October 2, 2015 • 56 mins
In the months leading up to July 15th, 2015, people across the US began to believe there was something fishy afoot. What was Jade Helm 15 actually designed to do? Would it be the first step toward a New World Order? Join Ben and Noel as they take a closer look at Jade Helm 15.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Now,
bellow everyone, and welcome to the show. My name is Noel, Yes,
and I am Ben. We are as always joined in
(00:23):
spirit by our producer and co host Matt. Let's see
what's foul we call them today? I mean, I like
the alliteration of the madman, what about Matt, the militants, Frederick.
That's good, that's good, that's approca. So before we start
today's episode, Noel, I was thinking that we could we
(00:45):
could have a little bit of a tangential conversation. Sure,
okay with that course, all right. I'm fond of the tangent,
fond of the tangent. Yes, all right. So have you
ever observed in real life a a widespread like a panic.
It's funny that you say that. You know, there's that
jam band called widespread Panic. Yeah, I don't know. I was.
(01:08):
I was fighting not to make a joke about it.
But it's gonna come out. It's fine, let it come. No,
I don't think so, you know, I mean nothing, um,
definitely no form of like mass hysteria, or any kind
of situation where I felt threatened or I felt like,
you know, things are out of hand. I mean, well,
actually now now now that now that I think about it,
(01:29):
I did go to a Creed concert um when I
was a kid, and I did feel like there was
some you know, that were on the edge of pandemonium,
really playing my my own prison. I mean, Creed exudes
a certain kind of energy that just gets into you
and makes you do crazy stuff. So that's the closest
situation that I can think of. And we've all been
in a similar situation, folks. You know, you've you've been
(01:53):
in a school or a building where fire alarm goes
off and you usually people proceed in an orderly manner
until they actually see the flames or shale the smoke. Uh.
Some of our listeners have been in riot situations, have
been in combat situations, have been in you know, on
(02:15):
the scene of tremendous catastrophes, right, And what we notice
often is that in today's day and age, it's easier
now than ever before for an event or rumors about
an event to spread across the world. It's so much easier.
You're just to click away from talking to someone on
(02:38):
the other side of the planet. So what we're looking
at today is something sort of related to these things.
We are coming back to update you on jade Helm fifteen.
So first I guess we have to say what what
is jade Helm fifteen. Well, a little background. Jade Helm
(02:58):
fifteen was a multi state military exercise that took place
from July fift September UM. So this was basically an
exercise and unconventional warfare, and then it evolved the US
Army Special Operations Command and the Joint Special Operations Command,
with other U S Armed Forces units also involved. It
(03:19):
happened in the following states in Texas, Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi,
New Mexico, and Utah. Yeah, and naps of the exercise,
which you should check out if you're at all interested
in that. Maps of the exercise included areas of the
US like Colorado or California where there weren't any operations planned.
(03:41):
So here's what happens. The troops involved in the exercise
are playing on two different teams. They're either occupying forces
or resistance forces, and they're fighting each other and testing
out these techniques in sparsely populated areas near small towns,
and some of the troops in this these scenarios wore
(04:03):
civilian clothes and drove civilian vehicles. The exercise originally was
supposed to have the Creme de la Creme from four
military branches, but it was reduced along the way to
only include two hundred Special Operation Forces and three hundred
support personnel, with about seven hundred members of the Second
(04:25):
Airborne traveling to Texas to train for like a week
in August. And no, you remember that earlier in May,
we did an episode on jade Helm before it happened, right,
and we there was a lot of concern people were,
people were, let's say a little worried, and we read
a lot of strange stuff about it too. So today
(04:45):
we're going to talk about what actually happened during jade Helm.
If you want to hear some of the background, check
out our earlier podcast in May. Uh, and maybe we'll
talk a little bit about the social psychology behind widespread panic. Oh,
there's the joke. It's such a horrible joke. We mean
the phenomenon, not the band. The band's all right, though,
(05:07):
Do you ever listen to him. I'm gonna say, you know,
I U I had a couple of songs there, so
I would put on for writing music, just for like,
you know, the really instrumental stuff. I spent a lot
of time in Athens, and they came out of there
originally and they are pretty revered, but it was never
really my scene. Never really are seen a jam bandman,
(05:28):
A jam bandman. All right. I like that phrase, jam bandman,
fun desaver. Sure it is fun to say. All right, So,
speaking of amazing segues, Noel, let's talk about some of
those reports, some of those crazy things we heard, and
let's start with the alleged stuff. So the biggest, I
(05:49):
guess you can say shady thing that occurred was the
closure of Walmart stores. And this is actually, I mean,
before you know, doing the research for this UM, the
one detail that I really remember being playing up in
arms about. It's like, oh, what's happening. They're closing Walmart
and armagedon right right right? UM, So there was, you know,
these these closures of Walmart stores across the areas, and
(06:12):
believers in these this particular conspiracy, I suppose UM allowed
to the stores were closing to reopen as internment camps,
I suppose. So when when when did this happen? How
to go down? Walmart closed five stores in April, laying
off more than employees in California, Texas, Oklahoma, and Florida
(06:33):
due to ongoing plumbing issues. Yeah, that was the official explanation,
was that there were persistent plumbing issues, so they need
to close the stores for what six months to a
year or something. And some of the things that we
heard people saying, or that these stores were being closed
only to be reopened as warehouses or internment centers right
(06:55):
to um to keep the local population. That was and
in step with the new world order. But we have
an update about six months later. Do we have an
official statement from Walmart? Uh? The official statement from Walmart
was that this was entirely unrelated and that it was
seriously just due to plumbing issues. A shame. But it
(07:18):
seems strange because we talked about this in a previous episode.
It seems strange that it will close so suddenly because
the employees had no idea. I mean, I I don't
think I've ever heard of a Walmart closing. I think
Walmarts are just infinite, you know. Yeah, it reminds me
of the There's this really interesting thing that leaf. It
(07:38):
might be FEMA that has it called the waffle House Index.
Have you heard of that? So it's a measure of disasters,
like the the degree of a disaster in an area
can be measured by how it affects the waffle houses
because they're the most likely things to remain open. So
there is a legit waffle house index for people who
(07:59):
are not from the South. I guess we shouldn't assume
that everyone knows about waffle house. How would we describe
waffle house? It's a dinner I guess, like a crappy
I mean, it's the name is pretty accurate. It's a
waffle house. This house certain waffles, certain a lot of waffles. Uh.
You have a jukebox with waffle house themed music on
(08:22):
it and in addition to your typical honky tonk kind
of you know, natsy kline things like that. And they're
all over they're all over the Southeast, and they're been
twenty four hours and they're open twenty four hours a day.
They rarely closed. They've been opened during um lizards, steering floods,
steering hurricanes. Uh, that is why. That's why there's this
(08:43):
waffle House index, which makes me wonder why we don't
have a Walmart index. You know, that seems like it
would be even a larger scale. They did close multiple stores, right, Yeah,
they closed five, and but they were not in the
same area where they know. They weren't in the same area,
They were in different eights. So how how could there
be unrelated plumbing issues at at stores in different states
(09:07):
at the same time they would need to close the
stores for all the same time. Great question, because some
other people who did not buy the official explanation would
be the employees of these stores, those over people, and
many of them believed that the stores were being closed,
particularly one in California, because the employees were organizing unionizing
essentially for better pay, better hours, more equity in the workplace.
(09:32):
And it's true that Walmart had been found guilty of
doing the same kind of retaliation closing in Canada earlier.
That does ring true. That sounds a little more likely.
But six months later Walmart reopened the stores and they
invited former employees back to their jobs. I love that
you use the word invited. Come on back, open arms.
(09:55):
Uh yeah, you know you have to wonder. I'd love
to hear from one of those employees. You have to
wonder what their perspective is. Absolutely, and please if anyone
listening you know, was in that situation, please please send
the letters interesting stuff. Well, let's let's move on from
Walmart to some other kind of red flags. UM. One
of them is widespread outages, reports of widespread outages in
(10:17):
these areas that we're hosting these uh, these war games Internet. Yeah, exactly.
So it's basically the idea that multiple communication channels, whether
cell signals, Internet service, et cetera, cut out or we're
somehow interfered with all the same time around these events. UM.
And we couldn't personally, um confirm a lot of these reports,
(10:38):
but they're definitely out there. They're being discussed, right. And
the question there is, uh, the questionnaire is one of
you know, coincidence or collusion to everybody's had crappy cell
phone surface or cable service before, you know, I mean,
we we live in a land notorious for that. So
what it let's speculate a all noll if this were
(11:01):
to occur, if there were a concerted effort to cut
communication channels, which we know is possible in the US
has done it before. Why would they do it to
what end? You know, I mean, if we're spitballing here,
I guess they maybe wouldn't want um reports of the
locations of these, you know, these exercises to go out.
(11:22):
They weren't want people to be blogging about it. They
wouldn't want, you know, people to be causing the fuss
that I mean, that sounds that sounds reasonable, I suppose,
But but again, I just I don't understand why these
exercises needed to be so secretive in the first place. Yeah, absolutely,
uh there Well, one one thing that we could say
about that is they would need to be secretive so
(11:46):
that other forces, other foreign powers don't know the nuts
and bolts of how they couldn't observe. But I, you know,
that's that's something that again is just spitballing. It seems reasonable,
but I haven't heard the official rationale for it. There's
another concern here, one of these alleged concerns which was
(12:07):
pretty interesting to me and kind of far out. It
was one of the most fringe concerns we heard, and
it was that the US was secretly preparing for an
asteroid impact some heavy you know, apocalyptic into the world
type stuff, you know, which I think is uh an
exciting idea. Yeah, it's almost like Bruce Willis and his
(12:30):
crew of rag tag blue collar workers weren't able to
blow up the asteroid in time. And so this was
the plan B, right, right, the plan B to contain
the area. And if you look at the map, then
because the states are primarily contiguous, you know, it looks
like there's a specific region marked out. So one of
(12:52):
the things that one of the things that really propelled
this belief was the the actions of religious fundamental to
believe that an asteroid impact would usher in the the apocalypse,
biblical apocalypse and the end times, yes, and that there
would be seven I think it's horsemen for them. They
(13:17):
doubled up on the host, almost doubled up, uh. They
they believed that there would be a period of tribulation, rapture,
all this stuff. And so this group is a little
bit different in comparison to the other groups who believe
there was an asteroid impact because their predictions were based
on interpretations of ancient texts, right, rather than contemporary events.
