In Episode 944 of the Lotus Eaters Podcast, Dan and Dan are joined by John, Adam and Anne to discuss the release of Julian Assange and the Snowden leaks. The lads also discuss the latest in the anti-vaccination and anti-vaxxer campaigns.
00:01:21.120Grateful to be here. Grateful for platforms like yourself where we can, you know, speak.
00:01:26.720Well, I've told the guys, you know, the viewers my story on this. I mean, I was just like happily, you know,
00:01:32.160sitting around at home, enjoying myself until lockdowns come. And I just found it such an egregious event.
00:01:38.320And I was very suspicious of the vaccines that were sort of pushing on us. I mean, I had a bit of advantage on this.
00:01:46.000I already didn't trust the government. But unfortunately, some people did. And for me, I just found the whole event incredibly stressful.
00:01:54.000I mean, I actually had a go bag by the door with a stack of cash in it and clothes for the kids and stuff,
00:01:59.200so that if they did go down the route with mandatory vaccines, we were out of there.
00:02:02.480I don't know what my plan would have been next, but I just did not trust them at all. And then, obviously, it turned out pretty much exactly like I thought it was going to do.
00:02:11.440I don't think we really trusted the government. I think we just believed the propaganda, you know.
00:03:33.860So I, I haven't followed it completely, but obviously seeing bits that's going on, just seeing how tough it must have been for, he's been in Belmarsh, hasn't he?
00:03:41.280Well, and he's been in some sort of captivity for about 15 years.
00:03:53.260I mean, I mean, he, he, he founded WikiLeaks in 2006, um, and he utilized a new technology then, which was a PGP, pretty good privacy.
00:04:02.500It's a sort of a mechanism where you can transmit information.
00:04:05.680So you could have whistleblowers inside, um, the U S government or the U S military or any organization really send him information in a confidential way that he could then publish in WikiLeaks.
00:04:16.980Um, and it was really in about 2010, um, when Chelsea Manning, and I'm not deliberately avoiding dead naming.
00:04:24.540I just forgotten what his original name was, but Chelsea Manning, um, sent him a whole dump of classified information.
00:04:30.920Uh, and it included a lot of stuff on the, the way that the Afghan war was being fought, including, um, the murder of about 18 civilians, including a couple of journalists.
00:04:41.300Um, and it, um, it went into sort of diplomatic cables and stuff like that.
00:04:46.960And what it kind of did was, is it shattered the image that America had presented itself for a long time, because, you know, as I'm sure if you remember in the, like the eighties and nineties, all the movies were, you know, America is the good guy.
00:04:59.540And they hold themselves up to the most impeccable standards. And a lot of the time, the power makers, they want to do something, but because they're so squeaky clean, they can't.
00:05:08.700And they're always hamstringed by how good and virtuous they are. And what WikiLeaks did is basically just showed, no, they're just, they're just a standard bunch of bastards like every other government in the world throughout history.
00:05:17.800Um, but it, it, it embarrassed them, it embarrassed, um, Hillary Clinton. So, um, so they, they wanted to go after him and eventually it got to the point where he knew that he was going to be arrested because they started drumming up fake, uh, rape charges on him.
00:05:31.480Um, basically the U S wanted to get hold of him and he went and went into, uh, the Ecuadorian embassy and he was sort of kept in this sort of, because the Ecuadorian embassy had this sort of two bed flat, this mini two bed flat, um, within it.
00:05:43.920And he was in there for about, it must've been eight years, seven, eight years, something like that.
00:06:02.800And, um, you're thinking, you know, you wake up this morning and you're thinking, you know, I'm in a hotel, I don't watch TV nowadays, but when you're in a hotel, it's the only thing you've got.
00:06:11.160You think you would get it all over BBC or IT, you know, Good Morning Britain, isn't it?
00:06:30.240Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. And, and all he did was, was he received information and then published it. And that's what journalists used to, it's not what journalists do anymore.
00:06:37.380No, no. These days, journalists, they just read out corporate press release and, you know,
00:07:11.880Um, but yeah. So anyway, so, um, Julian Assange, he's been in some sort of tension. Now I'm just skimming over this because, because like John said, this news just came out last night.
