Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Noel.
Speaker 3: They call me Ben.
Speaker 4: We are joined with our guest super producer, Dylan the
Speaker 4: Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are here. That makes
Speaker 4: this the stuff they don't want you to know. It
Speaker 4: is quite a week for strange news. We're going to
Speaker 4: visit some folks across the Pacific. We're going to go
Speaker 4: on air with some conversations we had had in the
Speaker 4: past about different ambitious attempts at grass roots regime change.
Speaker 4: We'll call it. We'll see some bribery. Well, we'll also
Speaker 4: just for anybody listening right now, if you have a pager,
Speaker 4: no judgment. If you have a pager, move it across
Speaker 4: the room.
Speaker 3: A pager? What is it? Nineteen ninety five, Oliver Bay
Speaker 3: I had one. I had a bright green, translucent Motorola pager.
Speaker 2: Yes, hopefully you don't need to be worried about your pager.
Speaker 2: If you know, if you're.
Speaker 3: A doctor or a drug dealer, a work production mine
Speaker 3: never mine never injured me, you know, physically anyway.
Speaker 4: The ones I had injured me emotionally exactly.
Speaker 3: That's that's clear. All those mean spirited pager codes that
Speaker 3: were flying around.
Speaker 4: Is it really nine one one? Is it really nine
Speaker 4: one one? Or do you just want me to tell
Speaker 4: you what Jennifer said about you in middle school?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 2: No, I mean, it's not nine one one, it's eight
Speaker 2: zero zero eight five?
Speaker 3: Is it really? Boobs? Guys? Is it really?
Speaker 4: We're fans and we've returned. Listen, folks, fellow conspiracy realist.
Speaker 4: We are recording this on the evening of September eighteenth,
Speaker 4: twenty twenty four, and our breaking news story should be
Speaker 4: considered just that we don't have all the facts. Very
Speaker 4: few people do. But I was talking with the guys
Speaker 4: earlier when I got the news and it quickly spread
Speaker 4: around the world. There was a massive pager attack on
Speaker 4: affiliates of his Belah.
Speaker 3: But not like an interruption of service attack, like where
Speaker 3: all of a sudden people's pages didn't work. It was
Speaker 3: something quite different. Ben right, Yes, sir, that's correct.
Speaker 2: This is.
Speaker 4: In contrast to a denial of service. This was a
Speaker 4: quote unquote service that the people affected certainly did not welcome,
Speaker 4: nor did they expect it. And to intro into this,
Speaker 4: I think it's important for us to note the events
Speaker 4: were going to describe here occurred just a few days ago.
Speaker 4: As a matter of fact, as we were gearing up
Speaker 4: for things. In the past twenty four hours, another attack occurred,
Speaker 4: another mass attack with exploding walkie talkies. This is going
Speaker 4: to be an episode in the future. Right now, we
Speaker 4: want to set the stage and answer some questions that
Speaker 4: are on everybody's mind. To really understand what happened, you
Speaker 4: need to go back to October of nineteen ninety five
Speaker 4: and a guy a lot of people don't remember his name,
Speaker 4: Kamil Hamad, met with operatives of shin Bet. Without getting
Speaker 4: too into the weeds, that's Israel's counter terrorism outfit. And
Speaker 4: when this guy met with shin Bet, he came to
Speaker 4: him and he said, look, I need funding and I
Speaker 4: need Israeli identity cards for myself and for my family.
Speaker 4: And shin Bett, like a lot of good intel organizations
Speaker 4: will do, said well, now we've got you by the
Speaker 4: short and curls right now, you work for us. We
Speaker 4: will inform on you and your bosses will murder you
Speaker 4: as a result. So he agreed to cooperate. He went
Speaker 4: in thinking that he was the deal maker, and he
Speaker 4: came out at the wrong end.
Speaker 3: Of a deal.
Speaker 4: So what they did is they gave him a cell phone,
Speaker 4: and they were upfront. They told him this was bugged
Speaker 4: so that they could listen in on his conversations. What's
Speaker 4: more important is what they did not tell Hamad. They
Speaker 4: did not tell him that this bugged phone also contained
Speaker 4: fifteen grams of explosives.
Speaker 5: WHOA I mean, that was my initial question, because there's
Speaker 5: part of me that almost wondered, is this some way
Speaker 5: of hijacking a device and causing it to overheat to
Speaker 5: the point.
Speaker 3: Where it would injure somebody. But it's deeper than that.
Speaker 3: It's it's potentially like someone got in on the supply
Speaker 3: chain of the product or planted a tampered with product
Speaker 3: that these individuals ended up using. That just seems so complicated.
Speaker 4: Which we'll get to. That's the twenty twenty four event.
Speaker 4: We're still like October nineteen ninety five.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you're describing that it is possible, right to
Speaker 2: do that, but with one person.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, that's what I'm hoping to do. Yeah, like
Speaker 4: the president here, which doesn't get as reported as widely
Speaker 4: as it should. Takes us to not Kamil Hamad. Kamil
Speaker 4: Hamad was not the target of this operation. Instead, the
Speaker 4: Intel was targeting a guy named yahe Ayash that is
Speaker 4: spelled yahya Ayyash. During his lifetime, this guy was known
Speaker 4: as the prime or chief bomb maker of Hamas. And
Speaker 4: so when the Chinbet gives Kamal Hamad this cell phone
Speaker 4: that he knows is bugged, he knows is tapped. Essentially,
Speaker 4: what they're doing is waiting for him to give it
Speaker 4: to someone who will give it to Ayash. And so
Speaker 4: Hamad gives the phone to one of his nephews, his nephew,
Speaker 4: and he knows that this guy, the chief bombmaker of Hamas,
Speaker 4: regularly uses this nephew's phones. And then fast forward It's
Speaker 4: January fifth, nineteen ninety six. Ayash's father calls him on
Speaker 4: this bugged phone. Aosh answers, and then and Israeli playing
Speaker 4: flying overhead, picks up the conversation, relays it to command.
