We'll also be looking at what happened in the 'foiled' terror attack in France, Thailand's worst ever such attack, and some of the latest extreme weather events from around the world.
Tune in for all that and more this Sunday 23rd August 2015, from 2-4pm EST / 7-9pm GMT / 8-10pm CET
Running Time: 01:53:00
Download: MP3
Here's the transcript of the show:
Niall: Hello and welcome to Behind the Headlines on the Sott Radio Network. I'm Niall Bradley; my co-host, as always, Joe Quinn.
Joe: Hi there.
Niall: And we're joined again this week by the lovely Amari Roos.
Amari: Hello everyone.
Niall: She's an editor with Dutch Sott.net. Which is nl.sott.net; and we'll be looking back at another crazy week on planet Earth. Planes falling out of the sky; planes getting smacked with hail in the sky; wars...
Joe: Rumours of wars.
Niall: ...people on the move en masse.
Joe: Because of wars.
Niall: Terror attacks everywhere.
Joe: Because of wars.
Niall: Because of wars. It's more of the same folks. If you listen to this show regularly you know the deal and if you're new to the show, you're in for a surprise.
Joe: And if you're not listening to the show...
Niall: You couldn't give a damn what's going on out there! That's not necessarily the case.
Joe: Let's address all those not listening to the show right now... (Coughs) Yeah, silence, there you go. Dead air. Dead air to them; anyway, carry on!
Niall: So, let's open up with this immigration crisis. I don't know if that's the politically correct term to use.
Joe: It's 'Muslim Migrants', double-M there, double jeopardy. Muslim Migrants. It's bad enough to have migrants swarming all over the place like ants, but if they're Muslims', (exhales) Jeez. I mean. Doomsday scenario, you got to pull the doomsday switch on that one.
Niall: Didn't they warn us this would happen? The Muslims would take over Europe and institute Sharia Law.
Joe: People have been writing books on it for the last 30 years; there's that guy - I can't remember his name right now [Samuel P. Huntington], who wrote that book the Clash of Civilisations [and the remaking of the new world order], that was supposedly used, to extent, to inform Neo-con policy - I think he wrote it in the 80's of taking - and it supposedly informed the Washington Neo-con policy of taking over the world, basically, it posited that there was this fundamental difference between east and west; Muslim and Christian; it was predestined to always come into conflict.
But of course, it ended up being a self fulfilling prophecy. You get psychos or schizoids like that who write those kinds of things when there's no real basis for it. Except in the context where you create it. You can make it if you want, and that's exactly what they did. They looked at east and west and said, "Well there is no clash. There's no clash between these two. And we don't see any potentially coming down the line. So let's create one, let's manufacture a clash of civilisations, and then we can tell everybody, "See, it's true".
Niall: Well that's just one of the things on my mind. To what extent is this, a kind of over-hyped media type crisis, as opposed to a real one?
Joe: Well, in recent years, what I was talking about there, it has become under the aegis of the War on Terror and the Muslim terrorists attacking the freedom and peace loving, lefty liberal bleeding heart types in the west, because they're not strong enough to face them. And they would come in and Muslim-ify us all and make us all submit to Sharia law; make us all wear burkas - including the men - and it would just be horrible for you average, pasty white westerner. And the evidence for this was this Muslim terror threat, that would eventually, establish a caliphate - or whatever - over at least all of Europe, and then "next we take Washington DC", type of thing. So, this is the ridiculous rhetoric as defined on things like Bill O'Reilly Show in the US, CNN and Fox in the US, they actually promote it, they have been promoting, this ridiculous idea, and scaremongering people over it. All in the context of the 'War on Terror' that began on, let's say, 9-11.
But what we're seeing today, what we're discussing in terms of the refugee or immigration crisis in Europe is a kind of Muslim hoard, but they not conquering, they're fleeing in desperation from the war that western politicians have unleashed on their countries.
Niall: Yeah, that's strangely lacking in the mainstream media narrative.
Joe: They don't really tend to go there; no.
Niall: Yeah, they're coming mainly from Syria, Libya and Afghanistan. "Isn't it awful"; yeah, it's awful.
Joe: I wonder why that happened. I wonder what's wrong with their own country, don't they like it there?
Niall: No you see, they 'love our freedoms'!
Joe: Ah, they're coming for their freedoms.
Niall: They're coming for their freedoms and democracy.
Joe: "Show me the freedoms!"
Niall: It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable how they just avoid mentioning the fact that they're NATO war refugees. They're fleeing the hell we've created over there. Anyway, I want to give some idea of numbers because there are different figures floating around. I've got some here. Did any of you get any idea of how many people we're talking about, millions?
Amari: Probably. I don't have the number here, but it says that the 2014 figure, of asylum claims in the EU was the highest since the peak in 1992. So, since 1992 we're having a lot refugees coming to Europe. So, like you said, it's in the millions and they are coming from Syria, Iraq, and Kosovo, Eritrea; mostly from the war-torn countries, or occupations. And I've been checking what some regular people have been saying and, in Holland, they have this way of thinking that these people are coming to Europe to take over their jobs and make their lives difficult, but they never think about why they're going there. And I've actually looked on social media, to see what kind of things they're saying, and...
Joe: Well that's where you get all the facts there days, according to the US state department.
Amari: Exactly.
Joe: As long as you use common sense as well, that combined with social media, is hard evidence. No, I'm kidding. There obviously is some decent information on social media, just not enough to justify Washington's Ukraine policy. But that's a different story, go ahead.
Amari: It gives an idea of how the media affects the news, the media, affects the minds of the people. For example, some people said; "God knows how many they've killed in their own country. They're all jihadi's and Muslims." Others say, "It's about time we got the KKK here.", "They still are pests, I say shoot them", "The soft police approach doesn't scare them", "When full is full, the Dutch population comes first." And there have been many comments like these; racial comments, calling them 'monkeys' and they, "go back to their monkey-land".
Joe: This is on Dutch social media?
Amari: Yes.
Joe: Well, the Dutch have a bit of history of that kind of thing, like the British as well. They don't think much of the dark skinned people.
Amari: And there are officials and politicians who say similar things. For example, Nadine Murano, a former French minister for Apprenticeship and Professional Formation, she complained that the French capital is, "becoming dirty as the uncontrolled influx of migrants proliferates prostitution, drugs and crime"; so that's her objective opinion on the matter.
Joe: Of course, white westerners; white French people just have never engaged in those types of activities ever, it was just unheard of before.
Niall: Never! Obviously the EU has had to pretend it's tackling this issue head on. I tried to get an idea of a number from them; they don't have one. They don't have an overall figure. But let's look at Greece alone.
Joe: A hundred and sixty thousand?
Niall: A hundred and sixty thousand. Twenty thousand arrived last week.
Joe: A hundred and sixty thousand since the beginning of this year. Which is seven or eight times the number that came in the same period last year. So, that's a 7-800% hundred percent increase in the numbers last year. What do you put this down to? Well, when you talk about Libya, Syria, Afghanistan - Afghanistan is still boiling over, despite the best intentions of the US military, or because of the best intentions of the US military. It seems that it takes a few years for these things to filter down. If you look at Libya and Syria, you're talking 2011, for both of those when they were subjected, initially, to NATO bombing and attempts at regime change. In the past three or four years since then, it seems that the situation there has ripened to the extent where a large number of people are ready or have already left and are filtering westwards. It took that amount of time. I suppose people would tend to stick around for the first year or two to try and work things out. But when they see it's not going to end, it's only getting worse; they eventually decide to leave, in the interests of their own lives.
Niall: Yeah, there is a backlog of people. The best EU estimate for refugees from anywhere, crossing the Med, this year so far, is 264,000, that's over a quarter of a million. Right now, there are 1.6 million Syrian refugees, in Turkey, planning on going to Greece. How do they know that? Well I guess these are people in camps, positioned close to the borders of Greece. There are another 2 million Syrians in Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, and there are another 6.5 million still within Syria, trying to get out. All told, you're talking about 10 million Syrians, of a population of 25 million; gives you some idea of how royally messed up the country has become. Thanks to US proxy warfare!
Joe: Close to fifty percent of the population displaced.
Niall: And with that backlog, you can imagine there are far more to come. So, in this respect, this is not an over-hyped issue, this is definitely happening. Two thousand people died on ships trying to cross the Med this year. The question becomes, in what way is it hyped and to what ends?
Joe: Well they're using it; British prime minister and various EU criminal elite types, have been using it to increase their own authority, scaremonger effectively. To make the people of their own country afraid, so they're hyping the fear aspect of it, using the kind of words; that they use, talking about 'marauding hoards' and 'swarms'.