(13:39):
But a lot of people began to believe this and
so many, in fact that eventually NASA had to had
to take to the internet. What did they have to
say about it? Yeah, they had to put out a
statement that said, guys, probably not the end of the world.
You have the text here too, right, could you do uh? Oh,
(14:00):
I'm sorry, yeah, I sure you okay, So could you
do uh? Like an interpretation? Here's my best my best
PR voice. NASA knows of no asteroid or comment currently
on collision course with Earth, so the probability of a
major collision is quite small. In fact, as best as
we can tell, no large object is likely to strike
the Earth anytime in the next several hundred years. No
(14:21):
further questions, No further questions. That was pretty good. That
was good. That was a good PR voice. So here's
one of the problems with this idea. Well, it would
be so so very difficult to keep an impact event
like this secret, or the threat of one, just because
even if everybody in NASA said, yeah, yeah, secrets are cool,
(14:45):
let's let's keep a secret, always one a secret. Why not? Yeah?
What just you know, for fun? Yeah, okay, it'll be
We're gonna shamalan these guys. I love it too. That's
how NaSTA people in Nassat's like, we'll pull We'll pull
a shamalama dingo, right Uh, ska doo skadoo. But that's
the problem. Even if NASA was on board with this
(15:06):
and the US government, there are so many other astronomers, institutions, states, organization, colleges,
I mean colleges yet actively watching the sky. Someone else
would find out about this. So we also have that's
that's our alleged stuff, but we also have some proven
(15:27):
things that happened, right. Uh. The basic one is that
it has proven that the the exercise was actually conducted
and all those operations did occur. The military cautiously describes
it as successful, though they point out they haven't conducted
a full post exercise analysis, as this something that they
do periodically, Like I mean, is it was this like
(15:49):
a new idea to do something like this, like in
civilian areas. This may be a no, it is not.
This may be one of the largest but and it
may use different or newer techniques. But military exercises are necessary, arguably,
and they occur fairly often. They do occur periodically, not
(16:12):
just here in the US, but around the world. And
we talked about that I think a little bit in
our last episode. You know, you can read how when
tensions rise in some countries North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Russia,
the Middle East, than other states will begin doing military exercises,
(16:33):
you know, right off the coast or right around there. Uh.
These drills are necessary to make sure that the enormous
amounts of money government spend on hardware and weapon rein
soldiers actually is worth it. You know that you get
the literal bang for your butt. Right. I'm sorry, I'm
(16:55):
not proud of that one, but but yes, uh, there's
there's no the thing it was proven here. Tremendously controversial
figure during this debate was a fellow named Alex Jones,
good old Alex Jones, good old a j as as. Uh.
He has never asked us to call Actually we I
(17:15):
don't think. I don't think Matt's spoken with Alex Jones
in person either. I haven't, now, have you. I tried
to get him. I almost got him. Actually, um. I
made a little documentary several years ago. Um and uh.
He was an outspoken critic of the subject of the documentary,
which was the Georgia guidestones. And I got up one
of his people, and they remailing back pretty regularly and
(17:38):
then just kind of stopped him. So but it's not
like it was gonna happen, but then it didn't. I
didn't even really know that much about him at the time,
but since I realized though he's probably highly paranoid, doesn't
talk to very many people. Well, it's probably very very busy.
He's very busy. But I thought I get a sense
that he likes to control his channels, you know what
I mean, Like you know, because I mean my film,
(17:58):
there was potential that he could have been taken out
of context. I think he likes to control the medium
of the delivery of his messages. Oh that makes sense,
because you don't wanna Yeah, that that does make sense.
He would have to be very protective of that. And
it's easy in especially in documentaries, for people to be
taking out of content. For the record, I think that's
a great documentary. We've talked about on the show before.
(18:20):
If you haven't seen it, right to us, if you
were at all interested in the Georgia guidestones. So Alex
Jones in this case, he covers a lot of stuff.
He got a lot of flak and ridicule in the
mainstream for the way he talked about Jade Helm. Uh.
People said that he was being alarmist and he was
making wild claims about the takeover of the US, you know,
(18:41):
very red downish um for different reasons. He said that
he was instead pointing out that the exercise was kind
of a frog and a pot thing, you know, the
old metaphor for cooking frogs. No, I'm afraid I'm not
aware of Well I don't. It's not a metaphor. Sorry,
(19:03):
it's a comparison. Uh So, the idea, and this is
familiar to a lot of our listeners, is that you
can cook frogs by putting them in water and slowly
turning up the heat. Because if it slowly turns up
at a certain rate, then they will not panic and
jump out, but they will slowly boil to death because
(19:23):
once you work your way up to a boil, it's
too late. So this idea is somewhat similar when he
when Alex Jones says, well, these are conducted to familiarize
people with this concept of an over an overarching the
police stage. That's a perfect word. No, it's perfect term.
(19:43):
So he saw this as the boil being turned up
just a little bit more uh, And he also said
he also said that jade Helm the last part was
an acronym for homeland eradication of local militants. And I
don't I don't know. I don't think the government would
be that on the nose. But it does show us
(20:04):
that his audience, or some part of his audience, was
concerned that this exercise was meant to root out local
militias and other groups or individuals able to defend each
other against the military. So is that who would have
been interred in the Walmarts militia? Right? And one thing
that's interesting about this is that that in the past
has been legitimate concern on both sides. You know, we
(20:28):
we hear about local armed groups numerous times, and I
can't you know, for a couple of reasons, I can't
provide a solid source on this, but I can assure you,
or I can't compromise the source, I guess, but I
can assure you that secessionist groups are far more widespread
(20:52):
than the media would have you believe. We've talked about
it briefly here on the air as well. But you know,
here in Georgia there's like a sovereign State of Georgia.
And these are the people who have their own license
plates or own ideas, have signs posted up saying this
is not us property, you are not allowed here, claiming
diplomatic community, none of which, of course, is acknowledged by
(21:14):
the courts. So there is it is important to know
that there is a culture of secessionists, but they are
different from a culture of what you would call, you know,
local military groups or people who are exercising the right
to be armed, which in this country is a right.
(21:34):
I mean, I guess you can think of a militia
sort of a an armed to the teeth neighborhood watch.
Yeah yeah, yeah, or in constitutionally it was kind of
an insurance policy, right. But anyhow, that's a that's a
pretty touchy subject for a lot of people. It's something
we can come back to later. But how did jade
(21:54):
Helm get in the mainstream to begin with? It's because
politicians got involved, right So Texas Governor Greg Abbott was
prominent among the politicians, asking for more information and listing
the local Texas police forces to keep an eye on
the jade Helm activities. Senator Ted Cruz also asked for
(22:18):
more information. So this really catapulted it into the mainstream. However,
now that now that the exercise is over and there
is not a one world government in charge of the region. Uh,
now that we know that we know of that's fair. Yeah,
now that that has occurred, Um, the a lot of
(22:40):
the people who were talking about this are not as talkative.
I noticed that, and we did a Paris copying the
other day and this came up, and I admittedly kind
of the lost track of the story. And as we've discussed,
for good reason, because the story just sort of fizzled
a little bit, you know, right, the and let's point
(23:01):
out some other military exercises that also occurred. Yeah, there's
Bold Alligator Love that name. Yeah, it's a naval exercise
where thousands of marines and sailors uh do amphibious landings
and they try to prevent insurgent groups in a fictional
country called Garnet. And that's actually something around the border
(23:22):
Georgia and Florida. And then that there's another one, right.
Another example is this exercise called Robins Sage, in which
US Special Forces support fictional guerilla forces in numerous counties
across North Carolina. UM, Green Beret soldiers work to liberate
another fictional country called them pine Land or pine Land,
(23:43):
I like Pineland, that sounds better, and operate in very
close proximity to civilians. You are, you know, for the
record warned that they may hear blanks being fired. Right.
And then there's the Marine Special Operations troop exercise that's
called Derna Bridge. And this is also in this in
(24:03):
South Carolina, Western South Carolina and as activities in the
Sumter National Forest. Here's something that did happen though. There
were altercations that are on record between the military and
civilians wherein civilians were firing on or attacking or planning
(24:24):
planning some activities. Just in case jade Helm went sideways
went pair shaped. Three North Carolina men, a guy named
Walter Litteral, Christopher Barker, and Christopher Campbell were arrested for
amassing weapons and conspiring to combat the government's alleged plan
to impose martial law. These guys had pipe bombs and
(24:47):
they had some They had some legal weapons and some
illegal weapons. As far as I know, they didn't attack anyone.
They were just caught on record. They just they kind
of opted to wait and see, right, And I think
literal who was the leader of the group. The de
fact a leader had also booby trapped his house, and
(25:10):
there was a lot of this is my thing. They
were amassing legal weapons, but they hadn't attacked anyone. There's
a different case in Mississippi where a sheriff said authorities
are searching for two men who fired gunshots from a
vehicle at soldiers at a military facility. Uh and this
(25:30):
was at Camp Shelby and Hattiesburg, Mississippi. UH And it
happened like two days, happened multiple days. So what we're
finding now is that despite concerns over the possibilities of
jade Helm, there was not a takeover as some had feared.
(25:52):
But other people who objected to jade Helm, most notably
Alex Jones, say that this is part of a slow
program to remove local resistance to federal power, and at
this point, that is where we are, and that's where
we are with jade Hell. No one was interned, the
(26:14):
walmarts reopened. But we are also left with with some questions,
some questions that go into not just this specific instance,
but in larger instances. And one of those questions is
how do these how do these panics occur, right, What
(26:34):
what is it about human psychology or group psychology that
allows people to get so caught up in an issue?
And then why with the current online culture, why do
these things become such flashes in the pan Yeah, I
mean especially let me look at like the sale on
witch trials for example. You know that was all word
of mouth, um, little bits of misinformation based on first
(26:58):
person accounts or something that mayor amount of actually taken
place in that particular way, spreading via word amount. Now
you know you've got fifty different pieces of misinformation that
are disseminated instantly, you know, over numerous online channels. I mean,
there's really no end to it. It's just like an
it's exponentially easier for this kind of thing, this kind
(27:18):
of information to spread. Yeah, that's a really good point.
