuxury.com.
Hey, I've been to Dubai.
I have no intent ever to go back.
You don't like it?
Is this a little warm, maybe?
No, it was boring.
Oh, it is boring, yeah.
It's just completely boring.
Yeah, there's not much to do there.
Here we go.
I'm so happy.
Well, while you're doing that, I've been meaning to do this for a couple of weeks now.
I want to thank two of our producers who are continuous, consistent contributors to To the No Agenda News Network, and of course their feeds flow into the whole system through the Freedom Controller, etc.
I'm just going to give their aliases, because I don't even think they want anyone to know who they are.
WT and Burt B. I think they're both Dutch producers.
And they just consistently have so many great stories, and they're so good, and they are a big part of...
Of how the show works.
And I needed to thank them for their courage and their continuous support of the flow of information.
And they're doing it through RSS feeds, which is great.
It's also appreciated so much on email.
Okay.
Well, what was the good story they gave you this time?
Oh, just tons of them.
And here's how it worked.
They listened to the show.
I don't know what they do.
I have no idea.
I've only had one or two email contacts with them when something didn't work because they're kind of on our systems.
And they'll say, hey man, something's down or whatever.
And they'll tune in and they'll find anything that relates to the topics that we're working on.
Oh, cool.
Anyway.
Yeah, I should keep up with that myself.
Well, this Freedom Controller thing that Dave Jones has single-handedly programmed, you might want to consider using it at a certain point.
Yeah, I probably will.
And the great thing is, if you have clips, all you'd have to do is open up a web page, and then you'd just select your clips and drag it into the page, and you'd be done.
How would I be done?
Because it uploads the clips to the system and it puts it in the feed and I would just be able to access it right away.
You wouldn't have to deal with anything.
That's it.
That's all you'd have to do.
Oh, okay.
Well, I'm in.
For that reason only.
Yeah, no, that'd be great.
Okay.
Well, you're set up, but I'll set you up again.
Oh, well.
These things happen.
So there was the big phony baloney event.
Brian Williams.
Yeah.
Flew to Russia with Gren Greenwald.
Gren, all right.
And, um...
Now, we have some overlapping clips, but I feel that you are going to take this one.
I have, um...
Decided that this was a very staged, extremely scripted, somewhat of a scam to promote Greenwald's book.
And I think I can't prove this.
I'm just thinking it's because of all the gratuitous plugs and Greenwald sitting in on one of the discussions.
I have to assume that Greenwald had something to do or his publisher had something to do with setting this up.
This was a promotion for the book.
It wasn't a promotion for anything.
I mean, NBC gets a little credit.
NBC was in on whatever the gag was.
There was a number of scripted comments.
They could have probably produced it better, even though they edited the crap out of it.
Yeah, that's always annoying and unlike anything that you would find.
There's no raw video ever of these things.
I've even gotten emails.
Hey, did you get the raw video?
No, that'll never be anywhere.
That'll never be released ever.
I like the opening where Snowden came in through the back door of the elevator, and they're filming him like a reality show.
Do you think I'm stupid that you can't see this is staged?
There's a camera in the elevator waiting for him to come in.
This is how reality shows work.
I bet you a lot of people don't realize that.
Oh, there he is.
He's walking in the back door.
What a coincidence.
I just happen to have it.
Yeah, I'm reminded of the reality show gimmick where the guy says, I'm going to have to call Laura and tell her that we're not going to do the date.
And then there's Laura in some other room with the camera right on her.
She picks it up.
And you're like, oh, really?
We can't go?
Oh, no.
And it's like, are you kidding me?
Exactly.
It's not even close to being interesting.
Exactly.
Anyways, as I would use that term loosely, there was a number of things in here I thought were interesting.
I'm looking at my list of clips.
I've got way too many clips, but not too many of them are long clips.
And we can just jump around to a few.
I mean, I didn't get the clip where he, because I thought it was played on the TV enough.
Oh, where he says that he's a spy?
This is so funny, because I was thinking to myself, oh, I don't need to clip that, because John will have it, or everyone's heard it at this point.
We got so much email.
And here's the crazy thing.
We already had all this months ago.
Well, first of all, our premise has always been that he works for the CIA and that this was a hit job on the NSA. Greg Greenwald Don Raff has written in his book that he vetted Snowden when Snowden showed him his CIA credentials.
And this was pretty much everything was already asked and answered in the German interview, which got zero play.
Yeah, nobody played in the United States.
Nobody played the German interview, but it's available.
You can get it and go to...
Yes, link in the show notes.
I put it in there for anyone who wants to go and take a look at it.
So yes, he does say, I was a spy.
And I had fake names and I wore a funny mask.
He didn't say that part.
So here's the clip.
I'm going to just jump around and start with these two to start with to show how this was set up and scripted.
This is the Snowden Key working for the government clip.
And this is where he says he's still working for the government.
This is part of, I believe, this is a, I'm not sure if this is a two-part clip.
Question or not.
But Brian Williams does the interview like a Larry King interview where he just changes the subject in a very awkward way.
So he never has a conversation or listens to Snowden.
He just has these candid questions that come in out of the blue and they're tightly cut.
I would say it's even different, John.
I would say he has no conversation at all.
These are all just questions that are being asked and answered and it's edited to make it look like a You're right, because Larry King doesn't do that.
He just does the quick different questions.
I don't think Brian Williams could have a conversation if his life depended on it.
It's probably true, and he didn't have one here.
And then Snowden is so reserved and smug.
It's like he's rehearsed these lines, these answers are canned, and it's very unappealing to me.
I'm very disappointed in this thing.
Of course, what I expect is on NBC. But play key working for the government, Cliff.
Legal sources tell NBC News that Snowden's legal team has been in contact with the government's lawyers, but negotiations have not yet begun.
Are you looking for clemency or amnesty?
Would you like to go home?
I don't think there's ever been any question that I'd like to go home.
I mean, I've from day one said that I'm doing this to serve my country.
I'm still working for the government.
Now, whether amnesty or clemency ever becomes a possibility is not for me to say.
That's a debate for the public and the government to decide.
Alright, so he says that, and then I guess somewhere along the line, like 10 minutes later, when they're, you know, clipping this thing together, it could be a half an hour later for all I know, they may do a series of questions and answers and then pull away, analyze what was said, and then they say, oh my god, we let this slip by, let's Here's how it went.
It came at the end, and I think it was different.
So, hey, man, thanks for your interview, you know, whatever.
And then the producer, oh, no, we have to ask one more question.
You have to do a little follow-up about the working for the government thing.
It seemed to me like, I've done these interviews.
I'm agreeing that, but I think it's because they caught the mistake.
Yeah, yeah, but Brian Williams ended the whole thing.
I think this was going on all along.
Yeah, exactly.
I think it was a continuum of, what can we do?
But you might be right.
Holy, get back again!
I've done interviews and junkets and stuff, certainly when I was much younger and much more inexperienced, and either didn't have the wherewithal to have a producer never come up and do that to me, because that's really horrible when the producer says, oh, you've got to ask this question, and then you literally, with the guest there, and you have to ask the question again, like you're some robot, which you are.
And Brian Williams, reminder, this guy was doing interviews, local NBC stuff in New Jersey with plastic surgeons, interviewing MILFs about their boob jobs.
That's before he became the Brian Williams, the top journalist.
Well, he went to MSNBC and became a fake anchor there for a while.
And then, of course, they bumped that news show there and moved him in.
He was the logical choice.
But he always seems, because he used to come on Letterman a lot, and he always seemed to want to be a comic.
Yeah.
Do you have the clip where the question is asked?
Yes, this is the next one.
This snowed in, working for the government.
It's a little further down.
That's the follow-up clip.
This came later in the show.
I don't have it.
Snowden, something the word, I crossed it out already.
Yeah, I can't see what it is.
Well, you said Snowden Key working for the government.
Yeah, I have that one.
You have asked what you would miss?
Yes.
That one?
No.
Best comment, and I'm just going through that.
Yeah, best comment part two.
Best comment part two.
Oh, correcting the record.
I'm sorry.
Got it.
Or that went wrong.
Did you say earlier you were still serving your government?
Yes.
How so?
When you look at the actions that I've taken, when you look at the carefulness of the programs that have been disclosed, when you look at the way this has all been filtered through the most trusted journalistic institutions in America, when you look at the way the government has had a chance to chime in on this and to make their case,
and when you look at the changes that it's resulted in, We've had the first open federal court to ever review these programs, declare it likely unconstitutional and Orwellian.
And now you see Congress agreeing that mass surveillance, bulk collection, needs to end.
With all of these things happening, That the government agrees, all the way up to the president, again, make us stronger.
How can it be said that I did not serve my government?
How can it be said that this harmed the country when all three branches of government have made reforms as a result of it?
Maybe I missed it, but not a single point during the interview did I ever hear him say anything negative or even talk about the CIA. I'm going to point something out on this particular thing which occurred later in the show.
Snowden, and you can go back to the first clip if you want, but I wouldn't do it, said, I'm still working for the government.
Yes, very different.
He said, you said you were still serving the government.
So Snowden didn't have to lie.
But it sounded as though, to people just casually watching, that what he meant by working for the government was this explanation that he just gave now.
But the question was different.
You said you were still working for the government.
Here's the way you asked the question, if this was legit.
And you do it right away.
You do it when he said it the first time, not 10 minutes later.
You said you're still working for the government.
Are you collecting a paycheck?
Are you still on the payroll?
What do you mean by that?
Exactly.
You said you were still serving the government and then let it go off on some tirade.
Let me just interrupt because you mentioned the CIA wasn't mentioned.
Except in the beginning.
What else wasn't mentioned?
What else wasn't mentioned was his girlfriend.
He never once mentioned his girlfriend.
He says, oh, I want to get back to my family.
I want to get back to my home.
You know, it's funny you say that.
When he said, I want to get back to my family, his tongue came out.
Which, as we know, is the tell.
Yeah, that's the I'm lying tell when you stick your tongue out.
Now, we believe his girlfriend was some agent, too, and they were just conveniently living together.
Yeah, something.
So I found that peculiar, that he's talked about, he just ditched her.
And he never mentions her again, ever.
On that note, there's one thing that I caught that I didn't know, I have not found in any online documentation, and to me was, oh really?
I remember the tension on that day.
I remember hearing on the radio the planes hitting.
And I remember thinking my grandfather, who worked for the FBI at the time, was in the Pentagon when the plane hit it.
I didn't I've never heard this.
I never heard this.
His grandfather worked for the FBI in 2001?
And he was in the Pentagon?
And I can't find this grandfather.
What is this FBI guy doing in the Pentagon in the first place?
Thank you.
That was weird.
And there was, you know, really?
And I looked, and if you look at Snowden's, well, it's hard to find, but, you know, there's like family trees and genealogy stuff.
Everything points to his grandfather being deceased in 86.
So I don't know where that came from.
That was weird, and of course, you know, because it's a chopped up interview, no follow-up, no anything.
And it's not on his wiki page.
We'd expect someone to have figured this out and put that in.
That was weird.
It could be a mistake that he said that.
It could be a screw-up.
It could be a lie.
I don't know what, you know, maybe he's full of crap about some stuff, you know, or a cover.
I don't know.
Yeah, I found it peculiar, too.
This whole thing was just crappy.
Here's one thing I thought, just a shorty that we all cracked up when we heard this, is Snowden as the TV critic.
Yeah.
Physical connections.
Right now I'm watching a show, The Wire, about surveillance, which is, I'm really enjoying it.
The second season's not so great, but...
He should have gone on and said, House of Cards, the British version, is outstanding.
I mean, that would have been better.
Actually, when Mimi's watching this, she says, you know, I would watch a show with this guy as a TV critic.
Yeah!
Totally.
You got nothing else to do.
Totally.
This is another one I found peculiar.
This is Snowden.
This is the licensed bloggers clip.
This is Snowden.
I don't know if I'm being hosted by Russia.
That I would bitch about anything until I got out safely.
Because they're going to say, his time is, they have to keep renewing him or they're going to have to kick him out of the country.
So I wouldn't be making commentary.
Now, I think that most of this commentary is really aimed at the United States because, as you know, I've been a big advocate of the cons, not...
I'm not a positive advocate, but I've been an advocate that somehow, someway, the FCC or someone is going to end up licensing bloggers and podcasters.
Right, which is why we have podcastlicense.com.
Exactly.
And this little commentary by Snowden here about bloggers in Russia, I thought was weird.
Registration law in Russia.
I can't think of any basis for a law like that.
Not just in Russia, but in any country.
The government shouldn't be regulating the operations of a free press, whether it's NBC or whether it's some blogger in their living room.
There's so much that needs to be defended here in Russia, but I'm limited by my inability to speak Russian and so on and so forth, that it's an isolating and frustrating thing, and I really hope...
That Russia, the United States, and many other countries will work to push back against this constantly increasing surveillance, against this constant erosion and abrasion of public rights.
Correct me if I'm wrong.
Yeah, so there's a couple of things.
Instead of saying free speech, he said free press, which I think is an interesting choice, different topic.
And then it was kind of like that international aspect to it.
What was your take on that?
I found that to be...
I thought it was some...
I didn't know.
That's why I clipped it, because it had some sort of universal...
It was some commentary in there, and I couldn't...
A code of some sort, and I couldn't quite pull it out of there.
I do know that he was complaining.
Right.
But he had a couple little messages in there.
One, because he says, because I don't speak Russian, and so on and so forth.
Well, I think that was maybe a throwback or a callback to when he...
It was on Putin's little TV show and he messed it up and it came across as really dumb.
Well, he's been in Russia now for about a year.
Yes.
It was in May of 2013 that he made his trek from China.
Now, if I'm in Russia like this, I'm learning Russian.
I mean, I may be stuck there forever.
I don't know.
I am not going to be sitting in my room on my ass doing nothing or just communicating with Gren Greenwald.
I will be learning Russian, and if I ever worked for the CIA or the NSA, I would be inclined to want to learn Russian.
Now, I can't believe he's not doing that.
It doesn't make any sense to me, especially if he was or is a spy.
Unless he actually is learning Russian, or may already be fluent in Russian, we don't know.
Well, I have...
And, by the way, that gives you a huge advantage when you're hanging around and you can't speak Russian, but you can actually speak Russian, you can hear what they're saying about you.
It's very advantageous.
There was an observation, and I had seen this, it had not really...
Registered.
Kyle Barton, one of our producers, sent me a note.
And when he tickled my brain about this, I thought, wow, this is actually a big piece of information.
Do you have glasses?
You don't wear glasses, do you?
Yeah, I do.
Yeah?
But not frequently?
Well, actually, when you're nearsighted and younger...
As you get older, your eyeball does a loopy loop.
It starts making you farsighted.
So I'm actually almost 20-20.
So I don't wear them very often.
Do you have glasses that are one piece or with pads on the bridge of the nose?
The current glasses I have have pads.
Have you ever had a pad fall off?
Yeah, years ago when I was a kid.
And how is that?
Well, you can't wear the glasses because you get poked in the nose.
Right.
If you go back to the original video that Laura Poitras did in Hong Kong, you will see that the left nose pad of Edward Snowden's glasses is missing.
And I noticed that because it also is being videoed from the left angle, as he was again...
Actually, the picture on his wiki page shows these glasses, and I think you might be correct.
And if you look at last night's video, he is one year later still wearing the same glasses with the same missing nose pad.
Now, this can be interpreted in a number of ways.
One...
He only puts the glasses on for the interview and they're bogative, but when I look at the glasses, there's definitely, you can see that they are of strength.
Right, they are.
Two, he is...
Well, hold on a second.
I'm looking at the blowed-up picture on Wikipedia, which is showing these glasses.
And they show that the right eye definitely has nearsighted, because that's the kind of way it goes.
With your far side, it makes your eyeball look bigger.
If you're nearsighted, it makes it look smaller.
And it also has this effect.
But the right eye seems to also be gray.
I'm not the eye, but the lenses seem to be gray, a little gray.
And the other ones are...
Look like they're just blanks.
I don't know.
This is interesting.
I'll tell you.
Okay, we're going with the theory.
Well, you cannot...
There's no...
If you're in one place...
And I've had this happen to me in Portugal or Spain or different places.
This happens.
And Mickey's had it happen in weird places.
You can get this fixed.
Yeah.
This is a fact.
And you will get this fixed.
In Hong Kong.
Yeah, you will get this fixed because you cannot really function.
It's extremely irritating.
So either he's not wearing these glasses consistently and doesn't care, only wears them for interviews, or I think it's very possible that he is under extreme duress and is being controlled and cannot even get out to do this.
That's interesting.
And that may be because he's under Russian control, which would be the most logical answer.
And they have the hammer on his head, and don't mess it up, boy.
But he is not free to...
He is not free.
That, to me, says he's not free.
Could also be...
Now, if I were...
It could also be a message.
Yeah.
I'm not free.
It could be a message that says, yeah, I would...
But no one has really picked up on this, and I feel that it is not irrelevant to the entire picture.
And that would explain why he's not learning Russian.
Or maybe he, yeah, exactly, if you're just stuck in one place.
Or any number of other possible situations here.
Well, that's interesting.
Yeah, I'm looking at the glasses now, you're right.
I thought the best...
I do have a best comment.
