Behind the Twitter Files Hype with James Corbett

billionaire Elon Musk. Most of these internal company documents which have not yet been released to the public and had been curated by Twitter management for TV and Weiss revealed the politically motivated suppression of information or the suspension of prominent individuals, including them President Donald Trump from the platform. The Twitter files have generated more hype in the past few weeks than most other media events in

2022. A lot of that hype on surprisingly has extended to the journalists affiliated with the releases Taibbi and Weiss, as well as Elon Musk himself. Many are lauding the trio as heroes are now viewed Twitter as a quote unquote free speech platform. But is this really so? Like most things that seem too good to be true? The same probably holds when it comes to the Twitter files have important

revelations been made? Yes, but they aren't necessarily new revelations as many of the internal documents at the center of the Twitter files nearly confirmed claims that were made over two years ago. Is Elon Musk Twitter currently free of the censorship that the Twitter files purports to expose? Not quite despite the reinstating of some high profile previously suspended accounts in recent

weeks. And looking at the main players as well as the main effects of the Twitter files phenomenon, it becomes quickly apparent that there is a lot to say about the whole affair that is sadly largely absent from even independent media coverage of the files in order to tease out and explore some of the deeper layers beneath the Twitter files. I am joined today by James Corbett of The Corbett Report at Corbett report.com.

James is an investigative journalist and one of the pioneers of open source intelligence based independent news. At the Colbert Report, he has spent well over a decade producing a trove of high quality and meticulously sourced podcast videos, documentaries, and articles that cover some of the most important and censored stories of our time. He recently produced an ex post on Elon Musk and often overlooked aspects of

his background. And like myself is quite familiar with a media event that took place roughly a decade ago and has some surprising parallels with the Twitter file situation today. So thank you so much for joining me today. James, welcome to unlimited hangout. Thank you for having me on. It's always a pleasure to talk to you. Likewise. So the Twitter files

has generated a lot of buzz. And so I guess a reasonable place to start off the conversation with would be to sort of talk about maybe first impressions of the phenomena, and how the sort of effects that you've seen it have on independent media discourse? Well, I guess my first impression is that this could be useful in a way. Although, as you say, what we are getting here is not an actual treasure trove of documents. What we are getting here is a curated series of screenshots of various

documents. But actually, that speaks to a deeper sort of more interesting phenomenon as we step into the electronic age, because the the types of things that we are seeing are screenshots of emails, screenshots of slack chats, I don't use Slack. So I don't know what the terminology is their direct messages, various forms of communication, that are presumably incredibly scattered over a number of different databases and organized in

different ways. So it raises the fundamental question about who is curating these, this collection of screenshots? And so what what access do we have to the actual information behind them, or that contextualize them? Nothing except what tie up and Weiss and others are reporting. So we have to sort of take it at face value on a number of different levels.

Actually, that goes back to something that I was talking to no meat Prins, about a number of years ago, she wrote a book about the various presidents and their relationships with the banks, and during their eras. And and one thing that came up in our conversation was that it was at least comprehensible. You could get a handle on, say, Roosevelt and the various correspondence that he had, because everything was done on paper, and through through

letters. But if you move into the Obama age, and things are being done by email and these other a morphus, sort of electronic communications, that means it's extremely much, much more difficult for a researcher to get a handle on all of the communications that are going on and I think this is a reflection of that. So there's that sort of problem of it. What information are we getting and filtered through what source and that even be?

came part of the Twitter files controversy itself as it was revealed that I believe it was you'll you'll Roth, who was curating these tweets, or these these these screenshots, I should say for the original, the first release of Twitter files threads by Matt Taibbi. And then he was canned and presumably replaced by someone else. But now who is curating these for the the reporters? Again? I don't know. And is there a different process going on? What's their screening process?

It raises a lot of questions about how we deal with this type of information in the electronic age. And, like so much else in the electronic age, I think it comes back to the point that we are essentially at at the whim at the mercy of the people who are actually holding the keepers of the database, they will allow us to see what they allow us to see. And we won't see what we are not allowed to see.

So it seems like, you know, one of the intentions here is for, you know, obviously Twitter is under new ownership with Elon Musk, you know, steering, steering the course of the company from now on. And it seems like what this is aimed at doing is making it seem like censorship. This politically motivated censorship at the focus of the Twitter, Twitter files, or the Twitter files is focused on that this will not continue under his under his reign, or something like that.

Despite the fact that there are some people like a garland Nixon, for example, a well known critic of US foreign policy, who have been suspended since Ilan took over, for example, you've had some high profile people specifically in sort of the alternative narratives to COVID-19 people like Peter McCullough and Robert Malone having their accounts restored.

But it seems like there's obviously some sort of motive for the people curating this and I guess it would be to convince people that the company is having a facelift of sort. Do you see that actually being likely or are we, you know, sort of being misdirected here? I would venture to say we are

being misdirected. And I think that's already demonstrable, as you've already pointed out, given people like garland Nixon, as you say other people in the alternative media space who were suspended continued to be suspended under the reign of Emperor musk. Obviously, Alex Jones being one example where specifically Musk weighed in personally because now it is apparently Elon Musk's personal decision as to whether someone is allowed on Twitter or not.

And Alex Jones will not be because me Elon Musk lost his first baby as as as a baby and he if he was holding him as he took his last breath claim disputed by his ex wife. But anyway, that and for that reason, Alex Jones is not allowed on the what what does that have to do with this? Very, very odd narrative? They're very, very strange, but in a sense, understandable.

Again, Elon Musk, we have to understand that Elon Musk is a billionaire for a reason you do not become part of the billionaire oligarch club unless you are willing to play various games and I hope people understand by now that Elon Musk is certainly part of the billionaire oligarch club who has gotten to the position he's gotten to because he has been willing to play various games.

And I think one of these games is that of course you're not going to let Alex Jones back on the platform that would be the the bridge too far. So he'll he might go in other directions with other decisions. But at the latest as we are talking, I just saw this coming across the news wire that the apparently the the college freshman who is tracking Elon Musk's private jet has not only now been suspended from Twitter, but is now apparently facing potential legal charges

over his Oh, wow, check. Yeah, so that's a long running thing. I think that's been going on for a year or two. Elon Musk disdain with this kid who, as you just mentioned, is basically pointing out where he's traveling, which he is allowed to do like this is publicly available public information, indeed. Right. And so he is, is it's literally just a twitter bot, essentially, that just posts every time his private jet moves somewhere. And again, that isn't even necessarily Elon in his

private jet. It's just the movement of his jet. But apparently that's not only against Twitter's Terms of Service, but now apparently questionably legally liable for that information. I don't know. I don't know how that's going to stick and I'm not sure which jurisdiction he's going to be tried. But anyway, that was the

latest that I saw today. So again, it is the arbitrary whims of a singular dictator, which I am not sure if that's what Elon Musk's supporters and the people who are cheering him on during this take Twitter takeover process. were originally cheering on. Were they really? Oh, yay. Now a different dictator will be able to come in and say, who is and is not allowed on the platform at his personal whims? Was that really what was being sold? Or was it

free speech no matter what. This is the battle for the future of civil allegations, that was how it started, right? And then he came out with this line, which is freedom of speech is not freedom of reach, which is basically license to do all this funny business that the Twitter files, in part has focused on things like shadow banning, and, you know, putting people on naughty lists and, and whatnot, you know, because like they can have their freedom of reach.