I'm glad you made that, because the barrier for communication
and what we would call the cost of communication is
so much lower. And you and I have talked about
this software before, about how quickly and strangely these things
can rise and fall. In our last episode we talked
(27:40):
about Martin Screlly, and one of the most fascinating things
I think you pointed out was that this story was
up and down within a week. I mean it was, honestly,
in a lot of ways a day. There was definitely
more out there, but the majority of the back and
forth and the you know, the Twitter rampage age, pitchfork
(28:01):
waving kind of scenario that led to him more or
less backing down from his position kind of took place
within the span of a day. And it's also true
that jade Helme itself did capture this national attention. It
became a subject of national debate. There was a there
was a poll by the Public Policy Polling in May
off and it found that one third of people identifying
(28:25):
as Republicans believed that the jade Helm exercise was about
the government trying to take over Texas and another third
hadn't made their minds up yet. So a lot of people,
a lot of people believe that something fishy was afoot.
And and I think this is just me speculating here
(28:46):
in folks, but I think part of this comes from
the absence of transparency. You're not letting journalists observe events,
um and if there were blackouts. As people allege human beings,
we are analytical, we think in categories right. We fill
in blanks, and we fill in blanks exactly, so we
(29:08):
begin generating our own explanations, and those explanations that we
generate are based upon our pre existing beliefs or values, right,
which is why the same ambiguous events can mean two
very different things to people. We heard, we heard allegations
that this was part of a plan to prevent Russia
(29:30):
from assisting, uh, the annexation of the U. S State
by Mexico, which seems very far out there. Uh, let's see.
We heard asteroids. We heard that there was going to
be a construction beneath the ground and that was part
of it. And of all these things we heard, what
we found at the conclusion of this on September fifteen,
(29:52):
two thousand fifteen, was that most of it, most of
those concerns didn't come to fruition. And this doesn't mean
that jade Helm is by any means a good thing,
because it leads to the larger question of why, um,
why the military would be doing this domestic activity. Right. Well,
(30:17):
we talked about this a little bit on the periscope,
and this was interesting initiating point that you brought up
that I hadn't occurred to me is they need to
be able to train in different terrains, like in different
real world scenarios, and especially like in a pretty arid,
you know, climate like Texas, very similar to some of
the desert situations that they you know, end up in
on they're deployed. Sure, But then the other question is
(30:39):
at what point does it unreasonably impinge upon the lives
of US citizens or residents, you know, is is there
a line should ALIGNE exists? Well, my question is did it. Yeah,
it seems like it didn't. From the reports we've heard.
It seems like the main and the main civility ends
(31:00):
that were affected by this were people who were involved
in crime just in case crime, or are people that
were seeking it out and trying to more or less
fight back or at least you know, counter threat to it,
you know. Yeah, And then there's the other one of
the questions that people also said was that this was
an intelligence operation. It was about informational awareness. Informational awareness
(31:25):
being this concept that or the informational awareness being this
idea that you can trace all electronic activity. You want
to know as much as you can about every individual
or group and their interactions between each other, that's an
essay stuff, you know, and uh that that is completely
plausible and that impinges upon people's lives far more than
(31:48):
a then a military exercise outside of your town, right
and unfortunate. That's because that stuff is still warrantless. There
is pretty much oh effective supervision, and there's not really
a means of recourse for the average person you and
I included, as well as you listeners, as well as
(32:09):
you met. Sorry, but but let's look at some other
examples of of these kinds of hands. So, I mean,
my favorite of these, because I remember exactly where I
was when this went down, was Y two k, Y
two k, Y two k K not visitors now someone, No,
(32:31):
definitely not so much made of Y two k. This
belief that because of the specifications of computer date keeping
right like it was too place digits exactly the year
two thousand would cause massive internal errors and computer programs
across the place, the possibly throwing the world into economic
and social term while including financial systems, data storage at
(32:54):
corporations you know, to your own personal computer, Wall street crashes,
all deaths are erased because they no longer exist. Satellites
fall from the sky right fire, there were massive reactions
to this. I mean people were going so far as
to hoard like water supplies. Walmart's got cleaned out the
(33:15):
night before, of people getting gas masks and you know,
like purified water and you know, in bulk and you know,
food and things like that. Now, you and I differ
on this preps, but I think it's a good idea
to have those things. And I mean I think it
probably is too. I'm just saying it's when it's specifically
tied to a theory about a thing that may or
(33:36):
may not happen, at that point, you're probably not thinking
that enough, you know. Yeah, absolutely, I'm sure. I think
there's something wrong with being prepared or the unknown, and
there's also a group mentality at work there too, exactly.
I mean it was reported widely. You know, there were
cameras in the Walmarts showing all the empty shelves and
you know, no more food, bread, eggs, things like that.
(33:58):
People just sort of like, what happens when or what
happened with the snow apocalypse here in Atlanta. It's like
all these reports of the grocery stores with the shelves
completely cleaned out. It was very much to that kind
of situation. Oh boy, and uh you you listeners in
northern climbs, Uh laugh, we're laughing or laughing so hard
(34:20):
on it. It was. It was strange because you know,
Matt and I made a video about how we couldn't
make a video because of this because the city of
Atlanta shut down. It was just not prepared. It all
goes back not to be too much of a boy
scout about it, but it all goes back to preparation.
The city had what three snowplows maybe in the entire city,
(34:44):
and so it was bonkers out there. One of my friends,
who is a special ed teacher, uh had to stay
at the school overnight and take care of all these
kids whose parents didn't get them all right, t guy
is he um had to basically sleep in his car
because everything was at such a standstill. And back back
to y took though I do feel like, not exactly
(35:06):
the same, but a similar kind of panic that was
very observable for us. And yeah, and that's that's a
really good point that if we could talk a little
bit about some of the psychology behind these things. Of First,
I want to I want to underline and say this, Uh,
I don't think ridiculing people is the right way to
(35:28):
approach these kind of things because the idea of a
government takeover of a town or a city or a place,
right is plausible. That stuff can happen. It happens in
other countries. It's happening now in other parts of the world.
Now does it seem unreasonable to think that would happen
(35:50):
here in the US. Well, it's less plausible because we
would have to question what the motivation for that would be.
But I don't think anyone would argue that if the
situation was right, if they wanted to, they certainly have
the means and the personnel to do this thing. Sure,
the U. S Military is by far the most powerful
(36:10):
military in the world. However, different we do have a
legal framework that is meant to prevent that kind of
situation from occurring. Yeah, but we also have a legal
framework that supposedly prevent things like n s A wire
tapping from Alright, touche my friend. That's a good point. Yeah,
And then it goes back to the idea of secret
(36:32):
courts and secret laws and secret interpretations of those laws,
and things are things are bent, things are true. Yeah,
You're you're spot on with that, here's one of the
things I think we can look at psychologically, So the
idea that this stuff can happen and it's plausible, or
at least it's possible, and due in large part to
(36:52):
the malleability of the laws as you as you astutely
point out. If we talk about the psychology, then I
would say that part of it is that certain events
or concepts can become this kind of steam vent and
people can project other concerns about it, you know, absolutely,
(37:13):
So the Salem witch trials, that's part of it. And
there is a you know, life was very difficult that
in terms of food, in terms of security and shelter,
and here we're in a country with booming inequality, very divisive,
very i won't say great powers, but very divisive political
(37:34):
parties that do not want to work with each other, right,
and there is a tension across the country. When there
is a tension like this, the smallest thing can topple
the Jenga tower, you know. And so this is this
is something that I think we need to be aware of.
There is a subtext here that allows um that allows
(37:58):
for this kind of panic to occur. In two thousand twelve,
we saw another thing that was one of my remember
the two thousand twelve panics, and these are both a
little bit different to jade Helm because these are apocalyptic panics.
So these kind of events all have certain commonalities. One,
it is considered to affect a large group of people too.
(38:22):
It has a do date, a very specific do date,
you know, July January one, two thousand. Time and again
we hear about these things and these do dates pass right, right,
I mean, I think we've said it before, but you know,
somewhere the world is ending for someone every day. And
(38:45):
I think there's an average of I can't remember where
I got this number, but I'll try to find a
source for everyone. I think there's an average of a
hundreds something apocalyptic predictions each year. There's some group of
people saying, this year, guys, the big one, this is
the big one. The other one didn't happen because we
(39:06):
weren't ready with our original prediction. But now, my friends,
are you familiar with the Church of the SubGenius, Yeah, vaguely,
so they have this, uh, this event. It's so for
anyone that's not aware of the Church of SubGenius, it's
a cult, but it's a joke cult. I mean it's you.
You sign up, you pay a membership, you get a
(39:26):
members membership card. Um. You you can become ordained in
the church of a SubGenius. Um. But they're one of
their central themes is this idea of X Day, which
is an event they have. It's basically like a hedonistic
bacchanalia in the woods where they you know, do a
lot of drugs and party and you know, tell do
weird sermons about slack, which is what their fundamental principle.
(39:50):
You've gotta have slack. It means just like not caring
and doing doing your own thing and not worrying about it. Um.
But X Day their profit. Bob Dobbs, who is embodied
by this sort of clip art um, you know, fifties
house father with a pipe. Yeah. Um he I hope
I'm not this characterizing this too much of any any
(40:12):
sub genii out there, please right in and correct me
all day. Um. But there was there was this date
that was associated with the end of the world, and
it turns out that they read it backwards, where they
read it upside down or something like that, so it
passes every like it's it's passed officially for the first time,
and whatever the inverse of it isn't going to be
(40:34):
for another you know, a thousand years or something like that.
I you know, I I can get on board with that.
I've never really understood the Church of the SubGenius because
I haven't looked into it. But I love the idea
of a wink and a nod. It's tongue in the
whole thing. This idea of like an apocalyptic cult, or
the idea of any kind of apocalyptic prediction. It's sort
(40:54):
of like, oh, we read the tablet wrong, or you know,
it's it's human beings are fallible, and that sort of
the joke there in right and again, this this concern
of I guess what we're talking about now is the
way of which jade Helm became this subject of national concern,
right in the same way in which Y two K
(41:17):
or the two thousand twelve stuff became a concern. And
we kept an eye on this. We looked to see
if there were and there were different things happening. And
at this point the stuff we found, which we've mentioned before,
wasn't wasn't the stuff that was predicted. I've got an
interesting book here and all that you've seen me flipping
(41:39):
through as we're talking. Uh. The name of this book
is Outbreak, the Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior. And what
this book does is it gathers all sorts of different
different mass panics. Right. Uh. The one I have a
page on now is Hayley Comment, Haley's commet Scare, which
(42:01):
is worldwide. In nineteen ten, he said that, uh, and
this this comes to us from a prediction in one
and astronomer named Sir William Huggins was analyzing light spectra
from comets when he discovered the presence of a lethal
gas called cynogen, and this produced a worldwide panic. Would
(42:23):
people believe that the next time Haley's comment passed Earth,
the entire planet would be poisoned with this deadly gas?