Niall: David Cameron, 'Just call me Dave', said recently, "There migrants are a swarm of people from Africa"
Joe: Uh huh. And I think it was the foreign secretary, Phillip Hammond, who said they were, "marauding across Europe". So, those words are obviously very emotionally charged and convey something to the average person which is, 'you've got to be afraid of these people'. What's interesting to me is that, I think it was just last year that, ISIS-ISIL-IS - whatever you want to call them - these mercenaries, unleashed on the middle east, by Saudi Arabia, in connivance with the Turks and the Americans and the Brits, and the Canadians; all the paragons of democracy and freedom, especially Saudi Arabia who likes to chop the heads off people. ISIS said last year, when there was a crisis with a lot of boats going across, from north Africa to Italy, ISIS supposedly put out this statement that they were going to, as their form of asymmetric warfare, was to send one million migrants-refugees throughout Europe and amongst them would be, ensconced ISIS members who would be ready to carry out attacks.
It's interesting that someone had 'ISIS' or whoever they are; put this statement out, in advance, to set the narrative of what and who these migrants were. Essentially to make the west fear them; that suggests to me that the powers that be in Europe and the west in general, knew this was happening and was going to happen, and they wanted to present it in a very particular light to the western population. They more than likely don't want them to come but also want to use the threat of them coming as a way to encourage the average person in the west to look to authority for protection; which is the main goal, of most people in authority in this world. Is to have the people, over whom they rule, extremely dependent on them and afraid of an external threat. It's such an old tactic, it's so boring, I'm bored of seeing it happen and I'm even more bored of seeing it actually work on people, still, today. When they can't even put two and two together, basically and see that these idiots are deliberately trying to scare us, so let's not be scared; apparently that's beyond most people.
Even though they've had multiple opportunities to see that in action, and to just even use a few of their brains cells, to figure out that extremely basic and simplistic ruse, and see through it. Nope; doesn't work, good job human beings. Not.
Niall: Here's the thing; short of manipulating the situation in this way, by bringing in terrorism, 'the War on Terror, the fear of Muslims, there are enough facts on the ground for them to simply report what is at this point and to have people naturally go, "Oh, Jesus Christ". But the Brits, they're looking at what's going on in Calais, where people are so desperate they're throwing themselves on train tracks and into transport vehicles entering the UK. That's at one end, the far end of western Europe, where the least of them have made it that far, at the other end, the port of entry, primarily Greece, where it's currently got a left wing government, not doing too well but nevertheless, it's not under the sort of regime that would jump the gun to take advantage of this in the, these are 'aliens', these are the 'other'. And Greece has the reality where tiny islands have nowhere to put them but inside stadiums, and riots are breaking out. Westerners are seeing facts that weren't manipulated, to make them see "Jesus Christ this is a serious problem". So, the situation has caught up with their narratives, to the point where they don't even need to manipulate people anymore.
Joe: Yeah, the thing is, it depends on the people in general. Amari just wrote an article that's on English Sott, about this issue and she mentioned the fact that Greece is doing quite a lot, or trying to do a lot to help these refugees; much more than the EU central powers themselves, or even the UN, to help this situation whereas Greece is doing all it can. (https://www.sott.net/article/300592-Victims-of-Western-wars-forced-to-flee-their-countries-called-swarms-of-marauding-people-by-Western-warmongering-politicians) and this may be the aftermath of them being, as you wrote earlier Niall, the economic.... (Bad audio) ...by EU and put in an extremely precarious economic situation. So, it's very interesting, that this one country Greece, that has been screwed over in this way economically, and looted by the EU central powers, is doing the most to actually help. First of all, it's the country that's bearing the brunt of the refugees and it's doing the most to help them; while the EU powers that just looted Greece are turning a blind eye and going, "Whatever, you deal with it." They basically said that, right Amari?
Amari: Yeah.
Niall: There were EU summit meetings on this issue. The idea being to come up with a joint plan, where they would allot a certain number of incoming refugees to different countries - so, that crashed and burned.
Joe: That's what they're saying they have to do but apparently none of them wanted to do it! And the thing is, very few people have actually in the EU have actually seen these people on their doorstep. But the people in southern Greece, who are seeing them, probably have a very different and a much more humanitarian approach to the situation because they see ordinary people suffering, with children, etc. So, they're not going to turn around and see them as the EU would like them to see them, as these evil terrorists type of thing, "put them all in boats and sink them". But that's a luxury for people further west, and it's interesting that countries further west, buffered against this crisis, who don't have to face it full on, they are not having to deal with it, and therefore have the luxury of saying, "cockroaches, swarms and their marauding"; they can make these extremely unempathic judgements about these people because they don't know anything about it, all they know is what they read in the papers and what they hear from politicians, which is extremely aggressive and, as we've mentioned, using these denigrating terms.
Niall: It's very useful for them to have an impoverished Mediterranean. Because it serves as a buffer zone between them and their ivory towers, and that terrible dangerous world out there that's against our civilisation. So, Greece contracting at thirty percent, it's in their interests in that respect; it's a buffer zone.
Joe: Well, there's plenty of room in the EU, for many millions of immigrants, and there's plenty of money, obviously, the Germans have it all, they stole it from Greece, most recently. So, there's plenty of money to cater to them and space to put them in. There's quite a lot of open space in the EU, some countries like Spain for example are relatively sparsely populated. And Spain is a good example, because it has millions of empty houses due to the housing crisis in recent years. So, it's not like there isn't an obvious solution to this, and if there are lot of refugees, they can be housed. But they don't have the political will to do that because you're talking about psychos who don't give a shit about anybody. But that's not going to stop, if they come in, if there's a massive increase, if you have tens of millions of people coming; I can imagine, instead of doing the right thing to do, it could ultimately lead to the whole Schengen area in the EU being torn up, closing off their borders, going back to nation states, and everybody deals with - but that would destroy their European super state idea, and I don't think they want to go there.
Niall: Well, here's the thing, somebody last week suggested a country in the Schengen area - I don't remember which country - Schengen by the way is just the agreement that allows for open borders within most mainland EU countries, which is why there's no passport control between EU countries - somebody last week suggested, "We may need to reconsider Schengen", i.e. 'Our country will close the borders and re-impose border control' and it was in the context of the migrants-refugees, and he got shot down for it. Low and behold, three days later, there was a terror attack, we'll get to this in a second, "Terror", on a train coming from the Netherlands to Paris, and a French minister, in a different context, says, "Oh, we may need to reconsider the Schengen area agreement." and people go, "Yeah, that's a good idea." It's so transparent what happened there!
Joe: It's amazing what you can achieve with 'Terror-ism'. It can justify almost everything; it can make people flip from one perspective to the complete opposite overnight. You just go, "Boo" and they go, "Oh yeah, ok, whatever you said, yeah; I'll do whatever you said." We that this is what happened it has been used to justify all sorts of crimes, and usually in the name of some noble cause. It's amazing what just scaring people, traumatising people, physically or psychologically, can do. It's kind of a form of torture; it has the same result on a mass scale that mild torture would have, where you attempt to break people down psychologically and get them to do things they wouldn't normally do or agree to things they wouldn't normally agree to. And that's exactly how terrorism has been used, quite clearly; it's not a conspiracy theory, its frickin' obvious. This is another screamingly obvious conclusion that is only a 2+2 equation, 9-11 clearly was a mass psychologically traumatising event for the American people that got the majority of them to accept the US military and the US government, bombing, attacking and invading countries in the Middle East that had no responsibility for 9-11 whatsoever.
But everybody in the US agreed with it, they were all going to sign up, probably a lot of them did sign up, to 'avenge America', against somebody who did this thing and, "Let's roll!" and off they go. The strange thing is that 9-11 is blamed on Muslim terrorists. So, 9-11 has to be seen, therefore, if you follow the official narrative, as the biggest example of a group of people shooting themselves in the foot, ever in the history of the world. Because 9-11 traumatised the American people and that got the vast majority of them to support a US military invasion of Middle Eastern countries, where the terrorists were. So, the terrorists, if they did it, with that knowledge, they deliberately did it to ensure that America would invade their countries and destroy their ability to operate. Of course the other narrative they come up with is that Al-Qaeda knew this would provoke the beast, to invade Middle Eastern countries and that Al Qaida would use these invasions as a recruiting tool for their organisations.
Niall: And thus achieve their long term goal of a global caliphate.
Joe: Right. But also the other narrative is that, now this is conquering and invading and establishing that Muslim caliphate, taking over the Europe and west, by other means, because that's what the long term strategy, from way back in 9-11 and before, when they planned it, Al-Qaeda, was to create the situation that we've just been talking about here which is the refugee crisis. This is the way that Al-Qaeda planned to get all the Muslims in the Middle East to Western Europe.
Niall: They're smart; they're really smart.
Joe: They're smart guys.
Niall: And all that from a cave.
Joe: Exactly.
Niall: That's amazing.
Joe: And they're all standing at this border in Greece, wanting to get in, saying, "Oh, we're helpless" and stuff, "look at my baby" and stuff, "have pity on me". But that's just a cover, a ruse, that's just a front.