Restricted, it's interesting anyway, I think since we're talking about Elon, a lot, you've obviously been looking into him, or have looked into him rather recently. And I think, you know, it's pretty clear from how he handles himself on Twitter specifically, but in other regards as well, that he's very, very, very conscious of his public image. And there's a very specific public image of himself that he wants to construct. So maybe we can discuss that for

a little bit. And if you would like to throw in some of the bits about his background, that kind of clash with that public image a bit. That would be helpful as well, well, I didn't go deeply into His family background and where he comes from, other than to point out that he is a again, as people hopefully know, by now, literally the grandson of a card carrying technocrat who was a high up member of the technocratic party in Canada, who fled to South Africa, and apparently looms large in the

musk family law. Essentially, he was an important figure, even though he died, I believe, when Musk was very, very young, perhaps even before he was born. But at any rate, he looms large in the mosque family legend. And then there's a whole story about his father and the abuse that he may have suffered at his father's hands. And now his father, fathering new children with his stepdaughter, I don't know, it's very weird stuff going on there. And that's.

So this is the type of background anyway, which from which Musk emerged. But essentially, he emerged into the public spotlight at a relatively young age, making his way to Canada and then to the US, where he began a series of entrepreneurial ventures, starting with something called zip to, which was meant to be a sort of, I guess, kind of like a proto Craigslist, essentially list your business on our on the on the internet, as when that

was a new idea. And eventually managed to make some money out of that by essentially selling that service to newspapers that were starting to feel the pinch of classified ads, declining revenues, and use that parlayed that straight into PayPal, which, again, is an entire story unto itself. And I'm sure there's a lot to talk about with regards to the PayPal Mafia and his connections to people like

Peter Thiel. But don't worry, Peter Thiel is a totally different has a totally different philosophy than Musk at least, that's what Musk assures us. So you don't have to worry about Palantir and things like that coming from musk. No, you will simply worry about the brain chips and other things. Because, of course, as people may or may not know, Elon Musk did spend a short time as CEO of the combined Pay Pal what what merged into

Pay Pal from his ex.com. And Peter Thiel and slash Max lived since PayPal, eventually merged into a singular entity See, Musk took over the CEO role for a short time was eventually shoehorned out of there because the board was not happy with his decisions and the way he was trying to run the company. So he basically took the golden parachute out of there, received a few 100 million dollars for his efforts and parlayed that into SpaceX, Tesla

Motors and SolarCity. And, and the boring company and all of these other ventures, which I'm sure that your listeners are broadly aware of that he's been involved with. But of course, the connecting thread through all these ventures is government money, essentially, a whole series of different ways in which government grants and tax breaks and what have you have essentially propped up his businesses to the point where they are possible at all. And I think it's starting to become a

point. Now you see, this is the interesting part of this is because for a long time, Musk has been a darling of I think the good thinking liberal left in the United States and elsewhere, who have seen him as this sort of cool space. tech guy who is going to save the environment, and he cares about all the things we care about. It is only recently that he has made the heel turn as it were and is now being supported by the right wing of the culture war that's raging in the United

States right now. And so he has enjoyed for a very long time, this sort of bad glow of publicity, of being some sort of, essentially tech savior or tech guru. But now Now the very same types of platforms that would have been heralding him as a savior just a few years ago are now digging in and finding you know, Tesla isn't a very well run company and they're such things so it's just interesting to watch.

Chow this plays out not based on any actual difference in what is happening on the ground, but simply the change in people's perception of who this person is and whether he is on their side or not. Right, so let's talk about a little bit how specifically since he's purchased Twitter how Elon Musk has been cultivating his image. So I think it's pretty clear that he's very interested in presenting himself one as anti

establishment right now. I mean, he's even gone so far to say things like, I might be suicided, and things of this nature. And this is a bit odd to me when you consider what you just mentioned. And, of course, there's a lot of evidence for this, that his wealth, his current roster of companies, a lot of it could not exist without the establishment, and a lot of these companies are very, very much involved with the national security state, specifically SpaceX, which is a defense and intelligence

contractor. So you know, if this is a guy that's really going up against the, you know, the establishment with the deep states, even though I don't really like that term, I prefer national security state. You know, he's, he's essentially a part of that. So it's a bit um, there's definitely a contrast there. He's trying to, you know, I guess, make himself seem just like a regular person, on occasion, posting memes and other things. And, you know, there's other aspects of this

image he's building is there. So what, what sort of image do you see him building? And what sort of motives Do you think maybe behind that? It's a, it's extremely difficult to know, sort of the inner workings of, of the creation, the public creation of a spectacle like Elon Musk, but I do see it as somewhat similar to what we saw just a few years ago with the creation of the personality of Donald Trump. And being sold to a certain section of the public that I think is certainly ready for

some sort of Savior. I think that it is the Savior narrative that is being played on here. And we saw that with Trump was going to be the savior of people on the on the right again, of this culture war divide that's taking place, certainly in the United States right now. And then that was, if not eclipsed, and perhaps bolstered by the q&a on SIOP, which even fed further into that idea of the Savior narrative. And that obviously didn't quite pan out the way that Kiwi supporters were

hoping. So now it's time to find a new person to pin hopes on. And Musk has taken up that mantle. And to obviously, as you say, I think Musk is extremely aware of his public image. And just the fact that he is engaged in tweeting and replying to people on Twitter on a hourly basis, shows that he is interested in at least cultivating some sort of public

image of himself. And clearly, that is lining up with the type of, I suppose broadly, the resistance movement that has risen up in the past few years against lock downs and mandates of various sorts, and Musk has positioned himself to be, I'm the one who's going to, I'm going to move to Texas, because I don't want to deal with California. And it's draconian lockdown laws and all of this.

So he has positioned himself in this way for a couple of years now, at least, and now is really coming out as someone who has been championed, essentially, essentially, largely by people on the right, who are disaffected by the

establishment. And I think this, this whole narrative of the Twitter files plays perfectly and brilliantly into that because clearly, Twitter was very much being run by people who were very, very invested in the Democrat Party, and basically ensuring the continued rule of the Democrats and, and on a disproportionate suppression of information coming from the right side of the political spectrum. So Musk being put in this position.