And this is just there's just one exist is a
weighty volume here, folks. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff here,
very small brand. I mean, just say just say win.
I'll just flip through a new ze wind. Okay. The
(42:44):
Mora witch affair and this is a Scandinavian countries in
sixteen sixty four sixteen seventy six, specifically Sweden, and uh,
you know it's the witch mania right when reports from
the countryside of witchcraft was taking place. The authorities were
first reluctant to take action, but as complaints continue to
(43:05):
be made despite the protest of doctors UH, they decided
rigorous measures were needed. The number of the executed has
never been established, but it is likely to approach two hundred,
including some children. So what we have here is UH.
This also has the context where they give you a
blow by blow of how it occurred and the social
(43:27):
conditions of the time, right. And what we've seen is
that there is a there is a relationship correlation between
economic difficulties and the rise of concerns about stuff like this.
It just doesn't these kinds of widespread panics. You gotta
(43:49):
find a different phrase. I keep thinking of the band.
These kind of concerns seem don't seem to spread in
times of economic boom. It makes me think of as
actually a show that I'm working on right now. It's
a little bit hush hush. I'm not gonna say too
much about it, but um. One a source person that
we interviewed was a professor who conducted a survey of
(44:13):
American fears and one of the biggest um Uh. Factors
leading to higher levels of fear about a wide variety
of things. Was economic hardship um paired with low lower
levels of education. Yeah, I can completely understand that. But
now we've opened another conspiracy, noal, because we do have
(44:35):
to keep that on the hush, don't we definitely do. Yeah,
it's gonna be good though. Yeah, no spoilers. You'll hear
about it soon enough. And speaking about hearing stuff, we
like to hear from you about what your take on
this entire event is. Is there something that Nolan that
and I missed, you know, is there is there something
that was unreported that should have been reported as it
(44:57):
been suppressed somehow, because we do want to know otherwise,
at the basis of this, it seems like a lot
of the predictions that people made did not occur. And
just to drive home how much we appreciate listener mail,
let's do some right now, do it? Okay, We've got
(45:19):
one here from Sandy um Uh concerning the episode you
and I did on Big Pharma the other week. I
cringed when I heard you guys mentioned creatum and just
a refresher. Creatum was the the herb I mentioned that
you know has been reported to be able to treat
multiple kinds of addictions, and as Sandy puts it here,
(45:42):
create um actually is also good for treating fibromyalgia, which
I believe is a nerve condition that creates pretty widespread pain.
Just all over. Um, everyone, we'd like to keep quiet
about this because we are so afraid it's going to
be outlawed. As I mentioned in the episode as well,
it's definitely on a few watch lists. Um. It is
(46:04):
not something to be abused, but has many medicinal uses,
So keep it on the down low. Lull I love
you all on the show, Sandy. Sandy, thanks so much
for writing and we appreciate your point. You might be thinking, well,
if you appreciate my point, why did you read the
letter on on the air? Jerks? But we're reading it
on the air because first off, it's it's not like
(46:29):
it's not like our show is going to be the
thing that tips the d a's had. You know, I
don't think so either. We have to keep a realistic
opinion of ourselves and uh, but but we do want
other listeners who perhaps missed that last episode to know
about this, especially if you have someone in your life
(46:49):
who has an addiction problem. You know, those things destroy
lives and often it's very difficult to get help through
the current system, right, So if there's something that can
free people from that, we want we want you, our
listeners to know about it. This is this can literally
(47:10):
be a life and death thing. And Sandy, we also
hope that it is not outlawed and we agree. I've
been reading about this NonStop since you introduced the concept,
and I had never heard of it. Um, So we
appreciate it and we want to know more about it.
I do. I promise you we won't do an episode
on it if that's too much publicity. So let's go
(47:33):
to another one here, all right, Lucton P Writes to
us and says, please consider the underwear bomber as a
podcast topic. What do you know about this two thousand
nine Christmas Day incident? Nigerian Umar Farouk abdulmutalab has and
his attempt to detonate an explosive substance might be all
you remember, but are you aware of the sharp dress man,
(47:56):
the man in orange, or the person on the flight
recording the entire incident? The official story of events was
ever changing, and several passengers made statements that suggest there's
more to the story. Two lawyers that were passengers on
the flight were even preparing to be called as witnesses
in the defense of mutalab So, uh, this goes on,
and Lupton's provided a lot of sources here. We wanted
(48:19):
to put this out. We're going to put this out
into the ether and ask you, guys if you would
like to hear something about the about the underwear bomber.
So let us know, do you remember that noise basically
what he said? Yeah, the broad strokes and goes into
much more detail we can see here. Uh, so let's see.
(48:40):
What do you think should we do one more listener
mail or should we go straight to Wait, what's that?
What's that noise? Oh? My god, it's you. I guess
it is. This is weird. You know, I was thinking
it might be nice. Uh. If we can convince Matt
to do a moment, i'd be good. Yeah we yeah,
(49:01):
we should have them out. Yeah, I get him to
skype in. Yeah, we'll see if we can work on that.
Let us. I think they'd be great because honestly, I
don't have much today. Man, I feel like, um, this
is this is warn me plumb out talking about this topic. Um,
I'm sort of fighting a little bit of a respiratory bug. Um,
and it was all I could do to kind of
wade my way through this conversation. Um, but I'm sort
(49:23):
of fading a little bit here. Honestly, Ben, I'm not
not too ashamed to say I feel you. Then the
sickness is going through the office. If you listen to more,
if you listen to other how Stuff Work shows, which
we strongly recommend, then you might hear some other people
getting getting the credit or the Batman voice. It's annoying though,
because I've literally made it all year without getting anything,
(49:44):
and that is super unusual for me. And now all
of a sudden, I'm stricken. Well, what about the power
of positive thought? Man? Well, I'm gonna work on that.
I've tried soup. I've tried juice. There's a really good
juice place here at Atlanta called Arden's Garden, and they
make delicious combo of ginger apple juice and carrots. Yeah,
(50:06):
you know, every time I take one of those usually
knocks whatever. I feel like it's coming right out. But
did not did not seem to do the trick. This time.
They also have the that complete recovery juice stuff. Yeah,
that's a good one. The exercise might also be good.
I've heard you can exercise away a bug. I don't
know if that's so. You're saying I should get an exorcist. Yes, yeah,
(50:28):
to exercise, you should get it. You know there is
there is still a chief exorcist at the Vatican. I
got a thing. What speaking of the Vatican, what's up
with the pope meeting with this Kim Davis woman? That
bummed me out to no end? Oh I didn't know that,
(50:50):
oh what? Yeah? And the and the only way it
came out was because Kim Davis is loudmouth lawyers who
have been caught very recently for distributing false information. Shin like.
They had a picture that was of some sort of
event in Chile, I believe, and they claimed that it
was a prayer group, a giant prayer group in her
honor or like, for her benefit. And then they ultimately
(51:12):
came out and said that now, in fact, it was
another event. They may not have claimed that they knew,
but whatever they definitely was was misinformation. So we were
really hoping, and I say this because this Pope has
been intriguing in a lot of ways. He's you know,
he definitely seems like he's got some interesting, more progressive
ideas about climate change and you know a lot of
different things that you don't typically hear of pope be
(51:33):
outspoken about. But he's more involved these politically or in
secular issues. And he he actually had you may have
heard of this before, the idea of liberation theology, which
is uh, something that a lot of Catholic priest or
members of the church in South and Central America were
(51:55):
involved with. Was this idea of connecting religion and in
some cases leftist movements, which you know, was not super
popular with the US at the time. But people will
tell you that the current popes, the current pope's perspective
on things like economic inequality or a couple of other
(52:17):
issues are echoes of liberation theology. But also still it's
the pope. The pope is going to have views that
other people would consider very very conservative. Well, I guess
maybe it's very naive of me, but this particular pope
just gave this sense that he was he was a
little different. You know, he was all about transparency, and
so the fact that he you know, took fifteen minutes
(52:39):
out of his schedule to secretly meet with this woman,
and it wasn't on his itinerary. You know, his camp
didn't at least this information. Again, it was her loud
mouth attorney that tweeted it out, you know, like, hey,
you know she's totally vindicated. The Pope's all about you
know design. So yeah, this is the of game men
and women because that's married Kim. That's who. What's her named?
(53:01):
Kim Davidim Davis. She was the county clerk in Rowan County,
Kentucky who, after the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional to
deny um gay men and women the right to be married, um,
she refused to issue marriage licenses. So you don't think
the meeting was something where he said to you. You
(53:21):
think the meme was like congratulatory, I approve. Well, I mean,
the the position of the Vatican is, yes, the meeting occurred,
and that is as far as they are going with it. Um.
So I suppose everything that we know about what was
said or not set is coming from Kim Davis's camp,
So it could all be absolute hogwash. But according to
her people, you know, he said something to the effect
(53:43):
of stay strong or um, you know, like gave some
measure of approval for for the first dance in this
whole situation. Yeah, that's uh. It's interesting because you know,
the Pope is such a practitioner of what would be
called soft diplomacy, you know, because it's not like the
(54:04):
Pope can send an army into a country. Does he
still uh? Does he still snapchat? You? Not in a
long time? Man, I'm sorry to hear that, because I
I still like we text. Yeah, I mean the Pope
text just basic stuff, just like how how's the game?
And he's like, oh, man, look at my shoes. No,
(54:26):
of course, we also want to point out that we're
not in any way I feel like we have to
say this. We're not in any way trying to denigrate
religion or religion at all. No, I mean, I'm a
I'm I I am not anti religion at all if
people are able to use it in a way that's
positive for them personally. I mean when I start having issues,
as when it's used as a as a tool to
(54:47):
harm people or to um cut people down and make
people less than that, I start having issues. But this
is just an interesting turn of events for me, Yeah,
I had not heard of that story, and I I
try to keep an eye on the current pope. But
let us know what you think about the pope, this
pope or the papacy in general, because that seems like
(55:10):
a topic we could dig into. Also, let us know
again if anything occurred in jade Helm. If you want to,
just hit us up on the internet. Were there all
the time? We are conspiracy stuff at both Facebook and Twitter.
We also have a website, UH that you can go to.
It is stuff they don't want you to know dot
com pain to type, but it's worth it. When you't
(55:31):
get there and see what else will? We have an
email and that is conspiracy at how stuff works dot com.