00:07:20.900I was expecting the phone call to say, look, John, we can't do it. We need to cover this topic. Just to say what Adam said, because we were talking in the way down, we were talking about it on the way down and he's mental health, man. Like that guy's mentally 23 hours in a cell. I'd imagine it was a padded room for how long? 900, how many days was it?
00:07:42.020Right. He was years. Years. I mean, this guy is going to be mentally unstable for a long time.
00:07:48.620Yeah. I mean, I, I remember reading about it at the time and, uh, you got these stories of, they're trying to discredit him, but these stories about, um, his weird behavior in the Ecuadorian, um, um, embassy.
00:08:00.240And it wasn't really until lockdowns that I realized, yeah, I'm going mental as well.
00:08:05.960And, and, and he had been in there for about four times as long and he didn't have an hour outside a day or anything like that.
00:08:11.720Yeah. I guess like this kind of goes to show you as well, but the power of the people standing up and never giving up on this man, because if it wasn't, you know, I've seen his wife and I've seen the amount of people in London when they were doing the trial a few months ago, amount of people when it's all coordinated correctly, people can get justice and they've never given up on this man.
00:08:32.600So it really goes to show you when people stand up for the truth, we really can, you can really make a change.
00:08:40.100Yeah. And for those watching on YouTube, um, make sure you come and watch our next segment, which we can't put on YouTube, but I'll be speaking to these guys about their experience of being silenced because of something that happened, um, a couple of years ago.
00:08:53.340So, um, and, and obviously we can't cover that on YouTube, but it's such an important story. So do, do come and follow us, uh, on, on low disease stock. You don't have to pay. You can, you can sign up for a free account and watch the, watch the podcast there. Um, and, and Josh will be covering this topic properly tomorrow, but I just wanted to sort of skim through this as it's sort of, you know, breaking news. Um, here we go. Here we got, um, Assange being released from prison for the crime of embarrassing Hillary, Hillary Clinton.
00:09:19.300So he, he, I think he's now heading back to Australia. So anyway, great news that he's out, uh, for the first time, he'll be able to see his, uh, son. I think he's got two of them, seven and eight.
00:09:34.160Yeah. Uh, I mean, he spent, uh, whatever it was fight. Yeah. Five years in, um, Belmarsh prison, like you said, that was in a two by three meter cell, 23 hours a day.
00:09:43.680I think they leave the lights on 24 seven.
00:09:46.980Yeah. So it was completely disorientated.
00:09:49.300If you do your research on Belmarsh prison, you'll be horrified.
00:09:53.380Yeah. Yeah. And, and it's not like he had a good time before that. Cause it was just in a very small flat in, um, in, in the Ecuadorian embassy as well. So, um, yeah, pretty bad. The way he's got out is a, um, he's done a plea deal. Now there's a lot of questions about why this was done at this time. Um, I, I, for me, I think it's for a number of factors. I mean, one at the, um,
00:10:18.180Libertarian convention, Trump hinted quite heavily that he would pardon Julian Assange and if this had gone to trial as it was expected to do, that's what we thought was going to happen.
00:10:30.380He would have been on the stand, um, while there was a presidential election going on. So he would have been talking about all of this stuff, all the sort of dirty laundry of the U S state while Joe Biden's trying to get reelected.
00:10:43.040So I reckon they just, does Joe Biden know he's trying to get reelected? Does that man know what's going on?
00:10:48.440It's, it's, it's unlikely. I mean, he would be learning a lot of the stuff like his own name for the first time, but, but yeah, I mean the, the, the people who are controlling, um, uh, Biden would have, would have been sort of deeply embarrassed by this.
00:10:58.940So I think they, they just took the calculation that, um, he's going to get pardoned by Trump, um, anyway, uh, and Trump's going to win unless they can, unless they can, um, fortify it again.
00:11:10.180So, um, and we don't want him on the stand during the election. So let's just give him this. And actually it's quite smart from their point of view, because they got him to plead guilty to one charge.
00:11:19.340So they've set the precedent now that if you publish information that embarrasses the government, you can go to jail.
00:11:28.940Um, not exactly. No, but, um, I mean, he's been through so much that he probably just wants now to spend time with the family. So they probably think, look, this, this is out of the bag at this point.
