Get ready for.
Twenty second day of August twenty twenty four. Allegedly, according to that thing we call a calendar, I have not been live in a while. The reason is, first, I was sick, and I got a long story to tell you about the succession of events that took place that kept me off air has now kept me from producing podcasts. I had to miss an o'kelli in the Greek. All kinds of mess going on here, and I'll tell you all about it, but not until I get to finally somebody who I've been trying to get on the show
for a couple of weeks. Between me being down and him being out of town, we couldn't get it done. But I gotta tell you, I'm always interested to hear what Mike Swanson has to say. Okay, and he's the author of two great books that I highly recommend, but
many other books. He's authored, Why the Vietnam War, First of all, you hear ads for that on this show and The War State, which I've recommended now for over a decade to people as required reading if you want to understand modern contemporary American history, and of course the post Cold War era if you want to understand it all got to include the war state, which is that red book you see on the sidebar of my website. Anyway, Mike also has a newsletter or all that kind of stuff.
Maybe you can explain to people how they can still sign up for that if they want, because you got the substack right, I'm not sure if you're doing that, you can explain it, Mike. But we also have some
other stuff coming up. An article you wrote and a little discussion about the upcoming conference in Dallas, Texas, which you'll be guess when November twenty second to the twenty fourth of this year, you know, exactly, lining up perfectly with the historical events surrounding the assassination of the thirty fifth president. Coincidentally, that's what the conference is about. I'm making jokes, so JFK Lancer November in Dallas. Michael Swatson
will be a presenter there. Anyway, another fat of me, Mike. We haven't heard from you in a while. How are you.
Oh, I'm doing great.
Yeah, I really am looking forward to that conference, and as you mentioned, I've been traveling quite a bit the past couple weeks now. We'll be doing that in September but I'm taking time right now to catch up on a lot of reading.
I'm gonna mention if we get to it.
I mentioned what I'm reading at the moment because it is JFK related. But in October, I'm gonna put together a presentation. You know that I'll be presenting at the November conference, and people should go to it, and then they not only can get the presentation, but they can meet us in person. You too, You're gonna be there and some of your other people who've been guests on the show or researchers people know about. It's gonna be
a good event. But what I'm gonna do is I'm going to in October put together a presentation full of documents no one's used in books, information that isn't in books yet either that one day I'll put into a book, but that could be published now for a couple years, you know the way it takes time to write these things. But regardless, it's gonna be about whether the assassination was about trying to keep get the Vietnam war going or
to start a war in Cuba. And again it's gonna be I'm going to have documents and two people that go, they can look up the documents for themselves, right, and it'd be a lot of new information frankly, that I don't see anywhere.
It's not really anywhere else.
Well, you've done this before again, the two books that I recommend Why the Vietnam War features information that people have not put out before. You know, in the war state at the time you released it, I believe had information in it that had not been seen by others. You do that, and your skills are great in that you find stuff that other people maybe have missed or have not included in their arguments before about particular things regarding this situation, you know, outside of Dealey Plaza and
in Lee rby Oswald and forensics and all that. You know, how about the motivation? How about the biggest question, why this happened? What was the purpose of it? If indeed it is not just a lone nut who just one day woke up and said, let me just go do this, which is apparently the big contention here. You know, he didn't have much time to planet or anything, if you believe the official stories. But the deal is, you know,
how about the motive? Then, why the Vietnam War? Well, you're almost asking that question here in the JFK case, Right, was the Vietnam War and the fact that it was definitely eagerly pursued by Lyndon Johnson after Kennedy's death, Is that part of the motive? This is something that I've contended since I don't know, probably for the past twenty
five years. Is the key element to the case is that that is one of the biggest things that the perpetrators, if you will, were interested in, is making sure that the Vietnam War would become well, not quite what it became, but would be even a thing I think it would have ended had Kennedy remained in office. I'm one of those guys, and I solidly believe that.
Now.
I'm not asking you to argue that today, Mike, I'm just saying that that, to me is one of those key elm woman's here about the motive, about the why, about what would cause you know, people that should have been on the side of protecting the president, the people, the elected officials, the will of the people even should have been respected by anybody who was involved here if there were so sort of insiders involved. Right, So this is a key issue, and I can't wait to hear
about that. And as you said, if people come to the conference, they'll be able to see us in person. We can hang out a little bit even, you know, depending on who you are. I'm not speaking for Mike, but I'll hang out with people if you come by. And it's great to see brand new researchers. There's going to be some young people there as well, some of the old you know, some recurring names, maybe even some surprises that have not been announced by the way, going
to be added to the bill. And it's a great time to learn, to interact, to enjoy and get the new looks at books and all that stuff. And in fact, in Mike's case, we're looking at something that isn't even a book yet but might be one in the future, So this will be great anyway. I'm looking forward to that. But I also want to get to this article that you published, and why is that relevant. Well, tell me a little bit about this article and we'll go back
to the Kennedy thing in a few minutes. But if you wouldn't mind kind of give people the bullet points on this article I have in front of us, which I'll include the link in the chat at ochelly dot com. And also I'll include it with the show notes, but would you mind telling us a little bit about it?
Well, the title of it in it's own Wall Street window. And yes, how people can get my newsletter just if they tape in Wall Street window, It'll take them to a place to opt in. And I've got it set up now where people basically have to opt in and subscribe.
To see the future articles.