Well, he's the opposition to that, therefore, he's on quote unquote, our side and I think exactly, again, exactly as Trump, the billionaire was posited as he don't worry guys, he's on your side. He's, he's for the average working man. I think, again, Musk is stepping into that role now that Trump has seemed to vacate it. So what Musk is doing here has sort of raised my eyebrow baton in terms of you know, what he might be up

to? So one thing that I've noticed over the past two years, especially, you know, if you look at, for example, everyone these days, and I was about the World Economic Forum, right. So one of their big themes last year was rebuilding trust. And a lot of even the Biden administration. A lot of you know, prominent institutions are very much aware that there is a major lack of trust specifically amongst certain segments of the

population. So, you know, if I was the World Economic Forum, which again, Elon Musk was a young global leader, right, and agrees with a lot of the main points policies that, you know, sort of web centric politicians and others tend to support like UBI. Among among several others, I think a carbon tax some other things, you know, if I was, you know, some like Klaus Schwab, I guess, right. And I wanted to get people to rebuild trust, I know, they're never going to

trust me. Right? I need some sort of figure that people who hate Me will trust that supports the same policy agendas that I do. Right, exactly. Right, essentially, influence laundering by way of the cool new tech savior that hey, hey, guys, he's totally on your side. And I definitely see what you're saying there. And, again, since this is 2022, I guess we have to connect everything back to the World

Economic Forum. So we must mention Young Global Leader Elon Musk, clearly, and as you say, onboard with so many different aspects of the of the technocratic agenda, generally, but the World Economic Forum agenda specifically in Klaus Schwab's statements, I know there's been a Twitter meme that's floated around for some time comparing Klaus Schwab statements on various issues like UBI and brain chips. And what have you and Elon Musk's

statements. I did make a little segment of that in my recent Elon Musk technocratic huckster expos a, just to drive home the point that I think these people are aligned on many fundamental issues. So where where is this break? And why are people suddenly cheering on this person who has been so intimately affiliated with the the World Government Summit in the World Economic Forum and all of these institutions? And where's New World Order? On his clothes?

stuff? Exactly. Right, very, very strange symbolism and things that come from himself and from Grimes and the various people that he's been associated with. But also, I mean, perhaps more substantially, we're looking at someone who is literally in the process of creating brain chips, that are going to augment humans in order to save us from the transhuman nightmare that's coming somehow. Don't think too deeply about

that. And oh, by the way, they're killing the test animal subjects left and right, but I'm sure it'll all be sorted out. Yeah, like 20% of the animal subjects die. And if this was any normal medical device, and the FDA was functioning as it was before, COVID, it would be very hard to get it to human trials. But let's just say it seems like Elon Musk is taking advantage of the removal of obstacles at the FDA since the

COVID. situation to get neural link straight to human trials after animal trials killed like 15 out of 23 animals or eight depending on if you believe Elon Musk's company, right. They say it was eight not 15. But and you know, exactly right. And let's, I mean, let's put this in perspective for people. What, what, what is the ultimate agenda here? I think your

audience is not naive. And I think they understand by this point that when something is part of the broader agenda, it will be approved through the official regulatory process exactly as the mRNA vaccines were approved. Well, I mean, there's a whole thing about the word approved, but you understand emergency use authorized. And exactly in this

case, as well. The things that neuro link are have been have been doing and was documented before all of this Twitter files hype started to swell up in the media. Absolutely, as you say, would have disqualified absolutely any other company. But for some reason, on this particular project, it seems that the regulatory agencies don't seem to care too much about the let alone the animal subjects, but how about the the potential for human trials going forward?

Again, if it's part of an agenda item, I think the doors will be open for it. And this is a prime example of that. Yeah, well, frankly, it's really disturbing to me that if that many monkeys died, and he's not worried about that many humans dying and human trials, you know, that's kind of clashes with the public image she's been trying to cultivate lately.

So what I brought up earlier about the rebuilding trust initiatives we're having, or that have been, you know, openly talked about by a lot of these more or less nefarious

organizations. What worries me, right, is that you people like Klaus Schwab, talking about brain chips, and this technology, people like Bill Gates even on board, right, but, you know, Elon Musk is basically developing a brand, so people that would normally be against that if it was Schwab OR gates, you know, they'd be like, well, Musk is different, like what he did with Twitter. He cares about free speech. He's not going to invade and surveil my thoughts. You know, he's, he's not like

the other ones. He's the billionaire. Yeah, exactly. Could you imagine if Bill Gates have taken over Twitter and was personally running it? And I

mean, yes, no one. Certainly none of the people who trust musk and what he is doing and are on board with this idea, the notion of freedom of speech, even if it's is not actually being implemented in reality would obviously be running the other way as quickly as they possibly could if Bill Gates were taking over, no, but Elon Musk is the cool billionaire who's, who's on

the good side. And I again, I think it's interesting to note that the the problems that neural link have had for for some time, I've been following it and talking about it for a while now and trying to draw attention to the to the the things that we already knew about the grim results of the animal tests that studies at neuro link. They've been out there for several months now, at the very least, but very, very, very little coverage. Until now

the Twitter files comes out. And as I say, the the sort of the the left side of the culture war and the establishment media have been activated against musk and are now finally bringing attention to stories like this and problems of Tesla and other such things. But of course, we have to keep in mind this sort of the bigger the bigger picture of what is going on here, which again, we do not have to look back back very far for the the

example of how this works. We we saw what happened during the Trump era, where suddenly the establishment media was very, very interested in holding politicians feet to the fire. Well, not politicians in general, essentially, essentially just Donald Trump. And we saw them go back to sleep dutifully once Joe Biden took

took over. So I think we're seeing the similar pattern playing out that Elon Musk, clearly, they're finally starting to do some investigative reporting on these companies and what they're doing but that will be interpreted by Musk supporters as look, the mainstream establishment media that lies about everything. Well, now they're lying about Musk because they don't like him and what he's doing to their, their, their that he's owning the LIBS on Twitter. Oh, what an interesting state of

affairs. All right, so maybe we should go back to the the Twitter files itself for a second. So Mike, and we talked you talked earlier about the the curation issue and when I saw the the how this was being rolled out. And you know, Matt Taibbi was saying things like he had to accept certain restrictions in order to work on

on the story. And all of this, what came what really got my attention is that I think this is yet another step away from well, sort of changing how the American public perceives the idea of quote unquote, leaks. You know, if you go back a decade and or even less, really, you know, there was once upon a time the WikiLeaks era, which of course, has sort of, I think, moved out of sight and out of mind, for most Americans at this point where WikiLeaks didn't really do so much curation.