00:11:38.980Um, people have got the internet and they can use it and they can use it to embarrass us. So we're just going to have to cut our losses, but at least we get the precedent set that if we want to, we can throw a journalist in jail or people who actually do journalists, not journalism, not, not the people who are paid to do journalism, but the, the people who actually do it for free.
00:11:56.480Um, you know, they, they, they, they've got that set. Uh, and the other thing is of course that, um, pressure was growing. Um, I mean, particularly in Australia, but I mean, there's lots of, lots of people, um, you know, my mate Peter from what Bitcoin did has done a number of podcasts with his, uh, with his wife, um, keeping the story alive.
00:12:14.220Um, I mean, a whole bunch of people have kept, uh, kept pushing this one. So, um, I, I guess they realized that, you know, this is not 2010 anymore. There's not like one website. Um, you know, they lost control of Twitter. So, you know, what are you going to do? Cut your losses, um, and keep them off the stand during the election. So I think that's what it is. Um, there's this, I don't think I'll be able to play it, but, um, I mean, let me just play a few seconds and then, and then I'll cut it short.
00:12:41.720So this is sort of, um, um, drone footage or a footage from the, um, Apache helicopter, um, that, um, took out 18 guys. So, um, can't, can't play that, but, um, you, you, you, you, you get, you get the idea from, um, from what you're seeing there that, you know, what, what happened here. So 18 guys and a couple of, um, I remember seeing the footage. Yeah. I've seen it. I've seen all the ones. It's very high. Yeah.
00:13:11.720And it just shattered the illusion that America are these, you know, these, these whiter than white who, who were constantly hamstrung by the noble principles.
00:13:19.800Let's be open and honest. It's not just America, is it? You know, there's quite a few stories from the UK military as well.
00:13:26.440Oh, there's all of them. No, it's not like, cause we kind of got this thing going at the moment. Another, another story in the news at the moment, um, where, where basically Farage was saying, um, yeah, Putin's a bastard, but we did provoke him.
00:13:38.720Um, it's like, well, yeah, all governments are comprised of a bunch of psychopaths. I mean, all of them throughout history. And it's not like they're all bad and we are good. It's no, they're all bad.
00:13:52.700Yeah. Um, and that's kind of the point that he was making on that. Um, let's just listen to, um, what he was saying himself. And this is something I think a lot of us appreciate now. Um, but it is, um, back in 2010.
00:14:07.820I mean, I, in 2010, I wasn't, I hadn't figured this out. Um, but I've, I've, I've come to appreciate it now. You know, what, what's really going on with these walls?
00:14:18.060Can we, can we click into that and play that?
00:14:19.700Because the goal is not to completely subjugate Afghanistan. The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the United States, out of the tax bases of European countries, through Afghanistan and back into the hands of a transnational security elite.
00:14:41.120That is the goal. I.e., the goal is to have an endless war, not a successful war.
00:14:49.800Yeah, I mean, that, that's essentially, I mean, that was, that we were talking about Afghanistan there.
00:14:54.460But I mean, you, you could apply it to, you know, modern wars as well. They're not designed to be won. They're designed to, um, keep the money rolling. And like, uh, and, and with these wars as well, I mean, he's saying that the money is laundered through Afghanistan and then back to the country. I mean, actually it doesn't, it doesn't even leave the country.
00:15:09.460So with all this Ukraine funding, the money goes directly from the, from Congress to the defense contractors. There's no, there's no intimate step where it goes via Ukraine or something. The money just goes straight to the defense contractors and then it sort of shipped over. So, I mean, it's a different war, but same story. And that's essentially what Julian Assange was exposing on all of that.
00:15:30.680The idea is this sort of continuous war footing on all of this stuff. Um, this is, this is also a clip where it's playing. Let's, let's listen to him here.
00:15:43.900Nearly every war that has started in the past 50 years has been a result of media lies. The media could have stopped it. If they'd searched deep enough, if they hadn't reprinted government propaganda, they could have stopped it. But what does that mean?
00:15:58.800Well, that means basically populations don't like wars and populations have to be fooled into wars. Populations don't willingly and with open eyes go into a war. So if we have a good media environment, then we'll also have a peaceful environment.
00:16:17.700Spot on there, aren't they? See, I said this, I think a couple of weeks ago to Sonia Poulton. I was at a thing with Sonia Poulton.