For more on this topic, another unexplained phenomenal, visit YouTube
dot com slash conspiracy stuff. You can also get in
(55:53):
touch on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy Stuff.
From UFOs two, ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Now,
bellow everyone, and welcome to the show. My name is Noel, Yes,
and I am Ben. We are as always joined in
(00:23):
spirit by our producer and co host Matt. Let's see
what's foul we call them today? I mean, I like
the alliteration of the madman, what about Matt, the militants, Frederick.
That's good, that's good, that's approca. So before we start
today's episode, Noel, I was thinking that we could we
(00:45):
could have a little bit of a tangential conversation. Sure,
okay with that course, all right. I'm fond of the tangent,
fond of the tangent. Yes, all right. So have you
ever observed in real life a a widespread like a panic.
It's funny that you say that. You know, there's that
jam band called widespread Panic. Yeah, I don't know. I was.
(01:08):
I was fighting not to make a joke about it.
But it's gonna come out. It's fine, let it come. No,
I don't think so, you know, I mean nothing, um,
definitely no form of like mass hysteria, or any kind
of situation where I felt threatened or I felt like,
you know, things are out of hand. I mean, well,
actually now now now that now that I think about it,
(01:29):
I did go to a Creed concert um when I
was a kid, and I did feel like there was
some you know, that were on the edge of pandemonium,
really playing my my own prison. I mean, Creed exudes
a certain kind of energy that just gets into you
and makes you do crazy stuff. So that's the closest
situation that I can think of. And we've all been
in a similar situation, folks. You know, you've you've been
(01:53):
in a school or a building where fire alarm goes
off and you usually people proceed in an orderly manner
until they actually see the flames or shale the smoke. Uh.
Some of our listeners have been in riot situations, have
been in combat situations, have been in you know, on
(02:15):
the scene of tremendous catastrophes, right, And what we notice
often is that in today's day and age, it's easier
now than ever before for an event or rumors about
an event to spread across the world. It's so much easier.
You're just to click away from talking to someone on
(02:38):
the other side of the planet. So what we're looking
at today is something sort of related to these things.
We are coming back to update you on jade Helm fifteen.
So first I guess we have to say what what
is jade Helm fifteen. Well, a little background. Jade Helm
(02:58):
fifteen was a multi state military exercise that took place
from July fift September UM. So this was basically an
exercise and unconventional warfare, and then it evolved the US
Army Special Operations Command and the Joint Special Operations Command,
with other U S Armed Forces units also involved. It
(03:19):
happened in the following states in Texas, Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi,
New Mexico, and Utah. Yeah, and naps of the exercise,
which you should check out if you're at all interested
in that. Maps of the exercise included areas of the
US like Colorado or California where there weren't any operations planned.
(03:41):
So here's what happens. The troops involved in the exercise
are playing on two different teams. They're either occupying forces
or resistance forces, and they're fighting each other and testing
out these techniques in sparsely populated areas near small towns,
and some of the troops in this these scenarios wore
(04:03):
civilian clothes and drove civilian vehicles. The exercise originally was
supposed to have the Creme de la Creme from four
military branches, but it was reduced along the way to
only include two hundred Special Operation Forces and three hundred
support personnel, with about seven hundred members of the Second
(04:25):
Airborne traveling to Texas to train for like a week
in August. And no, you remember that earlier in May,
we did an episode on jade Helm before it happened, right,
and we there was a lot of concern people were,
people were, let's say a little worried, and we read
a lot of strange stuff about it too. So today
(04:45):
we're going to talk about what actually happened during jade Helm.
If you want to hear some of the background, check
out our earlier podcast in May. Uh, and maybe we'll
talk a little bit about the social psychology behind widespread panic. Oh,
there's the joke. It's such a horrible joke. We mean
the phenomenon, not the band. The band's all right, though,
(05:07):
Do you ever listen to him. I'm gonna say, you know,
I U I had a couple of songs there, so
I would put on for writing music, just for like,
you know, the really instrumental stuff. I spent a lot
of time in Athens, and they came out of there
originally and they are pretty revered, but it was never
really my scene. Never really are seen a jam bandman,
(05:28):
A jam bandman. All right. I like that phrase, jam bandman,
fun desaver. Sure it is fun to say. All right, So,
speaking of amazing segues, Noel, let's talk about some of
those reports, some of those crazy things we heard, and
let's start with the alleged stuff. So the biggest, I
(05:49):
guess you can say shady thing that occurred was the
closure of Walmart stores. And this is actually, I mean,
before you know, doing the research for this UM, the
one detail that I really remember being playing up in
arms about. It's like, oh, what's happening. They're closing Walmart
and armagedon right right right? UM, So there was, you know,
these these closures of Walmart stores across the areas, and
(06:12):
believers in these this particular conspiracy, I suppose UM allowed
to the stores were closing to reopen as internment camps,
I suppose. So when when when did this happen? How
to go down? Walmart closed five stores in April, laying
off more than employees in California, Texas, Oklahoma, and Florida
(06:33):
due to ongoing plumbing issues. Yeah, that was the official explanation,
was that there were persistent plumbing issues, so they need
to close the stores for what six months to a
year or something. And some of the things that we
heard people saying, or that these stores were being closed
only to be reopened as warehouses or internment centers right
(06:55):
to um to keep the local population. That was and
in step with the new world order. But we have
an update about six months later. Do we have an
official statement from Walmart? Uh? The official statement from Walmart
was that this was entirely unrelated and that it was
seriously just due to plumbing issues. A shame. But it
(07:18):
seems strange because we talked about this in a previous episode.
It seems strange that it will close so suddenly because
the employees had no idea. I mean, I I don't
think I've ever heard of a Walmart closing. I think
Walmarts are just infinite, you know. Yeah, it reminds me
of the There's this really interesting thing that leaf. It
(07:38):
might be FEMA that has it called the waffle House Index.
Have you heard of that? So it's a measure of disasters,
like the the degree of a disaster in an area
can be measured by how it affects the waffle houses
because they're the most likely things to remain open. So
there is a legit waffle house index for people who
(07:59):
are not from the South. I guess we shouldn't assume
that everyone knows about waffle house. How would we describe
waffle house? It's a dinner I guess, like a crappy
I mean, it's the name is pretty accurate. It's a
waffle house. This house certain waffles, certain a lot of waffles. Uh.
You have a jukebox with waffle house themed music on
(08:22):
it and in addition to your typical honky tonk kind
of you know, natsy kline things like that. And they're
all over they're all over the Southeast, and they're been
twenty four hours and they're open twenty four hours a day.
They rarely closed. They've been opened during um lizards, steering floods,
steering hurricanes. Uh, that is why. That's why there's this
(08:43):
waffle House index, which makes me wonder why we don't
have a Walmart index. You know, that seems like it
would be even a larger scale. They did close multiple stores, right, Yeah,
they closed five, and but they were not in the
same area where they know. They weren't in the same area,
They were in different eights. So how how could there
be unrelated plumbing issues at at stores in different states
(09:07):
at the same time they would need to close the
stores for all the same time. Great question, because some
other people who did not buy the official explanation would
be the employees of these stores, those over people, and
many of them believed that the stores were being closed,
particularly one in California, because the employees were organizing unionizing
essentially for better pay, better hours, more equity in the workplace.
(09:32):
And it's true that Walmart had been found guilty of
doing the same kind of retaliation closing in Canada earlier.
That does ring true. That sounds a little more likely.
But six months later Walmart reopened the stores and they
invited former employees back to their jobs. I love that
you use the word invited. Come on back, open arms.
(09:55):
Uh yeah, you know you have to wonder. I'd love
to hear from one of those employees. You have to
wonder what their perspective is. Absolutely, and please if anyone
listening you know, was in that situation, please please send
the letters interesting stuff. Well, let's let's move on from
Walmart to some other kind of red flags. UM. One
of them is widespread outages, reports of widespread outages in
(10:17):
these areas that we're hosting these uh, these war games Internet. Yeah, exactly.
So it's basically the idea that multiple communication channels, whether
cell signals, Internet service, et cetera, cut out or we're
somehow interfered with all the same time around these events. UM.
And we couldn't personally, um confirm a lot of these reports,
(10:38):
but they're definitely out there. They're being discussed, right. And
the question there is, uh, the questionnaire is one of
you know, coincidence or collusion to everybody's had crappy cell
phone surface or cable service before, you know, I mean,
we we live in a land notorious for that. So
what it let's speculate a all noll if this were
(11:01):
to occur, if there were a concerted effort to cut
communication channels, which we know is possible in the US
has done it before. Why would they do it to
what end? You know, I mean, if we're spitballing here,
I guess they maybe wouldn't want um reports of the
locations of these, you know, these exercises to go out.
(11:22):
They weren't want people to be blogging about it. They
wouldn't want, you know, people to be causing the fuss
that I mean, that sounds that sounds reasonable, I suppose,
But but again, I just I don't understand why these
exercises needed to be so secretive in the first place. Yeah, absolutely,
uh there Well, one one thing that we could say
about that is they would need to be secretive so
(11:46):
that other forces, other foreign powers don't know the nuts
and bolts of how they couldn't observe. But I, you know,
that's that's something that again is just spitballing. It seems reasonable,
but I haven't heard the official rationale for it. There's
another concern here, one of these alleged concerns which was
(12:07):
pretty interesting to me and kind of far out. It
was one of the most fringe concerns we heard, and
it was that the US was secretly preparing for an
asteroid impact some heavy you know, apocalyptic into the world
type stuff, you know, which I think is uh an
exciting idea. Yeah, it's almost like Bruce Willis and his
(12:30):
crew of rag tag blue collar workers weren't able to
blow up the asteroid in time. And so this was
the plan B, right, right, the plan B to contain
the area. And if you look at the map, then
because the states are primarily contiguous, you know, it looks
like there's a specific region marked out. So one of
(12:52):
the things that one of the things that really propelled
this belief was the the actions of religious fundamental to
believe that an asteroid impact would usher in the the apocalypse,
biblical apocalypse and the end times, yes, and that there
would be seven I think it's horsemen for them. They
(13:17):
doubled up on the host, almost doubled up, uh. They
they believed that there would be a period of tribulation, rapture,
all this stuff. And so this group is a little
bit different in comparison to the other groups who believe
there was an asteroid impact because their predictions were based
on interpretations of ancient texts, right, rather than contemporary events.
(13:39):
But a lot of people began to believe this and
so many, in fact that eventually NASA had to had
to take to the internet. What did they have to
say about it? Yeah, they had to put out a
statement that said, guys, probably not the end of the world.