Niall: And they're pretending they're hungry; they're pretending they're crying and they're hurt.
Joe: They're spraying water in their eyes to look like they're crying.
Niall: They're all actors!
Joe: More or less. Al-Qaeda actors and that's how they're going to take over Western Europe. It all makes perfect sense, when your mind is completely messed up.
Niall: Completely screwed up! Oh, my god. The freaky thing about it, for me, if you want to think long term, I don't think they worked it out this way but it is weird how we are going towards that totalitarian zone where camps, massive increase in police checks, "papers please, papers please"; we're approaching this zone and it's happening in a way that people are going along with it because it's evidently the right thing to do. Because it's been created by other facts, that just arose naturally in some cases. I'm thinking here of the Calais camp - it's called a 'migrant camp' - between England and France.
Joe: It's Camp Calais.
Niall: Oh it's actually called Camp Calais.
Amari: It's called the Jungle.
Joe: And it's an Al-Qaeda military camp, called Camp Calais; you know you have Camp Bond steel and camp - the different names for the US military camps. This is Camp Calais-AlQaeda.
Niall: There's another one in Germany and they're going with the same meme where it's camp something - I can't remember the name of the place.
Joe: Camp Jihadi-Nut-Cases.
Niall: I just keep thinking that they have the basis now, between this and War on Terror - for example, Christine La Pen this week said, "Islamists" - it's nice and vague, I mean who the hell's that? That could be anyone - "must be expelled from France."
Joe: They're like the Christianists?
Niall: Yeah.
Joe: You know the Christianists?
Niall: Christianists...
Joe: They're the ones who are Christian and are all about the Christianity. (Laughter)
Niall: Yeah, there's like swarms of them.
Joe: Swarms of Christianists. (Laughter) The Christianists are going to fight the Islamicists in a final battle.
Niall: That's what it's all about isn't it; the great clash of the Islamists, versus the Christianists.
Joe: Yeap, the Christianists. Carry on; what were you going to say?
Niall: I think, over our last few shows, we've pointed out the way things happen in a seamless nature. I see this refugee issue, seamlessly, with the occasional help from terror attacks like we had in France a couple of days ago, seamlessly bringing us to, "Whoa. Well. They're already grouped together, so let's just put a fence around it. And whenever we collect more from other places, we'll through them in there. And let's just set up a few more; here, here, here and here."
Joe: It'd make it a lot easier.
Niall: And it's nice and open - it's because they're migrant and they need to be processed or whether it's because they're terrorists and potentially dangerous. It's the perfect cover for...
Joe: This is a boon for the Intel agencies. Because what they usually have to do, is go around the country that they're in, in European countries or elsewhere, and find some deluded, naïve person, of nominal Muslim faith, who has low intelligence, induct him into Al-Qaeda, and handle him in that way and get him to carry out some kind of terror attack. But that takes a lot of work and there's a lot of effort involved in that and it's a process that can take quite a long of time, grooming someone like that. But now they have their pick in these camps; they just go around, interviewing people supposedly, taking their details, whatever and you find the ones that are most likely to want to be a bit more extreme in their religious beliefs and - there you go.
Niall: There were Syrians and Pakistanis who happily took thirty Euros to attack police officers in Athens at the height of the referendum issue. When you're desperate you can be induced, paid, tricked, whatever, into doing anything. And so the reality they've created thus far now has a boost to take it to the next level.
Joe: It's creating a problem, particularly in France. France has the highest numbers of Muslims in Europe; there's something like ten percent of the population or about six million Muslims in France. And if there's anybody in the pasty white criminal elite, who are racists - which there are, most of them - if they ever had the idea of creating this situation, where you would deport or lock up or put in camps, as many French Muslims as you wanted, then this certainly has the potential to provide that justification, this immigration crisis. You let them in and treat them badly, put them into crappy housing complexes-projects and just treat them very badly. And you have the embryo there of a social chaos type situation which you can incite to achieve that end. I don't know if that's where they're going or that's what they want to do but certainly if they wanted to, the migrant crisis has the potential - if they let them in, more and more in - if down the line in this crisis, they open the borders and they let as many people in as possible, but then treating them as second class citizens, well that's ripe for, on some level, social uprising, which will be responded to with the typical police state strategy.
Niall: Um hm. There's a recipe for chaos all the way round. Short of nefarious designs by 'the Powers that Be' in Europe and elsewhere - if you have a large number of people who suddenly turn up to a place with a limited number of resources; certain towns, certain districts, certain regions; it doesn't help the community. It's normal. It's not because they're inherently against them - because they're either Muslim or a different colour - but simply because you've got new people who suddenly arrive, when you have already have a community and a way of life. The normal social bonds get messed up, things start to breakdown. And then you compound it with extra chaos brought on by people who would to take advantage of the situation.
Joe: We don't like to posit that everything is a conspiracy theory, but a lot of things are being controlled either in advance or managed as they happen. But I think as time progresses, as a result of years or decades or even centuries of unfettered greed by psychopaths in positions of power, you end up with a completely chaotic situation; if people just keep taking and taking and taking. And they just never stop to say that, "We've had enough." or "This is going wrong." when they see things going wrong they just take more, it makes them feel, "Oh my god the food supply is going to run out." and then they take more and more, and they contribute to the chaos. And at some point, when you start to try and analyse some of stuff that's going on in the world, you kind of have to conclude that this is just out and out chaos. There is nobody controlling this; this is just off the leash kind of stuff. Like I said, it's a result of psychopaths gone wild and doing what they like to do which is to feed off, control and destroy without any concern about the results of those actions.
When there are negative results, they contain those and manipulate them and just move ahead with the same policy, with the same feeding. So, it's good that that's a kind of an explanation. Because sometimes it's difficult to make any sense whatsoever of the stuff that's going on. And it just seems that these people are just reacting to a situation that's gone beyond their control. And they're just trying to make the best of it, which would generally involve them just talking a load of nonsense and telling a bunch of lies, about what's actually happening. And spinning it but eventually spin won't be enough to cover up the obvious reality on the street. And I think that's coming pretty soon. The worst case scenario - and this is not to say anything bad about the migrants or refugees - is when you have people who have no link to the society or the culture that they now find themselves in and if at that point things start to disintegrate at a social level, they have some kind of a major social crisis; running out of food supplies, like in the US and no water or climate change; in that situation having a large number of foreigners in your country, who have no ties and feel no sense of responsibility to the country which they now live, that can get pretty bad, that can really exacerbate any kind of social chaos situation.
Because those people are going to try and protect themselves and get what they need in any way that they can, without consideration for community ties. So, it seems there's the potential for a nasty situation. And of course the people to blame are the ones who created it, who are, as we keep saying, these nut jobs in positions of power. They're insane; from a normal human perspective, they are technically insane. The way they say things, the way they talk about things. Listen to Tony Blair; he should be in a mental asylum. The guy is so detached from reality that to just have a psychologist to analyse him, he'd be put straight into a mental home.
Amari: And David Cameron?
Joe: David Cameron as well. But Tony Blair's just a really good example of it. When the entire world, effectively - apart from his few friends in the criminal elite and have said and made it impossible for him to ignore the fact that they all think he's a war criminal that he's the scum of the earth and that no one likes him. He still swans around and says that it was really good thing that we did in Iraq, and this is good for everybody - as if everybody agrees with him! When you have a large number of people or everybody around you, all saying, "You're an asshole, you did wrong, we hate you, go away, never darken our doorstep again." and you say, "Hi everybody! Thank you for the great welcome!" that's insanity. And that's effectively what he's doing and he needs to be in a mental hospital. And I'll put him there if he ever comes near me.
Niall: He recently popped up in a Guardian op-ed, warning the labour left not that he prefaced it with saying, "I know you all don't particularly like me, but I think we all agree that we cannot have Jeremy Corbyn as the Labour party leader."
Joe: But everybody doesn't agree with you Tony. That's what you're missing again. You know reality.
Niall: The comments below were like - well, I don't think there was one positive one - and they were marked up.
Joe: He's roundly hated by everybody. Because he made the mistake of actually being a Labour prime minister and being a member of the Labour party, but acting like a conservative, like a traditional warmongering Tory. So, obviously, none of the Tory supporters like him, because he's Labour, right, so he's their natural enemy. But everybody in his own party hates him as well. Because of what he did and why wouldn't you hate him, he's largely responsible for killing a few million people. He's a mass murderer and one of the worst war criminals in recent history. But he still walks around and gets a hundred thousand dollars for speaking to a bunch of politicians and corporate types.
Niall: I think he's getting a cheque, now, from Ukraine government. Do we want to say something about this train incident?