It's not a best comment in terms of content for our show, but it's like, here he is, this is where he defends the NSA in an offhanded way.
Yeah, this to me also kind of wrapped it up saying, hey...
It's the douchebags at the top and it's all the money that's going in there.
Not the actual people.
I think his commentary during this...
I got two parts of this clip.
I think the commentary that he makes in here is aimed right at the John McCain's and the rest of the douchebags, as you would have it, that are running the show.
Caught up in all these issues, people have unfairly demonized the NSA to a point that's too extreme.
These are good people trying to do hard work for good reasons.
The problem that we're confronted with, the challenge that we're facing, is not the working-level guy, is some mustache-twirling villain who's out to destroy your life.
It's the fact that senior officials are investing themselves with powers that they're not entitled to, and they're doing it without asking the public for any kind of consent.
Okay.
I thought that was the most poignant thing he said.
I agree.
And as a guy working for the CIA trying to bring down the NSA, that fits the model.
It fits the model, especially if it's CIA old school.
And it would be, you know, calling out the douchebags of the same guys.
You can see who they are.
And by the way, note that he didn't say that about the CIA or the DIA or any other agency.
He said it specifically...
About the NSA. Yeah, about the NSA. Oh, a fixture.
Which is, again, a, you know, appears to be at this point a blackmailing operation.
Yeah, hold on.
So then we can finish the part two with it, whereas I think there's a follow-up question.
Is what I just heard you feeling bad for the...
Damage to the NSA. Hold on a second.
You've got to listen to Snowden because he fills this...
I don't know what is going on here, but he was told to ask this, obviously.
And Snowden fills up the answer with a bunch of non-sequiturs and a couple of sentences that make zero sense.
As a result of what you've exposed from the NSA. Well, what you need to understand in what I was saying, I guess not what you need to understand, but...
I like that little bit, too.
What do you think that was about?
He made a mistake on the script.
What I'm saying is...
Roll that prompter back, will you?
Not damage to the NSA. It's the sort of conspiratorial thinking that can emerge sometimes when we see the government has committed real and serious abuses that lead us to think they can do no good.
And the government does have legitimate programs and legitimate purposes, and they can do great things.
The NSA can as well.
Right.
Okay, so that was like his...
That whole little exchange was weird.
He...
Play...
Play this one.
This is the Snowden can sleep at night, and then there's a big Greenwald plug which made me suspicious of the whole event.
The ability to go to sleep at night, to put my head on the pillow, and feel comfortable that I've done the right thing, even when it was the hard thing.
And I'm comfortable with that.
A good number of Americans, of course, feel that because of what they see as an act of treason, they sleep less soundly at night, fearing this massive leak of secrets has endangered the country.
And there is more on the way.
Glenn Greenwald says the next story he is going to publish, based on the Snowden documents, may be the biggest yet in terms of impact.
Yeah, and this, of course, is the promise that Grand Greenwald is going to publish names of people surveilled.
Name names.
There was another little Grand Greenwald thing in there, which I found interesting, which I don't think you picked up on.
And that's the reason that the journalists have been required by their agreement with me as the source, although they could obviously break that or do whatever they want.
But I demanded that they agree to consult with the government to make sure that no individuals or specific harms could be caused by any of that reporting.
So, now this is something that we've already known but is rarely really discussed, is that every single story, even the ones that come out on, you know, the fabulous Intercept, Are always vetted through the government.
And we know that this was happening when he was at The Guardian.
We have The Guardian editors confirming this and that the government said, no, it's okay.
They didn't even say there was any problem to national security.
And NBC, and this is how this ties in, John, NBC has hired...
Greenwald to be their government contact.
That includes NBC News, which has reported on its own batch of Snowden documents and has a reporting relationship with Glenn Greenwald.
Right, I saw that.
I heard that clip.
I was going to ask, she was going to clip it.
Now, the thing about that clip that I didn't understand before, if true, and I don't remember this, maybe you can tell me that you remember it, Was Snowden is the one who insisted on government clearance for the stories?
Yes.
As opposed to the writers themselves?
Yes.
That was his deal.
Yes.
You know that for a fact?
That was the way it was done?
No, I don't.
Of course I don't.
It seems to me as though the writers are looking for...
It's kind of, I would say...
Cover.
It looks like they need cover.
They need cover because if I get a bunch of stuff and I'm going to write about it, but I'm, say, the national security writer, I'm probably somehow affiliated with some agency or other, but I'm writing about it and I'm going to go and take my writing and say, here's the article I'm writing.
Can you approve, you know, I can do this?
Is it okay?
Boss?
To the government.
And they say, okay, we don't want this, but you can do this, this, and this.
And then I get caught for doing that.
I look like I'm not much of a journalist.
Yeah, exactly.
I think this is more towards the public.
And I've heard Greenwald do this a number of times.
He talks about his deal with his source.
And I guess this is some holy thing.
I don't know how...
Yeah, I agree.
Often it's like, of course, you won't reveal your source.
That is usually how it works.
But it's not typical, I don't think, that you have a deal as to how you will use the information.
And I think that is purely used.
Well, if I could just interrupt for a moment here.
This is Greenwald.
he was on c-span he did this big book promotion let's just call it what it is a big book promotion and this is at the very end of course he's very very happy and very pleased with himself and it's a little telling about his relationship with his source and and what he's doing and of course how awesome he is um I don't make any apologies at all for having written a book.
I've been working on surveillance issues for eight years.
I want to maximize every platform that I have to go around the world and talking about why these surveillance policies are so dangerous, why government secrecy is so dangerous, urging people to protect their own privacy and talking about the reasons why that's so urgent.
It was just announced today that Sony Pictures purchased the book in order to make a film about it.
I'm thrilled about that as well.
When I was growing up, I was obsessed with the film All the President's Men.
It reached me about the duties of journalism in a way that I probably never would have been reached.
And I think the book and the film will reach people in all sorts of ways that wouldn't otherwise engage people.
I'd be great independently wealthy and could spend five months pouring my heart and soul ten hours a day into a book without getting paid and making a living.
Like pretty much every journalist and every person from Noam Chomsky to everybody else who might be admired who's written a book, you need to get paid for your work like everybody else does.
And I don't make any apologies for that as well.
My duty to my source...
What the heck did he just say?
He's saying, I'm making money on this and who gives a crap?
Is to bring the message that he wanted to bring to you.
Listen to his duty to his source.
This is the whole point of the clip.
I'm going to back it up two more seconds.
Here we go.
For that as well.
My duty to my source is to bring the message that he wanted to bring to the world and Now, this is interesting.
Listen to what he's saying.
My duty to my source is Is to bring the message to the world.
That is not typically a journalist's duty.
A journalist's duty is to bring the truth.
That's the duty of an apostle.
Or, if your source is the CIA, then you have a duty to that source.
Yeah, that would be true.
And you know it.
Let's do it one more time.
And I don't make any apologies for that as well.
My duty to my source is to bring the message that he wanted to bring to the world as effectively as I can.
And writing stories and going on the media and writing books and doing films are all really important ways for me to do that.
And that's what I intend to keep doing.
All right!
Thank you.
Okay.
I'm Glenn, I'm great.
Huh?
One thing that I've noticed only recently is this association with Noam Chomsky.
Oh, yes.
Why do you think that is?
I'm wondering myself, because it just started to appear, and Chomsky is a very sketchy character to begin with.
I've never liked the guy.
I think he's a trickster.
I think he's really good at twisting words.
He's a linguist.
And he knows how to present things in a very propagandistic way.
His use of adjectives and adverbs and the way he does them in his arguments is extremely I think, nefarious.
And I don't think he's a good guy.
Although he denies this now, I remember him doing it, which was supporting the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot.
Until they found out that this was the wrong side of history, as it were.
And he keeps cropping up in this.
He's a very critical of the United States, beard, subversive type of guy, this Chomsky character.
Okay, that's something we need to...
I just find it very strange, and this is only within the last couple of months, is that he somehow has got his hooks into Greenwald, and I believe because of Greenwald's politics that Greenwald is susceptible to the Noam Chomsky thought process, which I've seen people fall into.
Oh no, I know a lot of our listeners will send me Chomsky articles.
Yeah.
Chomsky's one of those, it's like an evil thing to read.
I don't believe in this sort of thing as a mystical thing, but I believe it's like, and evil's the wrong word, but just bad policy to read Chomsky uncritically because you will be sucked into the wrong way.
Your mind will not work correctly.
And I need to point out that...
A very good policy in general for your overall physical health is to not watch news, not read news.
You could probably just listen to this show once or twice a week and get enough, and then carry on with your life and do other things that are more important.
You can get sucked into any of it.
A lot of this is just casual getting sucked into.
I don't believe Brian Williams is evil.
Oh, no, I disagree.
But I think that Chomsky is.
At the end of the day, when it comes to most media, the whole idea is to get you to engage in more of their media or more of their entertainment products.
Especially the entertainment.
Let's play this last couple of clips and get this over with.
I thought this was a funny way to answer a question.
This is Snowden when he's asked what he misses from the U.S. Or what would he miss?
The question is, Snowden asked, what would you miss?
Do you see yourself as a patriot?
I do.
You know, I think patriot is a word that's It's thrown around so much that it can be devalued nowadays.
But being a patriot doesn't mean prioritizing service to government above all else.
Being a patriot means knowing when to protect your country, knowing when to protect your constitution, knowing when to protect...
I was bummed out that he mispronounced constitution.
And I was bummed out by the fact that it says your constitution instead of none.
Good catch.
Good catch.
Huh.
Instead of mine.
Yeah, or thee.
Knowing when to protect your constitution.
Knowing when to protect your countrymen.
From the violations and encroachments of adversaries.
And those adversaries don't have to be foreign countries.
They can be bad policies.
They can be officials who, you know, need a little bit more accountability.
They can be mistakes of government and simple overreach and things that should never have been tried.
But many in government say Snowden should pay for what he has done, whether or not he comes home.
What do you miss about home?
I think the only answer to something like that for somebody who's in my situation is, you know, what don't I miss?
What would you miss?
You know, what wouldn't you miss?
Interesting.
My...
And I was all alone watching this.
Miss Mickey had a dinner with some people, and...
I had the same kind of vibe about that answer.
It's like, yeah, there's so much, what wouldn't I miss?
As an American, as a true weirdo Yankee Doodle American.
Is that strange?
Is that a weird answer?
Well, I thought the answer was...
If I was held captive, that's the answer I would probably give.
Well, why wouldn't I miss?
I don't like the answer.
I didn't like the way he handled that question.
I think throwing it back at Brian Williams, which he did, I found the whole thing to be...
I don't know.
It just bothered me.
Somewhat condescending, maybe?
Well, I don't think it was that.
Then he goes on and says, I miss her.
Then he goes on.
I didn't clip the whole damn thing, but he goes on to say that he would miss his family.
Again, leaves out the girlfriend.
The girlfriend, yeah.
Which I find peculiar.
Well, I mean, maybe he had a hard time dumping her anyway.
He's like, oh, I'm happy I got shipped off.
Maybe this is the whole reason this whole thing happened.
Take her.
I was afraid to dump my girlfriend.
You know, she's a psycho.
But...
My psycho girlfriend, I finally got out from under.
Yeah, that's always possible.
I have a long shot explanation.
Very long shot.
So the last clip I have is Snowden wants to come home, and there's a little teaser at the end, which I find these things to be annoying.
If I could go anywhere in the world, that place would be home.
And when we continue, An American in Russia, Edward Snowden, talks about what his life is like now in exile, and how he feels about coming home.
I had one other little thing here.
Which was about the process that he says he went through to bring up these gross overreaches to his superiors inside the agency, inside the system.
I've called on Congress to write a letter to the NSA to verify that they do.
Write to the Office of General Counsel and say, did Mr.
Snowden...
ever communicate any concerns about the NSA's interpretation of its legal authorities.
Now, about that last point there, about the paper trail that Snowden says exists within the NSA. So far, NBC News has learned from multiple sources that Snowden did indeed send at least one email to the general counsel's office raising policy and legal questions.
we have filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act to look for any other records.
And I would love to see the one that he filed.
But I think that's not to be underestimated.
He did bring this up and he did go through a procedure.
And the procedure for the whistleblowers that the president put in place was not actually active when he tried to do this.
We've already discussed that on the show.
It didn't go into effect until several months after.
Right, and all the previous whistleblowers in this situation or other situations have been ruined.
Yeah.
This is not a thing.
And so any disingenuous jerk off, and I would put a lot of these characters who come on TV that say, well, he should have gone through channels.
He should have done this.
He should have done that.
All you have to do is do a little research and find that people who tried to go through channels literally had their lives ruined by these agencies led by the FBI mostly.
And it's ridiculous.
And so anyone who says that is a phony.
And I would put a number of people in that camp, including Hayden, who I think has said it.
And I think McCain and others.
This is just a ridiculous group of people, and they should be called out on it.
Summarizing, and I have two external clips to this.
This was obviously set up.
The timing of it is not coincidental.
There's a lot of stuff going on.
In fact, very annoying, I would presume, to NBC is the Roger Dodger shooting, which really was the news over the weekend when they, of course, want all the attention focused on this interview, which is supposed to be the big one.
So the timing is not coincidental with the year of Snowden's...
supposed asylum ending and on the today show not typically a show where the secretary of state would appear he appears and on a on a fine link from his uh for i guess from his palace and um he is there to promote the interview and the question uh is very simple uh where edward snowden says yeah
of course i'd like to come home but you know i don't want to be uh thrown in the break and never heard from again.
Which, by the way, there's something to be said for if he's willing to die for everything he's done, he's not.
You know what I'm saying?
It's like...
Well, if he has a choice and he doesn't have to, what would he?
What maniac would do that?
Well, but what wouldn't I miss?
Anyway, here's Kerry helping with the promotion of the show.
When people ask, why are you in Russia?
I say, please, ask the State Department.
Well, Mr.
Secretary, what about it?
Does he have a point?
He's basically saying, but for the U.S. State Department revoking his passport, he wouldn't be in Russia at all.
Well, for a supposedly smart guy, that's a pretty dumb answer, frankly.
Hello pot, kettle calling.
I'm not going to get into who he was, what he was, which was not the question.
No, he won't answer the question.
But that was not the question, whether he was CIA, NSA, a spy or not, which was what everyone was talking about.
That wasn't the question, interestingly enough, Mr.
Kerry.
If Mr.
Snowden wants to come back to the United States today, we'll have him on a flight today.
I think this is a setup.
I think the setup is to bring him home.
And still basing it on our assessment, our theory that he is a CIA asset.
He will be brought home and he will go through some form of process.
And we know that negotiation is taking place as we speak.
There are lawyers who confirm this.
This is the logical conclusion that To this entire issue.
We'd be delighted for him to come back.
And he should come back and...
Delighted!
And that's what a patriot would do.
A patriot would not run away.
Oh, Kerry.
What?
I said Kerry would know what a patriot would do.
Throw your medals.
...and look for refuge in Russia or Cuba or some other country.
A patriot would stand up in the United States and make his case to the American people.
And I believe that's exactly what's going to happen, John.
It's going to have to happen because that actually may be interesting because what Kerry said right there is not the way it would be handled under the Espionage Act, which is what Snowden keeps saying.
Snowden says no.
Under the Espionage Act, it's a secret trial.
I don't get to make my case to any.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So what's just happened there, which is almost kind of a legalistic thing, if Kerry, they could use, that may be the leverage they need.
Kerry may be setting this up for that possibility.
I believe that is what's happening.
And make his case to the American people.
But he's refused to do that to this date, at least.
The fact is that, you know, he can come home, but he's a fugitive from justice, which is why he's not being permitted to fly around the world.
It's that simple.
Have you softened your stance at all with regard to his alleged conduct here?
I noticed earlier this year you said that there were disclosures about the NSA made because of Snowden that you yourself were not aware of that constituted NSA overreach.
Does that change the calculus at all for you?
The calculus.
Huh?
The calculus.
There it is again.
The calculus.
I hate that word.
Up to the justice system.
Let him come back and make his case.
Again, make his case.
The fact is that, you know...
He should, if he cares so much about America and he believes in America, he should trust in the American system of justice.
But to be hiding in Russia an authoritarian country and to have just admitted that he was really trying to get to Cuba I mean, what does that tell you, really?
I think he's confused.
I think it's very sad.
But this is a man who has done great damage to his country, violated his oath, which he took when he became an employee, and yes, in fact, stole an enormous amount of information and released it to the public to the detriment of his country.
To me, it appears the script is playing out.
We're all fools.
Oh, well, this is just so coincidental.
Brian Williams has an interview.
It's so simple.
Everything fits nicely.
I didn't even know that it was May, but you're right.
It was May when he went over there.
Yeah, it's a year.
Now, there is one little issue.
We still have to cover the CIA's ass for setting him up and getting him to do all this.
And of course, you're going to have to think that Kerry and all these guys, they all want to knock down the NSA because of the blackmail angle.
And it's true.
The NSA knows way too much, can get to way too much, and we've just heard too many examples of what could be happening and what probably is happening.
Certainly as it pertains to politicians and the cabinet and the president and Congress.
So, let's get some information from the CIA. Here's the, well, he says he's ex-CIA, Bob Bear.
No, Bob Bear.
