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Dec. 6, 2022 - The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters
01:31:47
The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters #539
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Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Lotus Eaters episode 539 Already messed that up.
I'm your host, Harry, joined today by our new starter, Stelios.
Hello.
And Stelios has joined us recently.
He's going to be joining us on the podcast and also doing some content for us.
I'll give him an opportunity to introduce himself a little bit more later on in the podcast when we get around to his segment.
So, Today we're going to be covering the recent release of the Twitter files.
We're going to be asking, is hate speech really increasing on Twitter?
And then I'm going to be taking you through the Sam Bankman-Fried scenario developments in that and how exactly he is getting away with it.
So without any further ado, let's get into the news.
So, the Twitter files got released recently.
Yes, those Twitter files.
You know the ones, the ones talking about how they very intentionally covered up the Hunter Biden laptop story at the end of 2020.
Something that we already knew about, but now we actually have the evidence to prove For certain that that's absolutely what they did.
So, we'll be going through that in a moment.
First, I'd just like to draw your attention to a recent video that Carl did on the website that I think is also available on our YouTube channel, lotusheeters.com, which you should definitely subscribe to if you're not aware of that one.
This one is about reality against abstraction, and Carl talking about how ideology...
You know, everybody's ideological in one sense or another, but most people live within such deep layers of ideology that they can only view reality through that lens...
Which is not necessarily accurate to the concrete reality that we observe.
And you can see this through leftists talking about things like racism and how you need to deal with systematic racism to be able to get rid of crime rates in certain neighbourhoods.
But then when you do that, all of a sudden you see crime rates spike and the reality of the situation hits.
And Carl is talking about that and how we all need to start trying to live a lot closer to reality.
It's a very interesting video and I recommend you go check it out.
You might learn something from that.
But then, let's get into it.
So, out of nowhere, I say out of nowhere, but Elon has been hinting for a while since he bought Twitter that he would have to release some details about some of the shady things that Twitter were getting up to in the years before he took over, so that they would be able to come clean and earn the public trust as they march into the future.
And then he just came out with this on Friday evening.
What really happened with the Hunter Biden story suppression by Twitter will be published on Twitter at 5pm ET. That's pretty big news.
Not a lot of people were expecting that.
He even responded to himself with a little popcorn emoji.
Go back for me, John, please.
Saying, this will be awesome, and if you scroll down, we were all waiting, deeply in anticipation for this, to see what was going to come of it, and then he left us waiting a lot longer than we were hoping for.
I know I was sat on the edge of my seat, wondering if he'd been Epstein'd after he tweeted out, saying that we're double-checking some facts, so we'd probably start live-tweeting in about 40 minutes.
It did end up being quite a bit later than the 5pm, I think it was probably closer to about 7 o'clock where he was, but the anticipation was over, and we did get to see what was going on there.
Good things happen to those who can wait, I think.
Yes.
That's a good thing.
It is a good thing, because he was trying to double-check the facts, make sure that they weren't going to be releasing anything that was just wrong or manipulating the narrative.
And in the next one, he tweeted out at the time when it was starting to release, here we go.
This took me by surprise.
I don't know about you because I was expecting it to be something either a big document dump that Elon was just going to be in charge of, say, release a link to a Google Doc that had everything available on it, or if he was going to be posting the information himself.
Instead, it seems that he had delegated this task over to Matt Taibbi, who's a journalist that I'd heard of, I wasn't too familiar with before this.
Supposedly he was involved in Occupy Wall Street and a number of things.
So he's definitely one of those guys who seems to be a little bit more principled in the whole truth to power.
idea that journalists are supposed to be adhering to.
So if I'm getting any of that wrong about Matt Taibbi and there's anything I should know, please let me know in the comments because I'm not infallible.
But what it seems has happened is that Elon released the files to Matt Taibbi.
Taibbi read through them and released this massive long Twitter thread explaining exactly what he had found regarding this.
So we'll take a quick read through it.
through it.
I'll try to go over the information as quickly as possible so we can cover the stuff that's happened after this, because the likelihood is if you're watching this, you've probably watched it already.
But just for a quick recap, so we went over quite a big introduction regarding this, where he's talking about, oh, this is going to be the first installment in a series, so we know that there's more coming.
So immediately I'm anticipating whatever's coming next.