But anyway, this one is titled Google study reveals how social media mimetic engineering has altered the human brain for the worst.
Now quite a mouthful.
Yeah, Well, the phrase mimetic engineering, that's something I never heard of before until maybe six months ago, and it's come up in a couple I subscribe to the Bookings Institute newsletter, which is a defensive think tank, and they've done multiple articles using this phrase. And basically what it means is using social media memes as propaganda to manipulate people into, you know, figuring one thing or the other. And frankly, social media is you know, the Facebook feed,
the Twitter feed and so forth. That's what most of the content it really is. It's if it's simply advertisements, you know, half the stuff or A good portion of it is simply advertising, using memes to to make you click or buy or whatever. In politics, you know, the Twitter tweet is a meme. Memes are now something that you know, we're all used to. But another story came out.
It was a Routers story a couple of months ago that the Pentagon had set up a unit that is doing this UH propaganda MI medic engineering campaigns, not in the United States but in other countries.
In the article talked about how.
They did one in the Philippines a couple of years ago during the COVID outbreak that was directed against China. But what I stumbled upon a month ago was a Google study about how so called it Generation Z and that's people born after nineteen ninety five, so they're basically thirty or under, and how they're consume news on the Internet, and how it's actually different, different than what they expected
to see. Now, these people are the first, this is the first generation to come alive when the Internet, you know.
Was there. They're born online.
If they were Okay, so, if you're born in nineteen ninety five, the internet existed, it didn't exist in you know, the forman exists today, but in nineteen ninety five, you're born into that world. If you're a millennial or Generation Z, however they define when this begins, But if you start at nineteen ninety five or whatever, it works. Right there you go. The Internet was out there in public in ninety five. It really was out there in the early nineties,
but I got into it in the midnight. The key.
The key is, I think they were basically ten years old in the two thousands, right, So in two thousand and five, they'd be about ten years old. They were, you know, the nine to eleven happened when they were chill, you know, really young.
Is a very early childhood memory.
See.
Yeah, And I've talked to you about this a lot over the years. Honestly, if you think back to the conversations we've had, I told you about Look, you know, these kids grew up in a reality. I was calling them the Homeland Generation for a while because I said, they grew up in a reality where the constant surveillance, whether you go to a store, or you're on the street or anything else, is completely normal. Cameras are everywhere, right, And I talked about this with social media. I've often
referred to it as anti social media. This is almost like our conversations that you and I have been having over the past ten years or jeez, yeah, ten years coming into you know, into the visual spectrum of everybody now where it's like the stuff that we were talking about is exactly this now. I've often argued that it was about the compartmentalization, how people become isolated, and nobody talked about that until COVID hit, But I think there
was a psychological isolation already occurring, you know. And again this is not me reading the Brooking studies or any of this stuff that you did. This is just my observation. This did. And if you change the circumstances by which somebody lives their environment in a you know, their ecosystem completely, certainly you're going to change the way their brain works. We're adaptive creatures, right, We adapt to our environment. We adapt to the conditions that are just a given when
we're flung into them one way or another. And we're especially adapted to those situations if we were born into them. So social media existed right away for these ten year olds you're talking about, because Facebook emerges in what two thousand and seven something like that. So your social media sort of as it exists today, began right there, even though it had its roots earlier, I know. But all of this is relevant in that this is the way that people are connect or are collecting their views of
the world. And that's what these studies are about, is now, here's the results, right after all this time, and what have you found in scanning through these different things? What is the overall Is there an overall consensus? Is there a particular sort of zeitgeist that we can draw from just this element of society, how it's interacting online and how that's changed people, you know, in the real world.
Yeah. So this study is very new.
It's a Google study and it's just on the people in this age group and what it what they studied is how they're looking at news on the internet in their news feeds. And one thing they dispel is.
Over the past couple of years, you know, this idea of people aren't able.
There there's an assumption that a lot of people, a lot of stuff on the internet isn't real. You know, it's bullshit or excuse me, it's it's it's it's false information, and it's you know, flooded with this false information, and there's been kind of a fear that younger people they didn't grow up in newspapers, so they're flooded with false information, and therefore their news illiterate, so to speak, and they won't be able to tell the difference between what's real
and what isn't real. And frankly, people you know that in all the time, like now we have an election, you can see on Facebook or whatever you're looking at. People who are Democrats will think the Republicans fall for
fake news and vice versa. Well, what they found the Google study by examining this these younger Peopleeole dispelled that they found that by questioning them about the things that they're looking at, that they could determine what was real and what isn't that they didn't really have any problem with that.
What the study found was something.
Surprising, and that is that it isn't so much that they can't tell what isn't real and what isn't it's that they don't care.
They share stuff without care if it's real or not.
And the way older people would look at stuff is that issue is important to them. They will say, oh, this is a fake story. Some people at times will dig a little deeper to try to disprove something and argue with people, whereas the younger people don't even.
Bother to do that.
Instead they do is the first thing they look at. If I'm just use Facebook as an example, Uh, are the comments made about a story? And then they see, oh,
do the people agree with me? If they don't, then they then they pass judgment on them, or they'll say, well maybe I'm wrong, and then only then well they dig a little deeper, but usually they just want to scroll the comments and say and and see what side of the comment, you know, what's the majority opinion appeared to be it doesn't match their opinion, uh, and then pass a judgment. That's mostly usually what they're doing. And that is some sort of form of stimulation and an excitement.