You're never ex-CIA, trust me.
Bob Bear in particular.
Yes, he is, you know, you get on the pundit payroll.
It's Project Pundit.
It exists.
And these guys, they get books written for them, and they get talking points, and they get on all the shows.
And Bob, he's having a hard time, but he is going to definitely discredit Snowden's CIA angle, which is what the big promotion was of this interview, I'm a CIA spy.
Edward Snowden was a spy.
I love Carol.
Hold on a second.
I just realized something.
I gotta play this combo.
Hold on.
Edward Snowden was a spy.
Oreos are just as addictive as cocaine.
He says it the same way.
Oreos are just as addictive as cocaine.
Edward Snowden was a spy.
That's what he told NBC. The man who leaked a thousand NSA documents says he was not a low-level systems administrator, but a CIA spy.
Wow.
Joining me now for some perspective, Bob Baer, seeing a national security analyst and a former CIA operative.
Welcome.
Thanks.
So was Snowden really a spy?
No.
I mean, I wonder about his credibility now.
When he was in Geneva, he was a systems administrator.
The CIA doesn't take contractors and turn them into spies.
Yes, he had some sort of cover there.
Yes, he had a name he used in correspondence when he communicated with Langley.
But he wasn't a spy.
When he communicated with Langley.
Yeah.
Everybody does.
You know, when I communicate with Langley, I have a secret name.
Langley.
Isn't that fantastic?
That's great.
Hold on a second.
I've got to communicate with Langley.
Okay, I'm done.
And the National Security Agency doesn't have spies overseas, so I have no idea what he's talking about.
Yeah, I mean, that's a pretty blanket statement.
Clearly the documents that he hacked from the National Security Agency are legitimate, but his personal credibility I wonder about.
Well, you know what Snowden says.
He says the government is trying to discredit him by downplaying his true position.
Americans are split on Snowden, so why would he lie about such a thing?
And if he were somewhat of a spy, wouldn't that more easily explain how he had access to all of those records, all of those papers?
No, it's just that the National Security Agency is sloppy and compartmenting its files.
Don't you love it?
Give him the needle.
And he was able to get through those firewalls, get into them and read them.
Firewalls!
He's very good at hacking.
But he was, trust me, Carol, he was not a spy.
I mean, I spent too long in this profession.
It's not possible in any sense.
In everything I've heard, he's a systems administrator.
Nonsense.
Well, it's beside the point.
It's obviously he's scolding Snowden to shut up.
Shut up!
Exactly!
But Snowden knows what he's doing.
Snowden is bringing this up because it's, hey, you guys were supposed to get me out of here six months ago.
Yeah.
Where is my...
When you recover, I forgot what it's called, but...
Where's my extraction team?
And again, the National Security Agency does not have spies overseas.
It's got people that monitor computers and the rest of it that sit in a vault.
They're little weenie boys is what they are.
Little geeky boys sitting in a vault.
They have no spy.
They got no craft.
Spycraft.
They got none of that.
They just got little weenie boys with computers.
But I would hardly call that being a spy.
That's not really like a spy.
We kill people.
We drone people like the CIA. The National Security Agency snooping into my phone and keeping databases unimaginable.
Oh, really?
You don't like it, huh?
Necessary.
It's subject to abuse, and I fully agree with that.
But on the other hand, fleeing to Russia, in my terms, it's an enemy of the United States, whether we like it or not.
Now, listen to this.
Let's don't forget Crimea.
Let's don't forget the Ukraine.
Excuse me, Snowden did all this before Crimea and Ukraine was in the news and an issue?
This is all before that?
But they are not our friends.
He went to the other side.
And that is a real problem for especially people like me that worked in the Cold War.
That's great.
That's the clip of the day.
Give it to him.
Oh, really?
Oh, that's very kind of you.
Thank you very much.
And I have to say...
I should keep an eye out for that.
Every time I've seen Bob Barr, it's just a bear.
He's funny.
I've always thought he was hilarious.
And it's just always Adam.
He's always irked.
Well, he went too far on this.
I think he blew it.
He's going to get a memo on that one.
Yeah, he blew it.
He blew it.
He blew it.
And I must say that I have become a weird fan of Carol on CNN. Seriously, she comes across as...
Something has changed also at CNN. I see new faces.
I see a big push.
Someone, I guess it's Zucker, finally has caught on.
Like, hey, you get more people interested in watching when you go against the general government policy and you hop on boards of the VA thing.
They're all over that.
They've given Carol some kind of free reign.
And actually, when we talk more about...
The Roger Dodger shooting.
She has some interesting conversations.
I've become a fan in a weird way.
And CNN, of course, brings up bile in my throat, typically.
But she has something very weird.
Something's going on.
It's changed.
You're now our Carol watcher.
Happy to be it.
Hey, thank you for your courage, John, and I'd like to say in the morning to you, John C. Dvorak.
Well, in the morning to you, Adam C. Curry.
Yay.
I want to also say in the morning, all the ships and sea boots on the ground, feed in the air, subs in the water, and also the dames and the knights out there.
Yes, and in the morning to everyone in the chat room, noagendastream.com, noagendachat.net.
In the morning to our artists...
Martin J.J. came in again with the best artwork.
We need more help on this.
We need diversity.
Not that I don't feel good about Martin J.J.'s work, but where's the diversity?
Where's the...
Where's the work?
I want to remind people about, I probably shouldn't do this every time, but maybe I do it once a month.
But I want to remind the artists out there that Martin JJ goes way back.
He was one of the submitters that used to, month after month, year after year, he would submit crap.
Mm-hmm.
Until he got the hang of it, now he just, everything is gold.
And that's the way it's done.
That's the way all things are achieved, is through...
Perseverance.
Yeah, perseverance and attempts.
And you just throw, you know, you say, let me try this, let me try that.
And it also changes the way your brain works, and then you just get good.
And that's what he's done.
He's almost a great example of the way the mind works.
And it's one of the hardest things to do, by the way.
It's really one of the hardest things to do.
The spot art is very difficult.
This is, you know, yeah.
I mean, in the early days when we were just getting started with the spot art, you know, it was just a couple, it was usually a picture of the two of us, which we now reject all pictures of either or both of us, and some stupid scene.
And it was just, you know, it was just kind of casual.
It was interesting for what it was.
But then we started getting creative input, and our generator helped, too.
And then next thing you know, we actually have, you know, a lot of submissions.
It's entertaining itself in itself.
I want to thank a few executive and associate executive producers.
Actually, we both want to thank them.
There's only three because we had a holiday.
I want to mention this happens when there's a holiday week.
We have lousy...
Here's the example.
I pick up the checks from the post office on Wednesday.
Mm-hmm.
Generally speaking, we get between 10 and 20 checks of all sorts, $11, $5, $500.
A lot of these are automatic bank checks?
Most of them are automatic bank checks.
We usually get maybe one or two personalized checks that are sent in by hand.
And just like I said, between 10, 20, maybe 30 sometimes because some of them come in a big bunch.
I've never actually gone to the, especially on a long, we had a long, you know, from the Sunday show to the Thursday shows, the long part of the week.
I've never gone to the bank and opened the box and found two checks.
Now that was, to me, is part of the holiday problem.
And you know we have a big religious holiday coming up, which is, is it Ascension Day?
Well, it's not.
Ascension?
Is it?
Yeah, it's a big European holiday, a religious holiday.
Well, we'll have, there'll be another bad week.
Yeah.
But I've never seen that, and I think it's, I don't know if anyone in the post office even worked this week.
I think they took a week off.
So we have three associate executive, or two executive producers and one associate executive producer, and that's what we got.
Just, not that I'm complaining, I'm just complaining about the holiday and that people have to realize that you have opportunities here to get your name mentioned easier.
Robert Rock in Anchorage, Alaska.
And I thought he had a note in here.
Now I'm going to have to go to the email because I'm not going to pass this one up.
Rock, Rock.
I don't recall.
Well, maybe I do recall.
Hmm.
All right.
Robert Rock via PayPal.
William LaRock via PayPal.
I don't see a rock.
Hold on a second.
I can take a look.
It would be under...
What's his email?
It would be under...
He uses the member at paypal.com where it comes through.
Oh, here it is.
RobertJosephRock at...
John at curry.com, everybody.
How's that working out?
Are people sending you email?
No.
I got nothing.
Ah!
Nobody, I got finally, Sarah sent me an email saying, you know, you don't get any love.
Adam gets all the good email that he gets to read.
You get nothing.
So she's now sending me cool stuff.
Oh, is that Sarah R? I'm not saying.
Oh, yeah.
So I didn't reply to one of her emails and immediately she's peeved in emailing you.
Okay, I get it.
Yeah, I get it.
Anyway, no, I got no note from him under his Gmail address or anything else.
But anyway, Robert Rock sent in $529.14 from Anchorage, Alaska, where all the money is.
So we'll hear from him later, I'm sure.
Meanwhile, Luke Vanderhelm, 3-17-30, which is what it amounted to after he sent in a bank transfer.
Ah, and did this come through?
He's always complaining about the SWIFT system, and he wants us to use the European system, which we can't.
We can't.
It's illegal.
But it's very nice of him to support the program.
He did that, and $3.17.30, and he has just his random messages that we're doing a great job, and he didn't have anything special to say.
John Carlson, $222.22 from Brookings, South Dakota, says, after listening to the show for nearly five years, I'm honestly impressed.
There are a few people I can talk to more than...
For more than a half hour straight, and I can listen to you guys for at least two and a half.
So worth my time, I've successfully hit several friends and coworkers in the mouth.
I need to give my gorgeous girlfriend a shout-out and request some job karma, because if anyone deserves it, she is the one.
We're moving from South Dakota to Tampa, Florida.
I'd move to North Dakota for the jobs.
To Tampa, Florida, although there's a lot of nice clubs in Tampa.
For, and after selling all of our crap and moving out of the tundra, seeing her land an awesome job will be the icing on the cake.
Keep up the great work.
Thank you for your courage.
Oh, all right.
And that is, that's our, that we conclude our executive producer.
Hold on, this is, I need to give her a jobs karma.
Yes.
I want to make sure I do this.
Jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs.
Let's vote for jobs!
Yay!
You've got karma.
Yeah, ooh!
I do have a nice little PR note from Robert Jenkins, CEO of Cloud Sigma.
I think he may be Sir Robert, I'm not sure.
Adam, good news.
I've set up dedicated BitTorrent sync servers in our clouds as well as my desktop computer in our SOFIA office.
That would be Bulgaria.
I'm syncing the latest show folder, the archive, and the Jamesy archive folders as well.
I've set up servers in San Jose, California, Ashburn, Virginia, Zurich, Switzerland, and SOFIA, Bulgaria.
With the exception of Sophia, they all set up multiple 10 giga floppy pipes with no traffic shaping so they can stream at multiple gigabit per second speeds.
No problem.
They will run 24-7 and have unlimited bandwidth.
I hope this helps with faster distribution to the listeners.
Also, I'll add nodes in Miami and Hawaii in the next couple of months.
So this is the BitTorrent Sync, which is still in beta, and there's pluses and minuses.
It doesn't work for some people for some reason.
Although I have heard if you search the HFT network and the preferences, that appears to work much better.
But to have these dedicated servers is a huge help.
And I believe it still is kind of the future of media distribution where your audience is participating in the distribution of the program.
I love the whole concept.
Yeah, yeah.
I like the idea.
It's not a full-on solution, but yeah, go ahead.
I believe that the BitTorrent operation in general is under attack by the government.
Uh-huh.
Because it's so effective the way you describe it.
It just seems to be not part of the way things are going.
Well, there is, of course, a flaw.
There is a central ping server or tracker or something that the BitTorrent guys control.
And we don't need security on these files.
We just need them to be...
We need the peer-to-peer function to work.
There's another application.
We actually don't want security on the files.
We want these files to be freely traded.
Yeah, but it's more that you're getting the actual file.
Oh yeah, we do need that.
We need a proof.
Some kind of hashing stuff, whatever.
Yeah, so of course that could be an issue.
There's another one of our producers, Joseph Jones, is working on some other concepts.
And this is something called Sync Thing, which is now coming out, which is completely open source.
Not quite the same as BitTorrent Sync.
But things are evolving, and I'm very happy to see that.
Do you have any thoughts on TrueCrypt?
Yeah.
It's weird.
There's only really two ways it can be.
One is don't use it because it truly is compromised.
The other one is don't use it because we have to tell you that because otherwise we'll get shot.
That's possible.
That's the only two.
I've always been concerned with TrueCrypt.
The story, why don't you give them the background?
So, well, TrueCrypt came out.
TrueCrypt is one of the encryption systems that a lot of people, that personal computer users use to encrypt files, encrypt disks, encrypt something.
And they have...
It's always been kind of a secretive operation.
It used to be called...
Anyway, they've come out and said that we've been compromised.
We're turning off the whole process.
We're out of here.
So they shut it down.
The original version of this used to be called DriveCrypt.
And it was, I guess, 10 or 15 years ago when they switched it to TrueCrypt.
And I've always been kind of suspicious because DriveCrypt I thought was a better product.
And it also incorporated a couple of the Swiss banking encryption systems that the U.S. was telling people not to use.
Which I always thought was weird.
Yeah, that's weird.
Don't use that.
And they took that out.
Although somebody, JC, says that it's still in the source code and you can find a way to turn it on.
And there is a fork on, I think, maybe Debian that is still out there.
There's a couple of forks, but I don't know.
You know, there's the famous XCD cartoon.
Is that what it is?
Not XCD. You know, the little tech cartoons?
No.
It was like two guys, two geeks, like, ah, we've got TrueCrypt on this, you know, they can't decrypt it with, you know, that set up a whole multi-million dollar cluster to decode my 4,096 RSA encryption, blah, blah, blah.
And then the next frame is, yeah, or they could use a $5 wrench to keep hitting you on the head until you finally give up the password.
It's just pretty telling right there.
That's really the, yeah.
Well, I mean, most of the time, the way they, I mean, everyone makes a big deal about the encryption, but if somebody can plant a key logger, On your machine.
Oh yeah, there's so many ways to...
It's done.
You're toast.
And the key...
There was a company out of New Zealand...
Which is also...
There was an article about that recently that discussed the chips in...
Certainly in the Macintosh products.
And this was when the GCHQ came to destroy the computers that had the Snowden information at the Guardian.
But there was a whole article about the keyboard controller specifically, which also had to be destroyed, and they're very particular about that.
And so, of course, the question is, oh, what's going on in the key?
To have a built-in key logger, A huge buffer is not hard to do, of course, just for keys.
Back in the days when Compaq was still in business, there was a company in New Zealand that made Compaq keyboards that were plug-compatible and looked just like your keyboard on your machines that had a built-in key logger.
Right.
And there's no way anyone can do anything about that, because as you're typing away, you're logging everything you do, and there's your passwords.
But anyway, it's hopeless.
XKCD, that's what I was talking about, those cartoons.
Now, before we forget, we do have a show on Sunday, so I'd like you to remember this.
And we've had this weird week.
We have the weird holidays.
Of course, we have Memorial Day.
Not weird, but it makes it weird for us, and so we do need all the support that we can get.
And of course, we would always like you to continue to go out there and propagate our formula.
Our formula is this.
We go out, we hit people in the mouth.
Water.
Order.
Shut up, Slay.
Shut up, Slay.
Anyway, so that's it for today's show, I think.
For what?
For everything?
Oh, no, we got more show to do.
Yeah, I did a little bit of work on Roger Dodger.
Oh, yeah, I let you do that.
Yeah, thank you.
That doesn't sound condescending at all.
No.
I let you do that.
Thanks.
I let you do that.
Yeah, thanks.
Appreciate it.
It's the way the show works.
You know, you don't do something, I don't do something, and it sounds like it's done.
I know.
I'm just saying that because you...
Never mind.
So this is a perfect storm, obviously.
It really is.
I mean, there's so many things to be discussed here.
We get a lot of notes on this because we call the area creepy.
Yeah, but only one person really who's from there responded, and even he don't think was actually from Santa Barbara.
A lot of people...
Well, yeah, we got a lot of notes about the area, but, you know...
The things I don't want to do is I don't want to go too in-depth about it being a hoax or not.
It makes no sense.
There's a couple things we need to focus on.
Immediately, this was used for political game.
To me, that's really disgusting, how that takes place.
That's really not okay when that happens.
It was done in a number of ways.
For last, I will save the YesAllWomen hashtag, which there's a lot going on with that, which is very interesting.
Also being used for political gain, but there's something very real happening there, which I want to talk about.
But we have the War on Crazy.
People are very easy to compare autism and a spot on the so-called spectrum.
Remember, this is all set up by the DSM, which is really just a manual that allows so-called doctors to pretty much prescribe drugs to kids.
And I'm not a big fan of the DSM. But also Asperger, you know, to basically compare these symptoms as described to mental illness.
This is a big problem.
Because at any point, you or your spouse or your friend or your parents or your children could be diagnosed as being on the spectrum.
There is some...
Yeah, well, you know, I think from your perspective, Tourette's false.
Of course it's on the...
I don't think...
I don't know if it's actually literally on the spectrum, but it is a huge symptom.
It's a red flag for being on the spectrum, to have Tourette's, for sure.
Spinning, but also...