Speaker 4: They confirm this is the guy they're looking for on
Speaker 4: the phone, and they remotely detonate the device. They kill
Speaker 4: him instantly.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Effective, brutal effective.
Speaker 4: And this is what leads us to the news that
Speaker 4: everybody saw. On Tuesday, an attack in Lebanon across the
Speaker 4: country of Lebanon caused pagers to explode. Thousands of people
Speaker 4: were injured. At current count, twelve are dead as a
Speaker 4: result of the pager attack because the day after this evening,
Speaker 4: as we record, walkie talkies associated with Hesbola affiliates also exploded.
Speaker 4: This is something that I would say is not unprecedented
Speaker 4: therefore in terms of the principle or the concept, but
Speaker 4: it is unprecedented, I would argue in terms.
Speaker 3: Of the scale of the operation. To your earlier point,
Speaker 3: it's it's wild. I mean, and you know, we don't
Speaker 3: know much yet. I mean, we will hopefully by the
Speaker 3: time we do this full episode, but like you know,
Speaker 3: we certainly know there are things like defects and phones
Speaker 3: that you have to get recalled because the lithium batteries
Speaker 3: can heat up to the point of injuring people. I mean,
Speaker 3: there have been like lawsuits filed but against cell phone
Speaker 3: manufacturers for like people getting horribly burned, but this sounds
Speaker 3: even worse than that, and like more immediate. We hear
Speaker 3: we're hearing a lot about injuries to people's eyes and
Speaker 3: faces because they're holding the thing up to look at
Speaker 3: it when the call comes in.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but they got a buzz notification, right, And you
Speaker 4: can see you can see a lot of video of
Speaker 4: the aftermath, which is horrified. You can also see a
Speaker 4: couple of videos that just happen to be caught on
Speaker 4: things like CCTV and what you'll what you'll see there
Speaker 4: is somebody gets a buzz like soap, they into their pocket,
Speaker 4: they hold up the thing and it explodes with much
Speaker 4: more force than you know, an overheated lithium ion battery.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Asia probably doesn't even take one of those.
Speaker 3: I mean, they're so underpower they don't need much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, that's a really good point. It was said,
Speaker 2: it was known that the pager definitely got a signal.
Speaker 2: There were some kind of strange code that was displayed,
Speaker 2: you know, on the on the display there on the
Speaker 2: pager right before it went off, and it was like
Speaker 2: a like a couple of second delay.
Speaker 3: I think I maybe heard on public radio today that
Speaker 3: these were meant to be like proprietary communications from HESBELA.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, this was meant to be what we would
Speaker 4: call sequestered or discrete comms for Hesbelos. So if you
Speaker 4: had your own pager already, your CIV pager or your
Speaker 4: civy phone, that would not be connected. This is to
Speaker 4: message people in this organization because there is, as you
Speaker 4: can objectively understand, there is a great deal of concern
Speaker 4: about security of communication because HESBLA, being a proxy of Iran,
Speaker 4: has been at war with Israel for quite some time. Look,
Speaker 4: we know that this is ideologically deep for people. We're
Speaker 4: not here to talk about the ideology necessarily. We're here
Speaker 4: to explore what appears to be an insidiously successful covert operation,
Speaker 4: a genuine conspiracy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, can we quickly just talk about what Heswela is.
Speaker 2: I think sometimes people get confused about some of these
Speaker 2: organizations and groups and just to get people to run
Speaker 2: down on like because Hesbela is a vast and multifaceted thing. Sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: HESBLA is a political party, Lebanese Shia Islamist political party
Speaker 4: and also a paramilitary group. So if you talk to
Speaker 4: some people in Lebanon, they're going to say this is
Speaker 4: not a terrorist group, right, These are more akin to
Speaker 4: freedom fighters However, it is an open secret that Hebela
Speaker 4: receives a lot of funding from the nation of Iran,
Speaker 4: which is currently a theocracy, and Iran has different statements
Speaker 4: about this, you know what I mean, kind of like
Speaker 4: Russia writes laws about any Russian president. One notable thing
Speaker 4: that happened in the pager attack was that the Iranian
Speaker 4: ambassador was also injured. So one of the first questions
Speaker 4: that the international community is asking is why did you
Speaker 4: have a direct plug in to hisbolo?
Speaker 3: Holy crap, the plot dickens. I mean, now, that's wow,
Speaker 3: that's very I didn't even think about that aspect of it.
Speaker 2: It's a big deal. It's a good question.
Speaker 3: It's a big deal and a good question.
Speaker 4: This is where we get to something that was brought
Speaker 4: up a little bit earlier, but let's get to it.
Speaker 4: Initial conversation and speculation concerned the idea of how an
Speaker 4: attack could happen. Is it theoretically possible that malicious code
Speaker 4: could have been used to simply overheat a battery right,
Speaker 4: resulting in all of these things going off at once.
Speaker 4: That does not appear to be the case. Pagers again,
Speaker 4: are you know, not super advanced technology. They're not all
Speaker 4: cloud connected to.
Speaker 3: The point, probably why they use these instead of cell
Speaker 3: phones or instead of smart devices, because it's so siloed
Speaker 3: and low tech.
Speaker 4: And I keep thinking about I rewatched it too many times.