Or whatever. I don't know if it's exciting the past time.
Yeah, I think I know. What you're getting at is that, you know, just like when we looked at the study of the like button and how that was created purposely, you know, not as a way to go, look, this is a way of expressing yourself. Oh no, this was a way of doing something entirely different. We looked at that a couple of years ago, and fact is this? It actually again supports stuff I've been saying, sentimentality above substance. Right, So the younger group finds that they want to match
with senses sentimentality. Does this work with the stuff I already think?
Yeah?
Like, it's not about am I going to get new facts? Is there some new information that doesn't matter? Does it agree with the direction I'm going in already? And if it doesn't, let me see why and see what other people's reactions and impressions are. Not what the facts are, but let me see how other people are reacting. Maybe I'll switch sides if I see something that convinces me in others opinions. So it's weird it's this.
If not, you could dismiss those others as idiots or whatever. Yeah it.
Is, you know, But but again, it's about the sentiment. If it goes. If the sentiment goes the right way, then great, I support it, doesn't matter if it's real, it doesn't matter anything else. I support it if the sentimentality works for me. If it doesn't, then I can attack it or I can ignore it because it doesn't go with me. See, that's the thing I was talking about with even podcasts. They they don't want to hear new information. They want you to echo back the stuff
they already you know, believe. They want you to reinforce. They're looking for, you know, acknowledgment. They're looking for what do you call that? You know what I mean? When somebody says, no, you know what you're you're right, you're correct, they give you, you know, approval, right, what do you call that? It's it's like knowledge, but it's not acknowledgment. You know what I'm talking about here.
I can't think of that. I know what you're saying.
You know. What I'm getting at, though, is what approval?
Approval?
It is approval, but it's something else. It's like, Uh, I want to be you know, vindicated. Verified there's another word still. But it's not about any It's not about can I learn something new? Is there a fact that changes the way that I see something or the way something actually is? Uh, it's not about the facts. It's about God. I'm trying to think of what a validation that's the word I'm looking for. They want validation. So if you make their pre existing, their prejudice, really, if
you make their prejudice. Stand up and you validate their prejudice. Winner doesn't matter what you said, doesn't matter. If there's facts in it, they're gonna share it, they're gonna support it, they're gonna agree with it, even if it doesn't make sense, doesn't matter. It validates their opinion, It validates their feeling about the way things are. You know, it's sort of like.
With it's being in a herd and feeling comfort in.
That it's herd mentality. But it's even worse than that. It's sort of like the economy. Remember we've talked about the economy many times, and how many times have we had to say that, You know what, here's the thing they tell you something like, generally speaking, people feel that the economy is going bad. Therefore they insist the economy is going bad even if the numbers don't support that, and vice versa. Things are going bad, but they believe
things are going in the right direction. Right. It's like it's like everybody has joined a presidential campaign where it's like it doesn't matter what the numbers say. We're telling you that we feel this way, that's the way it is, and literally that will drive economies in certain directions, right, Like you'll see the market react to that, where it's not that anything's wrong yet, but people think that it's going wrong or it's gonna go wrong, you know what
I'm saying, or vice versa. It's like, well, I think everything was going great, so therefore it was and it does change things in the real world, even though the numbers don't change. Like it's hysterical. It's like, my business is doing bad, but your business isn't, you know, failing. You're not losing money yet, but it's doing bad because they have that attitude. They insist that that's the way
it is. This sounds confusing to somebody who uses logic and wants support, you know, in facts and figures and real hard evidence, right, But it's just sort of like people have decided in this group their sentimentality is the important thing and that's all there is to it. Right.
But if you step away and you go to Generation X or the baby boomers or whatever, we're sitting here with a different mentality because our minds are not trained the same way with all this, you know, with all the added comments on top of it, right after the thing is out there. It's not like you know, we wait two weeks for a letter to the editor to show up for a newspaper, right, you know, proclaiming that
a story is BS or whatever. But they're used to the instant gratification of people pushing back against the news article, a post, an ad, even right right away. There's reactions that we can observe. So this changed the way people operate in gathering information entirely. Does any of this make sense, Mike, or do I sound like I'm talking.
About No, That's exactly what I'm trying to argue.
However, I suspect that, yes, that this study is focused on this generation Z right, and it's not studying other people. And I would suspect that this is now becoming widespread, that this has happened to them first, because you know, this is what they were born into, this system, but it's now you know, become the dominant way most people
get news too. Very few people are subscribing to newspapers, news sites, and news sites themselves are you know, shrinking in terms of traffic, and more and more people are getting their news, local, national, from social media feeds. You know, I mean, I know that's a fact or apps. You know, the news break app or whatever, you know, different things like that, But you.
Know what is true.
So I think most people are getting their news this way already. I think these younger people are just the vanguard of these changes. In fact, I was getting not going to do it, but for a few years I was studying the local news industry and I subscribe to a media publication just for the news industry. And you know, they do these studies, you know, how do we survive or what can we do?
And one of the things that.
Has been studied is this again the same sort of thing, different study that's Generation Z people is that multiple studies have shown that that they are getting their news from TikTok and YouTube more than even Facebook.
And I'm not doing that.
But an argument that this news industry publication is making is that this is act this, this is going to be the future. If you're gonna want a viable news organization, you're going to have to do these short form videos and integrate that to attract people like they've got a way.