Joe: Not really. I mean, America saved the day, what else is there to say. America bailed out the French, yet again - if you don't mind me saying - always coming to the rescue, like they did in the Second World War. It's the Second World War all over again! It's the Second World War in microcosm. The Second World War was played out on that train.
Niall: And these hero's...
Joe: Some evil Nazi-Muslim-Whatever; Nazi-Muslims. One of them was on the train...
Niall: Islamo-Fascists are the term.
Joe: Islamo-Fascist-Communist - because he carrying a Kalashnikov - he actually got it from directly from Putin himself. So, he was on the train with a Kalashnikov, and there's some debate as to whether he fired the weapon or not, but immediately on sighting this 'infidel', two true blue American soldiers - who are stationed in some occupied part of Europe - a client European state, owned by Washington probably Holland or Belgium, they're probably in shape in NATO headquarters in Belgium - so, they see this Islamo-Fascist-Nazi-Communist on the train with the Kalashnikov. And they immediately jump up, recognise the enemy -
Niall: And said, "Let's roll!"
Joe: "Hoo-rah! Let's roll"
Niall: "Hoo-rah!"
Joe: And they ran over and took him down and beat him unconscious, and one of them got a few cuts because the guy had a box cutter...
Niall: Oh, he had to have a box cutter.
Joe: ...well it directly ties into 9-11. He was probably one of the 9-11 hijackers, come back from the dead or from Saudi Arabia.
Niall: Or one of their protégées.
Joe: And they took him down, and that was the end of it. The guy actually had, after he was arrested, that he's amazed they're calling him a terrorist, he wasn't a terrorist at all. His plan was to - not hijack the train but to...
Amari: Steal money to buy food.
Joe: ...to rob the train basically. He was homeless and he said he found the Kalashnikov in a bag - which may not be unlikely in Belgium - with a cell phone, in a park where he usually slept. And he picked it up and he said, "You know what I'm going to do, I'm going to use this to rob the people on the train." So, he got on the train and he was going to rob the people then shoot the window and jump out; a really bad idea.
Niall: The trains moving very fast.
Joe: The trains moving so if you jump out of the train you're probably going to kill yourself. And in the case you're going to escape when the train stops at a station, why shoot the window out? Just walk out the door. So, he hadn't thought this through very well, obviously which is probably the reason why he was so easily disarmed and didn't kill anybody; he didn't even fire the gun, supposedly. But the point here is that these two American troops saved the day, saved all of France from this, 'terror attack'. And it wasn't' a terror attack and that's just stupid. It obviously is what this guy said it was, some crazy homeless person, who, from somewhere or another, got a Kalashnikov, and had a really bad idea to rob a train. But it's being spun into a terror attack. And France is on 'high alert' now, because of this.
Niall: And thinking about closing the borders.
Joe: Everything's a terror attack. A kid can't point a plastic gun at a policeman these days without it possibly being terror related. And the fact that it didn't go anywhere, suggests that's what it actually was, that it was just a stupid, really bad idea, by some homeless guy who was mentally unstable. Because if it had been a proper terror attack ala Charlie Hebdo, then there would have been a lot of people killed and there would have been more involved than just some hapless dude.
Niall: There are many incidents like this going on all the time, we've had other reports, just now, crime related, where people armed with Kalashnikovs, pulled over an entire convoy of Saudi diplomats in Paris, robbed them blind in the streets, including of sensitive state documents, that could have easily been hyped up as a terror event.
Joe: If we didn't do it, it's not a terror event! That's what the western Intel agencies, their party line or their policy is, "If we didn't do it it's not a terror attack."
Niall: That's just like this hapless guy on the train. He was induced to be there at that time. And that they were ready for whatever falls out came from it whether he killed anyone or not. They were ready and waiting to convey this as a terror attack.
Joe: No. The people who carry out these phoney terror attacks don't leave open the possibility that your terrorist patsy is going to be immediately disarmed and not kill anybody. That's kind of small cheese; you don't invest any time and effort into doing something like that. You let these kinds of things happen on their own which it probably will happen, increasingly, on its own. Because of the hysterisized society and actually marginalised Muslims in Western Europe, and also they've created a prevalence of mental illness because of the nature of western society, which is mental.
Niall: (Laughter) It's mental. Do we want to say anything else on this? There was another terror attack this week, an actual one, in as so far as, explosives were used and people were killed. It was Thailand's worst ever such event. Over two or three days, they didn't initially connect the two events; bombings at a shrine in Bangkok, ten people killed, I think, many more injured. Supposedly, some guy just ran through the area with grenades, or some form of explosive, that he would throw - somebody was seen throwing something.
Amari: From the bridge.
Niall: Explosives. That was the second event. And the first event was...
Amari: A bomb exploded near a shrine, in the commercial interest centre of the Thai capital.
Niall: Right. Somebody, supposedly, left a backpack in this case. They got CCTV footage of him and they said, "This is our man."
Joe: There were two guys in the CCTV footage who handed themselves in and said, "That was me, but I'm not a bomber, I didn't plant any bombs." so...
Niall: That was a red herring.
Joe: So, the people who did it are unknown.
Niall: Ok, there was no further development on that.
Joe: No. And probably because that was another example of some western, CIA-type operation, terror attack operation. Usually the actual people involved in doing those things get away, and there's some kind of patsy.
Niall: Now before that, the media angle on it was to try to convey, "Well, there are some issues with them Muslims over there too" and then connected it to China. Specifically western Chinese, Uyghur, in the Xinjiang state, that has a Muslim population, which has people who have popped up in Afghanistan, in terror training camps.
Joe: This is the far reaches of NATO or the CIA's proxy Muslim mercenaries' ala Afghanistan or whatever, and basically these are the people they collect from around the world and use to further US foreign policy which is, "Oh, there are terrorists over there, we have to go and invade for attacking Americans, or whatever." - This group in eastern China that are being blamed for it - the Uyghur people who want an independent state or independence in eastern China, are being heavily funded by the National Endowment for Democracy. Which finance all types of separatist type organisations, that they then - obviously, if they're giving them large quantities of cash to these people, I think they were given half a million dollars last year, it's on the NED website - these were the people who were blamed for this attack in Thailand, and the NED have been giving money to their political wing. And of course, if you're giving them money, you have direct contact with them, and it's very easy to tell them what to do with that money, or give them training, in certain operations etc., which in this case, seems to involve a bomb in Thailand.
Which I think has something to do with the attitude of the Thai government, essentially; last year, there was a military general, who had taken power a few years previously in a coup, and he was ousted, a democratic president, and I think the government that's in power now, tends to be pro-China and refuses to play the America's eastern Asian game of, 'Let's get China. Everybody get China. All eastern states, let's get China'. A typical destabilisation attempt against the Thai government but there's also a lot of evidence that members of the Uyghur movement, have been fighting in Syria against Assad, and in Libya. So, these are just mercenaries, these are groups from which the CIA etc., pull mercenaries to do their dirty work, to carry out American foreign policy which is extremely dirty and always has been. It's based on dirty tactics, destabilisation efforts and murder of civilians. That's what American foreign policy is; kill the civilians, to effectively to change policy in the country.
Niall: Ok, so we're chalking this up to a Strategy of Tension, a reminder to Thai and also the wider region, to stay on board with the west.
Joe: Just last year, I think it was, the Thai government had expelled, with hoods over their heads, a bunch of these Uyghur people, and sent them back to China for the Chinese government to deal with them. The Thai government had stopped them, in Thailand, on their way to Syria; they were going to fight with ISIS in Syria, and they were Jihadis' from eastern China.
Niall: Amazing. The scale of this thing is unreal. From China to, how far west do they go? Are we going to hear about Irish-Muslim-Jihadists going to Syria one of these days?
Joe: No Irish ones but there are British ones, obviously. Quite a lot of British; Jihadi John and all the school girls and stuff...
Niall: Jihadi Jane.
Joe: And a lot of Americans are going but no Irish ones yet. There isn't too much of a fundamentalist...
Niall: Oh! We had the guy [Mahdi al-Harati] who was in Libya though. The head of the LTC, Libyan Transition Council.
Joe: He married an Irish woman actually and he was living in a house outside Dublin.
Niall: And he was robbed of the cash the CIA gave him. They just went into his house and robbed it.
Joe: He was leading the Libyan rebels to overthrow Gaddafi on behalf of the CIA. And the CIA had given him two hundred grand for his efforts. And he kept it in loose cash in the hot water closet in his house.
Niall: Somewhere in north Dublin.
Joe: And when he wasn't there, gypsies came in and stole it all. And when he went to the press, he actually admitted all that: that he got the money from the CIA - this is a guy just back from Libya, from overthrowing Gaddafi - "I got this money from the CIA and the gypsy's stole it from me -where's the sympathy??"
Niall: Well that's because he told the cops.
Joe: Yep, he told them all.