Speaker 4: I keep thinking about the scene and Breaking Bad spoilers
Speaker 4: three to one. I keep thinking about the scene and
Speaker 4: Breaking bad. Wherein Walter White ordered hits on a ton
Speaker 4: of people all in the same two minutes in the
Speaker 4: US prison system. Do you guys remember that?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 3: Huh, I didn't. I don't remember what clever mcguy vermethod
Speaker 3: he used to do that, but I do remember that
Speaker 3: plot point he got a biker gang ye had inside
Speaker 3: people in different prisons from this back. What was so
Speaker 3: this you're saying, just the level of precision and comms
Speaker 3: kind of reminded you of that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but in this case also innocent people were injured,
Speaker 4: and perhaps more importantly, this is real life. Now, another
Speaker 4: thing we have to think about here. When these explosions
Speaker 4: occur again simultaneously or near simultaneously, it tells us some
Speaker 4: very important things. The first thing it tells us is
Speaker 4: that this came from the same signal, right. The second
Speaker 4: thing it tells us is it's important mission critical to
Speaker 4: figure out the provenance of this pager supply and speculation
Speaker 4: is going for Hungry to Taiwan right now. And then
Speaker 4: the third thing I think it tells us to be
Speaker 4: quite clear, is that there was somebody waited. They put
Speaker 4: explosives in these things. They put grams of explosives in pagers,
Speaker 4: and they didn't immediately pull the trigger.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they waited.
Speaker 4: And the question then is why did they wait without
Speaker 4: sounding to James Bondi about it. It was probably because
Speaker 4: the plan was getting close to being exposed, so it
Speaker 4: was time to maximize the leverage.
Speaker 3: It's hella, James bond all of it. It's crazy. It's
Speaker 3: like an exploding pen.
Speaker 2: The big question I have, guys, is if they were
Speaker 2: a if whoever did this right was able to gain
Speaker 2: access to all those devices. These are just like a
Speaker 2: pretty simple send receive signaled device right usually with radio signals.
Speaker 2: If they took the time and were able to gain
Speaker 2: access to all those things and put explosives in them,
Speaker 2: what makes us think that they weren't also enabled with
Speaker 2: some kind of listening device or tracking device.
Speaker 3: Like original story Ben told was exactly.
Speaker 2: Exactly like and you're doing it across an entire organization,
Speaker 2: and it makes guys, it makes me think about the
Speaker 2: stories we've heard in the past from listeners in read
Speaker 2: online about let's say, a federal agent from any country
Speaker 2: that intercepts an Amazon package or something that's ordered that
Speaker 2: has a device in it, like a new computer or
Speaker 2: a phone or something like that that gets it gets intercepted,
Speaker 2: and then something gets meddled with just enough to where
Speaker 2: it can be useful in the future. And it can
Speaker 2: be that kind of thing you're talking about, Ben, where
Speaker 2: it's a tool that now you have and you can
Speaker 2: use it when you need.
Speaker 4: It right and you don't want The main thing you
Speaker 4: want to protect will be what we call methods, right,
Speaker 4: and I know we're going a little over again. We
Speaker 4: will have an episode on this pretty soon. Another question
Speaker 4: I had was immediately, what's next. There's a lot of
Speaker 4: scuttle but in the policy wonk field, in the war
Speaker 4: maker field right now, over whether or not this is
Speaker 4: the harbinger of a large scale ground invasion, which is
Speaker 4: very dangerous for innocent people. Here's what I learned when
Speaker 4: I thought what's next? The goal was not to instantly
Speaker 4: kill everybody with these pages. I imagine again whomever did it
Speaker 4: was hoping to fatally injure as many people as possible.
Speaker 3: We know that message, we know at.
Speaker 4: Least a dozen or dead. Worse than sending a message
Speaker 4: more dangerous listening because now that you have that network identified,
Speaker 4: you can look at things like hospital roots, which ambulances
Speaker 4: are picking someone up?
Speaker 3: Where are they going? Right?
Speaker 4: How many of these people in these places? How many
Speaker 4: folks have similar injuries?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because we're talking about the network of individuals that
Speaker 2: this opposition force is interested in. Right, So you're you're
Speaker 2: absolutely right.
Speaker 3: So are you saying that they don't already know who
Speaker 3: these people are? Yes? How would they? So they cast
Speaker 3: a wide net. Does that mean that maybe potentially civilians
Speaker 3: got a hold of these devices too? Quite possibly. That's
Speaker 3: why I use the phrase affiliates. Yes, And that's why
Speaker 3: it's important to say that, you know, in Lebanon, Hasbola
Speaker 3: is considered a political party, right, so there are people
Speaker 3: who are not you know, out at the front lines
Speaker 3: of the border trying to murder folks they ideologically identify
Speaker 3: with certain tenets of that party. And then if you
Speaker 3: just so this part up, if you assassinate a few people,
Speaker 3: but then you have already hijacked the enemy's communication network.
Speaker 3: They are identifying their forces to you, and then right
Speaker 3: after that they followed up with the walkie talkies.
Speaker 4: I wish we had time to talk about the providence,
Speaker 4: but it's going to have to be an episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's definitely a full episode, just to think about it. Guys,
Speaker 2: the CFR, the Council and Foreign Relations that you know them.
Speaker 2: They describe Hesbella as a terrorist organization because the United
Speaker 2: States has designated hesbel as a terrorist organization. Does this
Speaker 2: attack not feel like a terrorist attack or an act
Speaker 2: of terrorism? Both of these where car you know, and
Speaker 2: completely unexpected, and then just the fear that it generates.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I will say as we end this, before we go
Speaker 4: to a break, there is what we could see as
Speaker 4: public possible public like motivation, which is the attent at assassination.
Speaker 4: Hezbola earlier failed to assassinate a guy named moshe Yah alone,
Speaker 4: and this may have been a reaction to it, or
Speaker 4: methods may have been exposed.
Speaker 3: We do know, we do know that.