Based upon the thousands of internal documents obtained by sources at Twitter, the Twitter files telling a story of the Twitter's collusion with government and collusion with, well, not necessarily government, but collusion with political parties and the political biases.
And And he goes on a little history lesson here, saying that in the early conception, Twitter tried to live up to its mission statement and give people the opportunity for a public space to speak.
Yes.
And how do you think this turned out?
The original mission statement.
Well, we know how it turned out.
We saw how it turned out.
It didn't last long.
Of course, people immediately saw the power that could be attained by having massive influence over a gigantic public space like this.
So vested interests began getting involved.
Very, very early on, as time progressed, as Taibbi explains here, the company was slowly forced to add barriers.
Some of the first tools for controlling speech were designed to combat the likes of spam and financial fraudsters, and this is a problem that even Musk has run into since he's taken over.
He said recently that he went through a big scouring of a lot of bots and spam, and that sadly there were a few false positives on actual people's accounts.
So this is something that can just happen without any malicious intent to begin with.
Yes.
And except the problem was that people started to take advantage of it.
Outsiders began petitioning the company to manipulate speech as well.
And then by 2020, we've got requests from connected actors to delete tweets.
And that had become completely routine.
One executive would write to another, more to review from the Biden team.
The reply would come back handled.
So Biden just apparently had a team.
I don't know if Biden himself knew about this, but...
Are you sure or are you a bit bad?
Am I bad?
No, I don't think so.
Am I a bad person?
That was rhetorical.
I don't think so.
I like to think I'm a decent enough guy, but once again, I'm not infallible.
Correct me down in the comments below if you're interested.
Celebrities and unknowns alike could be removed or reviewed at the behest of a political party.
And here we can see an additional report from the DNC, so the Democratic National Convention, just like, can you get rid of these for us, please?
No problem!
And they were trying to get rid of real James Woods.
That's the...
Former actor.
I don't think he's starred in anything for a while because he was cancelled for his political views because he was one of those rare things, a conservative in Hollywood.
James Woods, they were trying to take down his tweets because he was very, very critical of lockdown measures and other things going on around the COVID period.
Hollywood does have a history of going after conservative politicians.
Oh, absolutely.
I can remember Bruce Willis or Charlton Heston before.
Bruce Willis?
I wasn't aware of anything to do with him.
That's very interesting.
But yeah, Hollywood's infested with communists anyway.
And even those who are probably a bit more based don't seem to have any room to be able to speak up if they want to maintain their career.
Yeah.
He carries on.
Both parties had access to these tools.
System wasn't balanced.
But he does point out, and this is something to note here, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honoured.
So this was something that was going on both ways, except, of course, he points to the open secrets graph here, showing the actual bias within Twitter lent far, far, far more in the direction of Democrats than Republicans.
And you can just see from the amount of donations that each party received, whereas...
Democrats in 2022 were getting 99.73% of all donations, whereas Republicans were getting 0.27%.
So that's just a little bit of bias, just a sprinkling of bias.
I think so.
We can say safely that it functioned as a Democrat platform.
It certainly has for a long time.
But everybody was getting a little bit tired at this point because they were like, Matt...
Give us the juicy stuff.
I mean, this is stuff we already know.
This is obvious.
Obviously, the few email screenshots that he leaked up to that point were, you know, new information, or at least confirming old information.
So that was interesting, but we were like, we want the good stuff.
It is much less boring now, I think.
Because you've got to bear in mind there was about three to five minutes between each tweet as well.
I did see someone put a jokey little tweet underneath with, what was his name, Hard Look Harold, the guy with the really strange smile, that meme.
I've probably got that name wrong.
But it said, every single time between each tweet, Matt's just taking a sip of coffee, taking a bite of a biscuit and turning to a camera to give everyone a reassuring thumbs up that this is all going to be alright.
So that's how I imagine this all going down.
But then we eventually get to the Twitter files.
How and why Twitter blocked the Hunter Biden laptop story.
So the New York Post published Biden's secret emails and expose based on the contents of Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop.
And immediately Twitter freaked out.
Or at least the Twitter higher-ups started to freak out, and they started to take extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be unsafe.
They blocked its transmission via direct message, which was previously only the realm of things like CP being sent over Twitter.
They'd never done this before, but if you sent it over a DM in Twitter, then bam, that was just gone.