Niall: He said, "I was robbed of my money" and they responded "Where did you get all the money from now?" and he said, "Well, the CIA." I think he was thinking - if he was thinking at all - that when he told the Garda, the Irish police, they'd go, "Oh, right, we'll definitely help you get this back as soon as possible." (Laughter) It's hilarious. Another conflict zone that's gone a bit nuts this week, it occasionally does, again, thanks to American foreign policy, is the battle of the Koreas. I think it amounted to somebody firing at somebody else. Then the other guy is saying, "We're going to declare war." and that's probably all we need to say about it because this happens every couple of years and it's like, "Whatever".
Joe: You have to wonder what's going on there. Because the US has a massive - more than one - military base in South Korea. And I think there's a large - I think there are 27,000 or something - a large number of US military troops stationed permanently, on a rotational basis, but permanently in South Korea, and has been there for a long time. And that's the US's military outposts in eastern Asia, or at least one of them. So, it's interesting that this threat from North Korea, from Kim Yung...some young man. I don't know.
Niall: Is it Kim Yung Ill? He's got an amazing haircut.
Joe: Whatever, the guy with the dodgy haircut. He is got this arch baddie-Nemesis but a really bad caricature of one. So, he threatens, "I'm going to nuke" whoever, he said he was going to nuke America recently. But it's enough to pose a plausible threat to South Korea which obviously justifies the continued US military presence in South Korea. It's very difficult when you've got bases all over the world, when you're on the other side of the globe, and your military are in all these countries, and there's pressure on you coming on you, "Do you really need to be here?" it's very hard to come up with a reason to stay there. Why would you need to keep your military there, unless there's some kind of a threat to the country that's hosting you? So, if there is no threat, it makes sense to create one. The military is very useful because it has weapons, and it uses the weapons and it needs the threat to use the weapons, and the reason it needs to use the weapons is because the people who make the weapons need to keep making money, from you using the weapons. You can't just supply the military and then have them never use them. They have to expend the bombs, drop them and shoot the guns and fly the planes.
Otherwise the defence industry which is some of the biggest and most profitable of the American multinational corporations will stop making money. Military has to be doing real military stuff against a real enemy. So, what if you don't have one? What if everybody is peaceful? Shit.
Niall: Then you don't get the money.
Joe: So, what do you do? Buy an enemy.
Niall: Buy one, make one...
Joe: Buy one, make one, and get one free!
Niall: Well they got a 2 for 1 deal going right now, because breaking news is saying that an explosion has gone off outside a military base outside of Tokyo in Japan. I can't say anything more about it than an 'explosion at an ammo depot at a US military base'. But it's kind of suspicious given what's happening in Korea, given what's happening in Japan. All of these things come together in a strangely coincidental way. The US is having a hard time keeping South Koreans, and especially the Japanese people onboard, with their massive bases, they've been there for seventy years now. It's a long time to be justifying on the basis of, "Well, you know, World War II." Ah, yeah, seventy years ago.
Joe: Are they going to be doing that in a hundred years? "You know World War II. Nobody's alive who remembers it. But yeah, we fought that war, we can't remember the name of it anymore it's so long ago, but remember that war where we helped you out and stuff? That threats still there. And we should still be here." really "Yes." and if you don't agree, I'll shoot you.
Niall: The justification for it now is Russia and China's alliance. But it's completely reversed the narrative, where Japan and Germany were the problem because they were Nazi's. But now, "Oh Russia and china are Nazi's - wait they're communists, the Terror...whatever!"
Joe: They just flipped it around. It's strange. The ones that were the enemies back then were the allies and the ones that were the allies are the enemy. They just make it up as they go along. When the whole point is to maintain them in power, maintain their hegemony around the world. Why? Because they are insane; people have been corrupted and infected with this greed and lust for power. And it is like a real psychological disorder that these people suffer from. Of course we all suffer because of their illness. People of the world suffer. But it is quite clearly a psychological illness, when, beyond all no reason, and for no real benefit, other than the end goal of having power, in and of itself. You continue to seed chaos around the world, have wars, invade countries and kill people.
Niall: I think at some level these people really believe, if there's no hegemony, if there's no one country or form of government on top, the only alternative to that is utter chaos. They really believe that. It's anarchy out there, therefore you need us. And, "Look, can't you see anarchy is increasing that's because you need us."
Joe: But the fact that somebody believes something - it's neither here nor there, it's kind of irrelevant to an objective assessment. Someone's belief in something is by definition subjective. So, you need an objective observation and an objective assessment of what they're doing. Like a serial killer, that went and killed a bunch of people, he did it because he believed god was telling him to do it. And that god told him to do this because it was the right thing to do. Are you going to give credence or validation to something like that?
Niall: No. But given the example of the serial killer, there's a method to his madness; the types of victims he picks; the types of things he does to them; the types of things he does to not get caught. There is actually a method to the American governments' madness.
Joe: They're going about it in the right way, if they want to achieve their ends. But their ends are fundamentally irrational, and similar to the ends of the serial killer. Why did you do this? Not that he did it and he did it successfully. But why did you do this? "I did this because god told me to do it and I believe that god told me to do it and that it was the right thing to do because god said it." Well obviously he's delusional. And the person needs to be in hospital. And he needs to be put away for his own protection and the safety of society. The same applies to these people in power in the world today. The belief that motivates all the things that they are doing is completely insane. There's no rational reality to it.
Niall: Who is the god that tells them to do these things?
Joe: I don't know. Doesn't really matter does it? Somebody whispering in his ear, some CIA operative pointing a microwave device at his ear; you know the whole thing is insane. And I like that explanation because you don't have to have to dig too much into the details anymore. Just say, it's all nuts. They'd be some very short Sott Focus that we'd do. Just list the things that have happened and then put the conclusion, it's all bonkers.
Niall: People want to know why though.
Joe: Because its nuts, because they're nuts, because they're crazy people and because they're insane. Just accept the fact that you live in an insane asylum, and the inmates...
Niall: Are you calling our readers and listeners, insane?
Joe: No. I'm saying they live in one, they're the sane ones but it's the inmates who have taken control and they're writing the daily routines for everybody and how things are going to go down. Enjoy it! It's fun, no? No.
Niall: No. It is fun, it's kind of fun. We can take a twisted pleasure out of seeing it, of course. But we suffer having to look at this crap, day in, day out. It's so mad that it's almost fun to be seeing how mad it is.
Joe: One of the things that makes people go crazy, when they're trying to research and investigate and understand, is their goal is to fix it. If they can find a solution to something they can fix it. If they can find the reason or if they can understand mechanism by which something happens, then they can develop a solution. But if you accept the fact that there is no solution, possible, then you can accept what's going on; you mightn't like it, but you have to learn to live with the lack of control. And learn to live with an uncontrollable future, an open future in that sense. Because we've tried for long enough to inform people about what's going on, and researched and looked into the reasons behind it. And unfortunately, that's the conclusion that you come to. That there's no reason solution, there's no way anybody is going to fix any of this; but it does have an end. There is a denouement. Because they can't - the people running this world - cannot continue with the policies, that they are continuing with. Eventually, they're going to cause a level of chaos, an upset in the world that it'll collapse. There'll be a macrocosmic collapse of everything, if you take that far enough. Take irrational people and put them in positions of power and let them direct society, and make decisions for the way society should evolve.
And have them sign and enforce laws, you need equally insane people to enforce insane laws. Well, anybody can see what the end result of that is, it's not going anywhere. It's going down rather than up, inward rather than outward; it's not expansive and creative, it's entropic. And there's only so long you can engage in the destructive principle, destructive activities, before you've destroyed everything, there's nothing left to destroy. You can only feed on something so long before there's nothing left. When you undermine a society enough, eventually it'll collapse especially if that infection and those effects are spreading to ordinary people as well.
Niall: I want to say something quick about Greece; they've called elections for September 20th 2015. My advice to people would be just to give up on that. That's done. Basically Syriza is finished. It might be Syriza in name but the protest is over; it was a protest. I wrote about it recently, and I've been listening to and reading what Varoufakis has been saying over the last few years - they had a plan. They were - if you like - deluded by hope. But they had a plan based on an objective assessment of how the situation is, in Greece, in Europe and even broader. Varoufakis' book is a kind of analysis from a financial point of view, of how the US set this up; not the US per se but the financial overlords, whoever. It's very good, and I hope to follow up on it this week. The short of it is after the last time we had this global catastrophe, from the point of view of the global economy, that was the great depression in 1929. And the elite in the US were interested, had been for a century previously, and they figured it out. And by the time World War II was over, they were the hegemon, by default. But they realised what they needed to do, was have other power centres, through which they could manage things. And that's why Germany, today, is king in Europe. And Japan in the east, has been. The problem with that now is China, and that system of managing other centres is breaking down.