Speaker 4: The question on everybody's mind, and a lot of you guys,
Speaker 4: friends were asking you about this, friends of family. We
Speaker 4: do know the question on a lot of people's minds
Speaker 4: right now. Is my stuff safe? You know, like my
Speaker 4: kid just got a phone? Is my kid safe? What
Speaker 4: could happen next?
Speaker 3: Gears? It could be other classes of devices that are
Speaker 3: affected too, as we've already seen two. I mean, you
Speaker 3: could easily argue that those are both kind of more
Speaker 3: low tech radio wave based devices. And to my understanding,
Speaker 3: it's usually radio waves that are used to trigger bombs
Speaker 3: a lot of the time. But I guess surely there's
Speaker 3: advancements in bomb making and triggering.
Speaker 2: Well, your device would have to have explosives in it
Speaker 2: to be triggered, right, of course.
Speaker 3: I guess. I just mean like it creates this sense
Speaker 3: of fear as to what's next, Like Ben was saying,
Speaker 3: like could it be in an iPhone? Could it be
Speaker 3: in you know, my razor or whatever?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 4: And here's why, as we go to ad break, here's
Speaker 4: why people are kind of other points I want to
Speaker 4: get to. Yeah, yeah, we'll do an episode here. Here's
Speaker 4: why people have been concerned candidly about the idea of
Speaker 4: a large scale ground war. It's because you're removing command, right,
Speaker 4: and a lot of hisbela command by the way, didn't
Speaker 4: use these pagers. They were communicated to by people who
Speaker 4: had these pages, so that the heads of the organization
Speaker 4: are not entirely gone. You remove command, you create fear, right,
Speaker 4: you break comms, and then by doing so, you remove
Speaker 4: the ability for the enemy to respond, and that is
Speaker 4: an arguable part of the calculus. This enigmatic what's next
Speaker 4: question is still haunting the world right now. We don't
Speaker 4: know what's going to happen. We know that as targeted
Speaker 4: as these things may appear on paper, there are inevitably
Speaker 4: civilians bystanders injured, and the question always becomes what happens next.
Speaker 4: So we'll be back with a full episode. We know
Speaker 4: this is heavy stuff. We're here with you. We got
Speaker 4: your back, folks. Let's go to the app break.
Speaker 2: And we've returned and we are going to travel over
Speaker 2: to Venezuela for the first story here. Maybe we'll get
Speaker 2: to the second one and we might just focus on Venezuela.
Speaker 2: We'll see. But guys, Venezuela in July had an election
Speaker 2: and somebody that we've talked about a lot on this show,
Speaker 2: mister Maduro himself, won a third term as the leader
Speaker 2: of Venezuela, much to the chagrin of pretty much the
Speaker 2: world and the opposition that he faced there in Venezuela.
Speaker 2: People are saying, uh, yeah, it really does seem like
Speaker 2: they're just covering up that he lost the election and
Speaker 2: just saying he won, and they being, you know, the
Speaker 2: powers that he, mister Maduro as a leader currently has,
Speaker 2: the levers that we just talked about with regards to
Speaker 2: other countries on the show, where once you have that power,
Speaker 2: you can do things like turn courts and legislatures and
Speaker 2: other powers in your favor to do things like cover
Speaker 2: up the results of an election.
Speaker 3: You know, the US has done it for less I mean,
Speaker 3: right in terms of being instrumental.
Speaker 2: In coups, Oh yeah, carrying out a coup in another country.
Speaker 2: There was a story from July. Ben I don't know
Speaker 2: if we actually talked about it, but you had it
Speaker 2: in the dock there to talk about at the end
Speaker 2: of July that there was a failed coup in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty in Venezuela something like that. I can't remember the specifics.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's been a fertile soil for attempted non consensual
Speaker 4: regime change.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, to just go back to that election, for
Speaker 2: one more minute. The National Electoral Council of Venezuela also
Speaker 2: known as the CNE, declared Maduro the winner on July
Speaker 2: twenty eighth, and it was ratified by the Supreme Court
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks later. But you know, the official
Speaker 2: documentation of that election, the things like the what they
Speaker 2: call the disaggregated data or data from the vote tally sheets,
Speaker 2: has not been published in a bunch of other countries,
Speaker 2: including the US, to saying this election is not right.
Speaker 2: Something is sour here, at least with those with the
Speaker 2: official reporting on that election. And you guys, I didn't
Speaker 2: realize the opposition leader who was going up against Maduro
Speaker 2: in that election had to get the heck out of there.
Speaker 2: He had to leave because he was facing some pretty
Speaker 2: serious charge, really freaky stuff. He flew to Spain because
Speaker 2: there was an arrest warrant out for him, accusing him
Speaker 2: of terrorism and conspiracy.
Speaker 3: That's what I accuse.
Speaker 4: Anybody disagrees with me about anything down, I'm like a
Speaker 4: freaking terrorist and you're inspiring case a Dias are clearly
Speaker 4: a superior sandwich. Someone arrests this.
Speaker 3: Man and this all transpired like after the election was called,
Speaker 3: then all of a sudden, these charges were filed.
Speaker 2: Yes, and then he had to leave. The opposition leader
Speaker 2: there who had to go to Spain and was charged
Speaker 2: with that stuff was Edmundo Gonzalez, and he was you know,
Speaker 2: he went out publicly and said, hey, this vote was stolen,
Speaker 2: this isn't right, and he became an enemy really quickly.
Speaker 2: So why are we talking about all this? Oh, because
Speaker 2: it's context to this story that was written in CNN.
Speaker 2: It is titled US says claims of CIA plot to
Speaker 2: kill Maduro are categorically false. That's in quotations. Yes, after
Speaker 2: Venezuela rest six foreigners. Okay, so let's just get in
Speaker 2: this state department says no, no, no, there's nothing. There's
Speaker 2: no base to these accusations that somebody was trying to kill.