00:16:24.760Before we had subtle corruption. Now it's just blatant corruption all in front of our eyes. Yeah. So many different level of things now.
00:16:35.020I wonder if it's becoming less subtle or we're just better at seeing it now. Like with social media, we, we, we can see what previously, because I mean, before it would have all been filtered through the newspapers and so it would have gone through a journalist.
00:16:47.720So all you need to do is bamboozle a journalist and then read it, read about it, you know, a couple of days later. Whereas now with like the video clips and social media, you can see.
00:16:55.960When was that said? When, when did they say that? Do you know?
00:16:59.020Um, let's have a look if he, if it says when he said it. I mean, it would, it would have been around 2010, 2011.
00:17:04.800So there was not really much alternative media back then, was there?
00:17:07.780Yeah. I mean, it was just starting to begin. So, I mean, Sargon popped up, I think in 2013, uh, the guy who founded this place. Um, and, and he was one of the very first. So yeah, I mean, that was sort of all before that environment and things like the, I mean, the Afghan war and the Iraq war. I mean, I, I, I, at the time I believed in them. I thought they were good things. Um, because I was sort of bought into the propaganda that the media pushes on all of this stuff.
00:17:31.400And he's only really, when you start to engage with this kind of stuff, you realize that actually, no, it is just another setup.
00:17:37.420Well, I mean, especially what's happened to us in the last four years now, you know, you know, things that I've seen in the past, I now question, I just question everything now.
00:17:48.600You know, I've, I've, I've seen documentaries on certain people, you know, if I was believing, you know, there's a, I don't want to get into too much, you know, because I don't want to muddy the waters, but, you know, with all these walls.
00:18:00.020Well, I mean, we, we, we, we get into your story next, but, um, I, I certainly now see historic events completely differently.
00:18:08.280Like I used to look at historic events and think, how could they get a whole population of people to go along with these crimes?
00:18:22.740I mean, but yeah, we, we, we, we, we will come back to that one in the, in the next segment.
00:18:26.240Um, one of the chief things he did was upset this, uh, lovely lady, um, Hillary Clinton.
00:18:33.480Um, and, and, and this is, this is a remarkable passage coming out of, um, a meeting in the state department.
00:18:40.280Um, basically they're discussing WikiLeaks, um, and how embarrassing this stuff is that's coming out.
00:18:45.680And, and Clinton just asks, well, can't we just drone this guy?
00:18:48.900Um, now initially the, the other people in the room laughed politely, but then that laughter died off when they realized that she was actually serious.
00:19:00.180Um, no, the U S state is not supposed to just kill people that are inconvenienced, but when she's talking like that, though, it makes you wonder.
00:19:13.620Well, I mean, Seth, Seth, rich springs to mind rather quickly, but, um, but yeah, I mean, there is, I mean, if, if you ever looked at the list, there's a pretty long list of Clinton associates who have died unexpectedly.
00:19:59.840So basically you can take that, take a, a file of something that you've got from somewhere, some classified file, encrypt it with that public key, send it to WikiLeaks.
00:20:09.740And if that file is intercepted on the way, it can't be decrypted unless you've got the private key on the other side that WikiLeaks have.
00:20:17.480So it's, it's, so there is a mechanism for people to then start uploading, um, you know, private information.
00:20:23.580So, um, I mean, if, if, if you ever wanted to get into something like Bitcoin, going via PGP is a good starting place.
00:20:31.800Cause it is, it's like one of the four runner texts that Bitcoin is something I can't, something I can't trust either, man.
00:20:38.940Like who invented Bitcoin, you know, like we don't even know who invented the thing, you know, so it's a hard one.
00:20:45.980Um, yeah, I think I've got an idea, but, um, I'll send you the Brokonomics episode that I did on it.
00:21:02.520So this is, um, Tucker being interviewed on Joe Rogan.
00:21:05.400Um, um, and he's talking about when he started talking about the, um, JFK assassination, about how he got a phone call from the CIA to say, yeah, stop talking about this.
00:21:16.860But he also goes on to talk about Julian Assange.
00:21:19.420So can we, can we click into this and play this from the beginning?
00:21:29.520I'll never, with my dog sitting next to you, I'll never forget this.
00:21:31.660And I said, are you really saying that to reveal that the U S government had a role in the murder of a democratically elected president to say that out loud, that's the crime.