If you organize.
If you look at how these people are finding information, younger people, they're going to TikTok, YouTube and then if they really want to dig deep into something. They'll follow a person on there that they find and then if they have books or recommend them to other sources, then they'll go down deeper, you know, say on a topic.
But let me ask you this. When I wrote this, it's not that long, but I thought about this phrase the medium is the message and that, and then I looked up, you know, that's a phrase I've heard of before. But then I looked up where it came from and so forth, and it dates back to nineteen sixty four and it was mainly being applied.
It was being applied to television.
And the idea behind the phrase is that every media technology, whether it's printing presses which creates newspapers, books, speech, have a form to them which impacts the way people view the world in their thicking processes, which is what we just applied to social.
Media now.
In what I'm put in the article as well, if the medium is the message when it comes to memes, it's us for them, you know, and can and conforming being used to group thinking. And I believe this is really compatible with authoritarian structures of society.
Well, sure it is, you know, it is it?
Yeah, Look, this causes the escalation of the ability to control people because everything is done in a shorter, more convenient, more punchy with less information attached to it. And just you know, look, if all you have to do is push sentiment and you only need a sentence or two, that's great. You don't have to write a whole script. You don't have to write a book to propagandize people.
None of that, right, and is the media of the message in a way, it is as the technology has evolved and you're able to reach more people with shorter experiences, shorter forms of information, of shorter forms to get your messages across. Right, You don't need to write a giant
book anymore to get a point across. You don't need to go to the trouble of getting a broadcast together, creating a radio broadcast, right, that's nice and clear and the signals are done, or TV or okay, maybe we should put it out on videotapes and make a publication and go through the trouble of distributing that. All of these things as it's become you know, much faster and much more compact over time, means that yes, indeed, the
way people are receiving the messages has been altered. I'll tell you a funny thing is I just popped open X real fast while I'm talking to here, thinking to myself because X is behind the time. See, Facebook is more for older people at this point. Mike, okay, sure. Like a few years ago, it was like, oh, you're you're like a grandpa if you're watching TV. You know, you actually watched TV. Remember that became very trendy. Though I don't watch television anymore. You know, nobody watches TV. Uh,
that's kind of passe, it's outdated. That's for older people, right. And while people were watching TV, it was like nobody reads the newspapers anymore. So on and so forth. Always as people, as new technologies emerge, the younger people grab up the new technology and that becomes their new way of receiving information. Lagging behind them is the previous generation.
We are generation X, right, and we're before these, you know, generation Z and obviously in the alphabet right, you know, the idea was that our brains were getting eaten up. The way that we were receiving information are a spans were being taken away, not by the Internet but by television. Right. TV broke things down into quick news segments. TV broke things down into you know, simple presentations in an hour.
They would try and tell you about something that maybe you would have had to take in a class for six months to learn about, uh, if you were looking at educational stuff. Plus there was the junk food of it too, you know, the junk food with a break.
TV was called a vast wasteland.
Yeah, a vast wasteland, an intellectual wasteland because it was destroying us, right. It was like, TV is gonna make you stupid. I mean you heard these things growing up, you know what I mean?
Well, I tell you, I mean, I didn't put this in there, but there's yeah i Q there's IQ test Okay.
That I didn't. I've just read this couple of days ago.
The average IQ a person went up two points from nineteen forty five to about fifteen years ago, and it peaked and it's now gone down two.
Points across the entire world.
Right, So I guess the TV didn't dumb people down, but the social media has.
The Internet has definitely because Luke, what is but notice the echo here? Because what has happened? Your attention span has dropped off even more now with the internet, right, we started out and gigantic podcasts used to get done. At one point there was no podcasts, but then there were podcasts, right, and podcasts would be hours and hours long.
Nowadays people release podcasts that are real short. There are some people out there making whole podcasts that are ten minutes long when they do them right, and that's their whole thing. They have ten and fifteen minute long presentations boom bom boom bom boom, and they're meant to be concise and entertaining and all that stuff. But no longer do you have the half hour or one hour TV show or whatever, or the two hour podcast or the four hour radio show. Talk shows used to be four
hours long on the radio. If anybody still listens to talk radio, even though everything's been shortened. I've even shortened my own show in the past two years. But everybody has shortened their stuff. Why because nobody's got the attention span for it. I think, finally, yeah, this may have succeeded in really truly creating a global siphoning away of
intelligence because no longer is there a texture. There's not a lot of information in the information age, right, But anyway, when I popped open X. I found it ironic because as we're talking, Elon Musk decides to do one of these you know, black graphics with white lettering, which is meant to be very it's very carefully constructed psychologically. When you take a bloak and you put white lettering on it. Okay, look it up. You know, I'm not asking you to, Mike.
I'm saying for the listener, look it up. There's a specific reasoning behind doing this. But he created a meme. And this is a guy who owns Twitter, right, X whatever, and he's branding everything X. I told people about that, and they're just starting to see it this week too, where it's like I told you everything's going to be X. But anyway that's happening. He put out one of these black memes with just white lettering, and what does it say?