Speaker 2: His name is Nicholas Maduro. By the way, I think
Speaker 2: we just lovingly calling him Maduro again mentioned before in
Speaker 2: that episode. It is one of my favorite foods that
Speaker 2: exists on this planet. A good Maduro or Maduro's usually.
Speaker 3: What is that I don't think I know about this food, Matt.
Speaker 2: That is a ripened plantain that has been somewhat fried
Speaker 2: in that's sweet and.
Speaker 3: Delicious I don't know that I've had a Maduro. N Oh,
Speaker 3: it's so good. All right, we'll hang out later and
Speaker 3: get sack, but not this Madru. I don't think we
Speaker 3: care for this.
Speaker 4: We're not hey, hey, we're not involved. We're giving you
Speaker 4: the strange news. As a matter of fact, none of
Speaker 4: us have officially visited Venezuela in Quba officially.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this guy Maduro seems like a real pill. Matt Oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Maduro, who was famously the number two for a
Speaker 2: long time to Hugo Chavez, which we've done a whole
Speaker 2: video series and talked about numerous times. He had some
Speaker 2: weirdness going on, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can see. I hope YouTube hasn't pulled it down.
Speaker 4: They're tricky with that kind of media. This guy, in
Speaker 4: the midst of running Venezuela, also was known for having
Speaker 4: his talk show that went on in excess of four
Speaker 4: hours where you could just call him live yeah and
Speaker 4: ask him stuff and then you know, off the cuff,
Speaker 4: he would he would have this big at least in
Speaker 4: the public facing persona. He would have big Uncle energy
Speaker 4: where someone would say, hey, sir, we are hungry, retired,
Speaker 4: crime is out of control, and he would just say
Speaker 4: something like mothers are the most important part of this country.
Speaker 4: Give that woman thousands of dollars, you know at buyer
Speaker 4: a house, all right, next caller, Which is not the
Speaker 4: way you're supposed to run a government.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he did have a team of people that
Speaker 2: just went out and bought houses. No, I'm just joking.
Speaker 2: I can't confirm that. So so there was allegedly some
Speaker 2: kind of attempt on Nicholas Maduro's life, at least according
Speaker 2: to Venezuela's official apparatus there and the State Department here
Speaker 2: in the US says no, that's categorically false. That did
Speaker 2: not occur. But they did. Venezuela did arrest six people,
Speaker 2: that has been confirmed. Those six people include a US
Speaker 2: Navy seal, which you know Navy seals. Guys, what separates
Speaker 2: someone who I don't know is in the Navy versus
Speaker 2: someone who is a Navy seal?
Speaker 3: Badassory, I mean, Navy is like your a sailor or
Speaker 3: you're on a ship. But I mean, I understanding, so
Speaker 3: you can be a pilot too. But isn't a Navy
Speaker 3: seals like a special ops kind of individual?
Speaker 2: That is my understanding. I just didn't know, if you
Speaker 2: guys had anything further on that. I know, Navy seal
Speaker 2: training is historically some of the most intensive stuff you
Speaker 2: can go through.
Speaker 3: Brutal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, if you ever, if you want to ever feel
Speaker 4: palpable tension in a room, hang out with some Army
Speaker 4: rangers and Navy seals and just you know, ask them
Speaker 4: if they want to arm wrestle and stand back.
Speaker 2: Don't ask them if they want to arm wrestle.
Speaker 3: But yeah, you're right.
Speaker 4: Special ops we call it small unit specialization as well,
Speaker 4: often ordered or tasked with identifying, capturing, and or terminating
Speaker 4: high level targets or sometimes reconnaissance, just getting behind very
Speaker 4: difficult enemy lines, getting the lay of the land. And
Speaker 4: I think we talked about this in maybe July twenty
Speaker 4: twenty four on Strange News that maybe that's a different one.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, because that's the twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this was a whole separate thing in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: where there were two green berets that were arrested.
Speaker 4: Exactly, and again the government, the US government, we should say,
Speaker 4: did make statements disavowing any kind of green lighting of
Speaker 4: this activity. Right, So, yeah, it is possible just to
Speaker 4: be objective, it is possible that these folks simply had
Speaker 4: their own experience and their own expertise and leveraged that
Speaker 4: of their own agency and volition to push for something
Speaker 4: they wanted to happen without checking in with chain and command.
Speaker 3: Completely possible.
Speaker 2: And guys, this Navy seal has been named a bunch
Speaker 2: of times. We're not going to say his name on
Speaker 2: here just because it doesn't well, maybe it does matter.
Speaker 2: We don't have to say his name. There are two
Speaker 2: other Americans that were also arrested, and then three other people,
Speaker 2: and Venezuela is alleging that this was a full on,
Speaker 2: like an action, a destabilizing action that was supposed to
Speaker 2: take place. They say that they seized four hundred US
Speaker 2: rifles that were linked directly to this plot, which implies,
Speaker 2: if true, that these were guys who were going to
Speaker 2: recruit a bunch of other people in country in Venezuela
Speaker 2: to take some kind of action that is much larger
Speaker 2: than just six human individuals. Right, four hundred guns, That's
Speaker 2: that's a lot of people. But that could also mean
Speaker 2: that it's some kind of weapons trade or you know,
Speaker 2: black market weapons deal thing going on, which I don't know. Weirdly,
Speaker 2: feels more likely to me, but maybe maybe I'm out
Speaker 2: of my depth here when it comes to, you know,
Speaker 2: some kind of attempted coup versus making some money on
Speaker 2: some rifles, and I don't know.