The cussing, Tourette's is the one.
And being intelligent.
Yeah.
It's like, you're on the spectrum.
Right, if you're too smart.
So, of course, this fits into the, we need to have background checks, and we need to have, doctors need to have the ability to speak up and identify when something like this takes place.
Very little speak or conversation about the three Asian gentlemen who were killed in their sleep, apparently, his roommates.
With knife.
And this does not fit the scenario at all.
He did not, at a single point, say, I hate Asian computer science students, which is what they were.
And to stab them to death in their sleep is very strange and there's no explanation, also no analysis, of course, of that.
And what's interesting to me is who the media is bringing to the forefront and who the media is not bringing to the forefront.
Well, let's start with Don Lemon.
This is CNN, of course.
Who brings on someone who knows...
Elliot Rodger from the past.
And this is Lenny Shaw.
Back now with more on the deadly university shooting in California.
I want to bring in a man who knew Elliot Rodger and says he had his own concerns about him.
His name is Lenny Shaw.
He's a former substitute teacher who knew Rodger through two of his school friends.
And he joins me now.
Thank you so much for joining us this evening here on CNN. How did you come to know Elliot Rodger?
Thank you for having me, Don.
Well, as I said, I met Elliot Rodger through a group of my former students.
Once they became adults, I stayed in contact with them.
And he was not one of my students himself, though.
What was your first impression of him, Mr.
Shaw?
My first impression of him is that he was very shy and awkward.
Also intelligent, though.
He was standoffish.
He wouldn't really talk to you unless you talked to him.
Did you think he could be dangerous at any point when you met him?
Not when I first met him, but no one can conceive of anything like this happening, but about three years ago, I did mention to some of these mutual friends, I said, if I ever had met anyone that fit the bill of a potential mass murderer, it was Elliot Rodgers.
So it was surreal when I got the news early Saturday morning.
This is always lovely when I hear this.
Okay, what are you trying to prove?
What point are you bringing in here?
Well, it's funny because I think...
I don't know whether this is bull crap or not, but I do know that I myself, and I think you do it too, every once in a while you go to some event or some party and then you come back and you stay with your wife or a friend or whatever, you deconstruct what you just went through and say, you know, that guy could be a mass murderer.
Did you mean so-and-so?
Well, that guy's a creep.
He could be a...
Yeah, there's a mass murderer.
I mean, I've done that.
You must have done it too.
Especially Mickey must analyze people.
All women do it.
And say, oh, that guy's a creep.
He's a pervert.
You know, they know in advance.
Because all women have had to deal with that.
Yes, they have.
They've had to deal with perverts and creeps and mass murderers.
Well, this guy immediately starts dialing it back when Don circles around to what he just said.
It was confirmed that it was Elliot.
I'm going to put you on the spot here, but why didn't you do anything about it?
That's a good question.
Thank you, Don.
No.
What?
No!
It's just a dumb question.
People do that all the time.
You always analyze people.
Why don't you call the cops?
Well, here we go.
There was a creep?
I'm not going to call the cops on him.
I really wasn't in a position to.
I didn't know his family at all.
I knew him, but I only saw him about seven or eight, maybe ten times at the most.
And I did not really feel it was my place to.
I wasn't close enough to the situation.
There were a lot of adults in his life, older adults, that were in a much closer position.
So I didn't feel it would be appropriate for me to step in.
Here's the thing.
When CNN brings on people like this, I do something very strange.
And it is only, of course, because we have this program and we have...
I don't have to do meetings with advertisers.
You Googled the guy.
I Googled the guy.
Exactly.
Who is this guy they're putting on as some expert?
The guy's a total jabroni.
He had a show called Studio 7.
Want a little magic in your life?
Then take a stroll through the psychic fair.
Woo!
Woohoo!
Come on!
What?
It's Brian Brushwood.
I don't know Brian Brushwood personally, but I would not put this on him.
That's just mean.
And welcome once again to Studio 7.
Your link to the cutting edge.
I'm Lenny Shaw.
We have a fascinating show for you tonight.
My guests, Carol Krauss and Richard Stratton, among others, have taken a rather mundane suite of offices in the San Fernando Valley and turned it into an intriguing and numinous place where they have periodic psychic affairs, where you can get readings in astrology, tarot, get your picture taken by an aura camera, and other fascinating things.
The guy's a kook.
He's a total kook.
Get your picture taken by an aura camera.
Please.
And most of the time you take out a studio in the San Fernando Valley, it's not for a psychic.
No, it's for porn.
It's for porn.
Hello.
The world's capital for porn.
So here is the, and again, I can only do this because I'm not doing meetings with advertisers and we are getting by so I can do this full time.
Thank you.
And I hope we're providing some value here.
So one of the people who was not showing up anywhere, Is his therapist, Dr.
Charles Sophie, who was mentioned once or twice, and I remember I wrote down the name to track it, and it's not come up.
But why not?
Because Dr.
Charles Sophie is not only a psychiatrist and medical director for L.A. County's...
Hold on, let me get the whole article.
He's a bigwig.
He is a bigwig.
Medical director for Los Angeles County's beleaguered child welfare agency.
And he carries two cell phones in his pocket.
One Blackberry, I'm reading from the LA Times, tethers him to his county job where he's responsible for the mental health needs of nearly 20,000 foster children.
The second, kept in a plastic case adorned with images of dollar bills, is reserved for his Beverly Hills-based private psychiatric practice.
Worst patients have included Paris Hilton and for scheduling appearances on television, interviews, and reality shows.
Among his recent on-camera sessions was counseling of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills cast member Taylor Armstrong and her husband Russell before Russell Armstrong committed suicide.
The guy does have death in his wake, apparently.
So this guy is very interesting.
Why is he not being interviewed?
Why is he not showing up anywhere?
And if this was the alleged shooter's therapist, who now is a frequent contributor to the Dr.
Phil show and the Today show, wouldn't it be interesting to talk with him?
Yeah, it would.
It also brings up the point that this is the high-end guy.
Very high-end.
So he doesn't work cheap.
Very high-end.
But also, I'm not discounting the public angle.
This is Child Protective Services.
There's a lot of weirdness going on with these types of agencies.
And I've had a lot of Aspies email me.
We have quite an interesting amount of Asperger's Syndrome producers.
And they all say the same thing.
The main character trait of Asperger's is obsession on one certain topic or thing.
And it is very easy to help someone obsess over something productive.
And by the same token, it is very easy to push someone towards obsession of something that is very destructive.
And two people have said, if only I could have talked to this kid, I could have helped him very easily.
And I believe that.
And when you think about this high-end guy and all of the political use that has come out of this shooting, this mass murder, anything over four is categorized as a mass murder, it would behoove many people to trigger this kid.
Now, I'm not saying that's a fact, but I'm saying that it does fit with a number of models.
Now, This guy is nowhere.
No one is showing up.
No one is talking to him.
No one is mentioning him.
I don't know why, other than he's got a lot of connections in Hollywood, which, of course, is how you can either get on or stay off.
But Dr.
Sophie does have a podcast.
And I spent some time listening to Dr.
Sophie's podcast.
And I found a number of interesting episodes.
And he has a very nice, suave voice.
He's kind of like a...
I put him in the Dr.
Drew category.
He does stuff on the Dr.
Drew show as well.
But this was one episode that I found particularly interesting in the context of misogyny, hatred towards women.
And even if I'm just a patient and I would presume that the doctor would say, you know, listen to my podcast.
It might be helpful for you.
That's not a crazy thing to think, is it?
No.
Now remember, you can find all of my book.
Yeah, read my book or listen to my podcast.
So, now put yourself in the overly obsessed mind of Elliot Rodger, who believes that women are shunning him and that he has some right to relationships and sex, and he's obsessing over this because of his situation.
And then you hear this.
And remember, you can find all of my podcasts on my website at www.drsophie.com or on iTunes.
This week we're talking about a very scary topic.
Oh, what could be very scary, John?
Very scary topic.
Female dating psyche.
Really?
Yeah, that's scary.
You got my attention.
Shaking in my boots.
Yeah.
We're going to be talking about a woman's sexual desire and mating strategy.
Is there really such a thing?
And is there really such a person that's Mr.
Right versus Mr.
Right now?
Does it really just meet needs?
Does it really meet a bigger picture of needs?
That's what we're going to be talking about.
Good guys versus bad guys.
What do women really want?
This is pretty much everything.
This to me characterizes Elliot Rodgers' thinking.
Right there.
Good guys, bad guys, what do women want?
What is their psyche?
Was he...
Talking to this child, essentially, in this manner, with these words?
I don't know.
I hope they know.
Gender imbalances.
Why and can it make it hard to find a partner?
So joining me today on my female dating psyche podcast, which is really scary, that's why I'm not doing it alone, is...
Again, the really scary thing.
Why is it scary?
I don't know, but maybe he's just sending messages to patients.
I don't know.
By the way, I have edited this, obviously, just to make it simple to listen to.
A really well-versed and trained and...
Really, really.
Well, he's going to give all the credits that this woman was very well-versed and really, really, really smart.
...expert, Vanita Mehta.
She's a Ph.D., clinical psychologist and journalist.
Has a ton of great schools behind her, lots of great degrees.
She has a bachelor's from Brandeis University, her master's at Harvard.
She holds two other masters and a doctorate from Columbia in clinical psychology and has trained both as a scholar and a practitioner.
Sounds like she's got all the goods, John.
What do you think?
Sounds like a nutball.
Anyone who gets that many degrees, and they've got all these backgrounds, and then ends up as a journalist?
This is bipolar.
Should I be scared?
Again, should I be scared?
What is this?
This is not good if I'm listening.
Oh my god, my doctor is scared.
My doctor is scared of women.
This is weird.
Shouldn't be scared, but maybe concerned.
Concerned.
What am I concerned about?
Well, you know, it's a very interesting area of research that's uncovering some very interesting findings about female sexual desire and female mating strategies and male mating strategies as well.
And what we're finding in the research is that women are basically doing battle with Two fundamental sexual desires, and one would be short-term mating strategies, and the other is long-term mating strategies.
Now remember, you're listening to this podcast as someone who was obsessing over women not wanting to date.
We're getting laid.
You're a virgin.
Yes.
And this is the information you're being given by your doctor?
Let's take another voice.
Sorry?
I'm just thinking this is like the dumbest thing I've heard ever, but go on.
What do you mean?
No, not the clip.
Oh, okay.
This whole thing.
I mean, this guy is really scary, scary, and then he brings out some woman who's got too many degrees and apparently the girl can't get out of school and she's now a journalist and she's making all this stuff up.
This is bullshit.
You know what this guy's in charge of, right?
Yeah, I know.
You brought it.
The mental health needs of 20,000 foster children in Los Angeles.
Yeah, so you set it up fine.
Alternating strategy.
All right, let's take another voicemail.
Everything has to be strategy.
How come they didn't get the MBA and strategy?
Now let's listen to the voicemail that comes in.
By the way, when you're having sex with one of these women, is it a strategic partner?
Let me go on.
It's an initial offering, I think, is what it is.
An initial offering and a strategic partnership.
Be quiet.
Let's take another voicemail.
Be quiet now!
Sorry!
Just be quiet.
Be quiet for a moment.
Let's take another voicemail.
Hi, Dr.
Sophie.
My name is Adam.
I am calling because...
No, I did not call in.
Shut up!
I am on...
A pretty long dry spell when it comes to dating.
Listen to the guy!
It's important!
And it's not that I don't want to date.
I definitely would like a girlfriend, but it's been several years now.
And I'm in my late 20s.
And I just really have no idea what's going on.
I don't think I understand women at all.
On paper, I think I make a good match for a lot of girls.
This is exactly the profile!
But the point is this.
It seems like the few girls I like aren't that responsive.
So I'm at a loss.
I don't understand at all what's going through their head.
They give all these mixed signals.
So any advice you could have?
It would be more than appreciated.
It might actually steer my life in the right direction.
Remember, I'm a patient.
I've been told to listen.
This guy sounds like me.
I'm already scared because my doctor's scared.
Give me some advice.
Thank you.
Interesting.
You go first.
Oh boy, that's a toughie.
No, I'm telling you.
Stop, stop, stop.
She said that's a toughie?
Uh-huh.
Why is that a toughie?
There's a million guys like that.
How is that a toughie?
Here, let me give you the question.
You're going to say that's a toughie.
Adam, you know, I haven't gotten laid in two years, and I'm kind of creepy, and the girls kind of reject me when I come up to them and mash my body against them.
Is there anything...
I'm doing wrong.
I don't know.
I don't get it.
Because it seems to me that if you go up to a girl and get real close, and you breathe in her face, and you push yourself up against her, and maybe bump her against the wall like that, you know what I'm saying?
You think they'd be more responsive.
I get zero response.
I get slapped a lot.
Oh, wow.
That's a toughie.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Interesting.
You go first.
Oh, boy.
That's a toughie.
No, let me tell you.
It's pretty easy.
But you go first.
Okay.
Fair enough.
I mean, I think that actually one of the things that is so...
Interesting about this is that this is where I think a lot of issues around gender imbalances in a population can come up.
Yes.
Which is bullcrap.
I totally agree.
But did you hear most of what this guy was saying is, I don't know what's in their head, I don't know what they're thinking, I don't know why they don't like me.
I did.
I think the biggest issue is what he's thinking, you know, bring them to me and they should meet my standards.
That's again what we were talking about a little earlier when we said look at your list because nobody's going to be perfect, but you also have to look at that list in conjunction with what is you and needs to be addressed before you do that list.
This is exactly what Roger did.
He looked at the list.
He went down the list.
I'm good looking.
I come from a good background.
I've got the right sunglasses.
I've got the right car.
Yeah, he thinks he's a horse.
This Dr.
Sophie is a dangerous individual.
And there was one other episode that I'll just play a little bit from.
No, you're not going to play anymore?
I want to hear the toughy answer.
No, no, no.
It goes on forever.
No, it's in the show notes.
I want to play this podcast.
This is for you, actually.
Today is a really interesting topic.
I'm sure as you have seen tons of shows about it and heard about it, there's even specific shows about it that just really find different people who do this or have this issue weekly on their show.
And it's always amazing to me, and I'm sure it is to you, even though as much as I know and as much as I've treated and a lot that I've seen, I still continue to be amazed at the extent of this issue.
And The issue is really about anxiety, which is at the core, which we'll talk about with our expert today, but anxiety is the driver of a lot of the issue behind this problem today, which is hoarding.
Very funny.
Very funny.
I'm an archivist.
Yes, I know.
I love the whole lead-in, though.
35 seconds to get to the issue.
Oh, yeah, no, it took rare.
I said, well, how does this apply to me?
And that was not edited.
Very funny.
I'm glad you found that clip.
Yeah, yeah.
Anyway, so I'm surprised that we have these morons on the television like Lenny Shaw, but not the guy who's always on television who seems to be related to this...
And then I'm going to finish up here.
We have a new puppet on the scene.
Wow!
Simon Astaire!
Now, Simon Astaire, I know him from our London days.
This guy is no slouch.
He's an author.
He's an agent.
He's been, you know, whenever they're talking about entertainment, but also royalty, you know, the queen.
This guy is a real high-end, high-society, bullcrap Brit.
And he now is a friend of the family and is doing interviews on behalf of the family.
And I want to say that...
That's odd.
Yes.
Yes, very odd.
Let me just look at his...
I'll give you his wiki page.
I'm glad you followed up on this.
I had no interest in it.
I think you had this thing pegged a little better than I did from the beginning.
I think that's why I dropped it.
Astaire was recruited by ICM, the International Creative Management Talent Agency.
Big agency.
Youngest agent yet to be employed by the firm during his 10-year career as head of young artists, including Oscar winner Rachel Weisz and international signing at ICM. He established a thriving music department.
In 97, became chief executive protocol of multimedia with diverse media divisions, including personal representation, product and celebrity endorsement, and PR, working with companies like Bulgari, Giorgio Armani, Calvin Klein, Alfred Dunhill, Saatchi& Saatchi, Charlize Theron, was contracted to Bulgari as Lady Helen Taylor was, to Armani and Calvin Klein.
Among Astaire's clients are members of the Hollywood establishment and the British royal family, including Prince and Princess Michael of Kent.
Regularly quoted on their behalf in the national press.
Regularly appears on CNN, Sky News, and Five and other networks commenting on all key media and celebrity stories.
A trustee of the MTV Foundation, a charitable arm to the MTV networks.
His first novel, Private Privilege, was published in 2008.
It became a bestseller.
The story is a rites of passage to the eyes of a public schoolboy.
Which, as we know, in the UK and England can be very weird.
And he is speaking on...
Buggery.
Go on.
And he is speaking on behalf of the family.
And this is...
He's on a number of shows.
I think this is...
ABC. When I saw them yesterday, I mean, they have literally diminished in size.
He's talking about the parents who he's speaking on behalf of.
And they've literally diminished in size.
Literally.
He didn't say figuratively or anything.
That means they literally.
Yeah, I think that's possible.
They shrunk?
Literally?
I think that when you go through horrible trauma, I think you can shrink, yes?
You can contract?
Yes, I believe that.
I think it's a very compelling description of how they're feeling, true or not, is irrelevant.
It's a very compelling description.
Alright, alright, go on, go on.