Propaganda isn't just about creating fake news, period, It's also about hiding real news. Now, is he right or wrong? I would say that no, propaganda is certainly you know, when you push propaganda out there, obviously you want to hide the things that are actually news, that actually treat you to information inform you. You do want to hide the truth, and you do that by usually obfuscating, by by placing some of the truth and blending it with a whole bunch of bs, and then you create new
narratives out of it. But like you said here, you know, everybody got that phrase fake news, fake news. They loved it. Trump was screaming it, you know, et cetera. And it's still a very popular sort of phrase that people just love to toss around. And propaganda and fake news are not the same thing, by the way, but it says right here propaganda isn't just about creating fake news, isn't
just about that. It's also about hiding real news. I just find it ironic that Elon Musk is the guy putting this out, you know, not not because he's a right winger and he's clearly, you know, in support of Trump, which, by the way, you see the interview with him and Trump on you know that that.
Was put out on that some of it, some of it. Yeah, I didn't watch the whole thing or listen to the whole thing.
Interesting discussion in the subtext there, not the stuff that the mainstream media pointed out to you. But it is very interesting to watch this interplay in that. Here's two people that I guarantee you the you know, millions upon millions of people that did watch this downloaded whatever experience it. I mean, they had something like two hundred million views or something right away. You know, these people are not living in the same reality that you or I live in.
Mike.
This is a conversation between two people who are one thing.
I'm not saying I'm not supporting Democrat, the Harris or whatever when I say this, Yeah, you know, I don't care for them either.
But in the past, the only person you ever revealed that you voted for on the show, by the way, is is Donald Trump? Just for the record, but go ahead.
Yeah that's true. Actually, but that said that was Look what you know the show, their show had trouble getting started.
You know, oh that was ironic too, is but the guy who owns the platform and is a tech genius and the other guy who's super stable genius in media savvy, the two of them get together and what do they have technical difficulties?
That is this, guys, they're both billionaires. They can't get the show going. Billionaires.
But not just billionaires, Mike, but a billionaire who owns a social media platform, this.
Platform, it's supposed to be a genius.
Who is a g a tech genius in Indian.
But what struck me about politically? Politically?
Politically?
You know, one of the things is that I wasn't.
Even talking about politics, by the way, but go ahead. Politically I didn't.
I don't really know what you're referred to, but I'll just throw this out there first because I do.
I'm curious what you're referred to. But they.
They were bashing unions, yeah, and making making it funny to fire people because elon you know, which Politically I don't. I don't get it because Trump is you know, they got the JD.
Vayans character. He's supposed to be for the workers.
And they went the union vote in Michigan and there's battleground state. So what's the benefit of bashing unions on the show phiblically for Trump?
And then he was doing along Musk.
Musk was one who started, but Trump enjoyed it, you know, So I don't.
I don't really get that.
No, it's look those.
I mean to come off, that's just stupid.
Listen. I don't disagree with you, but there is Listen. They always tell you it's three D chess. You got to understand, Mike, there's a big, grand strategy to it. But the reason for this is exactly what I was bringing up. These guys are not connected to the real world. They live in a completely different reality because they're on a different level financially, they interact with people in a
different way. The owners of corporations, believe me, have a different lifestyle than the guy who's mopping up the floor than the guy who's using their product. Okay, they're not connected to you or I the things that would make sense to you or I, like, i'd be upset. That's my job. If it's only numbers to them, then what's
the big deal? Just like you know, Musk is closing his operations in Brazil right now, right you know, as of August seventeenth, I think, according to Reuters, excuse me, and he's just closing up Twitter in Brazil because they were trying to put some restrictions on him that he felt violated his free speech rights on a global level. I guess, you know, not in America, but his free speech rights. And he said, you know know what, I'm just going to close my Twitter operations in Brazil my
office and all that. Nobody bats an eye at this. Nobody bats an eye at that he walked into Twitter and you know, paid billions of dollars for it and fired a whole bunch of people. They think that somehow this is a guy who's on the side of the people. You're right, But he runs corporations, and the way he runs his corporations, whether it's Tesla or this or anything else,
take a look at his behaviors and tell me. This is a guy who is an advocate for most of you, who isn't really actually even an advocate for free speech, which is what I hear all the time. This guy is a great crusader and warrior for pre speech.
Will Yeah, I'll tell you what I think that's really about.
Okay, tell me.
So.
I'd never really thought of this too recently either, but where I live a couple there's a road, you know, four miles from me. There's a big building on this road, like a warehouse, buildings, concrete and big. And this guy was running a business there. It's like ten years younger than me, and he was making he was what I was told was he was selling vitamins on Amazon now and making millions, millions, and then he.
Got busted and arrested.
And it turned out what he was doing was buying steroids from and they're coming from China and he was selling them on Amazon well and running ads all over. Well, the thing about it is this had in a while ago, and you know, he made deals and didn't get in too much trouble. But I forget You know, that story now resonates with me because I now realize that when you put it all together, Facebook, Twitter, all these social medias, and JP Satilly I know when he was on your
show mentioned this a couple of times. They are not They have a clause that they got pasted when Clinton was president, and a bill that makes them immune to the content that they're not responsible legally for the content on their websites.
So Facebook can.
Run ads, have people pay them, trying advertisements to buy illegal drugs, and if Facebook detects the ads and takes them down, that's fine, but there but if they don't and the ads keep running, or they run for months and someone buys the drugs and dies, they're not liable.
However, if I put out a.
Newspaper and did that, I would go to jail.
Right, you know i'd be. So they're given a special munity.
In speech to do things that you or I cannot do a newspaper can't do, a magazine can't do. You couldn't do in your radio show, you'd put in prison.