Speaker 4: Ay you raise a you raise really interesting point there too,
Speaker 4: because I think it was not just the CIA that
Speaker 4: was accused of involvement, but the Interior Minister was saying
Speaker 4: Spain's intel agency was there, Yeah, like named a rogues
Speaker 4: gallery of possible actors.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, there was a citizen and two Spanish citizens
Speaker 2: who were arrested. So I don't know, three Americans, two
Speaker 2: Spanish citizens, and one Czech citizen.
Speaker 4: Do you think do you think it's possible that there
Speaker 4: was some kind of internal dissent in like, let's say,
Speaker 4: so the CIA, as you as you point out, has
Speaker 4: publicly responded, which they don't always do, but has publicly
Speaker 4: responded and said, hey, nope, hashtag not it, not us.
Speaker 4: Is it possible that there would be factions in that
Speaker 4: organization who decided to you know, yeah, pony up their
Speaker 4: own bones.
Speaker 3: Aren't there? Like? I mean, we know that there's wheels
Speaker 3: within wheels and a lot of these massive branches of
Speaker 3: governments and military branches, you know, so maybe if this
Speaker 3: was some kind of siloed operation, like a black op
Speaker 3: of some kind, is that what you mean then?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think right. I mean that's what you're saying.
Speaker 2: It's an unknown, it's an unknownn wait no.
Speaker 3: No no, it's a no no, it's a.
Speaker 1: No no, it's a new unknown.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 4: Also yeah, again, to be clear for anybody in general
Speaker 4: who's listening, we are not saying anything. We are asking questions,
Speaker 4: and I think that's totally fine.
Speaker 3: Yea, wildly.
Speaker 2: I do love the point you made, Ben, I don't
Speaker 2: know exactly how you put it, something about the CIA
Speaker 2: just saying hey, not us. I'd love the idea of
Speaker 2: the CIA being known for having a reputation for just
Speaker 2: coming out and saying, oh are bad guys? That was us? Yeah, sorry,
Speaker 2: anytime they get accused of something, Ah, shucks, you.
Speaker 4: Gotta the CIA's new motto transparency.
Speaker 3: Or aucks you got shuts od jeepers.
Speaker 4: We're the real Apple Dumpling Gang, the twenty first cent.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I mean you're you're bringing up, though, something
Speaker 4: that's that's incredibly important because we know that there were
Speaker 4: multiple things that have been framed as coup attempts or
Speaker 4: even described as coup attempts by the people involved. What
Speaker 4: makes the CIA come out and say not it right?
Speaker 3: Like you know, typically you think they would just not
Speaker 3: dignify it with a response.
Speaker 2: I I don't know, what do you think? Seriously, do
Speaker 2: you guys have any ideas of why this idea would
Speaker 2: be auspicious?
Speaker 3: It's weird. Maybe the denial is part of the op
Speaker 3: in a way.
Speaker 4: Possible, Yeah, it's I mean, if we had to guess,
Speaker 4: and again just guessing, then one of the reasons you
Speaker 4: would do this is to kind of maintain the boundaries
Speaker 4: and parameters of your current geopolitical rivalry. Honestly, and this
Speaker 4: is a terrible comparison kind of like how when somebody
Speaker 4: stole the secret recipe for Coca Cola and tried to
Speaker 4: sell it to Pepsi and then PEPSI said, oh no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: not us. We're going to turn this to the authorities.
Speaker 3: Guys, Sorry, quick off, quick aside. Did you see that
Speaker 3: the Kentucky Fried Chicken original recipe secret spice blend was
Speaker 3: leaked by a relative of Colonel Sanders.
Speaker 1: It's the ones closest to you.
Speaker 3: And then I always hurt the ones we.
Speaker 2: Love, my God, we need to impose sanctions on.
Speaker 3: That person, and the internet collectively shrugged because no one
Speaker 3: likes KFC anymore.
Speaker 4: Wait, wait, Ben, has the CIA issued a statement?
Speaker 3: Where is job rule? It's a good question, then it's
Speaker 3: a good question.
Speaker 2: Hey, guys, just quickly we can end this out here.
Speaker 2: There's a lot going on between the US and Venezuela
Speaker 2: right now. Sanctions were just imposed on them by the
Speaker 2: United States. Sanctions on officials who are you know, they're
Speaker 2: in that close relationship with Nicholas Maduro, who may have
Speaker 2: actually helped change and cup up the election, right, make
Speaker 2: it so that Moduro won. So, yeah, the US and
Speaker 2: post sanctions on several of those people. That was on Thursday, y'all,
Speaker 2: September twelfth, as we record this. Then just before that,
Speaker 2: the US, I think, yeah, the US seized I think
Speaker 2: it was like the private plane or basically the air
Speaker 2: force one of Venezuela when it was in the Dominican Republic.
Speaker 2: They just said hours now, but.
Speaker 3: Also not it. Yeah, they called dibbs and then not it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. It's very very weird, y'all.
Speaker 2: So there's more to come here. Look up this. We're
Speaker 2: not gonna talk about this story. Just look it up.
Speaker 2: And I want to make sure you're aware of this.
Speaker 2: Look up New York fire chief bribery scheme. Just look
Speaker 2: it up, read about it. I'm sure we're going to
Speaker 2: talk about it at some point in the future. Yeah.
Speaker 2: If you ever thought, man, the firearm department doesn't get
Speaker 2: to my house as quickly as it seems to to
Speaker 2: a lot of these other houses, well, if you're in
Speaker 2: New York City, there's probably a reason for that.
Speaker 3: Gotta pay to play baby, a lot of money, apparently,
Speaker 3: pay to blaze.
Speaker 2: All right, be right back after a word from our.
Speaker 3: Sponsor, and we're back with one more piece of strange news. Matt.
Speaker 3: I just wanted to do a quick micro story. Mentioned
Speaker 3: that your second story tease made me think of there
Speaker 3: was a story that I read about a woman in
Speaker 3: Greece I believe, who was setting fires in order to
Speaker 3: flirt with firemen. That's a true story. It's a true story.