The person you sent it to couldn't access that.
The White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McKinney, Trump and his people in the White House were very, very aware of everything that was going on in Twitter.
Trump probably had some of the inside details as well.
Why do you think that they suppressed it?
Why do I think that they suppressed it?
Because of the fact that it was reflecting very badly on the Biden campaign, the fact that Biden was involved in this, the fact that Biden's son seemed to be involved in dodgy deals in China and Ukraine and also was addicted to crack and had some pretty horrible photos on there, which I've never seen.
Don't send them to me.
I know Josh has seen them and he's still not recovered.
I don't want to see them.
You may have seen Josh smile.
It's a lie.
He can't anymore.
Josh confirming from the distance over there.
Strom's note returned the answer that the laptop story had been removed.
Oh, sorry.
This led public executive Caroline Strom sent out a polite WTF. And this is another interesting aspect of this, which is you get to see a little bit of the...
Inner politics of Twitter play out as there's these different dynamics between the teams where one has more influence than the other and they have more room as a result to be able to influence what's actually in the policies and on the platform.
Yes, and I think that now with Musk laying off a number of people, this has changed Twitter significantly.
Oh yeah, all you need to do is look at the actual quality of the people that he'd laid off to see exactly where their political biases would land.
Like Joel Roth, the person who was previously in charge of safety in handling, I think was his role or something.
Safety in information.
He was a political partisan.
There was one of those people who just turned out to be trans.
So it's like, I wonder exactly what you were trying to censor.
Oh, there's so much dangerous speech out there.
No, it's just speech that makes you feel bad about yourself because you're ridiculous.
Although several sources recalled hearing about a general warning from federal law enforcement this summer about possible foreign hacks, there's no evidence that I've seen of any government involvement in the laptop story.
In fact, that might have been the problem.
I do disagree with him here, because as we'll go on to cover with the New York Post, the New York Post has pointed out that there was confirmation of the FBI going and having meetings with Twitter in the period leading up to the Hunter Biden laptop story, debriefing them about potential foreign hacks, etc, etc.
So it does seem like the FBI had a hand in this, so either Taibbi is keeping that from us, or...
He just hasn't seen any official documentation to confirm that here or there yet.
But we're talking about thousands and thousands of documents, and it sounds as though at the end, it sounds as though he's only had about 96 hours to look over them.
So that's a nice long time, but you're still talking about potentially weeks or even months of work, depending on how many thousands of documents there are.
It is very scary to think that you have a president and a presidential team who have evidence of mis- Bad stuff about Hunter Biden and no one listens to them.
And if you say that there is FBI involvement in it, It sounds a bit scary, doesn't it?
It is scary, because this is what's been going on for a long time, is that organisations like Twitter are a very convenient, private way of the US government being able to get around any First Amendment problems that they would run into.
The government can't prescribe speech, but as we were told for so many years, Twitter is a private company, they can do what they want, they don't have to platform you if they don't have to, except they were...
Obviously, in collusion with the government, or at least Twitter was acting as an unofficial branch of the government.
The decision was made at the highest levels of the company, but without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, with former head of legal policy and trust Vijaya Gad playing a key role.
Those of you who've watched the Joe Rogan interview from a few years ago, where Jack Dorsey went on and was grilled by Rogan, and specifically Tim Pool about the censorious...
We'll remember her as the Indian lawyer that Jack brought along with him, who basically answered every single question for him.
It was quite a pathetic showing from Jack, to be perfectly honest.
It seems that after a certain point, despite being CEO, he seems to have taken an incredibly hands-off role in the company.
So that's either a tacit endorsement of what they were doing, or just a demonstration of how he didn't care enough.
which when you're in charge of a massive platform like Twitter that has as much control and power as it does is a very bad way of going about this.
So Jack apparently had nothing to do with it and it was all to do with Vijaya Gad.
They freelanced it is how one former employee characterised the decision.
Hacking was the excuse but within a few hours pretty much everyone realised that it wasn't going to hold but no one had the guts to reverse it.
You can see the confusion in the following lengthy exchange, which ends up including GAD and former Trust and Safety Chief Yoel Roth.
Commons official Trenton Kennedy writes, I'm struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe.
By this point, everyone knew it was F'd, said one former employee, but the response was essentially to err on the side of continuing to F'd.