They would, you know, in the case of a lot of the emails they released, and other documents, they they made searchable databases. And this, this change was, you know, something that we can talk about in a little bit, the creation of the intercept and the owner of PayPal, Pierre Omidyar, which, of course has a lot of parallels, in my opinion to the situation with the

Twitter files. But since then, you know, you've had the persecution of Julian Assange, the dismantling of WikiLeaks as an organization, and pretty much most of the quote unquote, leaks that have come out, since then have not, you know, been handled that way in service to, you know, greater transparency. It's been mostly curated. And so in the case of the intercept, right, you have the Snowden leaks, 90% of it

isn't ever released. Right. And now you have, you know, claims after Jack Dorsey of the former, you know, the co founder of Twitter and former head of it, you know, steps in and asked Musk to release, you know, the full files and all of this, which must says he'll do and then subsequently, it's claimed that a lot of things were deleted as a disgruntled employee was leaving, how true

that is, I don't know. But you know, that we're getting these just screenshots and not searchable files is interesting. And I think it's particularly interesting when you look at the situation. That was the focus of the earlier Twitter file releases, which is the censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop, of course, Hunter Biden being the very troubled SON OF US President Joe

Biden. So a lot was said about the suppression of the laptop story and all of this, but very little interest shown in Hmm, why would they suppress the laptop? What's actually on the laptop? It turns out, not that long before the Twitter files came out, a nonprofit group called Marco Polo released a nearly 700 Page very detailed report on exactly what is on the laptop and why it matters. Very interesting that that's been moved out of the Twitter files,

almost entirely. It's like the story is almost entire is pretty much on the suppression not on the content that was being suppressed. What are your thoughts on that? Well, actually, I will say that, I guess mission accomplished for the Twitter files because this is literally the first time I am hearing about this 700 page report which I will have to go out and download Now, so thank you for bringing

it to my attention. But it goes to show just how thoroughly the Twitter files brouhaha has displaced any actual examination of the underlying data that we're supposedly talking about, but not really, what absolutely fascinating, isn't it? Okay, so you've raised some incredibly

important points. And here's one that has made me very unpopular among certain sectors of the independent media space for a long time is that I have always acknowledged what what Zbigniew Brzezinski said about the WikiLeaks phenomenon at the time that it was going on back in 2010 11. He was giving an interview in which he opined that the WikiLeaks organization is such a beautiful, wonderful idea for intelligence agencies to selectively leak information.

And I think the implication of that is that it doesn't mean necessarily that Julian Assange is himself some sort of intelligence agent who's who's essentially laundering this information out to the public. But he could be used by intelligence agencies that selectively leak certain documents. Oh, whoops, those documents got out. Well, other documents remain suppressed.

Now, that issue, I think, is a core issue of this entire question about leaked documents and what they what they do and don't tell us and how they are interpreted. And who interprets them for us because, generally speaking, we don't have direct access to this sort of insider information that makes these

documents understandable. Even within the Twitter files we have to rely on on Barry Weiss and Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger and others to tell us what some of this Twitter lingo the internal lingo means there was a bunch of acronyms and things PII and other things that I was learning about when reading through the Twitter files that, as they say, We have to talk to Twitter, current and former employees to sort of understand the context of this particular screenshot that we're

now showing you. So I think the fundamental question when it comes to these types of releases is the question of the bottleneck of information. Obviously, we're not getting everything. So who, and at what point is that information being withheld or suppressed, and then once it is put forward in some manner, then who is who is interpreting that who is making it sort of accessible to the

public innocence? And that was, I think we saw the transitionary point of the WikiLeaks era of the the leaking where it was, as you say, large document dumps to this highly cultivated curated era of the Twitter files. I think the the middle point, the nexus point was the Snowden information, which as you allude to, was, according to Snowden himself was consciously done in a way that it wouldn't be curated by

journalists. And they would report on what they thought was journalistically important, and the documents themselves would not be released. And that was Snowden stipulation. And that was the way that he wanted that to go. And so he selected the journalists and blah, blah, blah. I'm sure people are broadly familiar with that

story. But of course, what ultimately resulted from that, who ended up essentially getting the cache of Snowden documents was, as you say, Pierre Omidyar and first look media, which spawned the intercept. And I, as as you say, I did reporting on it at the time how the intercept came together, and for people who don't know about the Omidyar Network, and its relationship to, for example, funding Ukrainian protest movements back during the the coup there, back in 2014, etc. I've done work on

that before. But I think it's incredibly important to understand the way that that that cache of potentially interesting information, again, I'd say there's probably a bottleneck and who knows how much of that information is seeded into the public

consciousness on purpose. But anyway, potentially interesting information, obviously kept behind the closed wolves have a private organization like first look, media, the intercept, which was supposedly the core idea of the intercept, the core founding of it was to curate and report on the Snowden documents. That's the way it was sold to the public. That's what sold and it was a lot of hype. You know, Glenn Greenwald, was already kind of a celebrity journalist, but he became Ultra

celebrity. He was joined, of course by Laura Poitras, Jeremy Scahill, and, you know, I mean, it was probably one of the biggest media events of that particular period. A lot of interest, of course, in the Snowden leaks, which the Snowden archive run by first look, media was shut down a couple years

ago. So that 90% plus of the documents will never be released, as far as we know, the Washington Post and I think one other mainstream media outlet received aspects of the cache which I doubt they're going to release. But the the intercept said it was too expensive at the time and slubby in the shownotes. For those that are interested, I did a report I was working for Matt Preston news at the time about how it's very, very unlikely that cost was the real reason.

As you mentioned, Pierre Omidyar has ties to funding some very suspect movements in pre coup 2014. Ukraine, also heavily funding USA ID and having other ties to the national security

state. And it has been alleged that aspects of the Snowden archive specifically some of the documents not released, detailed how PayPal, which Omidyar has been the owner of since the early 2000s, buying it from musk and Peele and CO people's relationship with intelligence agencies, and presumably its role in illegal mass surveillance, among other

things. I mean, of course, people speculate but that seems, you know, very plausible when you look at how this ultimately played out, but, you know, going back in time to about a decade ago, Pierre Omidyar, not that differently from Elon Musk was framing himself as a resolution revolutionary guy who's going to you know, change journalism forever. And that's not that

different point. Elon Musk is doing what the Twitter files and talking about how Twitter can be a new place for journalism, and it's decent, you know, decentralized journalism and all of this stuff. Pierre Omidyar back in, you know, he was setting up the intercept that were puff pieces all about how he wanted to find adversarial journalism, Glenn Greenwald.