Well, I saw them yesterday.
I mean, they have literally diminished in size.
They're crippled with pain.
You've said that they are mourning the innocent lives that were taken more than their own son's life.
It's true.
Every part of it is talking about that, not about their son.
She tells me that she read the first four lines and she knew something was wrong.
So she automatically went to YouTube.
She watched 30 seconds of the video and immediately rang Elliot's father.
And she said, you have to look at this YouTube video.
Now, this is interesting.
He is building the narrative of the story from the parents' perspective.
It all has to come to this.
And he said, we have to get there.
We have to get to Santa Barbara.
And as they're driving up there, they know intrinsically something's wrong with Elliot.
And then they start to hear it on the radio.
Now...
Having previously called the police to do a welfare check, why do they start driving and not immediately call the police?
Well, the other thing is, who automatically goes to YouTube?
Yeah.
Good.
That's exact.
Well, yes, of course.
I think that is because...
That may have some validity to it because they had seen videos previously, and that's why they had the welfare check done, and according to his so-called manifesto, he had fooled everyone and taken them down and mentioned this on some of the forums that he was writing on.
But again, this guy, he is a professional storyteller, paid and successful, a professional PR storyteller.
Spin Man.
He's very good at what...
Doctor.
Spin Man.
I like Spin Man.
Spin Man.
And here's how he's building the narrative.
The news flashes that a black BMW was involved and that there's a mass shooting.
Was Elliot close with his parents?
You know, he was a very removed, remote child.
I remember on one particular occasion, I went to a party of theirs.
I walked out, and he was there on the street, all alone.
I thought he was the loneliest person I've ever seen in my life.
He was an odd child.
He hesitated.
He shook when you met him.
Do you know if Elliot was on any medication?
Wow, finally someone asked the question.
Holy crap!
I know, finally!
I've never heard anyone ask a question like that.
I understand he was on Xanax in the last six months, and I think doctors have offered to put him on medication before, like a year ago, and I don't know the legal side, you see, but I know that he refused to take it.
When he says, I don't know the legal side, this is a setup, because the legal side will be, it will be a crime not to take your medication.
That's where this is headed.
Xanax, I think, although I believe Xanax is an SRI, if I'm not...
Yes, which is not good.
No, not good.
We had one of our dames explain the problem with these sorts of drugs.
But whatever other drugs, which we will not hear about in this, not taking them is some kind of legal angle, which, believe me, will come down to...
I agree.
It's a crime to not take your mind-altering psychotropic drugs.
On a day-to-day basis.
I'm sorry.
You're absolutely right.
What am I thinking?
My God, how long have we had that jingle?
And here it is.
It finally comes true.
All right.
Onward.
Day-to-day basis.
Would you say that Elliot's parents were concerned about him?
Yes, every day.
Every day.
I think their fears, fundamentally, deep down, was that he was going to take his own life.
Elliot's mother, Chin, had reached out before.
Police showed up to his apartment, and now there is an investigation as to whether or not the correct actions were taken.
There's no blame to the police whatsoever.
Because Elliot fooled everyone for a very, very long time.
He fooled me.
He fooled his family.
He fooled everyone who saw him.
He was a tragic figure.
And now when I talk about him, I talk about him knowing what he did.
He is in many ways a monster.
Wow.
Okay, so it's all set now.
You know, if I didn't know any better, I'd say that this thing was set up by Hillary Clinton.
I hate to say it.
I know I can take it a long way, can't I? Well, listen to this conversation.
It was a 15-minute conversation, and now we'll get into the women thing, which is a very important topic.
This is Shannon R. Watts, who we've discussed on the program.
She is the former Monsanto PR spokeswoman.
Who changed her name, changed her entire...
Kind of like a chameleon, became the...
Started a non-profit Moms Against Guns.
I'm just...
That's not what it's called.
Moms Enough, whatever it is.
Which was recently merged with the Bloomberg Mayors Against Guns.
Like NGOs merging.
Yeah, so she is now on the former mayor of Bloomberg's payroll.
And then we have Jessica Valenti, both on with Chris Hayes.
It doesn't matter.
Just listen to the words they are using about this tragedy, which, of course, they rightly so see as a war on women, and they are taking the misogyny angle.
But the words that they're using are very important because, of course, they're paid to do this.
You know, I think that this has been seen in America over and over when there's an issue that hits close to a nerve.
And we're seeing it now.
In my opinion, that means we're winning.
We are going to win this war against gun extremists who have set the policies in this country.
And if that's the price we pay, so be it.
Hold on, new meme.
Gun extremists?
New meme there.
I'm writing it down.
Gun extremist.
And if that's the price we pay, so be it.
We are no longer going to be silenced.
You know, as a mother, I have a right to use my voice and my vote to show what direction this country should go in.
And I won't be silenced by gun bullies.
Bullies, which is the key theme here.
Bullies.
Are feminists winning?
Is that part of what the...
Are feminists winning?
Very careful now.
This world, this dark world that this shooter had some relation to and involvement with and was reading, is that part of the...
What?
I'm just looking for a silver lining.
Horrible.
He says that he's dumb.
He says it here.
Don't worry.
He's reading?
What's he talking about reading?
He's talking himself into a corner and he says, just trying to find a silver lining here.
It's nothing.
Chris Hayes is an idiot.
He's an idiot.
He's an idiot.
I'm just looking for a silver lining in the wake of horrible, horrible news.
I think in a way, yes.
I think feminists are winning sort of the national cultural conversation.
The fact that these hashtags and tumblers take off like they do certainly shows that people are ready for feminists to win.
Okay, thank you.
That is a Hillary Clinton ploy.
For feminists to win, we're going to use our vote.
Well, who else could that mean?
Elizabeth Warren.
It could.
It could.
Now, I will say this.
There's been a number of pro-Hillary articles floating around in New York Times and elsewhere, and they're all about Hillary, and Hillary's not, you know, she's so...
Are you going to move off this topic?
Because I do have one more thing I want to talk about.
Are you going straight to Hillary?
And Elizabeth Warren is not mentioned in any one of them.
I think they're trying to marginalize her, so I just want people to keep an eye on that.
So then, something that happened during all of this, which was started by a...
I found out how to get to the original use of a hashtag, by the way, which is great.
Thank you very much.
A lot of people chimed in on this.
You go to Topsy.com, you fill in the hashtag, and then you do reverse date, and you get the first use.
And actually, yes, all women was used two years ago a couple times, and then this...
This one apparently young author started this, but I think it was propagated by ThinkProgress.
They're the ones that really got it going, so who knows?
This original hashtag creator has now made her profile private and whatever.
But...
What really did happen, and I have a feeling you may have had the conversation, this really hit a nerve with women in America.
I don't really think, they say worldwide, but I think that's kind of bullcrap.
We know people worldwide who really haven't seen that.
But this Yes All Women, very interesting.
Did you have any conversations with Mimi or with Jay about this?
No.
Zero?
Zero.
Huh.
Maybe we think it's some sort of bullcrap, and Jay wouldn't even know what's going on.
They're not glued to this stream of bullcrap.
But yes, all women have dealt with abuse, and they want men to acknowledge that.
And it was just very interesting to have these conversations.
It hit a really deep nerve with a lot of women I know.
And I followed this hashtag for a long time over the past few days, and there's a lot of women talking about some pretty deep stuff.
Now, here's my favorite, Carol on CNN. Sense of theme.
I cut a lot out of this piece because there's no opposition.
Because you can't.
You can't oppose this.
It's an ideal position.
It's like Hitler.
You can't find any, you know, balance when you do.
Well, the only thing is, hey, if you say, well, not all men are like that, that is, this is kind of, yes, all women is almost set up for you to say that, which is when you get beat over the head.
And I've caught myself and it took me a while to figure out, oh, okay, you don't want us to say anything other than yes.
Shut up!
Yeah, and I do acknowledge it.
Absolutely.
But let's listen to this conversation.
I thought for everything I heard, this was the most sane conversation, and Carol was kind of doing a good job.
I'm impressed with her.
It's a tough conversation, but we'll give it a go.
So, Kelly, women, especially those in college, are scared of what they call misogynist men who take advantage of them.
It's hard to argue in this climate that they don't have reason to be, right?
Exactly.
And I think what's important to point out, and we also saw the hashtag, quote, hashtag not all men kind of sprout up here.
Women aren't saying all men are like this and all men do this, but they are saying That almost all women have felt harassed, have been objectified, some even worse, some, you know, sexually assaulted on campuses.
We have seen the power of social media for victims on college campuses to kind of bring attention to what's happening and put pressure on colleges and universities to do more when there are these allegations.
So you really see sort of this, from the ground up, women talking in real personal ways about what they say is happening And why they feel like we have to have a larger conversation here to stop it.
And when I heard this, the only thing I kept thinking is, well, how do we want to have this conversation?
By electing Hillary.
It's about a brawl.
Broader culture that sees women as prizes, as possessions, and as things to which men are entitled as opposed to human beings.
It's a culture where women walk down the street and are subjected to street harassment all the time.
It's a world where women have to say, I have a boyfriend, because if you just say, hey, I'm not interested, that's not enough.
Men will accept that you're another man's possession, but won't accept women's right to have their own interests and desires.
This is nuts.
This guy is crazy.
Broader world.
Some call it a rape culture.
I would agree with it.
We encourage the identification.
Rape culture.
...and violence against female bodies.
Now, this guy had mental health issues.
Is this Toure?
No, it is a black guy.
I think he was brought on specifically for that reason.
I'm not sure who he is.
I think he works for Huffington Post.
I suspect that in the perfect world, he still would be violent.
But there's something crazy-making about misogyny as well, and I think it only contributed to his mental health issues.
You know, Kelly, I think that this is a great conversation to have.
Again, I'd like to know, how can a man, and this is my question, the only question I have, how can I as a man contribute to the conversation?
That's all I want to know.
It's a dangerous line we're walking because I frankly don't believe all men view women as simply objects.
There's definitely a problem, right?
Especially at universities with sexual assault.
But by having this conversation, some men might think we're condemning all of them.
And the majority of men are good people.
I like that.
That is right.
Except for that black guy, apparently.
And I think you saw that.
You saw that online.
I mean, I've had conversations even in my own household where, you know, men who respect women say, whoa, wait a second, not all men are like that, and that is true.
But I think what I was struck by, especially as a mom of two girls, those tweets where moms and parents say, you know, I tell my girls to watch their drinks at bars, but do we tell men don't put drugs in women's drinks, right?
So this is the conversation I think that is dumb.
I don't like the way this conversation is going.
It implies or infers that men only teach their sons, which is patently not true.
And so it's a failure on everyone's part if we're not teaching basic wrong and right.
And, well, let me finish.
20 more seconds, then I'll give you my final thought.
I tell my girls, be careful so that you're not assaulted on campus, but do we tell enough of our men to not sexually assault women?
Do we talk about consent?
I mean, there's one school, Yale University, they talked about consent shouldn't just be yes or no, it should be an enthusiastic yes, right?
So how much are we having, you know, I think we need to have more of those conversations from kids going through middle school and on up, and that will help the dialogue and could help how women and men feel moving forward.
Okay, so here is the danger.
And it's very important to me because of our show.
If this moves to a point where, of course, no abuse is acceptable.
And physical abuse, absolutely not.
For anybody.
But there is a point where I'm worried...
Uh, that you will be condemned for saying, oh, here you go.
Hey, John, is she hot?
This is what I always say.
You say this constantly.
But I also say it about men, but that's beside the point.
You don't say it that much about men.
Agreed.
Because they have to be, you know, younger.
Yeah, no, now you're a misogynistic creep.
Well...
For saying she's hot.
And, you know, and this then gets into...
Is she hot?
You always ask me.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm supposed to...
Or I'll say she's hot, or whatever.
But I also talked about...
Here's another interesting situation, which is created by this.
You say, is she hot?
And it's somebody we know.
And I am thinking, well, she's kind of hot, I guess.
I mean, I never thought about it that way, but I can't say that.
No.
Because then she'll be pissed, because I didn't agree that she was hot, even though women don't like the...
Well, you recall I had...
You remember the...
It's a very convoluted situation.
I think we should just stop talking about women altogether.
No.
That would probably solve it.
Well, so the only thing I'm missing here is, and I hope it comes up, but there is an entire industry based upon 12- to 15-year-old, predominantly white girls, buying music.
From hip-hop artists.
And I beg you to now go listen to these lyrics.
Right, they're misogynistic.
Completely.
Yeah, out of control.
So are we now going to ban Jay-Z and Kanye and Wiz Khalifa?
I think you're absolutely correct in your original assumption.
This is about Hillary.
It's not about anything else.
It's about Hillary, even though I think a lot of people aren't necessarily thinking it's about Hillary as they do it, but that black guy sure is.
When he goes on about rape culture, it's rape culture.
It's bull crap.
What kind of rape culture is he talking about?
I'm not living in a rape culture here in the little town I'm in.
Nobody gets raped here.
It's not a rape culture.
So this guy, but that's a Hillary thing because, you know, I would say this right now.
The blacks who are all in with Obama, he can do no wrong.
Huge population of blacks and there's very few independent black thinkers.
They all just all in, Democrat.
They all love Hillary.
We talked about this before.
I was in Oakland and I went past a guy selling some, you know, some stuff on the street and the old guy there had a Hillary button on.
And we talked about this guy, and I chatted with him about Hillary, and I don't know whether he'd even be in on Elizabeth Warren.
They seem to be, somehow, when Bill Clinton claimed he was the first black president, I guess that was all it took.
Whatever the case is, that's what this guy's doing.
He's just a Hillary person.
I don't like all this Hillary stuff.
I don't think it's going to, you know, they're trying to, like I said a minute ago, they're marginalizing Elizabeth Warren, and there's no candidate that's going to run against Hillary.
Well, I celebrate women in all aspects.
Their intelligence, their beauty, their powers to give life.
And I celebrate that by saying exactly the way I feel about it.
And I will continue to do that.
Well, you don't have any suits telling you to stop.
That's also true.
But I do get...
Worried.
But also, I do think there was something very beautiful about women who were afraid to say, hey, I've been abused.
There was a lot of that.
I mean, I was a little touched by women saying, no, touched a lot, actually.
I was abused by a friend, a family member.
There's a lot of that out there, John.
There's a lot that is really not being discussed.
And that's a conversation, yeah.
There is a lot of that.
It's not just women, of course, but holy cow.
There's a lot of women in my life who I know.
Well, how is this new or different from the pedophile scandals that you have been discussing in Holland and England, and the guys who were...
Prime Minister was taking kids on a boat and killing them.
Well, in fact, it's not different.
You look at the Catholic Church scandals.
These victims were so afraid to say this, to admit this, that it's come out decades later when the guy's dead or whatever.
It can be swept under the rug.
And it's very hard for people to come forward, anyone, but women certainly in particular, to come forward and say this.
So, I don't know where this is going to go.
I have no clue.
I feel sad that the so-called conversation is essentially being politicized to get people to vote for Hillary.
Because I agree, that's everything I'm hearing.
And there's two other things that are happening with this.
One is, and this was Salon Magazine...
By the way, you should mention Hillary is going to do nothing for anyone in that regard.
Who wrote this?
This was in Salon Magazine, written by...
Uh...
Brittany Cooper.
And Brittany Cooper says, this is a white guy problem.
A young white man problem.
In a way, it's true.
If this was a black man, then this would have been a thug.
If it was a Muslim, it would have been a terrorist.
And now it's a white guy, so we have to bring them into the fold.
And this is also, of course, being seen as terrorism, which is very dangerous.
You'll hear this more and more by saying, you know, let's just be honest about it, this is terrorism.
And of course, if you categorize misogyny as terrorism, then you can prosecute someone in different ways, and I don't know.
Nothing good comes from this.
At the end of the day, it becomes an attack on free speech.
Ultimately.
Well, and that is...
That is, yeah, it's always an attack on free speech.
You know, bullying, being mean.
Yeah, being mean, saying mean things.
That's terrorism, seems to me.
Yeah, being mean, you're a terrorist.
Meanwhile, this is going on.
Play the burglar clip.
Okay.
Cracking down a burglar.
Surveillance photos from Friday night shows the burglar inside a business on the 200 block of Castro Street.
He broke in and stole $700.
Police estimate his age at 60 to maybe 70 years old.
Does anybody find that disturbing?
Yeah.
70-year-old man has to steal $700 because of whatever?
I don't know.
Hungry?
Yeah, hungry.
Hungry.
Very pathetic.
Hungry.
Okay, I have another...
Actually, we may want to take a break.
Well, I can give you an odd clip, but I'll save it.
Before that, I was going to mention two things.
No, actually, let's play this clip because this does actually have something to do with what you just were talking about in an offhanded way, the Hillary way.
Play the Christine Lagarde clip.
It's disturbing.
Oh, yes.
There's people talking as well that Christine Lagarde could be the next president of the European Commission.
It would be hard for the European Parliament not to endorse her as she's a woman.
It would be hard to not endorse her because she's a woman?
Yes.
Wow.
Is that a little sexist, or am I just imagining things?
Well, all you have to do is just place in the word black, Latino, male, anything, and turn it around.
And yes, of course it's racist, it's sexist, and it's the way the world is going.
We need to have a conversation about this.
Yeah.