Speaker 3: To the scene, a real firebug. Oh my god, it's
Speaker 3: crazy we keep meeting like this. I know, it's bizarre. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I just wanted to had to get a gander at
Speaker 3: those beefcake firemen rushing to the scene and their sexy uniforms.
Speaker 3: But anyway, that's not all my story's about today. My
Speaker 3: story is about the work day, the workplace. It's a
Speaker 3: workplace story specifically centered around the work culture in Japan,
Speaker 3: which I know we've talked about numerous times as being
Speaker 3: particularly hard and harsh. A regular, you know, work day
Speaker 3: in Japan is nine to nine, it's my understanding, with
Speaker 3: people typically staying as late as eleven and sometimes twelve.
Speaker 3: A lot of folks have probably seen viral images of
Speaker 3: Tokyo salarymen passed out on park benches and in train
Speaker 3: stations because they have to go out drinking with their
Speaker 3: bosses and they get hammered and the train stop running,
Speaker 3: so they just kind of fall where they lay, and
Speaker 3: that's part of the culture as well. Well. Another part
Speaker 3: of the culture is apparently it's quite difficult in Japan
Speaker 3: to quit your job. It's something we take for granted.
Speaker 3: I think maybe here in America, in addition to all
Speaker 3: that other stuff, we have a lot more protections in
Speaker 3: this country, minimal though they may seem to the average
Speaker 3: blue collar or hell even white collar worker here in America,
Speaker 3: But in Japan, ad just don't have this to the
Speaker 3: point where many folks report the when they try to
Speaker 3: quit their jobs, they are relentlessly shamed, hounded, harassed, borderlines
Speaker 3: stalked by their superiors. There's a really great article in
Speaker 3: the Wall Street Journal that outlines a situation where somebody
Speaker 3: who attempted to quit their job, an employer literally came
Speaker 3: to their house knocking on their door, came to their
Speaker 3: apartment knocking on their door. There are stories of folks
Speaker 3: trying to quit their job only to be held up
Speaker 3: in weeks of meetings, told that this is going to
Speaker 3: ruin their life, is going to ruin their future. All
Speaker 3: of this stuff just absolutely browbeating type behavior. And you know,
Speaker 3: in Japan there's also kind of a culture of non
Speaker 3: confrontation that is possibly, i think likely what these employers
Speaker 3: and companies are taking advantage of. That despite being an
Speaker 3: untenable situation workplace situation where you know that people feel
Speaker 3: like their mental health suffering toxic environments, they find it
Speaker 3: really difficult to quit, to the point where in recent
Speaker 3: years a handful of companies offering a service have sprung
Speaker 3: up wherein you can hire someone to quit your job
Speaker 3: for you, and they basically cover all of the bases
Speaker 3: in terms of giving notice, setting parameters for kind of
Speaker 3: no contact, even making sure that equipment or uniforms or
Speaker 3: any company property are returned. But it's just this buffer
Speaker 3: that for the price of like you know, a night
Speaker 3: out maybe with friends, like a date night, two hundred
Speaker 3: bucks roughly American, you can hire these agencies to phone
Speaker 3: your employer and quit on your behalf and you don't
Speaker 3: ever have to see or talk to these people again.
Speaker 3: There are sort of more bespoke versions of this that
Speaker 3: are a little more expensive, about four hundred dollars. In
Speaker 3: the case of hiring a firm to quit a military job,
Speaker 3: because of the nature of that and the government ties
Speaker 3: of that kind of employment, they offer a lawyer to
Speaker 3: do the quitting for you, a company cited in this
Speaker 3: Wall Street Journal article too timid to tell the boss
Speaker 3: you're quitting, there's a service for that by Miho Inada.
Speaker 3: The name of this company is Momori, which I think
Speaker 3: literally translates in English to I can't take it anymore.
Speaker 3: And so this is one of the companies that does
Speaker 3: all of this legwork for you when you want to
Speaker 3: quit a job. It's pretty wild that it requires that
Speaker 3: because I mean, it's certainly not illegal in Japan to
Speaker 3: quit your job, but there is such a kind of
Speaker 3: deference to authority figures and a sort of power dynamic
Speaker 3: in inequality that employers are bullying people into staying in
Speaker 3: jobs they hate. And the kicker is this, Japan actually
Speaker 3: has a worker shortage, so you don't have to be
Speaker 3: beholden to your current employer because there's probably something else
Speaker 3: out there that you can snap up pretty quickly. And
Speaker 3: this is partially why there's been such a spread of
Speaker 3: these companies who are now also consulting with employers who
Speaker 3: are looking for people who have recently quit jobs. So
Speaker 3: they'll call Memory and say, hey, do you have any
Speaker 3: candidates that I might be able to ring up for
Speaker 3: these open positions. So with that, i'd really love to
Speaker 3: hear what you guys think, especially you've been with your
Speaker 3: experience abroad, if you've witnessed any of this toxic workplace culture,
Speaker 3: and what you guys think of this kind of service
Speaker 3: and how popular it's becoming.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm trying to imagine a situation where I felt
Speaker 2: like my boss was too legit for me to quite well, sorry,
Speaker 2: I'm so sorry. No, but where I be afraid to
Speaker 2: resign and I did not understand it. I didn't have
Speaker 2: the personal perspective on it because I've I don't know
Speaker 2: about you, guys, I've known a lot of people who
Speaker 2: have resigned from positions over the years, or have left
Speaker 2: a position to go to another job, or that specific
Speaker 2: instance where you're like, I'm not going to work here anymore.
Speaker 2: I just need to put in my two weeks notice.