And, you know, the other people that signed on to first look, including Matt Taibbi himself actually talked about how there was going to be no interference from Pierre Omidyar and the stories they were writing, things like that. Matt Taibbi actually ended up leaving first look, I think within his first year there because of disagreements with Omidyar but Greenwald and CO went on insisting that there was no influence there. I disagreed with that on more than a fair

few fair occasions. Glenn Greenwald was not very nice to me. But subsequently ended up leaving the intercept because he said that there was censorship and they weren't letting you know, they were influencing the types of stories and what have you. So I don't know. It seems like Glenn Greenwald figured it out at the end, ultimately, but you know, when it comes to the intercept, I have a lot of opinions. I guess probably because I've written like eight

articles on it, maybe more. And one thing I, to me, it really just seems like it was an operation in a lot of ways. So you have, you know, Pierre Omidyar being very well funded. He's essentially sweeps in and privatizes the Snowden leaks. And before he is framed as this revolutionary and does that there are tweets of Pierre Omidyar is where he talks about people who leaked documents to groups like WikiLeaks are thieves and something needs to be done to help catch the thief.

Yeah, that he sets up the intercept. And I'm sure you're familiar with this, James, in short order. Of course, with all the hype around Snowden and secure drop the platform for leakers to submit their documents to the intercept that Snowden promotes. Three whistleblowers have gone to prison for leaking to the intercept. And in every of those three cases, it was either sloppy or allegedly intentional act to out the source and have them go to

prison. So those three would be reality one or Terry Albery and

Daniel hail. So you know, if you're looking at this down the road, and then the closure of the Snowden archive and all of this, it really seems to me that Pierre Omidyar was interested in creating a honeypot for would be leakers, on behalf of his friends on the national security state, while at the same time privatizing leaks and being able to curate ones that were interesting, you know, enough to the public, but you know, slow down the pace gradually, and create a media outlet with this

hype around it, of it being adversarial, honest, independent journalism, sticking it to the man when in reality, it has not been that. I don't know if you have to add to that. Well, I would venture to say, I mean, ask the average person who actually reads the intercept. And perhaps that's already a small section of the public, but ask someone who reads the intercept about it.

And I would imagine, the vast majority of them, probably by this point, don't even know that this was supposedly originally set up as the place for the parsing and, and journalism surrounding the Snowden files. It's obviously that it literally closed the door on that several years ago, officially, we're done with the Snowden files. That's it. So it was it was a brilliant PR coup, I suppose because it generally seemed to work. Basically, all such reporting has stopped right now.

And as you say it private thises the, the notion the the idea of what a WikiLeaks or or similar organization could be, it has essentially turned it into the hands of a private company that as again, anyone who looks into Omidyar and the Omidyar Network and its various connections will know undoubtedly has connections to the US, intelligence world.

And oh, by the way, speaking of which, as I'm sure you know, Ellen McCloud, over at MintPress news has been doing reporting on various intelligence officials at various of the social media outlets, including, of course, Twitter, which has been infested by various intelligence agents, career intelligence officials, who then go on to in various positions in Twitter, and there's no, no lack of examples of people along those lines that he's documented there at

MintPress news. So again, it seems like the intelligence agencies working hand in hand with these crusading NGO, slash philanthropy, entrepreneur capitalists, whatever, Elon Musk's and people like that are read consolidating information. And I suppose maybe it's beside the main point of our conversation today. But I do find it absolutely horrifying to think that Twitter really does represent the future of

journalism. Because the confines of the 280 character, little soundbite of a soundbite essentially, reporting that's then broken up into these threads. It's it's a it's a horrible way of conveying information. And I point to one example from the Twitter files

itself. As if my memory serves, it was in the first Twitter files thread on that Matt Taibbi did where he made a statement about there is no evidence they have seen no evidence linking this to an interference by government or something along those lines. And that particular statement was caught on and and became this this big way of basically allowing people to shrug their shoulders about the Twitter files, Oh, whatever. I mean, they say there's not even any government interference. So

what's the big deal? My reading of that is that Matt Taibbi was essentially saying there's no evidence that there was Russian government sponsorship, essentially, of the Hunter Biden laptop story, that that that connection, the foreign government connection was not, but because of the confines of the 280 characters, I believe that message became mangled and then got misinterpreted and mis

reported. And that's the kind of world we're stepping into when we start thinking that oh, you know, these Twitter threads are going to be the, the deep dive journalism of the future. Can you imagine Whitney putting something like one nation under blackmail? Twitter thread form? How many millions of tweets would that take? Oh, no one read

it? Well, I think, you know, you think about like, 1984 and stuff like that, how they talk about how they manipulated and changed language to like, dumb it down. And, like, cheapen it, I think, you know, reducing, you know, leaks driven journalism, which generates a lot of attention, because the leaks is, you know, the hidden to the unhidden. You know, a lot of people are interested in it just for that reason, like it's secrets being

aired out, right. And what you have here is, you know, that hype, but it's, you know, this is what journalism looks like. Now, this is the cutting edge stuff. And, you know, as someone who writes very long articles, I do not think that Twitter threads, future of journalism. And if that is the move being, you know, made here, I think it's a little unsettling, but I think there's a bit more to it

as well. For example, Barry Weiss, one of the journalists who was handpicked by Moscow to be sort of the one of the interpreters and publishers of Twitter file threads. She coincided her participation in the Twitter files with the launch of her new news outlet, which is called the Free Press. If you're familiar with Barry Weiss, his background, at least people my audience, I don't think people will expect her to necessarily be objective, at

least not on certain topics. I think actually independent media, she became most notorious for her meltdown on the Joe Rogan podcast where she called Tulsi Gabbard, who, you know, I'm certainly not a, you know, she's another young global leader who lies about it, actually, but, you know, she was called an Assad toady that is not by Barry Weiss. That is not a fair assessment of Tulsi Gabbard 's views on Syria or and then couldn't define Toady. Yeah, she couldn't define any of

this. She had no evidence for it. And obviously, she's not an objective reporter. And that's especially true when it comes to issues of Zionism, Palestine and Israel, where she's even accused, you know, anti Zionist Jews of of anti semitism and her book, How to combat anti semitism, or it's called

something like that. She calls anti Zionist Jews part of a long history of left wing, anti semitic movements that successfully conscript Jews as agents in their own destruction and quote, so, you know, there's a lot to say about censorship of Palestinians on social media include and Twitter. But I, you know, I'd venture to guess that that won't be covered by the Twitter files. That's just a guess here.

So again, it's interesting that her particular outlet is being promoted at the same time with people that are, you know, of the same mold of, I guess, journalist as she is. And, you know, I'm personally not a fan. Just be pretty open about that.

And I'm, you know, we're in talking about the parallels between what's going on here and the the intercept, the intercept when it was launched, made celebrities out of people like Jeremy Scahill, and Laura Poitras, and Glenn Greenwald, and sort of put them above reproach for some people. I don't really think that's fair.

For you know, reasons I've talked about over the years, and of course, people can go back and look at some of my Twitter exchanges with Glenn Greenwald were and I criticize Pierre Omidyar, and he tells me that I'm a liar and belong in a mental hospital, you know, about a year or two before he says the same thing. So, um, you know, again, and we're having Taiyi and Weiss being elevated here.