Christine Lagarde.
Who, by the way, is in court right now.
For what?
This is not being covered very well.
I'm sure.
This was the embezzlement fraud case when she was the finance minister of France.
She could actually serve time for this.
When she was Sarkozy's finance minister, she authorized a €270 million payout, that was €300 million payout, to one of Sarkozy's supporters, Bernard Tapie, who,
there was something, some lawsuit, and she essentially, I think it was, he claimed Credit Lyonnais Bank had cheated him, When they sold his sports empire or something like that,
and this went up pretty high, and then eventually she made sure that he got paid off, but then he used a lot of that money to help get Sarkozy re-elected.
That's kind of it in a nutshell.
And this is not being covered very widely.
I know there's a lot of stuff going on when Sarkozy was getting...
Well, yeah.
And you had the woman from the...
Was it the Fashion Empire?
Who was that?
Remember, she also was slipping money to him.
A lot of stuff going on.
But this is not really being covered because, I don't know, as a woman, you can't.
Apparently.
What news service was that that said that?
That was France 24.
Then the French would know, I guess.
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.
Before you start, John, I'd like to just read a couple of notes that I have left over from when we came back from Japan.
From stuff that came to the house.
Max Turnquist, who sent us a bottle of...
Well, here's the note.
I'm not sure what I would do without my twice-weekly dose of reason from the Guardians of Reality.
Handwritten notes, by the way.
This is why we read them.
I started listening in November in 2012, sequestered from most human contact while toiling in a remote particle accelerator.
Ahem.
Then, as now I made barely enough to feed myself, let alone donate to the best podcast in the universe, I am currently trying to adjust this as you are owed some value for value for the plethora of information you have given me.
I recently was afforded some time my family's ancestral castle in Frickenhausen in Germany.
This small hamlet is one of the best locations for a vineyard I've ever seen.
Accompanying this letter should be a check for $50.33.
Yes, we have that.
And a bottle of Frickenhausen's, I guess, finest.
Did you receive your bottle, John?
Yeah.
Have you tried it yet?
No, no, it's a very decorative little bottle with that old-fashioned style, that round.
It's beautiful, yeah, kind of like an old...
It's a Franken-Riesling.
So I appreciate that and the check.
Have you tried yours?
No, no, no, no.
It's ready to go, though.
Is it a refrigerator?
You have to refrigerate it.
Oh, you do?
Oh, thank you for telling me.
This is from Sarah.
I've been listening to the show since my boyfriend hit me in the mouth a few months ago.
I find it...
Relieving to hear all the douchebag...
I guess it relieving?
Hear all the douchebaggery and double-talking bullshit ripped apart and laughed at.
Ha ha!
Pointed out.
And for the twisted self-interest, self-righteous propaganda that it is.
I've always had a hard time taking in the mainstream media.
I could only take keeping up with it for a few days before getting depressed and crying, giving up.
No agenda to the rescue.
Crying.
Yeah.
Yeah.
If you ever need a pad or a meal or a drink on the beach in Vancouver, The Mrs.
2, please hit us up.
Best podcast in the world in the morning from Sarah.
Yes, the embroidery is a token of my respect and appreciation, which is very beautiful.
It's like a mic windscreen with no agenda on it and crackpot with a whale, apparently.
And then, finally, we have...
Adam here.
Oh, this is from Danny Gray from Simply Rugged, and he made me a holster.
This outfit makes holsters.
Were they making you a belt, I believe?
Yeah.
Yeah, I just wanted a belt.
He needs your size.
Yeah, I knew there was something.
And he sent me this beautiful holster, which he made specifically for the judge, and it fits like a glove.
Beautiful.
That's Simply Rugged.
Oh, you can walk around town now.
Yeah!
Oh yeah, that's great.
SimplyRugged.com, you also attached a 320 to that for $60, and we appreciate your support of the show as well.
No, it's really, it's a beautiful holster.
I love it.
Really appreciate it.
It's always nice to come home to gifts like that.
It's cool.
And that is everything that came in that I've been keeping since our Japan trip that came in.
Okay.
Well, we do have a few people to thank for show 621, including Lucas Zua, who is $177.91, takes him to Knight.
Oh, nice.
He wants to need a knight.
Since he's a knight, we'll give him some jobs, jobs, jobs, don't eat me, Hillary, shut up, slave karma, for his fiancée, if you don't mind.
Yes.
Let me see.
Where is...
Now, didn't we just have this?
Here we go.
Jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs.
Let's vote for jobs!
Yay!
Hillary Clinton!
You've got...
Yeah, it's coming back!
Wow, that is really irritating.
$150 from Longmont, Colorado.
It came in as a check.
Philip Zirin came in as a bank transfer, and he says $122.33.
I think he's from Switzerland, and he said he just thinks we have the most fantastic show ever.
And that came in over the...
I have to go to the bank to get the details on these things.
And this one came with this little note which was cut off saying, thanks for all the great work you do.
And the bank teller is going, this is interesting.
I didn't know you could put a note on a bank transfer.
But apparently you can.
Yes, you can.
No, you can.
I know you can.
Woods Woods in Westbury, New York.
$100.
I'm back.
I think with some reason to ask for a douchebag call out for the douchebag that stole my credit card.
Douchebag!
Which it doesn't...
It's better if you have a name attached to the douchebaggery, I believe.
Sarah Greer...
Hold on, he also needs an F cancer for his buddy.
I do like to do the F cancers.
I do like to do that.
Sarah Greer, she sent in a note that came to me too late for the spreadsheet.
She is from Shikshini, where we stayed during our Hot Pockets tour.
Right, 96.96.
And she has a note.
Hello there!
I just donated to Noah Jenna, but I wanted to dedicate it to my best friend, best partner, best lover, and best guide as it is Michael Greer's 40th birthday today.
But I goofed it up and didn't get the message attached to donation.
I put it on the list.
It's on the list and she says many thanks and hi to you and the lovely Miss Mickey.
We have another birthday call from Christine Zachman who will be on the list.
$77.77 in Las Wages, Nevada.
Tim Connor is $77 from Edmonton, Alberta where all the money is.
Scott, by the way, I was talking to my wife about this driving around, and somebody was on the radio saying about Alberta.
Now when anyone says Alberta, I cannot not say to myself where all the money is.
And I explained this to her.
She says, oh, you're crazy.
Scott Montgomery, $75, Sydney, B.C. That's a stack of sevens, by the way, that Christine put in there.
Alan Adler, 7373 in Rolling Hills, California.
Yep, the ham donation.
Scott Scoggin is 6969 in Fort Worth, right up the street from you, Texas.
David Helm in Fargo, North Dakota, 6809.
Mario Baptista in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Oh, Johannesburg.
Joburg, as they call it in the area.
He wants a de-douching, which I'll give you to him.
You've been de-douched.
David Charton from Sydney, Nebraska.
Really?
It's a real name.
An insulting comment.
I'm not going to read it.
P. Jansen in Address City, 5621.
Why not?
Address City.
I don't feel like it.
We're not reading these things.
Address City, Holland.
Is that right?
Address City?
I think that looks like a combination of the Dutch word for address and city.
And somehow he filled out the PayPal field with address city.
I don't think it's...
I'm not familiar with this.
Oh, I get it.
Address and city.
Yes, I don't think it's an actual place in the Netherlands that I'm familiar with.
I like it, though.
Address city.
There you go.
Address city.
It's new.
Address city.
He does have something funny to say.
In my defense, I have a condition called priapism, also known as long-time boner, but I got better now so I can be a donor.
Okay.
That's funny.
Well, that's because you informed us what priapism is.
Yeah.
Priapism is a permanent erection.
It's very uncomfortable, I've been told.
Or some would call it a scheduling conflict.
Christopher Gray in Albeda Springs, Louisiana, 5555.
Oh, he donated for last Thursday's show for Karma for Selling the House, even though it was missed due to the PayPal issue.
Within four hours of donating, I heard that the house was closing.
Just remind people there.
5555.
Daniel Piper, I believe.
I would say Pieper.
P-I-E is pie.
In European, it would be Pieper.
Well, he's in Omaha, Nebraska.
Yeah, peeper.
Peeper or piper.
Eric Newman in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Double nickels on the dime.
We all continue the double nickels on the dime thing just for kicks.
We got a few.
Three or four.
Not that many.
Sir Brian Kaufman in Phoenix, Arizona.
Eric Newman in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
I think there's a note.
The spreadsheet just kind of blew up.
Hang on a second.
It's okay.
Did you have this problem?
No, I have Brian Kaufman.
Well, who's on 23, on line 23?
Luke Mudge?
I got none of this.
It's a blank.
24 is a blank.
Okay, so after Brian Kaufman, is that where you lose it?
No.
I got nothing after Brian Kaufman.
I got a bunch of blanks.
Okay.
Luke Mudge, Double Nickels on the Dime, Denver, Colorado.
Got the No Agenda newsletter, and today I noticed my birthday, June 15th, is John's prediction for the next six-week cycle.
Yay, hey.
And, oh, he also asked for a birthday...
Oh, on the 15th.
You gotta write his back about the birthday shout-outs.
Yeah, no, I... It doesn't work in advance.
It's very hard to track.
You load the spreadsheet.
This is just ridiculous.
William LaRock from Locus, North Carolina.
In the morning, from Nancy, where police drones will be able to photograph any public gathering.
Thomas Weah from Nairsness in Norway.
Double nickels on the dime.
We had a big double nickels on the dime push in the newsletter.
Which we're resurrecting.
Sir Andrew Harris from Durham NC. Okay, I got it.
Kilo Charlie Zero Whiskey.
I can't read it.
Kansas City Zero World War II. Yeah.
Samuel Lichtenstein in New York City, New York.
5510.
These are all double nickels on the dime.
Christopher Pierce in Pasadena, California.
Served Dean Bertram Barron of someplace or other.
You can spread that out.
The Gold Coast.
Oh, the Gold Coast.
Andrew Salzberger in Alf...
What?
Elfter?
Elfter, Deutschland?
Elfter, Deutschland, yeah.
Ben Smith in Greenville, Texas?
Hold on, he's not on the list either.
He says he's giving himself a birthday present.
Okay, we'll put him on the list.
Ben Smith.
Come on, Eric.
Ben Smith, 529.
Okay.
Eric Hochul in Berlin, Deutschland.
Jean-Claude Schmid in Irvine, California.
And then we have $50 donations from Robert Yetter in Denver.
Timothy Kiernan in Bellevue, Michigan.
Charles Anderson in Cranberry, New Jersey.
David Dural in...
Front Royal, Virginia.
Peter Totes from Parts Unknown.
Shad Rich and Abednego in Seattle, Washington.
Finally, our famous anonymous lesbian from Parts Unknown who comes in with another $50 donation with a smiley face.
No real long note this time.
I do want to read Eric Newman's note because I thought it was kind of interesting.
Okay.
Enclosed double nickels on the dime donation for your miraculous work producing no agenda.
People have said this show offers sanity.
And this reminds me because our anonymous lesbian always writes sanity down in the memo at the bottom of the check.
This show offers sanity to me.
It offers much more than that.
It provides my essential mental programming and counter-programming needed to survive the propagandistic media hellscape of the 21st century.
I have to admit, I listen to each show repeatedly, probably four full-time start to finish.
Wow!
We don't even do that.
Squeezing out every last minute of No Agenda's juicy goodness.
The best example I can give of your analysis on net neutrality, you guys are the only news outlet I've actually heard play a clip of Brian Roberts, Comcast CEO, talking about Comcast's planned tiered data service model and how, much like life, classes of packets must, much like...
Classes of people must be treated differently to manage effective flow through the network or society.
It was also nice to hear with real examples that this was not just another example of corporate collusion to screw consumers and Leo Laporte out of bandwidth, but more of a transition to a pay-for-what-you-use model.
My biggest problem is what happens when you have to repeatedly download gigabytes of updates for Windows.
Oh, yeah, thank you.
Very, very good question.
Good question.
Sorry for the rant, but I just wanted to share my love and value with the best podcast in the universe.
I'd also appreciate some client karma from our hardest working web designer in Pennsylvania.
And he has a birthday.
We have you on the birthday list.
Client karma on its way right here for you, my friend.
You've got karma.
That's very...
Actually, I did have a...
I was actually going to give...
Are you doing Twit today?
Today?
Yeah.
No, because today is Thursday.
Yeah.
You can still go up there if you want, see if they'll have you.
Well, actually, if I go up there, there's a great meat market in the area in Petaluma that's not open on Sunday, and it irks me.
Well, I'll get to it right after we do.
We do have a nighting, thank goodness, and we've got a couple of birthdays.
But first, remind us, John, how much we need everybody's support.
We do need support, especially with the upcoming Sunday show.
I want to remind people to go to dvorak.org slash na channel, dvorak.com slash na.
Or if you go to the No Agenda Show website, noagendashow.com or noagendanation.com, there's a button you can push, and it takes you to an alternative donation site.
It doesn't have all the options, but at least you get in on something.
And we recommend you do that right now.
Yes.
Vorak.org slash N-A So here we go, Michael Greer, of course, celebrating today, 40 years old, and that comes from the love of his life, Sarah Greer.
Ben Smith celebrates today.
Happy birthday to you.
Christine Zachman says happy birthday to Leatherface Dan Yeager, turning 50 on the 31st.
Eric Newman will be celebrated on the 24th.
And Jean-Claude Smith says happy birthday to his brother Andre Schmidt, 31 on May 28th, yesterday.
Happy birthday from all your buddies here at The Best Podcast in the Universe.
And then we have Lucas Ziva, who has been working on his knighthood for a while, I believe.
And very happy to welcome Lucas into the illustrious table of the knights and the dames.
There it is.
Thank you.
Let me get mine here for a moment.
Okay.
Lucas Ziva!
D-Z-I-E-W-A-A. Step forward, my friend, and kneel as we can now bring you into the No General Roundtable of Knights and Dames, and I hereby pronounce the Sir Lucas Knight of the No General Roundtable for you, my friend.
Oh, we got hookers and blow, rent boys and chardonnay, whiskey and wet knives, wet knives, bad science and perky breasts, Cuban cigars and single malt scott, cannabis and cabernet, Three gashas and a bucket of fried chickens, vodka and vanilla, bong hits and bourbon, sparkling cider and escorts, or just mutton and mead.
Your choice.
Go to noagendanation.com slash rings and we'll get one out to you ASAP. And thank you for supporting the show, the work, and your own health, really.
Mental and physical.
It's a healthy podcast.
And a diet podcast.
A what?
We've talked about this.
A diet podcast?
Yeah, you can lose weight listening to us because you won't be just obsessing on eating chocolates and sweet things to try to get through the day.
We've talked about this.
Somebody came up with this thing and realized this is a weight loss show.
Fact.
Fact.
It should be another entry in the podcast awards.
I give Leo Laporte a lot of crap.
You do?
Come on, you know I do.
Let me explain why to people out there, listeners, because he won't bring you back on the show.
Right.
But I need to give him some props.
Okay.
I'd like to do that in the form of a clip, which is somewhat long, from Security Now with Steve Gibson.
I have to say, I was very, very, very impressed with what happened.
I don't even know if Leo actually knows how good it was.
He had a guy on, Brett Glass, I think is his name?
Yeah.
And he runs a wireless ISP. And this Brett guy, I recognize, he's been around for a while, I think, right?
Yeah, I just know him.
Tell me, tell me about him.
He seems like a stand-up guy.
Yeah, no, he's just a real down-to-earth guy.
He works for a living.
Did you see this interview by any chance?
No, I did not.
I'm on all ears.
Okay.
I've heard about it, though.
Yes, and I've clipped it.
It was very long, but I've clipped this down.
I've cut it down to the essence of what is going on.
Now, Brett is an ISP, so he is, in essence, no difference from Comcast.
Other than that, he doesn't have the install base of Comcast, doesn't have the money that Comcast has, but he has the same issues with bandwidth usage, which has skyrocketed.
His clients, of course, are also all using Netflix.
This is the real problem that has sparked this net neutrality debate, which got broken down into the actual...
The reason why we're seeing all these lobbies jump up, this lobbying, which is all paid for, non-profits, all filtered down and completely almost untraceable.
And I found the entire conversation interesting.
We will stop a couple times throughout the clip to discuss, and let me just pick it up here.
If we want there to be still more competitive providers, we want to be very careful about how we regulate, because if the regulations make it tough to start up a new business, if it makes it tough to make a profit, Then you're going to have fewer and fewer and only the large companies that have other sources of revenue, like the cable companies which provide you with TV. Now, this, of course, fits into our assessment of the situation.
Of course, Comcast wants to be treated as utility because they're the biggest.
And once they're the biggest and they have to have some rules, which will not be all that horrible, for them, they'll be the incumbent.
No one's going to jump in and try and do it with fixed pricing and all kinds of bullcrap.
The default provider, which is why they love it.
...are going to be able to survive.
Now, you also talked about Netflix, and that's an interesting situation for our ISP in particular.
Our bandwidth is very expensive.
People watching Netflix, and believe me, this is the first thing that they ask us about.
Whenever they call and they ask for service, they say, can I receive Netflix?
Can I stream Netflix in HD? This, by the way, is very sad to hear.
That the Internet...