You have the text here too, right, could you do uh? Oh,
(14:00):
I'm sorry, yeah, I sure you okay, So could you
do uh? Like an interpretation? Here's my best my best
PR voice. NASA knows of no asteroid or comment currently
on collision course with Earth, so the probability of a
major collision is quite small. In fact, as best as
we can tell, no large object is likely to strike
the Earth anytime in the next several hundred years. No
(14:21):
further questions, No further questions. That was pretty good. That
was good. That was a good PR voice. So here's
one of the problems with this idea. Well, it would
be so so very difficult to keep an impact event
like this secret, or the threat of one, just because
even if everybody in NASA said, yeah, yeah, secrets are cool,
(14:45):
let's let's keep a secret, always one a secret. Why not? Yeah?
What just you know, for fun? Yeah, okay, it'll be
We're gonna shamalan these guys. I love it too. That's
how NaSTA people in Nassat's like, we'll pull We'll pull
a shamalama dingo, right Uh, ska doo skadoo. But that's
the problem. Even if NASA was on board with this
(15:06):
and the US government, there are so many other astronomers, institutions, states, organization, colleges,
I mean colleges yet actively watching the sky. Someone else
would find out about this. So we also have that's
that's our alleged stuff, but we also have some proven
(15:27):
things that happened, right. Uh. The basic one is that
it has proven that the the exercise was actually conducted
and all those operations did occur. The military cautiously describes
it as successful, though they point out they haven't conducted
a full post exercise analysis, as this something that they
do periodically, Like I mean, is it was this like
(15:49):
a new idea to do something like this, like in
civilian areas. This may be a no, it is not.
This may be one of the largest but and it
may use different or newer techniques. But military exercises are necessary, arguably,
and they occur fairly often. They do occur periodically, not
(16:12):
just here in the US, but around the world. And
we talked about that I think a little bit in
our last episode. You know, you can read how when
tensions rise in some countries North Korea, South Korea, Japan, Russia,
the Middle East, than other states will begin doing military exercises,
(16:33):
you know, right off the coast or right around there. Uh.
These drills are necessary to make sure that the enormous
amounts of money government spend on hardware and weapon rein
soldiers actually is worth it. You know that you get
the literal bang for your butt. Right. I'm sorry, I'm
(16:55):
not proud of that one, but but yes, uh, there's
there's no the thing it was proven here. Tremendously controversial
figure during this debate was a fellow named Alex Jones,
good old Alex Jones, good old a j as as. Uh.
He has never asked us to call Actually we I
(17:15):
don't think. I don't think Matt's spoken with Alex Jones
in person either. I haven't, now, have you. I tried
to get him. I almost got him. Actually, um. I
made a little documentary several years ago. Um and uh.
He was an outspoken critic of the subject of the documentary,
which was the Georgia guidestones. And I got up one
of his people, and they remailing back pretty regularly and
(17:38):
then just kind of stopped him. So but it's not
like it was gonna happen, but then it didn't. I
didn't even really know that much about him at the time,
but since I realized though he's probably highly paranoid, doesn't
talk to very many people. Well, it's probably very very busy.
He's very busy. But I thought I get a sense
that he likes to control his channels, you know what
I mean, Like you know, because I mean my film,
(17:58):
there was potential that he could have been taken out
of context. I think he likes to control the medium
of the delivery of his messages. Oh that makes sense,
because you don't wanna Yeah, that that does make sense.
He would have to be very protective of that. And
it's easy in especially in documentaries, for people to be
taking out of content. For the record, I think that's
a great documentary. We've talked about on the show before.
(18:20):
If you haven't seen it, right to us, if you
were at all interested in the Georgia guidestones. So Alex
Jones in this case, he covers a lot of stuff.
He got a lot of flak and ridicule in the
mainstream for the way he talked about Jade Helm. Uh.
People said that he was being alarmist and he was
making wild claims about the takeover of the US, you know,
(18:41):
very red downish um for different reasons. He said that
he was instead pointing out that the exercise was kind
of a frog and a pot thing, you know, the
old metaphor for cooking frogs. No, I'm afraid I'm not
aware of Well I don't. It's not a metaphor. Sorry,
(19:03):
it's a comparison. Uh So, the idea, and this is
familiar to a lot of our listeners, is that you
can cook frogs by putting them in water and slowly
turning up the heat. Because if it slowly turns up
at a certain rate, then they will not panic and
jump out, but they will slowly boil to death because
(19:23):
once you work your way up to a boil, it's
too late. So this idea is somewhat similar when he
when Alex Jones says, well, these are conducted to familiarize
people with this concept of an over an overarching the
police stage. That's a perfect word. No, it's perfect term.
(19:43):
So he saw this as the boil being turned up
just a little bit more uh, And he also said
he also said that jade Helm the last part was
an acronym for homeland eradication of local militants. And I
don't I don't know. I don't think the government would
be that on the nose. But it does show us
(20:04):
that his audience, or some part of his audience, was
concerned that this exercise was meant to root out local
militias and other groups or individuals able to defend each
other against the military. So is that who would have
been interred in the Walmarts militia? Right? And one thing
that's interesting about this is that that in the past
has been legitimate concern on both sides. You know, we
(20:28):
we hear about local armed groups numerous times, and I
can't you know, for a couple of reasons, I can't
provide a solid source on this, but I can assure you,
or I can't compromise the source, I guess, but I
can assure you that secessionist groups are far more widespread
(20:52):
than the media would have you believe. We've talked about
it briefly here on the air as well. But you know,
here in Georgia there's like a sovereign State of Georgia.
And these are the people who have their own license
plates or own ideas, have signs posted up saying this
is not us property, you are not allowed here, claiming
diplomatic community, none of which, of course, is acknowledged by
(21:14):
the courts. So there is it is important to know
that there is a culture of secessionists, but they are
different from a culture of what you would call, you know,
local military groups or people who are exercising the right
to be armed, which in this country is a right.
(21:34):
I mean, I guess you can think of a militia
sort of a an armed to the teeth neighborhood watch.
Yeah yeah, yeah, or in constitutionally it was kind of
an insurance policy, right. But anyhow, that's a that's a
pretty touchy subject for a lot of people. It's something
we can come back to later. But how did jade
(21:54):
Helm get in the mainstream to begin with? It's because
politicians got involved, right So Texas Governor Greg Abbott was
prominent among the politicians, asking for more information and listing
the local Texas police forces to keep an eye on
the jade Helm activities. Senator Ted Cruz also asked for
(22:18):
more information. So this really catapulted it into the mainstream. However,
now that now that the exercise is over and there
is not a one world government in charge of the region. Uh,
now that we know that we know of that's fair. Yeah,
now that that has occurred, Um, the a lot of
(22:40):
the people who were talking about this are not as talkative.
I noticed that, and we did a Paris copying the
other day and this came up, and I admittedly kind
of the lost track of the story. And as we've discussed,
for good reason, because the story just sort of fizzled
a little bit, you know, right, the and let's point
(23:01):
out some other military exercises that also occurred. Yeah, there's
Bold Alligator Love that name. Yeah, it's a naval exercise
where thousands of marines and sailors uh do amphibious landings
and they try to prevent insurgent groups in a fictional
country called Garnet. And that's actually something around the border
(23:22):
Georgia and Florida. And then that there's another one, right.
Another example is this exercise called Robins Sage, in which
US Special Forces support fictional guerilla forces in numerous counties
across North Carolina. UM, Green Beret soldiers work to liberate
another fictional country called them pine Land or pine Land,
(23:43):
I like Pineland, that sounds better, and operate in very
close proximity to civilians. You are, you know, for the
record warned that they may hear blanks being fired. Right.
And then there's the Marine Special Operations troop exercise that's
called Derna Bridge. And this is also in this in
(24:03):
South Carolina, Western South Carolina and as activities in the
Sumter National Forest. Here's something that did happen though. There
were altercations that are on record between the military and
civilians wherein civilians were firing on or attacking or planning
(24:24):
planning some activities. Just in case jade Helm went sideways
went pair shaped. Three North Carolina men, a guy named
Walter Litteral, Christopher Barker, and Christopher Campbell were arrested for
amassing weapons and conspiring to combat the government's alleged plan
to impose martial law. These guys had pipe bombs and
(24:47):
they had some They had some legal weapons and some
illegal weapons. As far as I know, they didn't attack anyone.
They were just caught on record. They just they kind
of opted to wait and see, right, And I think
literal who was the leader of the group. The de
fact a leader had also booby trapped his house, and
(25:10):
there was a lot of this is my thing. They
were amassing legal weapons, but they hadn't attacked anyone. There's
a different case in Mississippi where a sheriff said authorities
are searching for two men who fired gunshots from a
vehicle at soldiers at a military facility. Uh and this
(25:30):
was at Camp Shelby and Hattiesburg, Mississippi. UH And it
happened like two days, happened multiple days. So what we're
finding now is that despite concerns over the possibilities of
jade Helm, there was not a takeover as some had feared.
(25:52):
But other people who objected to jade Helm, most notably
Alex Jones, say that this is part of a slow
program to remove local resistance to federal power, and at
this point, that is where we are, and that's where
we are with jade Hell. No one was interned, the
(26:14):
walmarts reopened. But we are also left with with some questions,
some questions that go into not just this specific instance,
but in larger instances. And one of those questions is
how do these how do these panics occur, right, What
(26:34):
what is it about human psychology or group psychology that
allows people to get so caught up in an issue?
And then why with the current online culture, why do
these things become such flashes in the pan Yeah, I
mean especially let me look at like the sale on
witch trials for example. You know that was all word
of mouth, um, little bits of misinformation based on first
(26:58):
person accounts or something that mayor amount of actually taken
place in that particular way, spreading via word amount. Now
you know you've got fifty different pieces of misinformation that
are disseminated instantly, you know, over numerous online channels. I mean,
there's really no end to it. It's just like an
it's exponentially easier for this kind of thing, this kind
(27:18):
of information to spread. Yeah, that's a really good point.
I'm glad you made that, because the barrier for communication
and what we would call the cost of communication is
so much lower. And you and I have talked about
this software before, about how quickly and strangely these things
can rise and fall. In our last episode we talked
(27:40):
about Martin Screlly, and one of the most fascinating things
I think you pointed out was that this story was
up and down within a week. I mean it was, honestly,
in a lot of ways a day. There was definitely
more out there, but the majority of the back and
forth and the you know, the Twitter rampage age, pitchfork
(28:01):
waving kind of scenario that led to him more or
less backing down from his position kind of took place
within the span of a day. And it's also true
that jade Helme itself did capture this national attention. It
became a subject of national debate. There was a there
was a poll by the Public Policy Polling in May
off and it found that one third of people identifying
(28:25):
as Republicans believed that the jade Helm exercise was about
the government trying to take over Texas and another third
hadn't made their minds up yet. So a lot of people,
a lot of people believe that something fishy was afoot.