Right.
No, they have a community, and that's the free speech that they're really protecting.
Well, the funny thing is, even even on my my little show here just broadcast, there are broadcast standards, believe it or not, and I have to suffer both of them in in the US and in Europe that if I do certain things even on my little minor broadcast here, okay, online you have to go find it and everything. It's not on the airwaves. So the FCC has nothing to do with it. So I can curse and I can
break lots of rules. But guess what, there's still rules, and some of those rules are I can be held liable for things if I did something that caused a criminal act to occur. Okay, if it's found that I was literally somebody who provoked, who facilitated a criminal act one way or another, whether I sold a product or you know, or or I or I encourage people to do something and they took actions, right, I can be held liable and there's really harsher laws for it in Europe,
believe it or not. Oh yeah, So there are broadcast standards that you can be held to. But what Facebook and these other entities are not held to at all is not only the broadcast problem, because a lot of that stuff was through the FCC. You know, you couldn't advertise this, you're putting air that And look, the Internet doesn't go out on the airwaves. It's not on the public airwaves, so therefore it's not part of the FCC's responsibility,
the Federal Communications Commission, by the way. But still there are rules in place anyway. There's a lot to this, Mike, Yeah.
But the thing is.
When they can run companies that are able to do things that legally no one else can do, that puts them in a situation where they're operating out kind of lawlessly or they're like outlaws. Yeah, and they're able to do it legally, you know, without any consequences. That puts them in a position where they're able to make money that no one else can make. It makes their companies more profitable than they would be if they didn't operate
that way. So how much of their stock valuations, how much of you know, their profit margins are simply because they're allowed to operate in these gray areas where anyone listening to show.
If they try to do, they'd be put in prison, right.
And what you're looking at is people who say they're for free speech, like Elon Musk, while he downgrades or banishes people who criticize him or competitors.
You know he did that with substacks.
Take away substack links because I don't want substack because they might compete with me.
That's freedom of speech.
The freedom of speech they're trying to protect is these special privileges that they have.
What they really are.
That Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, they're monsters, They're human monsters, right, And what Elon wants to do is put chips in people's brains.
Well, I can't say that. I know he wants to put gyps in everybody's brain.
But now there we go.
Now there's something that he does want to do. You know, he's willing to sell the chips if you can figure out how to make them. But here's the thing, just like with his cars, you might order him and not get him for three years because they're not ready. You know, that's that's a common problem with him. But you've struck on something very important here, which is that, yeah, there are people that are in particular positions, that are privileged
where they can get away with doing certain things. Get ready because they're figuring out a lot of stuff that they can get away with. Let me let me tell you something else, strange fact that has come up in a couple of court cases and nobody will talk about it. And I'm almost not sure if I should say this on my show, but here's the thing. You know those cases where people have live streamed you know, murders, you know where people have turned around and you have Facebook
takes it down and whatnot. But there is a case they can be made that if you are inciting a crime in certain jurisdictions, and I know this is a factual thing, if you incite a crime, all right, like you encourage someone to commit a crime, you can be held at least partially liable for that criminal act. So an argument could be made in a court you would think that says, you know, the reason why this guy did it is so he could stream it on Facebook
and people did that on Facebook Live. The shootings and all kinds of things. Yeah, people did it because they were able to stream these things and they got away with it. And in some cases it took them a while to take it down and didn't come down like in five minutes. You know, like if you bootlegged I don't know, you know south Park cartoons, you know, they would knock you down in five minutes, right, the algorithm
would catch it. But you know, that's protecting content. But some people might say that there have been crimes and there have been tortures that people have committed and put on Facebook Live where they kidnapped people and done things to them. There is a lot of wild cases out
there that haven't gotten the big headlines. And some people could say, you know that this was encouraged because you could get a lot of clicks, You could get a lot of crazy people that want to watch this and believe it or not, these performances are encouraged by Facebook, you know what I mean, because they pumped them full of violent content all day. Then they turn around to
try and get the attention. They go decide to make a point because they you know, and in some cases this was high school kids turned around and captured some kid they were bullying and tortured them on Facebook live. There's like dozens of cases of this that I know about. Do you know about any of this.
I don't know about the kids being tortured, but I mean vaguely I can. There's stories I've heard over the years. You know, I don't have them getting great in my mind.
Well, the first first ones I found were these kids were high school students, like you know, juniors and seniors in high school that you know, decided to pick on somebody, so they tied them up, put them on Facebook Live and started burning them with cigarettes and beating them and all this other stuff. And the one kid died, you know, had suffered a heart attack in the midst of being tortured.
They were, you know, putting gags in his mouth and doing all kinds of stuff, and he had some kind of I don't know, seizure or whatever and died during this. And that was one case. But here's the thing lawyers have tried to introduce. Maybe Facebook is liable because they encouraged this activity and allowed these people to live stream. You know, in some cases these things went on for
hours online. It's crazy, and you know, and some people downloaded it later, which is why you know the I mean in some case these I'm just telling you this has happened. Now, if you were on a radio station, Mike, or if you and I you know, printed something on your website even and put out a newspaper or whatever, and or we were on this show right here, and
we encourage people to do stuff. You know, what you should do is find this kind of person in your neighborhood and do X y Z to them, right we If somebody turns around and does it and they show that they were listening to this show, they could take us to court as what accessories. We encouraged it, We incited it, Okay, but see Facebook, you got all kinds of people randomly inciting it. You have a forum in which this was allowed to go on. There's nothing stopping
people from doing it, right and all that. Plus they're being pumpable of all this other crap, which is getting their rage level up all day. You know, do you see the point I'm trying to make?