With all its beauty and everything that has been created over decades has come down to people wanting to have Netflix.
Well, actually, I make it more pathetic in my new speech where it comes down to Netflix.
It all boils down to this.
The revolution, the computer revolution boils down to Netflix and Facebook.
Yeah, that is very depressing.
There's nothing else.
The difference is, if you're using Facebook, you are not clogging up the network like you are when you are using Netflix.
No, the one's clogging up the network and the other one's not, but that's beside the point.
Now, let's also just point out the reason people are so into Netflix is because it's very cost-effective for your Hollywood entertainment versus what the cable companies have been offering.
If you want the full gamut and the packages the way they set it up, you're paying a minimum of $100 a month, probably more.
And if you can just get internet access, that's what everybody wants.
Internet access, Netflix, I've got my Hollywood entertainment.
And they can cut the cord on all the other stuff.
So obviously this is about money, but again, it is very sad that the internet, the revolution has boiled down to Netflix and Facebook.
Thank you for depressing us.
Very first question.
They will not subscribe to your ISP if you can't provide that.
Right away, they want to be able to do that.
And so it's something which you must do as an ISP. Netflix has the market power here.
If Netflix were to refuse to serve our customers or somehow disadvantage our ISP, they could do bad things to us.
They could basically deprive us of a lot of our customers.
Not the other way around.
We don't have a choice.
We must carry Netflix.
We must make sure that the quality is good.
They have a choice.
They can afford to either serve us well or not.
Netflix recently went to Comcast.
A very large ISP. And they agreed to pay them money To connect directly into their network instead of going through a content distribution network like Level 3 or Akamai.
Go directly into their network to provide higher quality service to their customers.
Which, by the way, I think I've always said I hope that we get down to multiple internet networks where there is, there should be a Hollywood internet.
Please, let there be a high speed, high bandwidth thing that you connect to that is only for that.
And here we are.
Now we have this situation and Netflix has brought themselves into the network where they really do belong, no different than the set-top boxes that the cable companies already provide.
And they actually paid Comcast money to build this facility and so it could happen.
And so Comcast customers are getting a special deal from Netflix.
Well, I went and I called up Netflix and I said, okay, well, I've got an ISP too.
Will you do the same thing for me?
And they said, oh no, we're not going to do anything like that.
You are going to have to pay thousands of dollars per month to run a special connection to us and then host one of our servers in your facility, which is something that ISPs normally charge for.
That's your problem?
And so now you're seeing where this is coming down to a division of money.
The customer ultimately pays for everything anyway.
All of the costs wind up coming back to the customer.
The question is, of what's left, who gets to keep which part?
This is very key.
And this is what's really going on with Netflix.
Netflix, and also to a certain extent Google and Amazon and all of the other large content providers...
Pay attention now.
I'm paying attention.
These are being called content providers.
...have set themselves up in a tug-of-war with ISPs over who is going to get what share of the total amount of money that the customer is shelling out for their internet connection and for the content.
People should pay in proportion to the resources that they use.
Ultimately, the internet customer who is streaming 24 hours a day should pay more for that than the one who just uses the web and email.
I think we can all agree on that.
We can all agree on that.
That's not the issue.
This is interesting.
All of a sudden, everybody agrees that metered bandwidth is...
Well, that's just unbelievable to me.
That's new, right?
This is new.
This would be, we can all agree.
Of course, he gave it as a leading question.
In fact, if you listen to these other debates that have been going on for the past two or three weeks, they can't all agree.
But now they're all agreeing, okay, fine, let's go.
And most people would also like their monthly bills to be predictable and fixed.
Now, this is the key.
People hate caps.
They hate...
Overage charges.
They hate surprises.
They really want to pay a fixed amount per month for everything, whether it's their ISP bill or their bill to Netflix or whoever.
And so how can you make both of those things happen at the same time?
One good mechanism by which this could be done is what's called a two-sided market.
A two-sided market is sort of like a newspaper, where the cost of the newspaper is borne in part by the subscriber who pays to get it delivered, in part by the advertisers who pay to get it printed, and also as the paper gets thicker, they pay more and more to cover the increased cost of printing it.
Well, you can have the same thing in the Internet.
People can pay a fixed fee for their basic ISP connection, and then if they decide to stream day and night, What they can do is they can pay a fixed fee to the content provider, like Netflix, and then Netflix can pay a little bit of that back to the ISP to cover the extra resources that all of this streaming takes.
Now this is the basic issue, and I was surprised, and it was really nice to hear this, Brett, Brett is his name?
Yeah, Brett Glass.
Surprised to hear him explain this so clearly.
This is, of course, flawed, but this is the reason, because the ISPs, the broadband providers, particularly the cable companies, have mistreated their customers by giving them basically a free ride for a long time, and now their system is breaking down as to how it has to be paid.
They don't want to...
Move to a billing model that will piss people off and maybe have them look for alternatives, which I think the alternatives are building.
This is why this is an issue now and why they'd love to become a utility and lock it all in.
And their solution is very interesting.
And this is where, for the first time, I'm going to say Leo's on the right side of the argument.
Their solution is to go to the...
Yeah, it's the Netflix today, but of course it could be Twit tomorrow or anybody.
And say, I don't know, you've got to charge these people some money and give us a piece of the money for the bandwidth that will be used in our network.
It's very interesting that this is, that Brett lays it out like this.
Well, there's a couple of things.
I agree, I think it's, we have to always remember what happened, the history of cable.
You there?
Yeah, I'm listening.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I just went so silent.
I was thinking, wow, there's like no DBs coming.
Do you know that our noise gate is so good that certain Bluetooth headsets, when we go quiet, they disconnect.
Because it's an...
You've got to make a lot of racket.
Because it's all digital, it is zero signal.
So when the cable companies began, they began as CCTVs, community, television, blah, blah, blah.
Community...
Antenna access or something.
Yeah, community antenna, see AATV, something like that.
Somebody would set up a big antenna in the fringe area of some city, like San Francisco, let's say they'd be out by Vacaville, and they'd have these huge antennas, and they'd pick up the San Francisco stations, and then they'd stream them over the regular, like a cable.
To the normal cable, to the houses in the area, and now you can all get San Francisco TV and maybe some other channels.
And then, of course, these companies came along like HBO would be the progenitor, all of them.
And they'd come along and they'd add some value add to make these guys' business better.
And the cable company would pay HBO to carry its stuff.
And then they could use it as a leverage, as a sales pitch to sell more cable.
And it became a big phenomenon around the country with all these other guys like ESPN and people coming along.
And certainly when they discovered that they could insert local advertising, it became even more interesting.
And it took decades.
And it took a long time for this to develop.
Originally, there was these stations, like the local stations, who would beg these guys.
Oh, yeah, take us.
It gives us a bigger advertising area.
We'll pay you.
At one point, they were being paid the cable companies for carriage.
And then at some point, they got big enough that they could make the cable companies pay them.
Yep.
So you can't carry ABC unless you give them money.
Yep.
And so this thing can go back and forth on who, you know, the dog wagging the tail, the tail wagging the dog, and what was good about that clip, it showed that Netflix is now the tail wagging the dog.
Yes, exactly.
And that's a huge change, and this could be going on, we don't know who's wagging what, because even with, I don't know about you, but my Google on Comcast is not as snappy as it once was.
I agree.
I have had several times that Google services would not function.
I'd have to reload, essentially.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
And so I'm thinking, well, whose fault is that?
Is that Google throttling?
Or is it Comcast throttling?
Or is Google paying them for some peering?
Or are they paying Google?
Well, of course, we also know from...
I don't know any of this.
We also know historically the way the networks have built the internet is you would buy, let's say, a T1 and actually...
Everything is being oversold because the way the network theory goes, you're not going to have all people using the pipe equally at the same time and it kind of evens out.
That's why I have all these pricing models with bursting to certain capacity.
And we're just now down to the basic fact that video has ruined the model of it all works out in the end.
Right.
Because it is replacing the exorbitant fees that you have to pay for your Hollywood content through the cable company's set-top box.
Right, which is a complete rip-off.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, you can't watch...
If you get a big package, the Whopper, from any of these operations, Dish Network to Comcast, any of them, it's costing you $150 and up.
To have Showtime and HBO and all of it.
You can't watch Showtime while you're watching HBO. I mean, there's some operations.
You can have two different channels in two different rooms.
Yeah, sure, maybe you could.
But practically speaking, a person cannot watch two things at the same time.
They can record one while watching the other.
And sometimes you can go months without watching anything on HBO. There's nothing to watch.
There's no movie you're interested in.
There's no series you're following.
But you're still paying, and you can't do it.
And it's always been more appealing to me, and I've always thought about why I always wanted to get a C-band, was because I could put a C-band in the backyard and go on some of these websites where you can buy HBO for an hour.
Right.
And you get a bill.
And that's another part of the problem, is people like Amazon, for instance, you're dipping in and dipping out, paying on a per...
Per content piece basis.
But yeah, now we are down to...
As you say, it's sad, but yes, this great evolution of the internet has come down to Netflix and Facebook, and that's all the people care about.
And quite honestly, I'm not sure how this will come to a head.
Just a little bit more, Brett, because he was a nice guy.
I really think he has...
He wants to work out, but man, I think he's in the wrong place on this one.
And then you've met all the criteria that the customer wants.
You have fixed fees, and everything gets paid for, and it's fair.
And that's really his customer.
He's afraid to give his customer variable pricing, which, by the way, the customer is very accustomed to, but we've been lied to by the ISPs about this eat-all-you-want, but it's not so on mobile, it's not so with water, it's not so with electricity.
But what you hear from the network neutrality advocates, they scream when they hear this, oh no, the ISP is asking for ransom.
And the way the money flows in the end winds up being fair because the only people who are paying more than they would pay for their basic internet connection are the people who were signed up for Netflix and are going to be using the extra bandwidth.
So the chairman of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, went ahead and proposed that when they made some new rules to try to keep ISPs from misbehaving, they allow what's called two-sided markets.
This is interesting, because this has never been discussed that that is part of the deal.
And immediately, there was this tremendous hue and cry that you're hearing all over the internet.
Oh no, that's creating a fast lane!
Let's do it somehow unfair!
Most of this was actually the result of lobbying by Netflix and Google, who simply didn't want any of the money to flow back from them to the ISPs.
They wanted to keep it all.
Yeah!
Yeah!
Which we said, and I also said the same thing in that column I wrote.
Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely.
So when you hear people talking about that, a lot of it is due to the publicity campaigns by the content providers that want to keep more of the total money the customer is paying.
It doesn't make any sense at all, Brett.
Now, here's where Leo does a good job, I think.
Although, I don't know if he actually realizes what he's saying is correct in this context, but I was surprised.
You want us to shoulder a burden that you're unwilling to shoulder.
You offer, as an Internet service provider, free and open access to the Internet.
Do you not?
Yes, we do.
Well, that's your offer, and it's got to cost you what it costs you.
Well, bandwidth costs money.
I know.
I pay for it.
I have to pay you, too?
Well, yes.
Yeah, that's not going to work.
That's not going to work.
But what happens if it does?
If people scream for this net neutrality crap, which that's the messed up part, is people don't actually understand what they're screaming for.
I think it could go horribly wrong and we could wind up in this two-market situation.
And it could be exactly that.
Well, you've got to go horribly wrong because everything goes horribly wrong when the public is being manipulated by, like he said, the lobbyists, the public relations campaigns, Google, and Netflix, who have manipulated.
They've got the great buzz term, you know, net neutrality sounds good, and then they can just push out as much bad information as they can to get everyone all jacked up because they're going to screw you out of your Netflix somehow.
Yeah.
And everyone gets all up in arms about it.
They don't think about it.
And the next thing you know, it does go horribly bad because that's where it always goes.
It's going to go to something horrible.
But you saw this coming with the video thing with IPTV. No one wanted to believe it.
No one wanted to believe it.
This cannot go on.
And very good point, by the way, from our donor there.
Saying, oh, who pays for the gigabytes of updates of Windows?
And of course, Apple also has that.
Yeah, I've heard that one before.
That's a good one.
That's a great one.
Who's going to pay for that?
Do I have to pay for that?
And if I have five computers, am I paying for all of that?
Yeah, well, it's coming to a head.
And that's really the bottom line.
Yeah, and it's coming to a head where I think it's going to end up.
Regulation by the FCC, the government's going to get involved and everyone's going to be very sorry and they're going to look back and go, how did that happen?
And then what do we do?
And then what do you do?
You can't do anything at that point.
Because nobody's ever noticed this, but when something happens, the government takes over programs or it starts to regulate something, they don't stop.
It's not like they say, oh, well, let's shut that down.
When I was working for the air pollution district, I went back and looked at it, and it was in, I guess, the 70s.
I went back to the University of California Library and looked up the original paperwork for the agency that I was working for, which began in 1955, and I read the whole thing.
And this was, of course, happened during the London fog era.
I mean, a bunch of people died in London, remember that?
From the horrible fog, the killer fog.
Oh, yes, of course.
It was in the 50s.
So they started this agency.
The whole country was freaked out about it.
Our country was freaked out about it, not to mention the English.
And...
In there, it was very specific.
It said that this agency would have a 20-year lifespan and it would be shuttered in 1975.
That's how they sold it.
They sold it as a kind of look.
They do this with all the bridges they built in the Bay Area.
Oh, it's going to be toll-free after we pay for it.
No.
This agency that I'm talking about that was supposed to be shuttered in 1975, I believe that was the date, maybe sooner, is in business now.
This never goes, they never pull it back, they never pull the reins, they never shut anything down.
And the FCC, once it gets a hold of the internet, you can just kiss your free net neutrality and everything else goodbye for good.
There's one other additional issue which would solve a lot.
The copyright and licensing is a big problem in all this.
Most ISPs and also the whole advertising model also falls down because really the way it should work is you have a network, you're going to use smart caching for a lot of things.
A lot.
And you should definitely be caching these HD files just like you should be caching Microsoft updates and like you're caching images and you should have a cache in your home.
And there's a lot of different ways that this can be solved.
But because of licensing and DRM, this has become almost impossible for these large media files.
There's so much that has just been driven by greed and power and non-smartness.
It's pathetic.
It's really pathetic.
And where actually peer-to-peer, which works very well on network segments, or it should work very well, is really genius, but that has been kind of pushed out because, oh, that's only piracy.
You know, ham radio, baby.
Back to pack.
I'm going back to pack.
Ham and Hillary.
Back to pack it.
Ham and Hillary.
Back to pack it.
We'd be remiss if we didn't talk briefly about the EU election.
Yeah, I got a couple...
I think I may have one run down here that kind of summarizes some of it.
I got a bunch of EU clips.
What was your general take on what happened?
Uh...
Well, there was a low, very low turnout.
And the Euroskeptics, as they like to be called, or the far-right.
Neo-Nazis.
The Neo-Nazi far-right, or the Euroskeptics, probably pulled in a third of the very, you know, 25 to 35% of the very low turnout, which was, like, very low.
Except, interestingly, in the Netherlands.
Yeah.
Totally failed.
I actually have a breakdown of that.
Okay.
Because it's kind of interesting.
But let's play this.
The elections...
Well, actually, there's, yeah, there's, let me play this clip, which is the, there was a little poll done, and this is by Van Kat again, and they're talking, this is Doug Herbert, who is a better reporter than a pundit, but he is in studio talking about this little poll that was done showing that these far-right people were all just anti-immigration because they first attributed this swing of To bad economies.
But play this and I have a follow-up clip that kind of talks about the Netherlands.
That said, you're absolutely right.
There was an Ipsos poll done sort of on the eve of this election showing that immigration actually and anti-immigration platforms of almost all of the far-right parties trumped economic concerns.
Mm-hmm.
Alright, so that...
And by the way, that is a huge concern, although very weird how in the Netherlands that suddenly whipped around very strangely.
Well, that's why I want you to play the part two of that clip, and then we can talk about the Netherlands.
Okay.
Immigration is a threat to national identity.
This is what the far-right and the far-right sympathizers believe.
They believe that the more foreigners you have coming in, the more you have this dilution of...
Of some pure national identity and a threat to their very way of life.
So you had a real galvanizer of those who voted for the far right was this.
A rise in intolerance towards the other, so to speak.
People in their midst who don't necessarily look like what they think people from their country should look like.
You know, you had in Finland, the real Finland party, right?
You know, you're supposed to look Finnish in a certain way.
Xenophobia, obviously, by definition, xenophobia means fear of or mistrust of outsiders.
And then outright anti-immigration stances.
I talked about Geert Wilders in the Netherlands.
It's interesting because he didn't do very well, did he?
He didn't do well.
He did not do well.
However, and perhaps one of the reasons he didn't do well is he may have scared off some people with his comments.
He asked, what are we going to do about the Moroccans?
He said that on the eve of the vote.
But anti-immigration, this is going to be a continuing...
Yeah.
Now, he messed that up.
Well, here's...
Wait, wait.
You've got to...
This is the part that gets to me.
They do this poll.
They blame everything on immigration issues, even though that is an issue.
But then when it comes down to Wilders, who says he blames something on the Maroccas and everyone steps...
Now, all of a sudden, they step back and say, oh, that's racism or whatever they think to themselves.
In other words, this is a contradiction.