And and I think this is just me speculating here
(28:46):
in folks, but I think part of this comes from
the absence of transparency. You're not letting journalists observe events,
um and if there were blackouts. As people allege human beings,
we are analytical, we think in categories right. We fill
in blanks, and we fill in blanks exactly, so we
(29:08):
begin generating our own explanations, and those explanations that we
generate are based upon our pre existing beliefs or values, right,
which is why the same ambiguous events can mean two
very different things to people. We heard, we heard allegations
that this was part of a plan to prevent Russia
(29:30):
from assisting, uh, the annexation of the U. S State
by Mexico, which seems very far out there. Uh, let's see.
We heard asteroids. We heard that there was going to
be a construction beneath the ground and that was part
of it. And of all these things we heard, what
we found at the conclusion of this on September fifteen,
(29:52):
two thousand fifteen, was that most of it, most of
those concerns didn't come to fruition. And this doesn't mean
that jade Helm is by any means a good thing,
because it leads to the larger question of why, um,
why the military would be doing this domestic activity. Right. Well,
(30:17):
we talked about this a little bit on the periscope,
and this was interesting initiating point that you brought up
that I hadn't occurred to me is they need to
be able to train in different terrains, like in different
real world scenarios, and especially like in a pretty arid,
you know, climate like Texas, very similar to some of
the desert situations that they you know, end up in
on they're deployed. Sure, But then the other question is
(30:39):
at what point does it unreasonably impinge upon the lives
of US citizens or residents, you know, is is there
a line should ALIGNE exists? Well, my question is did it. Yeah,
it seems like it didn't. From the reports we've heard.
It seems like the main and the main civility ends
(31:00):
that were affected by this were people who were involved
in crime just in case crime, or are people that
were seeking it out and trying to more or less
fight back or at least you know, counter threat to it,
you know. Yeah, And then there's the other one of
the questions that people also said was that this was
an intelligence operation. It was about informational awareness. Informational awareness
(31:25):
being this concept that or the informational awareness being this
idea that you can trace all electronic activity. You want
to know as much as you can about every individual
or group and their interactions between each other, that's an
essay stuff, you know, and uh that that is completely
plausible and that impinges upon people's lives far more than
(31:48):
a then a military exercise outside of your town, right
and unfortunate. That's because that stuff is still warrantless. There
is pretty much oh effective supervision, and there's not really
a means of recourse for the average person you and
I included, as well as you listeners, as well as
(32:09):
you met. Sorry, but but let's look at some other
examples of of these kinds of hands. So, I mean,
my favorite of these, because I remember exactly where I
was when this went down, was Y two k, Y
two k, Y two k K not visitors now someone, No,
(32:31):
definitely not so much made of Y two k. This
belief that because of the specifications of computer date keeping
right like it was too place digits exactly the year
two thousand would cause massive internal errors and computer programs
across the place, the possibly throwing the world into economic
and social term while including financial systems, data storage at
(32:54):
corporations you know, to your own personal computer, Wall street crashes,
all deaths are erased because they no longer exist. Satellites
fall from the sky right fire, there were massive reactions
to this. I mean people were going so far as
to hoard like water supplies. Walmart's got cleaned out the
(33:15):
night before, of people getting gas masks and you know,
like purified water and you know, in bulk and you know,
food and things like that. Now, you and I differ
on this preps, but I think it's a good idea
to have those things. And I mean I think it
probably is too. I'm just saying it's when it's specifically
tied to a theory about a thing that may or
(33:36):
may not happen, at that point, you're probably not thinking
that enough, you know. Yeah, absolutely, I'm sure. I think
there's something wrong with being prepared or the unknown, and
there's also a group mentality at work there too, exactly.
I mean it was reported widely. You know, there were
cameras in the Walmarts showing all the empty shelves and
you know, no more food, bread, eggs, things like that.
(33:58):
People just sort of like, what happens when or what
happened with the snow apocalypse here in Atlanta. It's like
all these reports of the grocery stores with the shelves
completely cleaned out. It was very much to that kind
of situation. Oh boy, and uh you you listeners in
northern climbs, Uh laugh, we're laughing or laughing so hard
(34:20):
on it. It was. It was strange because you know,
Matt and I made a video about how we couldn't
make a video because of this because the city of
Atlanta shut down. It was just not prepared. It all
goes back not to be too much of a boy
scout about it, but it all goes back to preparation.
The city had what three snowplows maybe in the entire city,
(34:44):
and so it was bonkers out there. One of my friends,
who is a special ed teacher, uh had to stay
at the school overnight and take care of all these
kids whose parents didn't get them all right, t guy
is he um had to basically sleep in his car
because everything was at such a standstill. And back back
to y took though I do feel like, not exactly
(35:06):
the same, but a similar kind of panic that was
very observable for us. And yeah, and that's that's a
really good point that if we could talk a little
bit about some of the psychology behind these things. Of First,
I want to I want to underline and say this, Uh,
I don't think ridiculing people is the right way to
(35:28):
approach these kind of things because the idea of a
government takeover of a town or a city or a place,
right is plausible. That stuff can happen. It happens in
other countries. It's happening now in other parts of the world.
Now does it seem unreasonable to think that would happen
(35:50):
here in the US. Well, it's less plausible because we
would have to question what the motivation for that would be.
But I don't think anyone would argue that if the
situation was right, if they wanted to, they certainly have
the means and the personnel to do this thing. Sure,
the U. S Military is by far the most powerful
(36:10):
military in the world. However, different we do have a
legal framework that is meant to prevent that kind of
situation from occurring. Yeah, but we also have a legal
framework that supposedly prevent things like n s A wire
tapping from Alright, touche my friend. That's a good point. Yeah,
And then it goes back to the idea of secret
(36:32):
courts and secret laws and secret interpretations of those laws,
and things are things are bent, things are true. Yeah,
You're you're spot on with that, here's one of the
things I think we can look at psychologically, So the
idea that this stuff can happen and it's plausible, or
at least it's possible, and due in large part to
(36:52):
the malleability of the laws as you as you astutely
point out. If we talk about the psychology, then I
would say that part of it is that certain events
or concepts can become this kind of steam vent and
people can project other concerns about it, you know, absolutely,
(37:13):
So the Salem witch trials, that's part of it. And
there is a you know, life was very difficult that
in terms of food, in terms of security and shelter,
and here we're in a country with booming inequality, very divisive,
very i won't say great powers, but very divisive political
(37:34):
parties that do not want to work with each other, right,
and there is a tension across the country. When there
is a tension like this, the smallest thing can topple
the Jenga tower, you know. And so this is this
is something that I think we need to be aware of.
There is a subtext here that allows um that allows
(37:58):
for this kind of panic to occur. In two thousand twelve,
we saw another thing that was one of my remember
the two thousand twelve panics, and these are both a
little bit different to jade Helm because these are apocalyptic panics.
So these kind of events all have certain commonalities. One,
it is considered to affect a large group of people too.
(38:22):
It has a do date, a very specific do date,
you know, July January one, two thousand. Time and again
we hear about these things and these do dates pass right, right,
I mean, I think we've said it before, but you know,
somewhere the world is ending for someone every day. And
(38:45):
I think there's an average of I can't remember where
I got this number, but I'll try to find a
source for everyone. I think there's an average of a
hundreds something apocalyptic predictions each year. There's some group of
people saying, this year, guys, the big one, this is
the big one. The other one didn't happen because we
(39:06):
weren't ready with our original prediction. But now, my friends,
are you familiar with the Church of the SubGenius, Yeah, vaguely,
so they have this, uh, this event. It's so for
anyone that's not aware of the Church of SubGenius, it's
a cult, but it's a joke cult. I mean it's you.
You sign up, you pay a membership, you get a
(39:26):
members membership card. Um. You you can become ordained in
the church of a SubGenius. Um. But they're one of
their central themes is this idea of X Day, which
is an event they have. It's basically like a hedonistic
bacchanalia in the woods where they you know, do a
lot of drugs and party and you know, tell do
weird sermons about slack, which is what their fundamental principle.
(39:50):
You've gotta have slack. It means just like not caring
and doing doing your own thing and not worrying about it. Um.
But X Day their profit. Bob Dobbs, who is embodied
by this sort of clip art um, you know, fifties
house father with a pipe. Yeah. Um he I hope
I'm not this characterizing this too much of any any
(40:12):
sub genii out there, please right in and correct me
all day. Um. But there was there was this date
that was associated with the end of the world, and
it turns out that they read it backwards, where they
read it upside down or something like that, so it
passes every like it's it's passed officially for the first time,
and whatever the inverse of it isn't going to be
(40:34):
for another you know, a thousand years or something like that.
I you know, I I can get on board with that.
I've never really understood the Church of the SubGenius because
I haven't looked into it. But I love the idea
of a wink and a nod. It's tongue in the
whole thing. This idea of like an apocalyptic cult, or
the idea of any kind of apocalyptic prediction. It's sort
(40:54):
of like, oh, we read the tablet wrong, or you know,
it's it's human beings are fallible, and that sort of
the joke there in right and again, this this concern
of I guess what we're talking about now is the
way of which jade Helm became this subject of national concern,
right in the same way in which Y two K
(41:17):
or the two thousand twelve stuff became a concern. And
we kept an eye on this. We looked to see
if there were and there were different things happening. And
at this point the stuff we found, which we've mentioned before,
wasn't wasn't the stuff that was predicted. I've got an
interesting book here and all that you've seen me flipping
(41:39):
through as we're talking. Uh. The name of this book
is Outbreak, the Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior. And what
this book does is it gathers all sorts of different
different mass panics. Right. Uh. The one I have a
page on now is Hayley Comment, Haley's commet Scare, which
(42:01):
is worldwide. In nineteen ten, he said that, uh, and
this this comes to us from a prediction in one
and astronomer named Sir William Huggins was analyzing light spectra
from comets when he discovered the presence of a lethal
gas called cynogen, and this produced a worldwide panic. Would
(42:23):
people believe that the next time Haley's comment passed Earth,
the entire planet would be poisoned with this deadly gas?