Anyway, that's the big picture and Varoufakis understands that well. And at the European level he had a plan, the Syriza idea was to go all in, and force the situation that would bring about a change in regime. I don't mean necessarily the personnel running Europe, but in the way they approach the problem of austerity. They're basically saying, "There's no need for us to continue on this contractile path, we can have growth again and here's how." And they agreed with him! He's met people, really high level people in the German government over the years; they knew him long before he became this 'pain in the ass' guy from Greece who upset everything this year. They knew well what he was saying. And they agreed, "You're totally right, this would definitely work, the solutions are well thought out - but we're not going to do it." and he was like, "Why not??" and he - the guy's an expert in Game Theory - realised that he was seeing the way power works. Power relations between countries, regions, between the hegemon and all its vassal states below, it works on a negative basis, where that one card that could solve the problem for everyone, you keep that in reserve; you're never going to actually use that. Because it's what gives you control over the next one, it's an inherently negative relationship. And if you actually solve a situation, you break that, and you end up with a non-hegemonic world.
Joe: Of course. It's like a landlord with his peasants in the field, you don't keep them all dependent and you have more than enough resources to give all of the peasantry to live on, you can give them a piece of land where they can be self-sufficient, where they can be independent, but you're no longer in control of them.
Niall: So, they would never have allowed Syriza to win because there would have been an entire change in the system. Which brings us to the core issue: There cannot be a change in the system because the system doesn't allow for it.
Joe: Well, they don't allow for it. The system they impose, enforce, on others, doesn't allow for it, because they don't allow it. But of course it could work. The problem with Syriza - even Varoufakis seems that he had his eyes opened, in dealing with these people, when he heard them say that. When he said, "Here's how it can work.", and they agreed "Yeah. We actually agree that's how it could work, but we're not going to - we're going to crush you anyway. Because that's the way we do things. We remain on top and we don't share out the goodies. We don't engage in any kind of equality etc. there is an obvious clear hierarchy here. We're at the top and you're down below us. And you stay there. What you're proposing is a distribution of wealth, of equality, of justice and fairness. That's not how it works. Are you that naïve Mr. Varoufakis?" Maybe he was a little bit naïve about that but it's really hard for a normal person to imagine that people who present themselves as paragons of freedom and democracy, would actually behind the scenes to be the exact opposite. Be a bunch of fascist dictators. And that's who these people in the central EU powers are. And if they had been aware of that fully - some people are aware but they're not in positions of power. Or even relative power like the Greek government or the Syriza party.
None of them realise, or certainly didn't realise, the way the game worked, their real positions and how bad it could get and how far these supposed democrats in the EU were prepared to go. But if they did they would have had a chance to implement the plan that Varoufakis had. They shouldn't have talked to them at all. Certainly they could have talked to them, but it should have been a ruse. "Let's just string them along. Let's say we're going to do this, and OK, and maybe and let's discuss." Meanwhile behind the scenes they're planning for Doomsday. They're planning to go, as you said, all-in. And that's effectively what, I think, Varoufakis', the basics of his plan, was. But I think what was missing is having the military on side. Because the other aspect of this is, when you poke the beast in the eye and tell him, "No." you have to be prepared for a backlash. You have to understand the nature of the backlash and the nature they go about getting revenge on you. And that, as we know, involves sowing violence and chaos in the society ala colour revolutions; shooting people in the streets, unknown snipers, and so on.
So, that's what they needed to be prepared for as well. But in Greece, they would have had to have the military on side and aware and prepared to take action. Basically, they need to understand that they're dealing with a rabid dog; keep your distance, try to placate it, to distract it, all the while you're preparing your big stick to completely destroy it with your first blow. It's a knockout blow. You don't take on these people who are extremely powerful unless you're going to do as much as you can to mean they don't get up again. And very few people are willing to go to those extreme measures. And it would have required extreme measures.
Niall: But there are only two countries that are powerful enough to follow that through, Russia and China.
Joe: Well, Greece could have done it, in the way I described. With Varoufakis' economic plan and having the military ready, to go through the painful process of possibly having to shoot people on the street, troublemakers on the street; basically no quarter given because the people you are up against are willing to go there. So, you have to be as well. And it's hard, it's very difficult, and most people don't want to do that because it feels like, and it might actually be in a real way, a selling of your soul and because these people in the Syriza party are generally peace loving people, for them to be asked to become extremely war like, to combat these EU monsters who have no scruples and no concern about killing people at all. That's what they'd have to do so I can understand. That's why I don't blame anybody in the Syriza party for not doing that because unless they were willing to go there, they were not going to defeat them. They were not going to be able to chart their own course. And really flip the bird. They'd have to set it all up in advance, have everybody ready and on-song. And to have those kind of conditions, that unanimity amongst the people, the Syriza party, the military, and wherever else you need to have it; it's very difficult.
It just takes a few people in there to - if everybody's not on the same page and fully committed to this course of action and then you're probably better off not trying; because you'll get the negative consequences not the positive.
Niall: Exactly. Greece would have been better off if Syriza had never been elected.
Joe: Maybe. Although, as we were mentioning earlier on, there is, leaving aside the details and the physical reality let's say, of how it would play out, despite the fact that Syriza have been defeated, more or less split in half, and the EU power brokers have won and have had their way, in doing that the EU powers have exposed themselves, their true natures, to a lot of people in Europe.
Niall: Such that, if this situation were to occur again, it's going to be a lot harder to -
Joe: Right. So, many people - there was that hashtag trending on Twitter: '#ThisIsACoup'. A lot of people in Europe saw the nature of these people in power in the EU. And they hadn't seen it before. And that awareness - even though it's not going to change the world or anything - is the best we can hope for these days. That the evil that stalks this planet, in the form of these psychos in power who all the time present this benevolent face, the best we can hope for is that the mask comes off or they're pushed in some way. Someone, like the Syriza party, even expecting defeat, will stand up to them, momentarily, so that the mask drops and that the rest of the people in the world can take a look at it. And that's very valuable. Because just to be stuck in this illusion reality where evil is behind a mask of goodness, it's terrible; it's going to lead people on a road to hell. And the best chance of them avoiding that is to see what's really happening, what the truth is, even to a small extent. At least for them to come out of sleep momentarily or just that their world view has changed, that they're not so complacent and self satisfied; "We in the west are all wonderful and our politicians are all democrats and peace lovers."
And if they can have that faith in this evil system that masquerades as good, if they can have that faith shaken, then that may shake the system. Because it's the faith that props it up, it's the belief of the ordinary people. If you can have that faith shaken...who knows.
Niall: Meanwhile, this mad chaos all around - chaos on the streets, chaos in the skies. We've obviously mentioned this before, the mechanism where you reach a denouement - a point where everything is destroyed, or about to be - is that you get a response from the environment. One of the most striking things in recent weeks, especially in the northern hemisphere because it's summer time, we tend to get more electrical storms, is the number of people killed by lightning.
Joe: There were eighteen US soldiers in North Carolina, Fort Bragg, who were out in the ... (Bad audio) and got struck by lightning, eighteen, all at once.
Niall: From one bolt?
Joe: Yep.
Niall: Yeah it's not just that there's more lightning but that the bolt has more power, or something, to affect so many people in one area.
Joe: They weren't killed, though several of them were injured. What was interesting when reading this story - you can look it up: Fort Bragg, 18 soldiers - was that the military person or spokesperson said that, "When this happened the soldiers immediately went into their lightning strike drill."
Niall: "This is not a drill!"
Joe: Exactly. "That was a real lightning bolt, quick run!"And apparently that's what they did, the protocol for lightning strikes in the military annual of what to do when the shit hits the fan, is to -
Niall: Bend over and kiss your ass goodbye?
Joe: Yes, well no. It's to run down a hill, if you're on high ground, and separate.
Niall: But if you've already been hit, you'll roll down the hill.
Joe: It could be some kind of Russian secret weapon.
Niall: It could be that could have been the first wave.
Joe: They basically respond to it like they're being attacked by something.
Niall: Russia?
Joe: Well, they're not saying that - but a lightning bolt is kind of like a bomb going off in the vicinity and it can injure you in that way. But the only lightning specific part of the tactic or response, was to get to lower ground, and put your selfie stick down, and don't put your hand above your hand, and also split up.
Niall: "I'm over here!"
Joe: So, they just split up and ran down the hill. And then checked each other to make sure they weren't Kentucky Fried Soldiers. (Laughter) There's so many more. We're actually putting together, at the minute, a list; you can look for it on Sott.net in the coming days, of the reports of lightning strikes, to date, compared to last year. And it's similar to the refugees actually, there's about a 7-800% increase, at least in the reports, of people being struck by lightning, from last year to this year.
Niall: We've got some supporting data from a local news source, our regional newspaper last week, reported on a storm that happened the week previous. They've set up a sensor in the region, that will automatically count lightning strikes; not just lightning strikes but actual flashes, flashes versus strikes that hit the ground. Anyway, 2014, one particular storm brought the record, that 2014 record was doubled by this single storm recently.