Joel Roth, in this email exchange here, is saying that given the severe risks here and lessons of 2016, those lessons of 2016 are presumably the mainstream media's accusation that Twitter had allowed Trump to be voted in due to Russian misinformation being spread on the site.
Something that was never confirmed, in fact, was outright denied by, what was the big...
I've forgotten the name of the guy who began with an M. You all know what I'm talking about.
There was that big investigation into it that concluded that there was no collusion at all between Trump and Russia or Twitter and Russia.
It would be interesting to see about the donations in Twitter at 2016.
It would be interesting.
I think the...
If we made the comparison between the...
Well, if you scroll back up, I think you can see that in the Open Secrets screenshot that we've got.
If you scroll back up for me, please, John, just a little bit further, just up a bit further.
Sorry, keep going.
There we go.
So in 2018...
The donation percentages to Democrats was 96.38%, to Republicans 3.62%.
So it was still massively weighted in one side, but even that 3.62% either switched sides between 2018 and 2022, or was just removed from the organisation altogether.
So if we can carry back on down there, so back to number 27 it was in the tweet thread.
Thank you, John.
Former Vice President of Global Comms Brandon Borman asks, can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy to which former Deputy General Counsel Jim Baker again seems to advise staying the non-course because caution is warranted?
I mean, that's just an excuse.
That's just a...
Congratulations, I've just given myself an excuse to censor and do whatever I want.
Your caution is warranted.
Brilliant, so no one can say anything.
We should tread cautiously.
Well, I am doing.
This is me being cautious.
A fundamental problem with tech companies and content moderation.
Many of the people in charge know and care little about speech and have to be told the basic by outsiders.
An example he gives of this is one exchange.
On day one, Democratic Congressman Roe Canna reaches out to Gad to gently suggest she hop on the phone and talk about the backlash regarding speech.
Canna was the only Democratic official I could find in the files who expressed concern.
Gad replies quickly, immediately diving into the weeds of Twitter policy, unaware that Conor is more worried about the Bill of Rights.
I mean, you know, Gad obviously doesn't care about the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, so why would she even clock on to that?
Conor tries to reroute the conversation to the First Amendment, mention of which is generally hard to find in the files, when within a day, head of public policy Lauren Culbertson received a ghastly letter and report from Carl Szabo of the research firm NetChoice, which had already polled 12 members of Congress, 9 Republicans and 3 Democrats, which had already polled 12 members of Congress, 9 Republicans and 3 Democrats, from the House Judiciary Committee to Rep.
NetChoice lets Twitter know a bloodbath awaits in upcoming Hill hearings, with members saying it's a tipping point, complaining tech has grown so big that they can't even regulate themselves, so government may need to intervene.
Szabo reports to Twitter that some of the Hill figures are characterising the laptop story as tech's access Hollywood moment.
Continuing, he says, The First Amendment isn't absolute.
Szabo's letter contains chilling passages, relaying Democratic lawmakers' attitudes.
They want more moderation.
And as for the Bill of Rights, it's not absolute.
So that just goes to show...
Exactly where we all stand in America regarding that.
An amazing subplot, continues Matt Taibbi, of the Twitter-hunted-by-the-laptop affair was how much was done without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey and how long it took for the situation to get un-effed, even after Dorsey jumped in.
While reviewing Gad's emails, I saw a familiar name, my own.
Dorsey sent her a copy of my Substack article blasting the incident.
So that's Matt Taibbi.
So Jack's like, guys, have you noticed that this is really bad, what we're doing?
We're kind of being a little bit evil right there.
And all of the people who could occupy...
If you're going to take, say, Twitter, if you're going to refer to them in the same way that you would, like, a state, for instance, it seems that these were the deep state operating underneath Jack and not even really beholden to anything that he's talking about.
They don't seem very transparent.
No, not even to their boss, it seems.
Jack just, once again, seemed like a figurehead who was more than happy to just take his hands off the wheel and just let this car crash unfold.
Yes, and it is very interesting to see why now there is suddenly such a focus on transparency.
Only now, for some reason...
Well, that's why I quite respect Elon for all of this, and we'll get into it in a moment.
So, there's multiple instances in the files of Dorsey intervening to question suspensions and other moderation actions for accounts across the political spectrum.