And this is just there's just one exist is a
weighty volume here, folks. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff here,
very small brand. I mean, just say just say win.
I'll just flip through a new ze wind. Okay. The
(42:44):
Mora witch affair and this is a Scandinavian countries in
sixteen sixty four sixteen seventy six, specifically Sweden, and uh,
you know it's the witch mania right when reports from
the countryside of witchcraft was taking place. The authorities were
first reluctant to take action, but as complaints continue to
(43:05):
be made despite the protest of doctors UH, they decided
rigorous measures were needed. The number of the executed has
never been established, but it is likely to approach two hundred,
including some children. So what we have here is UH.
This also has the context where they give you a
blow by blow of how it occurred and the social
(43:27):
conditions of the time, right. And what we've seen is
that there is a there is a relationship correlation between
economic difficulties and the rise of concerns about stuff like this.
It just doesn't these kinds of widespread panics. You gotta
(43:49):
find a different phrase. I keep thinking of the band.
These kind of concerns seem don't seem to spread in
times of economic boom. It makes me think of as
actually a show that I'm working on right now. It's
a little bit hush hush. I'm not gonna say too
much about it, but um. One a source person that
we interviewed was a professor who conducted a survey of
(44:13):
American fears and one of the biggest um Uh. Factors
leading to higher levels of fear about a wide variety
of things. Was economic hardship um paired with low lower
levels of education. Yeah, I can completely understand that. But
now we've opened another conspiracy, noal, because we do have
(44:35):
to keep that on the hush, don't we definitely do. Yeah,
it's gonna be good though. Yeah, no spoilers. You'll hear
about it soon enough. And speaking about hearing stuff, we
like to hear from you about what your take on
this entire event is. Is there something that Nolan that
and I missed, you know, is there is there something
that was unreported that should have been reported as it
(44:57):
been suppressed somehow, because we do want to know otherwise,
at the basis of this, it seems like a lot
of the predictions that people made did not occur. And
just to drive home how much we appreciate listener mail,
let's do some right now, do it? Okay, We've got
(45:19):
one here from Sandy um Uh concerning the episode you
and I did on Big Pharma the other week. I
cringed when I heard you guys mentioned creatum and just
a refresher. Creatum was the the herb I mentioned that
you know has been reported to be able to treat
multiple kinds of addictions, and as Sandy puts it here,
(45:42):
create um actually is also good for treating fibromyalgia, which
I believe is a nerve condition that creates pretty widespread pain.
Just all over. Um, everyone, we'd like to keep quiet
about this because we are so afraid it's going to
be outlawed. As I mentioned in the episode as well,
it's definitely on a few watch lists. Um. It is
(46:04):
not something to be abused, but has many medicinal uses,
So keep it on the down low. Lull I love
you all on the show, Sandy. Sandy, thanks so much
for writing and we appreciate your point. You might be thinking, well,
if you appreciate my point, why did you read the
letter on on the air? Jerks? But we're reading it
on the air because first off, it's it's not like
(46:29):
it's not like our show is going to be the
thing that tips the d a's had. You know, I
don't think so either. We have to keep a realistic
opinion of ourselves and uh, but but we do want
other listeners who perhaps missed that last episode to know
about this, especially if you have someone in your life
(46:49):
who has an addiction problem. You know, those things destroy
lives and often it's very difficult to get help through
the current system, right, So if there's something that can
free people from that, we want we want you, our
listeners to know about it. This is this can literally
(47:10):
be a life and death thing. And Sandy, we also
hope that it is not outlawed and we agree. I've
been reading about this NonStop since you introduced the concept,
and I had never heard of it. Um, So we
appreciate it and we want to know more about it.
I do. I promise you we won't do an episode
on it if that's too much publicity. So let's go
(47:33):
to another one here, all right, Lucton P Writes to
us and says, please consider the underwear bomber as a
podcast topic. What do you know about this two thousand
nine Christmas Day incident? Nigerian Umar Farouk abdulmutalab has and
his attempt to detonate an explosive substance might be all
you remember, but are you aware of the sharp dress man,
(47:56):
the man in orange, or the person on the flight
recording the entire incident? The official story of events was
ever changing, and several passengers made statements that suggest there's
more to the story. Two lawyers that were passengers on
the flight were even preparing to be called as witnesses
in the defense of mutalab So, uh, this goes on,
and Lupton's provided a lot of sources here. We wanted
(48:19):
to put this out. We're going to put this out
into the ether and ask you, guys if you would
like to hear something about the about the underwear bomber.
So let us know, do you remember that noise basically
what he said? Yeah, the broad strokes and goes into
much more detail we can see here. Uh, so let's see.
(48:40):
What do you think should we do one more listener
mail or should we go straight to Wait, what's that?
What's that noise? Oh? My god, it's you. I guess
it is. This is weird. You know, I was thinking
it might be nice. Uh. If we can convince Matt
to do a moment, i'd be good. Yeah we yeah,
(49:01):
we should have them out. Yeah, I get him to
skype in. Yeah, we'll see if we can work on that.
Let us. I think they'd be great because honestly, I
don't have much today. Man, I feel like, um, this
is this is warn me plumb out talking about this topic. Um,
I'm sort of fighting a little bit of a respiratory bug. Um,
and it was all I could do to kind of
wade my way through this conversation. Um, but I'm sort
(49:23):
of fading a little bit here. Honestly, Ben, I'm not
not too ashamed to say I feel you. Then the
sickness is going through the office. If you listen to more,
if you listen to other how Stuff Work shows, which
we strongly recommend, then you might hear some other people
getting getting the credit or the Batman voice. It's annoying though,
because I've literally made it all year without getting anything,
(49:44):
and that is super unusual for me. And now all
of a sudden, I'm stricken. Well, what about the power
of positive thought? Man? Well, I'm gonna work on that.
I've tried soup. I've tried juice. There's a really good
juice place here at Atlanta called Arden's Garden, and they
make delicious combo of ginger apple juice and carrots. Yeah,
(50:06):
you know, every time I take one of those usually
knocks whatever. I feel like it's coming right out. But
did not did not seem to do the trick. This time.
They also have the that complete recovery juice stuff. Yeah,
that's a good one. The exercise might also be good.
I've heard you can exercise away a bug. I don't
know if that's so. You're saying I should get an exorcist. Yes, yeah,
(50:28):
to exercise, you should get it. You know there is
there is still a chief exorcist at the Vatican. I
got a thing. What speaking of the Vatican, what's up
with the pope meeting with this Kim Davis woman? That
bummed me out to no end? Oh I didn't know that,
(50:50):
oh what? Yeah? And the and the only way it
came out was because Kim Davis is loudmouth lawyers who
have been caught very recently for distributing false information. Shin like.
They had a picture that was of some sort of
event in Chile, I believe, and they claimed that it
was a prayer group, a giant prayer group in her
honor or like, for her benefit. And then they ultimately
(51:12):
came out and said that now, in fact, it was
another event. They may not have claimed that they knew,
but whatever they definitely was was misinformation. So we were
really hoping, and I say this because this Pope has
been intriguing in a lot of ways. He's you know,
he definitely seems like he's got some interesting, more progressive
ideas about climate change and you know a lot of
different things that you don't typically hear of pope be
(51:33):
outspoken about. But he's more involved these politically or in
secular issues. And he he actually had you may have
heard of this before, the idea of liberation theology, which
is uh, something that a lot of Catholic priest or
members of the church in South and Central America were
(51:55):
involved with. Was this idea of connecting religion and in
some cases leftist movements, which you know, was not super
popular with the US at the time. But people will
tell you that the current popes, the current pope's perspective
on things like economic inequality or a couple of other
(52:17):
issues are echoes of liberation theology. But also still it's
the pope. The pope is going to have views that
other people would consider very very conservative. Well, I guess
maybe it's very naive of me, but this particular pope
just gave this sense that he was he was a
little different. You know, he was all about transparency, and
so the fact that he you know, took fifteen minutes
(52:39):
out of his schedule to secretly meet with this woman,
and it wasn't on his itinerary. You know, his camp
didn't at least this information. Again, it was her loud
mouth attorney that tweeted it out, you know, like, hey,
you know she's totally vindicated. The Pope's all about you
know design. So yeah, this is the of game men
and women because that's married Kim. That's who. What's her named?
(53:01):
Kim Davidim Davis. She was the county clerk in Rowan County,
Kentucky who, after the Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional to
deny um gay men and women the right to be married, um,
she refused to issue marriage licenses. So you don't think
the meeting was something where he said to you. You
(53:21):
think the meme was like congratulatory, I approve. Well, I mean,
the the position of the Vatican is, yes, the meeting occurred,
and that is as far as they are going with it. Um.
So I suppose everything that we know about what was
said or not set is coming from Kim Davis's camp,
So it could all be absolute hogwash. But according to
her people, you know, he said something to the effect
(53:43):
of stay strong or um, you know, like gave some
measure of approval for for the first dance in this
whole situation. Yeah, that's uh. It's interesting because you know,
the Pope is such a practitioner of what would be
called soft diplomacy, you know, because it's not like the
(54:04):
Pope can send an army into a country. Does he
still uh? Does he still snapchat? You? Not in a
long time? Man, I'm sorry to hear that, because I
I still like we text. Yeah, I mean the Pope
text just basic stuff, just like how how's the game?
And he's like, oh, man, look at my shoes. No,
(54:26):
of course, we also want to point out that we're
not in any way I feel like we have to
say this. We're not in any way trying to denigrate
religion or religion at all. No, I mean, I'm a
I'm I I am not anti religion at all if
people are able to use it in a way that's
positive for them personally. I mean when I start having issues,
as when it's used as a as a tool to
(54:47):
harm people or to um cut people down and make
people less than that, I start having issues. But this
is just an interesting turn of events for me, Yeah,
I had not heard of that story, and I I
try to keep an eye on the current pope. But
let us know what you think about the pope, this
pope or the papacy in general, because that seems like
(55:10):
a topic we could dig into. Also, let us know
again if anything occurred in jade Helm. If you want to,
just hit us up on the internet. Were there all
the time? We are conspiracy stuff at both Facebook and Twitter.
We also have a website, UH that you can go to.
It is stuff they don't want you to know dot
com pain to type, but it's worth it. When you't
(55:31):
get there and see what else will? We have an
email and that is conspiracy at how stuff works dot com.
For more on this topic, another unexplained phenomenal, visit YouTube
dot com slash conspiracy stuff. You can also get in
(55:53):
touch on Twitter at the handle at conspiracy Stuff.
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
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