Joe: That kind of thing is happening all over the world. That increase in the amount of lightning strikes in storms, and the number of strikes that actually either hit people or destroy infrastructure. This is another thing that's been in a few reports recently; I think there were two reports in the last week or two, of lightning hitting oil refineries. There was one from a couple of years ago that I remember. I'm sure there's been several more. There's run off, from the oil refining process, where it's a mixture of water and oil, in a big open pool. And these things for some reason attract lightning. And when they get struck, they combust obviously, they explode and start to burn. There have been two of those in the past couple of weeks, I can't remember exactly where. Among other lightning strikes, there was a big lightning strike that hit the back of the plane; it wasn't just a little - it was big thick bolt.
Niall: That was a storm in Atlanta, it was on the runway, it hadn't even taken off and it was on the ground.
Joe: So, it's crazy.
Niall: There was another chemical plant explosion in China. A second one, not as massive but it was big and fairly nearby as well, a couple of hundred miles south on the seaboard. I found a video of it yesterday. This is another thing people need to consider, things blowing up and then setting on fire, there may not have been a visible bolt. But there's probably an electrical component.
Joe: Discharge, yeah.
Niall: You can have a discharge event, which is basically a transfer of an extreme amount of energy from the atmosphere and vice versa from below, without their being a visible arc, the visible light you see. There's a lot of stuff happening that is pretty freaky. Because at least if you see a bolt, you can say, "Well, I know what that was." But there's things blowing up and going off the rails, train derailments, it's very hard to find base level statistics to work from. But you've probably noticed the number of reports of trains derailing is just -
Joe: And airplanes, there were two yesterday, yesterday and today, in England and in Switzerland respectively, at air shows, two planes came down. The one in UK was pretty big -
Niall: It killed 11 people.
Joe: The guy was doing a loop and came down and hit the road, just outside the airfield. And it makes you wonder, when you see a spate of these things happening, it's hard to believe it's just a coincidence. But obviously these things, in the context of what we're talking about -
Niall: They could just be 'accidents' but chances are there's something electrical; they got fried -
Joe: Flew some kind of a, who-knows-what, I don't know. There's a real strange nature of our world that has always been there, seems to be manifesting itself a lot more. And it's a much more dangerous place than it used to be. People used to say, "The world's a dangerous place." Well they don't know the half of it. They used to say that in the context of human activity; you might get robbed; you might be in a car crash. And that's been worsening over the years, in terms of society going downhill. But to that you can add the danger of the Earth and the atmosphere itself, starting to do very strange things, and unfortunately they're dangerous things, dangerous for human life; lightning bolts, explosions from under the ground, and monster hail. I'm just waiting for the day, I don't know if it's happened yet, but I'm waiting for the report that someone has been killed by hail because you see this baseball sized chunks of hail that smash car windscreens. What's going to happen if that hits you in the head? If you get caught in that, boom. So, I think that's on the cards.
The environment is turning against human beings, basically. It's blowing up all our stuff, and killing some of our peoples, just arbitrarily, apparently. But it's an extremely dangerous place; you don't just have to worry about being mugged at cash point anymore; you have to be watching the skies in case Zeus has a thunder bolt with your name on it or a chunk of ice is going to hit you on the head, or you get swallowed by a hole in the ground that just happens to open up under your feet or a big gas explosion is going to blow up half of your town into the sky.
Niall: I saw a video yesterday, filmed and posted by a Swedish guy who was out camping with friends. And they were in awe of what they were seeing. They saw a bit of the Northern Lights - eh, so what, they see it regularly there - but also noctilucent clouds - Ok, that's really cool - but then someone shouts from the camp fire. And he swings around from that view to the right, and there's a massive fireball! And it's not just a streak, like a Perseids meteor, we're talking about a fireball that turned everything, briefly, into daylight. He's like, he didn't know what to film, he's like, "Did that just happen?" and he goes back to the clouds, the nice shining clouds. Of course the two are related, the nice shining clouds are because of meteor smoke, the increase in fireballs. It's weird and wonderful, and dangerous, for sure. It also appears cute. So, yesterday, I'm on my Facebook page. And instead of a cute kitty or puppy video, I come across this cute bear one. A family in New Jersey are having a pool party, they have to scatter and go inside, and one of them gets a camera to film the scene.
It's a mother bear and her four-five cubs - which alone is unusual because they don't have so many cubs at once, I later found out - and they've invaded the pool party, and they're swimming in the pool; playing on the lilo, going down the slide - it's really cute. And I'm thinking where did this happen. New Jersey? New Jersey has bears? It does have bears. New Jersey, although it's urban and it's in the great eastern seaboard, metropolitan area, it's actually got the highest number of black bears in the North America.
Joe: In the mountains.
Niall: However, there's been a bear explosion in the population.
Joe: A bear exploded?
Niall: No, it hasn't exploded; there's been an explosion in the population, of black bears. So, I looked, and five years ago they had to restart the hunting season, it was controversial at the time. But they had to start culling them because there were so many. And they culled like half of the population and it has rebounded in the space of two years. And it's alarming people.
Joe: They're expecting the social chaos. The bears know, they feel, they sense this is going to happen.
Niall: I think they're expecting a feast.
Joe: Exactly. And they know there's going to be a lot of people out in the streets, wandering around, and homeless.
Niall: Until last year, it was one hundred and fifty years before a human was killed by a bear in New Jersey. And four of have been attacked and eaten since.
Joe: I could say something really macabre, but I won't.
Niall: A bit what?
Joe: A bit morbid. Maybe I should say it. I was just thinking that you'll need that amount of bears for getting rid of the bodies, you know.
Niall: Ah. That's true, I think nature's got - I think she's got a plan, if anyone's got this figured out.
Joe: Well look at the small scavengers with animal carcasses, there has to be something programmed in to the system for a lot of human bodies, just big scavengers.
Niall: Bears are just one creature though. In Europe, wolves have been spotted as far west as the Netherlands. The Netherlands is part of the north west of Europe which is the most densely populated area/region on earth, I think. And the wolves are back.
Joe: Maybe it's part of a prepper kit. People should include bear and wolf costumes, so they can pass unnoticed. So, you can still go down to the Wal-Mart and do a bit looting and avoid the bears. They'll think you're one of them. (Laughter) That could go viral. We could sell a lot of bear costumes.
Niall: Well, Wal-Mart might be in to selling them.
Joe: No! We'd sell them.
Niall: Oh. Yeah.
Joe: Get up to the sewing room and start stitching. Put all the bear costumes together and sell them on the prepper sites; essential item for a post-apocalyptic Earth.
Niall: The bear necessities?
Joe: That's perfect! Jeez we're on to something here.
Niall: The simple bear necessities of life.
Joe: Yep. Anyway, what else is going on? Do we have anything else? Or are we going to a very special Trump-tastic pop culture round up soon? What's it going to be?
Amari: Well, there's maybe one more thing. You mentioned hail stones. Well, a lot of hail stones have been damaging multiple commercial things, so maybe at some point one will actually be so damaged.
Joe: A big one? Do you want ice in your drink? Do you want ice in your in-flight drink?
Niall: It's freaky isn't it? And they're all damaged in the same way. The nose of the plane is absolutely crushed. And you know they say that hail can never smash the windscreen of a car?
Joe: It's being doing it all over the place.
Niall: It hasn't penetrated the windscreen of any of these craft has it, but it's completely shattered them.
Joe: No because they're flying into it. It's not hitting them vertically; they're flying into it horizontally. They're flying into it and through it.
Niall: One of these planes is going to come down. At least two of them were so damaged that Delta airlines decided to write them off. They're permanently grounded.
Joe: Yeah. Keep watching the skies and watching the news and watching what's going on folks. Because it's getting pretty crazy out there and it's only going to get crazier and more interesting. You can't be made crazy by it; you just have to be interested in it.
Niall: Yeah keep the faith because you've got front row seats.
Joe: Just get a titanium umbrella.
Niall: And a bear suit.
Joe: So, I think it's time for another pop culture round up from Relic. And this week it's a little longer but I think you'll enjoy it because it's kind of special, one-off, dedicated, Trump-tastic, Pop culture Roundup. You'll see.
(Intro music)
Relic: Well, hello there everyone. And welcome to another new fandagled edition of Pop culture roundup. It's your old friend relic here, coming to you live from the cold, wind-burnt shores of upper lake Canada, where snow-shoes are better known as our outside shoes and thirteen layers of socks are better known as our inside shoes. For those of us fortunate enough to be able to afford shoes, of course. Speaking of misbegotten fortunes, tonight's a very special edition of the show kids. We're going to take a look into the murky shadows of that horrible place where entertainment and politics collide. We will turn our focus upon one rather well known mangy billionaire. And take a candid and in-depth look at the life and legend of one would-be republican US presidential nominee. Let's just say, the person I'm talking about is the most Trump-horrent, Trump-testable, Trump-palling, Trump-noxious, Trump-iffying, Trump-pugnant cretan, that's ever disgraced the human race. Who am I referring to you might ask? Well it is he who shall not be named. Yes the ruling king of Asshole Mountain. Yes that's right, you guessed it; Mr. Donald J. Trump.