And it's, it's interesting. You mentioned earlier how Elon Musk, you know, previously was sort of a a darling of people left leaning, because Tesla's you know, AOC has a Tesla and stuff, right, and was sort of, you know, seen as being more popular on that side of the political divide until sort of his recent change. And so I think that's kind of fair to say for people like Glenn Greenwald in and Matt

Taibbi as well. Anyone who has followed the development of of Greenwald and anti abuse, public reputation will know it was interesting to watch, I must admit, just from a popcorn perspective, five or six years ago, when they started to talk about for example, Russia gate and obviously not going along with the establishment message on that and the to see their own audience attacking them so vociferously because this is not the message guys. So yeah, clearly is the creation of

public personas. And these people have demonstrated their ability to be essentially chameleons. Greenwald starting out being pro Iraq War. But people probably don't remember that way back in the day when he first started blogging. Having renounced that, several years later, when he transformed into the crusading left wing journalist of the Guardian, and then various other outlets in

the United States, right. And then now doing this other transformation through the after the intercept, and then into this Russia gate era, and now being whatever he is today. And I think Matt Taibbi along for much of that same ride. So I think it is about public perception and creation of public persona and playing on

that. And clearly, again, it keeps circling back to this sort of divide in the public opinion, there is a culture war that is taking place that clearly people are are looking for people to be

on their team. And I think most people will accept someone simply saying, Hey, guys, I'm on your team or making the right kind of signals that I'm on your team is essentially enough for them to turn off the critical thinking faculty and no better example of that than Elon Musk, who went from the darling of the left to the darling of the right. And I think shouldn't be the darling of anyone given the sorts of things he's been

involved in. Yeah, well, I think, you know, not unlike Trump, what you mentioned earlier, made some comparisons about Elon, too. I think he's most Elon Musk is most interested in Elon Musk, right and promoting Elon Musk and Elon Musk image, if you ask me. So I think there's a specific reason why Elon Musk picked Tybee and Weiss? I'm not sure exactly what

that is. But, you know, I, I think it's pretty telling when you consider sort of what we've talked about earlier that Musk has a very specific reason for doing all of this. And presumably he has picked these two people because of their associations and I guess perceptions among at least some people that they're anti

establishment. So, you know, in tyese case, who journalistically I think is far superior to Barry Weiss, who's technically an opinion writer, Matt Taibbi has done some really good articles over the years, I think he was actually one of the few people in mainstream or at least mainstream adjacent media to cover FASEB 56, which was a policy that's really insane where basically government agencies can have public and private budgets so they can basically you know, put one

version of the budget out there and then have a private one and like cook the books and do all sorts of sane financial, crazy stuff they shouldn't be allowed to do. But having said that, um, you know, there are certain it's very clear, if you look at Matt tyese journalism, there's some topics he does not like to do.

at all, and it's very different than someone like Glenn Greenwald, for example, Glenn Greenwald has a lot of similarities to Matt Diaby, but when pushed on things like 911, and other issues like that, he said, essentially, you have to pick and choose what you cover, like if you want to be taken seriously. So, you know, I've noticed that with people who are mainly strive to have them brand wise, be mainstream media adjacent, that they won't cover

those types of issues. Yeah. So Matt Taibbi, instead of ignoring those issues, as a career move over the last several decades at this point, has made it a point to ridicule people. So he's not just ignoring issues like, you know, September 11. He intentionally ridicules people who don't believe the official story. And the most recent of these, well, he's done it on Twitter as recently as a few months ago, making fun of anyone who identifies himself as a quote unquote truther. But in a 2019

article for Rolling Stone. It's the subtitle is why conspiracy theories won't die. I'll just read a quick quote from it. He says, The old quote unquote physical impossibility saw is a nervous tic found in a lot of the trashiest American conspiracy tales, only controlled demolition cause building seven to freefall, on September 11. And he says, Look at the fatal headshot that killed Kennedy, it's back into the left the wrong way. If Lee Harvey Oswald was shooting it.

So you know, he's calling people that don't believe in a lone wolf shooter, which is now according to polls, actually, a majority of Americans don't think Lee Harvey Oswald was acting alone, right? So if you believe that you're believing a trashy American conspiracy tale, or if you think 911 fell into its own footprint in seven seconds. So because of uncontrolled office fires, even though there's a University of Alaska study that demolishes the

nest Googly Guk. Narrative, or report that claims to show it was office fires, you know, you're

not very smart. So it's it's troubling, and probably the most troubling of all goes back to some of his early work, where he calls he says the 911 truth movement makes the left behind Sci Fi series which is like Christian apocalyptic stuff, says it makes it like Shakespeare, and he calls people clinically insane 911 conspiracy theorists and his his gripes with the 911 truth movement, according to him, where he goes, it's a lot of ad hominem about people like Jason burr mess and Dylan Avery,

calling them quote unquote, Dick wads, among other things, and he says 911 conspiracy theory is so shamefully stupid. It's the lowest form of conspiracy theory, because it doesn't offer an affirmative theory of the crime. And basically, his whole takedown of 911. Truth has nothing to do with refuting evidence offered by the truth movement. Instead, it's basically here's the silly dialogue of what I imagined Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney would have planned if the 911 truthers

were right. So it's a very dishonest engagement with the information in my opinion. And you know, it's not what you would do if you were interested in getting to the truth of

things. I don't know. I think at this point, you even have people that shared the 911 Commission say, the official story, the 911 Commission report is full of holes and unanswered question that they were stonewalled, etc. So, you know, is it really fair to call people that question, the official narrative, you know, you know, trash and hopelessly stupid and all this nasty ad hominem? I don't know. Do you have any thoughts, James?

I do. Indeed. I recalled. Probably over a decade and a half ago at this point, there was a correspondence that went on between Matt Taibbi and David Ray Griffin that people can look up. And clearly at that point, I think it was quite apparent that Toby was never ever going to entertain any, quote unquote, conspiracy theories about September 11, exactly as bush warned us against in his speech to the UN. But I actually have my own experience interacting

with Glenn Greenwald. Also I do recall at the time where I was doing that reporting on Omidyar and first look and what have you, I got into a Twitter exchange with him because I was on Twitter at that point. I am no longer in case anyone out there in your audience doesn't

know that. But I did get into a Twitter exchange with him in which after a few back and forth, he ended up apparently going through my archives He must have gone pretty deep because he ended up pulling up a YouTube clip that someone had made of some one of My podcast episodes that at that point was probably three or four years old that he dug up as oh look, this guy is talking about Stratospheric Aerosol injection. And oh, he's one of those chemtrails, Kooks or something along those lines before

blocking me. So that's, that's the type of Glenn Greenwald that that was involved in this. And yes, then Matt Taibbi is, I think, a chip off of the same block. Again, it's not to say that none of their work is of of any

utility some of it is. But it I think people have to become discerning as to whether they're simply going to believe someone based on their public reputation of oh, this is a, this is a cool journalist, this is the cool space guy is going to deliver us, the tech that's going to save humanity or things along those lines, I think we have to as a society wizened up and grow up and stop believing these narratives that are implanted for us to believe, having said that, I imagine most of your

audience is already well along the journey towards growing up in that fashion. It's how do we reach people who are so easily entertained and distracted, essentially, by things of this sort? Again, it's not to say that the Twitter files are completely useless. There are things in here that are at least interesting to me. Some of the screenshots, not just confirming that shadow banning happens again, I think we already knew that, although that, although Twitter did actually officially

deny it. So it is it would be nice to have actual real evidence of that rather than a screenshot. However, some of the insight into the various categories and how that that shadow banding takes place, etc. Again, it's interesting information. I wouldn't, I wouldn't dismiss it entirely.