Speaker 2: Until I started reading this article that you shared with us,
Speaker 2: and there's another CNN article. There are a couple of the
Speaker 2: places that have articles on this, and they're describing I
Speaker 2: couldn't fathom the number of overtime hours that people were
Speaker 2: putting in. There's a story, there's a story in there
Speaker 2: of somebody who put in one hundred and fifty nine
Speaker 2: overtime hours in a single month before dying, literally experiencing
Speaker 2: heart failure. Now it's nuts for me, because you have
Speaker 2: to imagine that the stress levels in somebody who's going
Speaker 2: through that must be incredibly high. Is that stress directly
Speaker 2: related to the heart failure that that person experienced. It
Speaker 2: seems to be so, at least it's written about it
Speaker 2: that way. I don't know the science behind all of that,
Speaker 2: but if you've got a huge number of people that
Speaker 2: are going through that kind of stress, then yeah, this
Speaker 2: kind of service makes a ton of sense and being
Speaker 2: able to be that cold third party that says, here's
Speaker 2: what my client is going to do, and it takes
Speaker 2: the potential emotional encounter out of it, which is kind
Speaker 2: of good.
Speaker 3: Probably worth your money at that point, because it sounds
Speaker 3: like some of these folks just can't muster up the
Speaker 3: courage or the kind of grit. I guess to face
Speaker 3: that because it is so off the charts, toxic and
Speaker 3: meat spirited and manipulative. Understandable. Ben you have any experience
Speaker 3: with this kind of thing that is from your travels
Speaker 3: or just any perspective on why this would be so
Speaker 3: necessary from a cultural.
Speaker 4: Standpoint, Yeah, it's definitely tough. The overtime is crazy. Overtime
Speaker 4: here in the United States is pretty crazy as well.
Speaker 4: But Japan's work culture has some serious objective obstacles that
Speaker 4: will have to be tackled at some point. A lot
Speaker 4: of it is the idea of face of preserving decorum
Speaker 4: in conversation. Another thing that happens on the flip side
Speaker 4: of this, which may help explain the emergence of these
Speaker 4: sorts of agencies is that sometimes Japanese companies won't fire people. Instead,
Speaker 4: they'll kind of quiet fire them, they'll sideline them from projects,
Speaker 4: they'll just not give them work. You show up, you
Speaker 4: have eight hours, nine hours in the day, and you
Speaker 4: don't have anything to do. Right, you're literally rearranging paper clips.
Speaker 4: You're just checking on the printer, making sure the coffee
Speaker 4: is working. This is something that, unfortun only a lot
Speaker 4: of people have experienced. And another thing that maybe missing,
Speaker 4: I think from what we would call the salary man philosophy,
Speaker 4: is that in places like the United States, which doesn't
Speaker 4: have the same worker protections as maybe your EU countries.
Speaker 4: But in places like the United States, it is not
Speaker 4: abnormal to fire or to be fired, to resign, or
Speaker 4: to somehow quit a job and then go to another
Speaker 4: place in the same industry without your character or your
Speaker 4: reputation being smirched. It's not necessarily a demerits people know
Speaker 4: you get in situations. However, depending on the industry we're
Speaker 4: talking about. In Japan, in corporate life, it can be
Speaker 4: seen as a vast demerit, as a loss of face.
Speaker 4: If you are God forbid fired, right, because that means
Speaker 4: that you did something, or if you quit, that also
Speaker 4: means that you did something. And so now the onus
Speaker 4: is on you and you have this sort of scarlet
Speaker 4: letter employment wise upon your characters. So there are reasonable,
Speaker 4: valid and actionable needs that explain why this industry would
Speaker 4: take off, because a big part of it too is
Speaker 4: being able to not burn bridges to retain good relations
Speaker 4: even after you were maybe no longer a colleague of
Speaker 4: someone for sure.
Speaker 3: The article on CNN that Matt mentioned interview is somebody
Speaker 3: named Shiori Kalamazo is the operations manager at the Monmuri
Speaker 3: agency that does this and said that in the past
Speaker 3: year alone this articles came out, like last month, they've
Speaker 3: gotten more than eleven thousand inquiries. And the agency's located
Speaker 3: in Manato, which is a very busy business district in Tokyo.
Speaker 3: It's been around since twenty twenty two. And there's a
Speaker 3: really telling quote from Kalamada that I think and on saying,
Speaker 3: we sometimes get calls from people crying asking if they
Speaker 3: can quit their job based on X y Z. We
Speaker 3: tell them that it's okay and that quitting their job
Speaker 3: is a labor right, and the thing it was something
Speaker 3: I was trying to remember earlier. It just one last
Speaker 3: point that I wanted to mention. Another thing that Kalamata
Speaker 3: says is that most of the time the employers go
Speaker 3: along with them and they're you know, quitting on behalf
Speaker 3: of these other individuals, but about ten percent of them
Speaker 3: insist on further negotiations involving lawyers. So there is just
Speaker 3: this really entrenched culture of just not taking no for
Speaker 3: an answer when it comes to, you know, the bosses
Speaker 3: there in Japan. It's very very interesting. It does kind
Speaker 3: of reading stuff like this does make me feel lucky
Speaker 3: that we have the minimal labor protections that we do
Speaker 3: have here in the good old United States. So that's
Speaker 3: that one, guys.
Speaker 4: We have We have learned a lot, and thank you
Speaker 4: for bringing that story, Noel. You know, we've got a
Speaker 4: lot of listeners in Japan. We've got a lot of
Speaker 4: people listening who are of Venezuelan extraction or providence or
Speaker 4: may live in Venezuela now. And you know, we have
Speaker 4: family members in Lebanon or of Lebanese origin, and there
Speaker 4: is so much more to all of these stories. We
Speaker 4: can't do this show without your help. So thank you
Speaker 4: very much, fellow conspiracy realist, for tuning in. We would
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