00:21:42.500What about the actual crime, which is murdering a president?
00:21:51.540And so Mike Pompeo is the one who pressed Trump to keep those documents secret.
00:21:58.440And so it's like, what's crazy to me is not just that Pompeo did that.
00:22:01.620I think Pompeo is a really sinister person and a, and a criminal.
00:22:04.900I think that, I think that because the facts suggest that he was caught Yahoo news, Mike Isikoff wrote a long piece on this several years ago.
00:22:13.280His employees went to Mike Isikoff and said, Hey, Mike Pompeo was plotting to murder Julian Assange, who has never even been charged with a crime in the United States as CIA director.
00:23:28.480I mean, you, yeah, well, we, we, we, I mean, we get into that because, uh, cause obviously the official line is that they are, uh, safe and effective.
00:23:36.260Um, so, so that's what we're going to go with until we bin YouTube and then we have a, then we have a proper chat.
00:23:41.900But so before, before we, before we bin YouTube and just to say to the YouTube viewers, um, this is an important segment.
00:23:47.400This isn't a segment I've been wanting to do since, um, you know, since I joined here at Lotus.
00:23:51.560So the whole reason why I came to Lotus Eaters in the first place, um, is, is because the, what happened to us two years ago was an absolute disgrace.
00:24:01.080Um, and what they fostered on the population was an absolute disgrace.
00:24:03.920So this, this needs to be talked about, but we can't talk about it properly on, on a censorship platform.
00:24:08.820So just to remind you who these guys are, uh, I'm going to, I'm going to play you something that reminds you who they are.
00:24:14.940Uh, and then come over to lotuseaters.com.
00:27:36.080We haven't got a microphone on you, so our viewers and listeners won't be able to hear what you say.
00:27:39.520I think, look, the last thing I'd say is, you know, we went through a pandemic, like everyone else.
00:27:44.780But at the points when it came to the vaccine, those decisions were always taken on the basis of medical advice from our medical experts to tell us as politicians, who are obviously not doctors, about how best to roll out the vaccine, what was in the public health interest, the priority order, how that should be done, who should be eligible.
00:28:03.160That was something that the doctors recommended on, and that's something that we followed.
00:28:07.140Now, obviously, if there are individual circumstances which haven't worked out, then that's why we have the compensation scheme in place, and I'll make sure that we follow up on your cases.
00:28:24.220And the reaction of the host, he didn't know that was coming either.
00:28:28.860So, how the hell did you guys get on that?
00:28:30.780I don't want to say too much, because we've done an event in Glasgow.
00:28:35.440So, I do a podcast as well called Bring the Noise podcast, probably the most censored podcast in the UK, because I can't get anything on YouTube, but it's on Rumble.
00:29:20.580It was a fantastic event, and we sold it out, and it was to try and raise money for the injured, and it was quite successful for people that had been affected by it.
00:29:28.440But I can honestly tell you that the one and only question they didn't know in that studio was mine.
00:45:32.020So as soon as I lie down flat, so even when I speak to you, Dan, now I've got my brain feels like it's constantly spinning in my skull like that, but slowly.
00:45:41.020So if you imagine that and you lie down and you close, when I close my eyes, it speeds up even more.
00:45:46.460So you're getting like sea sickness in bed.
00:45:47.860Yeah, yeah, and then what happens is as I'm trying to go to sleep and close my eyes, it feels like I'm being dropped off a cliff, and my body, like they've seen it on the monitors in hospital, so my heart goes out of rhythm because my heart was going into VT.
00:46:01.380So they're saying as my heart goes out of rhythm, my blood pressure drops that low.
00:46:05.840That's what's causing this extreme dizziness, and I miss a few breaths.
00:46:09.960And then what happens is my body automatically jerks up right, so I sit up right, and I feel fine again.
00:46:16.340And then this would happen like 15 times a night, so I...
00:46:20.660So I didn't know what was going on, so I phoned my GP up, couldn't get on a face-to-face appointment, and he went, are you getting nocturnal panic attacks?
00:46:30.480I'd never had a panic attack in my life, so I didn't know what it was.
00:46:33.740So I left it a couple of weeks, and I had to like stop working.
00:46:36.920It was the first time, you know, I didn't, I feel stewed because I did not think it was the vaccine.