But I just do not think that this is the amazing breakthrough journalism, that it's being presented as well, what worries me, right, is that you're having these these two, you know, journalists being set up and you know, being celebrity ties, I guess, I mean, they already did have like high profile platforms, but people sort of like in these types of events. And in my experience, it seems like people really emotionally

bond with these people. And Elon Musk included in this current iteration of, you know, how all this stuff is playing out. And I find that concerning in the case that I don't know, for example, you have whispers of a potential repeat of the COVID era coming up not that long from now. And Jeremy Farrar of the Wellcome Trust being named World Health Organization, Chief Scientist, right? It doesn't bode well for that.

So imagine the events of the past couple of years end up repeating themselves in a way that's very unfortunate for the world. And you have, you know, the anti establishment, quote unquote, people that have been elevated up and, you know, they're not exactly a reliable source of information, perhaps when it comes to these types of

activities. Right? Um, you know, if they're unwilling to question events that took place 20 years ago, or in the case of the Kennedy assassination, like much earlier, and are going to be actually a minority among the American public when it comes to the Kennedy assassination in order to backup the official story of the conflict of interest ridden Warren Commission.

You know, I just think, given the stakes of what we're seeing right now, and people really need to understand that information warfare is very sophisticated. Yeah. And also that, you know, like you said, James, people like Matt Taibbi have done really great work, but at the same time, you know, no one is perfect. You should I really wish that people could get away from this culture of celebrity journalism, and instead judge journalists on the quality of the journalism they

produce. And, you know, as on even on a case by case basis, or something like that, you know, maybe that's a lot to ask, when the the political savior and this whole celebrity worship, including in journalism is so ingrained in some people and, you know, very much propagated by the social media model.

Which, you know, I guess is Twitter files coming full circle, in a sense, but it's, um, I really do worry that if people go in, you know, look at this stuff with, you know, approach it and kind of a naive way you're gonna get suckered in. And, you know, I've had experiences with some of these people I've had, you know, with Matt Taibbi. You know, that's the only time I've ever been interviewed about my work on the Epstein case, and it has not

been published. And part of that I was only asked really one question before the feet cut off. And I was assured that they had enough to make the interview and they would patch it together and publish it and never did. But it might tell you BSS the first question, and he said, What conspiracy theories about Epstein are too crazy. And I said in the question that I didn't didn't want to really set any parameters. I don't have any interest in gatekeeping. What's my use, specifically about

Epstein's death? For example, because there's so much I mean, no one really knows what happened, right? So that's somehow turned in, I later find out not necessarily from high Ed, but other people at that podcast and sponsored by Rolling Stone, that someone there in that studio thought that I was saying that Epstein

is still alive. And this came out in a petition that was sent to Rolling Stone trying to get them to actually be platform that tie up claiming that they invited me on and I claimed that Epstein was still alive. And I'm a crazy person. So that's a pretty weird experience. And I'm, I'm kind of disappointed by that. So, you know, but I'm not bringing this stuff up. And I'm sure you're not either Jameis.

Because of our personal experiences with these people, I guess, what I'm trying to point out here is that we can't really have rose colored glasses about these kinds of people, when they've shown over the course of their career, that there's certain topics that they're not just unwilling to engage with, but they're going to use to, you know, ridicule people that don't see the same way they do about

certain stuff. So while they may be good on things like Russia gate, and things like that, people really do need to learn discernment, if your ultimate goal as a media consumer is to get as close to the truth as you possibly can. I mean, I think that's, you know, required behavior. I suppose it comes down to people's own internal guide as to what what it is they're doing and what they're engaged in, and why I think it has to come down

to fundamental motivations. If you are genuinely interested in a pursuit of the truth, then as I have maintained for many, many years, in fact, since the inception of The Corbett Report, when this starts becoming about people rather than about information, then we lose, because then it becomes a soap opera, and it can be manipulated in all sorts of different ways.

That is why I do not ask people to take me at my word on anything that I'm saying, I always try to provide the references to what I'm saying so that people can go and look it up in its own context, and see if they agree or disagree with my interpretation, that has been a core part of my work for many years. Because I do not want people to put me on any sort of pedestal or to simply accept what I'm saying, or to think that I am saying, please accept

what I'm saying. Because I say it, that is not the way this should work. And anyone who does come along with that as sort of the implicit guideline for what they're doing, should, I think probably be held in suspicion for for that, that that view, but at the end of the day, I'm sure a lot of people are more interested in the spectacle, and in popcorn munching and in choosing sides in some sort of

spectator sport. Let's eliminate those from the conversation because I imagine they're probably not subscribed to your podcast. So the people who are genuinely interested in truth, do not make this about people make it about information. And that applies equally to myself and to Whitney and to everyone that you listen to. If you cannot triangulate, or if what they what they're saying does not actually comport with your

understanding of reality. Of course, don't take it on board, just because someone you've liked or seen that you think you'd like said it, obviously. Now, having said that, of course, we have to make certain choices in life, we only have a certain amount of time, I'm not going to waste my time following someone that I strongly suspect is lying to me all the time. So we have to make certain

decisions at certain points. But at any rate, no decision should be final as to I will this person is an arbiter of truth. And I think that's the fundamental point that we're both gesturing at.