Yeah, certainly. And and the thing about is it's possible. You know that one day there will be growing awareness of this. And I think a lot of people already have a negative view of social media, and and you know, everyone knows stories of something bad that.
Has you know, people have been influenced somehow from it or.
Whatever, even in minor cases again, yeah.
Just getting depressed or what you know, we'll get having trouble with your diet, or you know, wanting to be too girls get want to be become bohemiic or something.
You know.
Okay, the pure pressure and the bullying and the all that stuff is more minor than the murder and torture.
Oh yeah, yeah, but regard but everyone knows some stories of minor incidences.
You know, but either way, either way, what.
I'm trying to say is people know there's a bad stuff going on to this. Social media has bad impacts. Well you know, you look at the car industry.
But here's the protection. Let me get to the protection part of this though, real fast, is that even in minor instances where people are saying and I'm not saying I agree that this is true or not, but in some cases people say, you know, look they're able to use this thing as a tool to bully and my kid was bullied. You got increased suicides, all these peer pressure things, right, these stories, Well, that is a crime. If somebody's harassing somebody like that, if somebody is intimidating them,
you know, and using this. If you use a phone, indeed, okay, if you use a telephone, an old telephone. If I call you on a landline, you know from here, and call your landline and say I'm going to kill you, Mike. Yeah, you know what I just did. I just made a threat to you, and actually I crossed state lines to do it. I've committed a federal offense. If they do this stuff on Facebook or on one of these social media platforms and they torture and bully somebody. They've tried
to bring this into court too. And what did we end up with? Elon Musk, you know what testified before Congress if you remember, No, not Elon Musk. Excuse me, excuse Zuckerberg. I misspoke. Zuckerberg goes before Congress and they're like, do you think you have any responsibility here? And he said no. And guess what. Facebook has not been held accountable for any of this stuff.
They can't be.
They try and bring it into court and they are protected. But I'm telling you now, any other type of medium outside of these online forums like this are not protected. I think it's one of those things people just haven't seen. Nobody's making a big enough stink about it, you know, and then what do we do. We'll wind up descending into discussions about the dark web and this and that,
which is a whole other problem. But I think it's more of an imagined problem than this one that's right in front of us every day, that's out in the open. And indeed, I think it's changed people, not just for the worst, but just for benign ways too. It is certainly altered the way people are gathering information and communicating
with one another. And I've argued over and over again again pre pandemic that people were isolated and contained in these boxes and continue to remain to be there where their entire reality is fed to them by an algorithm that guess what Mike does exactly what people actually want, which, as we can see from those studies, they want their prejudiced belief. They want their preconceived notion fed back to them. Whether it's right or not, whether it's supported by facts
is irrelevant. That's what they want, and that's what the algorithms do. You like violence, here's some more violence. You like history, here's some more history. The algorithms do this and keep you contained in a world where you'll be protected from new information. You'll be protected from things that don't you know, focus on your sentimentality, regardless of substance. You'll be fed. If you're gonna be fed substance, it's
the substance you wanted now, so you know. And that's real helpful when you want a movie that's just like the last movie you watched. Oh, I like action movies. That's great for those kind of algorithms, But when it comes to being informed about the world, you're only getting what it is you already decided you want. It means that you do what you're stagnating intellectually. You're not being
exposed to anything that you don't want to be. Really, it's like the ultimate safe space, and it's being done digitally. Or do you disagree with me? Tell me I'm wrong.
No, I agree with what you're saying.
I just wonder this really has only been around now for ten years or so, maybe even less than that, you know, maybe eight years, but we're going you know, no more than ten, and it's probably not going to be around forever. In its current form, It's only been around for ten years. If you look at like the tobacco industry, well.
Don't you think it's been around for more like twenty years, Mike, Because I mean it began in the oh something's right, oh five?
Like you know mysell, I really think like the social media's we know.
It well again, Facebook started. Let me go look at when Facebook started. I think it was like two thousand and seven though, okay, okay, I mean I'm just saying I'm going to go look just to be sure. But I mean Facebook and even Twitter, I think, yeah, you're.
Right that that law giving them all this immunity was made when Clinton was present.
And that was made when Clinton was president. But yeah, the social media construct as it is today, I think started right then, right with the beginning of like say Facebook, I mean.
Yeah, yeah, what's that two thousand and six.
Well, I'm gonna go look right now. But I mean, I'm telling you if Facebook two thousand and five started when you know here I am asking my non Google machine. Quite honestly, it started now. It started initially in two thousand and four, okay, at Cambridge, right, and then it evolved from there. Remember at first it was just for the university there, and they got expanded.
But Zuckerberg, well twenty years then, let's say twenty years.
Yeah, almost twenty years now.
But what I'm trying to say is you look at cigarettes. You know, they.
Were one hundred and fifty year long industry until they started to get regulated. Basically the car industry. I don't think they had seat belts to like the late sixties or seventies mandated for all cars. So this can end up being regulated or change or maybe replaced one day with something people find better. It may take another twenty years.