You can't say that these guys all won because of immigration issues, but then when the immigration issue is pushed one extra notch, they all back off unless it's not about immigration.
I don't think it is about immigration.
I think Wilders made it obviously in his case about immigration, and that's why he lost.
This is bullshit.
OK, so there's different cultures in different countries.
And the Netherlands has been hoodwinked for now going on 20 years with the most recent immigrant wave, which is, we'll just call it the Moroccans.
And this was part of a big push called the Multicultural Society.
And you'll recall that Pim Fortoune was very against the Muslim integration, and he was assassinated on the eve of the election, which his party won posthumously.
And that shut down everybody.
And that was a big shut-up slave moment.
And then we had Theo van Gogh, the filmmaker, who also, he made a film, and he was killed for that film, which was anti-Qur'an.
This will shut up a population, John.
And when Wilders came up and said, what are we going to do with the Moroccans?
We saw this, Mickey and I, we saw this debate happening and it was expertly manipulated.
There's one extra thing you need to remember in the Netherlands is the number of Jews who were persecuted and killed in the Netherlands was astronomical.
And Frank, we've got a lot of this stuff.
There's a huge history going on here.
And the kind of the centrum parties, and also we still have a religious faction, which is very strong.
They expertly took this.
And for the Dutch, and this is cultural, specifically to the Dutch, which I can speak to.
I can't really speak for other European countries.
They took the easy way out.
No one wants to be branded as a racist.
And I agree.
Wilders went too far with that particular statement, and it was a PR flub, and it was taken and, on the eve, completely manipulated and worked against him.
Because this is still the issue.
I think it is one of the issues.
But I don't think that Holland is immune anymore or sold out anymore than the French.
It's a cultural difference.
The French are known for standing up and getting in the streets and fighting.
The Dutch, not so.
Well, the British have been pushed around, too.
And again, I don't see it being...
Because this propagandistic thing about moving Europe into a Muslim world has been going on for a long time.
But it is actually happening.
Yeah, it is happening.
And I believe this is...
But it's one of these things, John, it's like people see it, they don't like it, but they're afraid to...
Because they've been guilted into feeling racist by saying, I don't want it!
That's the problem.
Well, I don't see that they're not being guilted the same way in England.
Well, that's why UKIP was branded racist and they did fantastic in the election.
Right, and we also get a lot of notes from certain producers who thought we were crazy, the two of us.
For extolling Farage as an interesting character who is going to have some influence.
It was, nah, that'll be the day.
This guy's a clown.
He's not going to ever get a vote.
And having lived in the UK for five years, a very short time, I have never been in a more racist country.
That's my personal opinion, my personal experience.
Yeah, you were in Japan just recently.
That's another story.
I wasn't there long enough.
I have five years in the UK, integrated in business and social life.
Wow, I found a lot of racism going on.
Blatant.
The culture is racist.
Most of those cultures in Europe are racist.
That's why they are still, you know, French are French and Brits are Brits and Germans are Germans.
They all have these opinions.
The Germans hate the Turks.
They think that, you know, they're the outsiders that are coming in.
And the Netherlands, before the Moroccans, had the Turks.
And before the Turks, it was the Surinamers.
And before that, it was, I think, the Irish or the Italians.
But when it hit the Muslims, and now they're in government.
And, you know, and I hear people, you know Taxi Eric, don't you?
Yeah, he's got me killed, this Taxi Eric.
Right, well, and you know what?
He is borderline racist, I would say, in his, no, he's a racist the way he talks about Moroccans, but I bet he didn't vote for Wilders.
I bet he said, oh, no, I'm an entrepreneur, and I don't want to be deemed a racist, and some Moroccans are my clients, and whatever.
Yeah, but it's a secret vote, isn't it?
You go to Holland, you don't have to come and say, yeah, I voted for so-and-so.
It's the culture.
In the Netherlands, it really is the culture, and a lot of it has to do with World War II, and it's being a collaborator, and a lot of crap...
Really bad cultural crap that scares people and they were taken advantage of.
The Netherlands, man, it's like they are complete drones.
Seriously, they are really drones to the media particularly.
Well, that's a shame.
Yeah.
It's a real shame.
So something did change.
I don't think it's really changed enough.
No.
I have a breakdown here of the way it's going to look in the Parliament.
Play the wrap-up.
That's got most of the information.
The wrap-up.
Yeah, got it.
Well, for more on this, let's bring in our international affairs editor, Douglas Herbert.
Doug, it's not the first time Europe's been through such a big crisis.
How big a blow is this for Europe?
I'm not going to try to understate, you know, what has happened.
You know, we've heard the words political earthquake used here in France.
And that's probably not an exaggeration by any sense.
But let's try to look for a tiny bit of perspective here.
The main thing is that the far-rights have made giant inroads, the biggest inroads in their history, especially in France, especially in Britain, a country like Denmark as well.
That said, they are not going to have a controlling faction in the European Parliament.
Let's just keep those figures in our minds.
You will still have centrist and conservative right-leaning parties, but not far-right parties, having about 520 of the 751 seats in the parliament, which is a controlling majority.
So you will still have, and presumably the next president of the European parliament, will presumably be someone who is able to steer Europe not in a far-right direction and be able to sort of snub the appeals of the far-right.
But that said, it's true.
There are now ticking time bombs, essentially.
Groups of political factions which are ticking time bombs, sitting within an institution, a European institution, which in the Treaty of Rome, which established Europe in 1957, what was their objective?
It was to move Europe gradually towards, quote, ever closer union.
And that is now the objective that you basically have a couple of hundred Europhobe and outright Europe hater deputies in the parliament working against.
You have people who want to either curb Europe's powers or, and this is the more extreme position obviously, abolish Europe altogether.
You might say it's a paradox.
You have people who don't believe in Europe who want to abolish the European Union sitting in the parliament to work for its dismantlement.
But I will say this.
There are several countries.
For all the countries that had far-right gains, you did have countries where they were setbacks.
The Netherlands being one of them with a party of Geert Wilders obviously did worse than in 2009.
The Finnish far-right party came third place in its position.
Slovakia, national party there.
We've talked about that in the past.
Didn't get a single person into parliament.
So it's not like across the board the far-right won.
But where it did win, it won very big.
And France always attracts attention.
Whatever happens here, second biggest economy in Europe.
All right, so bottom line is this has been going on since the early 50s, and there's no stopping it, and so this is a little setback, and it will continue.
This is the new world order.
We will eventually have the Trilateral Commission bringing everything together.
We may not witness it, but that has always been the mission.
The only way is if we collectively all just say, no, I'm opting out of all of this.
Well, that's not going to happen.
I don't think that's going to happen.
I'm sad about that, but...
Well, you know, it's good.
The little bumps in the road are handy.
It gives us something to talk about.
It's very handy for the show.
You've been around just a little bit longer than I have, John, but is this just more of the same?
Has it always been this way?
And are we just...
We have more access to it that it seems crazier because...
I don't even think it's that so much.
We do have a lot of access to stuff, but the internet and the rest I think just brings us more celebrity news.
I think what it is is that over time, as the public, all you have to do is watch some of these great channels like MeTV and some of these things that have old shows on them, and you realize what's happened is that the media itself has gotten so sophisticated and so good that At keeping people, you know, keeping people nervous and scared and all the rest of it.
The way it was done with Walter Cronkite and Huntley and Brinkley is not the way it's done anymore.
The public gets used to, oh, this is bullcrap, and then they start, you know, actually relaxing a little bit.
No, no, no, no.
We've got to keep them on edge because, like you said earlier, it's to keep people addicted to this material.
Engaged is the word.
Engaged.
Yeah, right.
Engaged.
They have to be engaged.
So they go to the movies and they spend money on crap and stuff they're told to buy.
And they work to make the money to buy some sneakers.
And the way it's done today is really much better.
So if you're older, you've seen the old-fashioned one.
You've seen the new ways.
And I think it's just a matter of execution.
I don't think it's anything different.
Even my daughter...
Who has grown up with a certain set of values and questioning attitude.
I spoke to her the other day.
And she said, oh man, it's warm again.
We didn't even have a winter.
I'm worried.
What?
I'm worried.
Yeah, because all she's been trained in the past, you know, she's been out of my direct reach for a year, is, you know, the earth is going to kill us.
She actually, there's a lot of stuff she doesn't buy into, but she actually is worried.
Well, this is, again, you know, the thing about the No Agenda show where we have to keep reminding people because it's very...
I would say one month away from the show and you're back.
I think for me, too, if we weren't doing the show.
One month in and all of a sudden the meme starts setting in and you get...
Because it's really good.
These guys that are running the media and the...
And it's only a couple of companies, really, when you look at it.
It's only five companies at most.
Yeah.
These guys are so good today at just hypnotizing you, making you think a certain way, and getting you into the position where you're buying crap.
Essentially, it's just to sell stuff.
We are a mercantile country.
What are you going to do?
It's not just this country, man.
Well, the whole world is mercantile.
It's worse in Asia, actually.
If they had more money, holy mackerel, we wouldn't know what was going on.
Anyway, so it's just the way it is.
But I always like to think there's a way out, and there's a positive...
There's no way out.
There was John Paul Sartre, I think, had a play, or a book, No Way Out.
I think it still applies.
I don't like thinking that way.
Where's my unicorns and rainbows, man?
Come on!
Come on, give me some unicorns and rainbows!
No way out.
It was a 1987 movie with Gene Hackman.
So did you just give up and only listen to our show just to stay up to date and stay healthy?
No way out.
And just read some books and watch some plays.
Oh yeah, no, people do that.
That is the way out.
And play cards or chess or mahjong or some strategy games.
If you cut off the media and read books...
Well, here's my tip.
This has changed my life dramatically.
And people say, man, you're crazy.
You'll be tracked by that.
You know that guy who talks to me like that.
Yeah, that guy.
Get rid of your phone.
And buy just a tablet or anything that's handy.
Just a Wi-Fi.
And it will change your life.
Because you go to places and you can't...
you literally cannot communicate, unless you know, with your Wi-Fi password.
So if you need to, or if you're gonna be in a place where you come regularly or we need some access, of course, there's always some solution that you can get.
But the casual checking in the car, all of that is gone, and it is so liberating.
It really...
And you don't need to be...
No, you're not a doctor on call, a heart surgeon, where you need the beeper.
I remember when I had the first mobile phone, one of the first mobile phones in the Netherlands, which was basically a battery with a handset attached to it.
Big giant battery.
Big giant battery.
I'm talking 10 pounds.
Nah.
Yeah, probably close to 10 pounds.
And people would say, what do you need that?
Were you a doctor?
What are you, a fire brigade?
What do you need that for?
And you don't.
That's the way it used to be.
No, you don't.
But now, apparently, you do.
By the way, John Paul Sartre wrote No Exit.
Ah, No Exit, right.
And in some translations, it came out as No Way Out.
Okay.
Yeah.
And he's no slouch.
No.
But no, there's no way out.
No exit.
You don't carry a phone everywhere you go, do you?
No, rarely.
I mean, I have the phone.
Now, when I carry it, actually, I ran out of minutes.
This is the first time this has happened.
Oh, wait a minute.
Net neutrality.
You've just been capped.
I have a $30 a month plan, and I get 100 minutes in unlimited text and unlimited data.
So I usually text people, and I use the data plan for surfing a little bit, but I use the phone mostly for navigation, especially when I was in Detroit, I used it a lot.
But because I was in Detroit for so long, I used up my 100 minutes.
This is another thing that I've noticed, because I can't use my iPod Touch for navigation.
Because it's not connected.
Which makes no sense to me, but okay.
What do you mean makes no sense?
You should be able to use it for navigation.
No.
It should be connected.
That would be a great navigating device.
No, because it has no connection to the network to bring in the maps, nor does it have a GPS in it.
Right.
It's useless.
You know what happens?
You'll be surprised.
I plan my trip.
Oh, and you actually look at a real map?
Well, I use Google Maps, and I plan my trip, and I sometimes do it on the device and take a screenshot, so there's my route, and I pay attention to where I'm driving all of a sudden.
I'm looking at stuff, I'm seeing things I haven't seen before, and I have more situational awareness...
Of where I am and where I'm going.
And I'm not just a drone who's like, turn right now.
Actually, you can't...
Now, I have to say this.
The Google Maps on the phone have deteriorated.
I think they're in the third generation.
Everyone's been worse.
This latest one, we were trying to get to a bank yesterday, and this is telling you to go left, right, left, right in the same minute, and then it tells you to turn around when you're not...
It's horrible.
Google Maps on the phone are almost getting to the point where it's useless.
Yeah.
But yeah, and I agree, and people also, I agree that you should probably not get too reliant on them.
You should figure out how to get there.
Well, besides that, what happens if the network goes down?
How will we figure out how to go anywhere?
Well, there's that.
Or the GPS system gets jammed or turned off or any of that could happen.
Which will happen.
But just for your sanity, that's all I'm saying.
For your sanity, give it a try.
Give it a try.
You actually do know how to get to work.
You know the ways around it.
You know the traffic flows.
This is my tip.
It will make you feel better.
Get rid of your phone.
Get a Wi-Fi only device that you can, when you're at a destination, when you need it, you can use it.
You will feel better for it.
You will have more interaction with people.
And stay off the television.
And you know, yes.
And what you'll notice, you'll notice how other people are enslaved to this.
Seriously, we're at...
They're always looking at the device and they're walking on the street looking at the device.
There's a couple of good videos where people almost got killed crossing the street.
We had one of those, the couple's dinner, it was like six of us, and at a certain point, it's like birds flying in formation.
Everyone's like, on their phone, and it's a moment of silence, and of course, I had no Wi-Fi access, and I'm like...
I'm just going to look at porn that I already downloaded or something because everyone's on their phone here.
And no one really got the joke.
No one really understood that everyone just went to their phone.
It was like a non-discussed moment of checking in on stuff.
Yeah, what is so damn important?
I think if you go back to your original thesis where you had the big battery phone in Holland, I said, what do you need that for?
What are you, a doctor?
What are you on call?
What's the point?
Which should be used as the argument today, but no.
As B.B. Netanyahu said, you're a slave!
That's what he said.
You're a slave to your device, and he's absolutely right.
So that is something you can do.
And you know what?
I gotta write a post about this or something.
I think a lot of people will find it very hard.
I bet it's an addiction and they can't get off.
I bet you they're freaking out if they don't have their phone.
A lot of people.
I bet 90% of the people listening to our show cannot do it.
And Facebook's the same way.
There are people that cannot quit Facebook.
It's interesting because you actually talk to people.
I mean, on the phone.
I never talk to them.
No.
Mickey sometimes calls me and I say...
Well, actually, that's why I have a landline because I've got the sonic.net deal, which gives you a landline for free.
And landlines are so much better than cell phones.
And I still don't understand why people don't have them because there's no latency.
You're talking right to somebody.
And yeah, I talk to people on the phone.
And it doesn't go down when the power goes out.
Right.
You don't have to say, oh, my battery's good dying.
I gotta hang up.
Mickey is the only person who calls me sometimes.
And I always say, oh man, why do you call me?
We don't have good communication because there's a delay and it feels wrong.
It's really strange.
He's the only person that calls me.
Nobody else calls me.
And if it just goes to Google voicemail, I don't give a crap.
Go ahead, because that's the only number I really have.
For a little bit of texting.
My daughter, you know, we do Skype or whatever.
You know, we communicate through email and other things.
You don't need the phone.
You don't need the constant connection.
Give it a try.
You will feel better for it.
It's like stopping smoking.
I swear to God.
It's almost that liberating.
We're like, wow, look at these.
Oh man, you're sucking on the man.
You gotta smoke that thing.
Oh my God, you're going outside in the rain.
And I was that guy.
And now you'll be like, oh my god, you're on your phone.
Look what's happening.
Your kid is running the marathon and you're on your phone.
There are people that go outside to go on the phone now too.
Just like the smokers.
They're outside on the phone making personal calls on company time.
That's the way I see it.
I guarantee you, even if you have a high-end, high-powered job and you need to be in constant contact, which a lot of people say they need, you can do that.
With Wi-Fi only.
You can do that.
I guarantee you, you can do it.
It may feel uncomfortable, but once you're there...
How long have I been without a phone, John?
A year?
Maybe?
Probably close to a year.
Not quite a year, I don't think.
Well, it's a fabulous feeling.
Yeah, and then nobody's tracking you either.
Well, of course.
There's all kinds of ways you can track when I log into a Wi-Fi, but not constantly.
And, of course, I always have my portable 2-meter, 70-centimeter dual-band handy-talkie with me for any emergencies.
I could really get a whole community going in seconds if I needed it.
And you're not going to bookstores buying Catcher in the Rye.
No, I already have it.
And, of course, there will be 10 people in the audience that will get that joke.
I'm saying five.
I can guarantee ten.
All right, everybody, thank you very much for tuning in to the podcast.
Thank you all for supporting us, especially our executive and associate executive producers, everyone else who supported us.
We do need more for Sunday to keep it going.
There'll be a lot, I'm sure, as there always is, as we continue to bring you your healthy news diet.
Coming to you from FEMA Region 6 here in Austin, Texas, in the morning, everybody, I'm Adam Curry.
And from northern Silicon Valley, I'm John C. Dvorak.
We'll be back on Sunday right here on No Agenda.
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