Every pundit on the planet has been having a field day with this wispy haired buffoon, and well, there's not much left to be said. However, being that Mr. Trump is such a hot topic these days in the celebrity media, it is my sworn and solemn duty as your pop culture correspondent to report on topical issues such as these. So, where to begin? Born in Queens, New York City, in 1946, Donald J Trump is the first born son of Frederick Trump, a successful real estate developer. I was surprised to learn on Wikipedia that Frederick Trumps middle-name is Christ, which might account for his son's pompous, messianic complex. Rumour has it that the Trumps grandparents immigrated to the US from the old country, bearing the original name of Trumpet which was anglicised and shortened to Trump. Because they didn't want to be known as a windy instrument that makes loud obnoxious honking noises; it seems the irony was lost on their grandson.
Mr. Trump likes to make note of the fact that he's a, 'self made business man' but seeing that he inherited two hundred million dollars from his late father's estate, I think the term 'born with a silver spoon up his ass' seems slightly more apropos. Not content to sit back and swim in his mountains of money like some deranged Scrooge McDuck, Mr. Trump then devoted all his energy to developing the Trump brand into a global phenomenon. Aside from a plethora of skyscraper Trump towers and casinos dotted about the globe. He's also developed a line of menswear, watches and accessories; he calls the Donald Trump signature collection; which includes the Donald Trump personal fragrance, advertised as smelling like a mixture of arrogance and flop-sweat. Then of course there's the infamous Trump board game, where the winner is the player who uses imminent domain laws to buy up poorer neighbourhoods to build fancy hotels by forcing the most welfare recipients in to the streets. True story!
And who can forget his 2003 reality TV show the Apprentice; where starry eyed interns eagerly battle for the ultimate humiliation of being terminated via his most famous catch phrase.
(Recording)
Trump: "You're fired. You're fired. You're fired. You're fired. You're fired. You're fired."
Hell, this Donald Trump person is so cantankerous and bombastic; he gives old curmudgeons like Relic here a bad name! Now, no biography of Donald Trump would be complete without addressing the elephant in the room. Or in this case, the golden fleecy road-kill abomination that he calls his toupee. So, how could old Relic possibly describe Mr. Trump's one-of-a-kind hairpiece? Imagine a rabid weasel that climbed into giant cotton candy machine and then had sex with a custard-yellow haired troll doll, and the resulting spawn of this resulting union then fell into a vat of radioactive toxic sludge that was then flattened by an industrial steam roller. And then imagine this mutant creature becomes self-aware like the sentient ooze of Spiderman's' venom symbiote, where it then climbs up and permanently latches itself to Donald Trump's shiny, scaly head, and is now perched up there like some coiled rattle snake, patiently waiting to strike at the hearts of innocent and unsuspecting liberal interns everywhere. Yeah. That'll fix 'em, fix 'em good.
Now, it's no secret that Mr. Trump has recently entered himself as a nominee in next year's presidential campaign. And thus far, has made quite a few gaffs, missteps and blunders along the way. And yet, somehow, mysteriously remains at the top of the republican leader board. I wonder what could account for his tremendous popularity. If only there was a way we could ask him in person...
(Phone rings)
What's this? Someone is calling Relics old-timey telephonium device? I wonder who it could be! (Rings) Hello, its old Relic here, who do I have the pleasure of talking to?
Trump: It's me, Donald J. Trump.
Relic: Well, isn't that amazing. Good morning to you sir.
Trump: Good morning. Today I am very proud of myself.
Relic: Oh, I'm sure you are. Can I assume Mr. Trump that you were just listening to our show and decided to call in?
Trump: It only makes common sense.
Relic: Well, I must say it's an honour and a privilege to have you here with us today.
Trump: What a great honour it must be, for you to honour me tonight.
Relic: Indeed. So, Mr. Trump, an intrepid pop culture correspondent, like myself, is known for asking the hard hitting questions. And well, I'd like to broach a certain subject that the mainstream media has chosen to ignore. Would you mind if I asked you some pointed personal questions?
Trump: There's nothing better than that.
Relic: Now this may be a touchy subject and I have no wish to offend.
Trump: Ask your question please.
Relic: Alright. Well. There's been some speculation that you, sir, engage in the practise of cannibalism, and are a regular connoisseur of human flesh. Is this true?
Trump: One bite and you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. And believe me, it's the best of the best.
Relic: Can you describe your first experience eating another person?
Trump: Nobody knew who the hell he was?
Relic: Do you think it's fair for your victims to be eaten alive?
Trump: First of all, these aren't babies, these are total killers and these are not the nice, sweet little people that you think, okay?
Relic: Well, then how do you justify the practise of using human beings for meat?
Trump: They're not doing you any good, you don't need 'em, and nobody wants 'em.
Relic: So, how do you choose which kind of people you want to make for dinner?
Trump: We use people that are soft and weak and, frankly, stupid and incompetent.
Relic: And do you have a preference of one type of meat over another?
Trump: I love Mexican people and I mean that in every sense of the word.
Relic: Do you ever indulge in the cooking and eating of children?
Trump: Inner-city children in Chicago; there's nothing better than that.
Relic: Well that sounds just horrible. How do you get away with such a barbaric practise?
Trump: Because I have used the laws of this country, I've taken advantage of the laws of this country.
Relic: Now it seems to me that human cannibalism of the poor and disenfranchised has become all the rage amongst the richest 1% and rumour has it you are now serving the delicacy of human flesh at all your five star hotel restaurants, for all your elitist psychopathic friends to enjoy as well.
Trump: I've just raised the stakes. Treat yourself the very, very best that life has to offer.
Relic: I supposed. As the demand for homosapian meat grows larger, you must have to outsource some of your products from other countries?
Trump: We don't know who they are, where they are, they come from all over the world.
Relic: But where specifically do you import your human livestock from?
Trump: Mexico. I'm talking about from all over the world when I say that, they're coming from all over.
Relic: Any other place besides Mexico?
Trump: I deal with China; I have a great relationship with China. We are not making our product now, China and other countries are making our product.
Relic: And what would you have done Mr. Trump, if one of your human menu items tried to escape?
Trump: Folks, we want those people back. Very, very quickly believe me; we would have had them back quickly.
Relic: Some folks are comparing you, sir, to a Dr. Hannibal Lector; do you have any thoughts on that?
Trump: Well, I'm not so sure. Look, I have a lot of respect for him; I think he's really a terrific person. I love his stance, he's so different. He's very refreshing.
Relic: Well, thank you Mr. Trump for being so candid about this morbid and, frankly, repugnant obsession of yours. But, before we let you go, I notice you often like to proclaim how obscenely rich you are, as if this somehow justifies being a pretentious blow-hard. And well, certain psychologist might speculate that all you're blustering about being a billionaire is in fact, overcompensation for the fact that you have a very small penis. Would you care to comment?
Trump: I'm worth many billions of dollars.
Relic: But doesn't that just prove the point?
Trump: I have fairly but intelligently earned many billions of dollars which, in a sense, was both a score card and acknowledgement of my abilities.
Relic: So, you admit to using your enormous wealth to hide an inferiority complex about your microscopic genitalia.
Trump: I have a total net worth of well over ten billion dollars. I'm really rich.
Relic: Well thank you then for being so forthright about your tiny testicles.
Trump: Part of the beauty of me, is that I'm very rich.
Relic: Alright. We're going to let you get back to the campaign trail Mr. Trump. And thanks again for calling into our show.
Trump: I am really proud. I am really honoured.
Relic: Well, isn't that special. As we all know, American politics is pretty much a complete farce these days and, well, after spending some time getting to know Mr. Trump, he may be called many things, but boring isn't one of them. So, I ask you kids, who better to preside over the final collapse of the stingingly corrupt American empire than an insanely ostentatious and vitriolic fiasco like Donald J Trump. Overall, US presidents may be mere puppets, but with Mr. Trump at the helm at least he'll be a hugely entertaining puppet. So, for that reason Relic has decided to officially endorsed Mr. Trump for president of the United States of America. And urges you all to get out there and cast your futile little ballots in support of this pompous apprentice firing machine.
And thus brings another show to a close for this week kids. I'm kind of exhausted after that phone call and the fires growing a little low, so it's time for me, your old friend Relic here, to mosey on off to dreamland.
Until next time, always remember: Keep your feet on the ground and your eyes on the stars.
Reader Comments
to our Newsletter