Yeah, absolutely. And the only point I feel like we didn't make today as we're wrapping up here that I would like to point out to people on the Elon Musk from Elon Musk has been very, very specific that his intention in acquiring Twitter, even though he made these postures about it being freedom of speech and culture war stuff, he said very openly that he intends to turn Twitter if he can into a WeChat equivalent, with WeChat being the closest thing we have today to the quote unquote, everything

app, as it's sometimes called. And I think Elon Musk and ended up sort of using that term, or at least mainstream media sort of attributed that term to him for his ambitions for Twitter. So we chats parent company, by the way, is a major investor. In Elon Musk, I believe it's Tesla, and probably one of his most

active shareholders. So it's interesting that you have this idea of promoting WeChat to an American audience, because basically, we chat, if you're looking at this, from the paradigm of data is the new oil which I know you've you've covered a lot about that in your work, James, you know, you think about the who were the barons of the oil era? Well, you know the Rockefellers because of the Standard Oil monopoly So if you want to be the Rockefellers of the data era, how do you basically get a

monopoly on data? Well, you own the everything app, because all the the idea of the everything app is having, you know, everyone do their finances, their social media, their government services, their whatever, everything through this one app, right. So if you control that app, you control all the data flowing through that app. And if everyone's obligated to use it for everything, you're gonna have the most data out of everyone

else. So this is, you know, Elon Musk is not at Twitter necessarily to restore free speech. And I actually got a message from a friend of mine, Sam Husseini, who's also a colleague, really great journalist, I would encourage people to check out his work. He's been shadow banned more than ever on Elon Musk, no one can even see his tweets at all. Even people that reply to him, his his tweet above suddenly

becomes hidden and stuff. I mean, you know, people need to be vigilant about the stuff and aware that there is some, you know, usually where there is this type of hype, even if it seems to be social, media generated and viral, all of these things are manipulated social media is a heavily manipulated medium, the algorithms and all of that, I mean, it would be very naive to think that Elon Musk isn't tweeting that to his advantage for whatever goals he has for his acquisition of the platform.

Let me just back up what you're saying there, I'm so glad that you brought up that final point about the WeChat everything app of Twitter. That is such an important concept because as we're recording this, I just recently released my new world next year with James and Bilodeau media monarchy.com, where we're talking about our predictions for future trends. And my prediction for 2023 is about the digital ID, and how that is going to be increasingly a part of people's lives and being

foisted on the public. And it's already happening in basically every country around the world, various governments are working hard at trying to implement and foist and digital ID on their population. But as part of that pincer movement that we're talking about, where it's generally there's there's two sides that are essentially working towards the same thing, but one seems to be on your side and the others the big, bad,

evil, scary men. In this case, it is absolutely possible that instead of having some sort of government mandated government run digital Ivica, oh, that would be terrible. No, we want to trust Spaceman with his digital ID essentially, which is what the everything app is, it's, it's the consolidation of your entire physical and biological identity into the digital space, and everything that you do everything that you think everything that you buy, is being recorded in that space.

So it essentially functions as a type of digital ID. And it may be a way of getting a digital ID through the back door. It with the support of the people who would be against it if it was coming from the federal government say, so I think we have to be on guard against that. Yeah. What's very odd in the context of what you just said, too, is that you're having these rather prominent figures on the quote unquote,

anti establishment, right? For example, Jordan Peterson, recently arguing that anonymity should be eliminated from the internet and online government should be able to know who you are when you're saying stuff. Which is actually interesting enough, another policy goal of the World Economic Forum, and their partnership against cybercrime is literally all about that. And the people, their reasons for the cyber polygon stuff, it all ties back

to ending online anonymity. And of course, digital ID agenda, having your government your digital ID your government issued ID tied to your social media activity is very much part of that. So interesting to see that popping up on people like Tim Poole talking about hey, whoa, yeah, neural link is going to be the greatest thing ever. I

can't wait. it weird that all these these, you know, voices and the same sort of niche, I guess, that Musk himself is trying to develop are now starting to talk about how, how great all this stuff is all of a sudden and you know, people are gonna, you know, targeting the segment that nor of the population that would that would normally be most against this. It's a bit. It's a bit odd. But you know, I don't want to be a hopelessly stupid conspiracy

theorist James. So me well, Whitney, as you know, the pursuit of truth and actually standing by principles has never and will never be a popular endeavor. So yeah, no, I think people have to look in the mirror and see if they're ready to really take the plunge as to whether they are willing to withstand the psychological onslaught that will come as they become holdouts of the the brand new technocratic future that's being dangled out in front of

our faces. Anyway, I know which side of that line I'm on, but it's never going to be an easy path. Well, on that note, I would like to say sorry, to all the listeners that might be Elon Musk fanboys are fanboys of Matt Taibbi, Barry Weiss, Glenn Greenwald, and the list goes on.

But I think it's important that as we said earlier, scrutiny is applied to all of us that it goes for me that goes for James as As my friend Ryan Christian likes to say, question, everything should probably also be question everyone, it should all be about, like you said, James the information, not the person. And I really hope at some point, we get to a paradigm

where that is the case. And I hope that people, you know, if you're eagerly consuming the Twitter files hype, and are enjoying it, which is you're totally within your right to do that, that, you know, perhaps maybe prod some of these figures to release the files that they're actually putting out there to be a little more transparent. So you know, the idea is that this type of censorship doesn't happen again.

So for effective change, that fact that that documentation has to be there, for example, if legal action were to be taken or something like that, to at least send a message or something like that, to the Twitter executives involved in this suppression being exposed, most of whom don't work at Twitter anymore. I think all of them actually don't work at Twitter anymore. Fancy that. So I guess with that being said, James, thanks so much for joining me to discuss these

issues today. If you have any parting thoughts, I would love to hear them. And if not, if you could, please let everyone know where to find your work and what you have coming up.

Well, let's leave the parting thought as I don't want to say a plug for my site [email protected], you will be able to find all of the reports I've done along these lines, just use the search bar to search for Musk or Peter Thiel or any of the issues and things that we've discussed first look media, the intercept, Omidyar Greenwalt, you will find it in the archives there, it's all available for free. So I hope people take advantage of that and use it as one way of

gaining a window into this. And as always, only one way. And as I certainly don't have the the archive of everything, but I'm working on it. I will be plunging into the new year with a bunch of new material. But for the next couple of weeks, probably taking a bit of time off and enjoying the the Christmas New Year's break. So having said that, once again, thank you, Whitney for everything you're doing. I hope your listeners are supporting

your work. I know this is not again, this is not an easy or popular path. And so my best to you and and thank you for doing what you do. Well, thanks, James, I really appreciate that. You definitely for me, you're one of the models about how journalism should be done. You know, you are the open source intelligence masters. So I'm very happy to have you on my podcast today. So thanks again. And yes, for everyone listening, you probably are aware that Christmas and New Year's are

upon us. So this will be my last podcast of 2020. To see you all again in 2023. Thank you so much to everyone that supported this podcast, including when I was not producing very much because I was writing a very lengthy two volume book that is very much appreciated. And I hope everyone listening has a great holiday season, and that you enjoy this last podcast of the year. Just like James mentioned, unlimited hangout and myself also have a lot of material coming out next

year. That will definitely be of interest to a lot of people listening to this podcast and interested in some of the themes of the recent podcast, including the FTX situation that I have written about recently. So I would encourage you to if you haven't already, sign up for our newsletter at unlimited Hangouts. You can find out about all the podcast articles and interviews and other things as

they as they are released. And with that being said, Have a great holiday season everyone and see you in the next year.