No, true enough, And look, I look at an article from twenty twenty two in USA today. If you don't mind, just read the first couple of sentences, just just to give you an idea about the beginning of Facebook. Facebook marked the beginning of a social media curve. Yes or orchit and MySpace existed before.
Orc it okay or I don't remember that.
Yeah, you and me both. But Facebook was the beginning of sharing, live feed okay, posting on your friend's walls, and so much more. According to Status, Facebook is the most used online social network worldwide, boasting around two point nine three billion users around the globe as of the
first quarter of twenty twenty two. Okay, while many might think Facebook's era is long over and serves as a nostalgia tool for millennials and early Gen zs, Facebook was the top social media platform on which American users spent the most time per day in twenty twenty one. TikTok and Twitter were close second and third, respectively. Let's see and you know, here we go? When was Facebook created?
Launched on February fourth, two thousand and four, TheFacebook dot Com Facebook's initial title was made with the goal of creating a directory of information for college students, Chris Hughes, who will start TheFacebook dot com, told Time Magazine, But a couple of things were snipped away post launched the social media juggernaut, cut the from the name in two thousand and five, and lifted its college students only restriction
in two thousand and six. So really, it became available in two thousand and six a step by step guide how to avoid blah blah. Okay, anyway, so it became available for everybody in two thousand and six. In two thousand and five, it was only available to college students. There was a time period there just college students, okay, but all this sharing and everything. They were the innovator, they were the vanguard. And like I said, in twenty twenty two, they claim two point nine to three billion
users around the globe. That's pretty astounding, do you think.
Yeah, I guess it's it's amazing.
When you had that big of a chunk of the world's population somehow or other interacting with something.
You feel, like I was saying before, it's all compatible. You know, it's countries all over the world, right, it's compatible with dictatorships.
They operate just as well there as they do here.
Well, that's the thing. How best to spread a message?
Right now?
You know, if I told you, look, I got a message I got to spread, where are you gonna go with it? If you just need to reach random people in as many places as possible, you're going to go to one of these platforms. I mean even today you want to sell stuff locally, you know what I mean, some people might still use Craigslist or whatever, or remember
the days of classified ads. Well, nowadays you go to Facebook and they got something called marketplace, and in the marketplace it goes locally, just to your area that you enter in, and people are basically selling their stuff like as if they would through the classified ads or Craigslist in the old days.
You know what I mean.
Oh, I've got furniture, I've got I see cars on there everything, you know. So this serves a whole lot of purposes. But at the end of the day, think about the difference in information you're getting from it as opposed to having you had a newspaper and look at the class fids, you know what I mean, or you know, get old of something else and you can you got to go every day and get class fides from the newspaper, right, I mean it's wild, Mike, No, well it's.
Yeah, this is a little off topic. But I went, if you hear this hawk Girl. No, it's some viral social media thing and uh, it went some girl that went viral on TikTok or somewhere a month ago. Okay, And I went to the post office today and someone had a bumper sticker on their on their van floor.
I just thought it was funny.
No, I don't know anything about hawk Girl. Listen, Mike, I need to take a quick break here.
And yeah, we were been on for a long time.
Yeah, I mean, I run you over time, so maybe I should let you go. What do you think?
Okay, sure, you know, And I'll get.
Into another segment after this, guys, but I need to take a quick break. I advise you to go sign up Wallstreet, Window dot com, sign up for Mike's very informative newsletter. And it's always great to talk to you.
Mike.
Are we gonna have you next week or the week after or what.
I'll be here.
Sometimes it won't be next week, but it'll be you know. Sometimes I'll say we'll get back in.
Touch right And as usual, I highly advise you go get The War State. You know, the book The War State or or Why the Vietnam War, both of them authored by Mike Swanson, and the links in the show notes for tonight's show. Anyway, I'll be back after this break, guys, stick around you the dot com radio network.
If youse expressed my caller schools there anyone else who happens to get on the air of Jelly dot Com do not necessarily reflect the views little Jelly dot Com or job go Chilly, and we are not responsible for gay stupidity which mighty Sue.
Thank you go ahead calling.
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Dot Radio Ready segment number two on a Thor's Day, and uh, it's an interesting evening here thanks to Mike Swanson. I'm sorry I had to run real quick there, but I had to take care of something uh personal that was immediate in that moment. But so we don't have Mike with us now. I wanted to tell you a quick story about what's been happening, because you guys might have noticed there wasn't so many broadcasts lately. Well, first of all, I got ill for a bit, and okay,
what else is new there? Chuck your ill a lot, I know, and I I didn't even want to spend a lot of time on this story. You know. What I wanted to do is cover the DNC this week. I want wanted to cover a whole bunch of things this week last week, But here's what happened on I think it was a Monday, no Tuesday. I was so fed up with a collection of ailments that I finally found my way to go see you know, to go to a clinic. And I went to the clinic and
took care of that whole thing. And okay, I hate doing it, but there was too many things wrong with me that I couldn't quite figure out, and numbness in my hand. I was having serious problems with digestion. I was having other issues with getting my whole system either not moving or giving me problems. When it did, I was having fevers and dizziness, loss of my equilibrium, numbness and pain simultaneously in some of my limbs, and in fact,
my right hand almost totally dead feeling wise. I could still move it, but I couldn't really feel it, and I couldn't pick up things trying to, you know, pick up things when you can't feel, and stuff like that, and horrendous pain plus back pain plus all these things were going on, and I felt like I was just falling apart