The problem with hacked materials ruling several sources said was that this normally required an official or law enforcement finding of a hack, but such a finding never appears throughout what one executive describes as a whirlwind 24-hour company-wide mess.
And you've got the big email here.
Sorry I'm not going through all of this in as much detail, because I want to get further on into this story.
And you've got the link below, so if you want to read through all of this yourself, if you haven't already, Thank you, Matt Taibbi, for posting all of that.
that that's all we got for now elon did later go on to do a live twitter space q a where there was 1.1 million total listeners tuned in live at one point and you can find the upload of that recording here if you go to the next one uh one of the people involved in it kim.com posted it on youtube the twitter files elon musk interview i listened to a bit of it not had the chance to
But just to confirm that Elon was asked at one point how he's feeling in terms of his mental health, and he said that he's feeling fine, he's feeling great, and in fact that if anything bad was to happen to him that appears to be of his own hand, don't believe it, it's fake.
So, Elon will not kill himself, is basically what he said, he's not suicidal.
And he said he also didn't want to come across like he was controlling the narrative himself, which is why he sort of delegated it over to Matt Taibbi to be able to release all documents.
He wants to release more of the source documents.
In fact, he wants to release all of the files to everybody, he just thought it would be best to filter them through some journalists first to release some information to the public, Some could accuse him in that sense of trying to moderate the narrative a bit, but I do understand why he's being cautious with all of this, because if you just release all the files at once, who knows what narratives people might be able to come up with.
He actually, respect to him as well, he actually immediately, the second he joined, got grilled on how dedicated to free speech he was by, between doing this and then also at the same time, re-suspending Kanye.
And he did take it like a champ, and I think I can understand the reasoning that he gave there.
He also said in doing stuff like this, he's trying to encourage a competition between other social platforms over truth rather than pure engagement, which I respect.
Because can you imagine all the truth coming from Twitter, the fact that Twitter is now suddenly a space for journalists and other people to be able to really dig deep into topics without fear of censorship, if that gets more engagement, which it seems to be doing, then that might force other platforms to loosen up.
He even was speaking about opportunities to release video content on the site and even get monetized for it.
So can you imagine if a more free speech-based Twitter starts to become a true competitor to YouTube?
That would be very, very interesting.
Yes, and I think Musk is really clever in this.
Because he's getting the public hooked.
Oh yeah, he is.
He's a born marketer.
He knows what he's doing.
I think he definitely uses this to apply pressure to all people from all sides who are coming after him.
And I respect him for doing so because that's just smart business as far as I can tell and it's nice to see somebody involved in business who is just a smart businessman.
Exactly.
I mean, that's nice to see.
There were also a lot of random celebrities showed up in the Twitter space as well.
Ben Stiller.
Showed up at one point, which I don't know if he's trying to get more politically involved.
I know he recently went to Ukraine.
But James Woods was in there as well, which you would expect because he was one of the people being targeted by the Twitter suspensions and the DNC. And he has been on Tucker Carlson since then to say that he is planning on suing the DNC for trying to silence him, for trying to ruin his career by smearing him as some evil person when he was just a conservative.
So that will be very interesting to see where that goes.
Do you know if Rob Schneider was there also?
He has started tweeting a bit, getting more involved into politics.
Oh yeah, Rob Schneider's been getting a bit more based recently, but it only displayed one page and I can be sure that there was probably hundreds of pages of people listening in because there was 1.1 concurrent listeners at one point, so I can't say for certain.
Yeah.
There is more to come as well, because Elon tweeted out on Sunday, not Sunday, was that Saturday?
Yeah, on Saturday, saying, tune in for episode 2 of the Twitter files tomorrow.
And then on Sunday, said, looks like we'll need another day or so.
And he didn't do it last night either, so, you know, we're still waiting, Elon.
If everything's okay, Elon, please tweet twice, you know, do something, blink for us, just...
Anything to make sure that you're okay?
I think he is still tweeting from his account.
So I assume he's fine.
They're probably just still going over the information.
So if you're wondering...
Oh, sorry.
No, I hope he's faster than James Cameron in giving us a sequel.
I do too.
I really hope so.
I hope it doesn't get Elon 13 years to upload Twitter files too.
I don't think it will, somehow, because it looks like he's already got people looking over it.
If you think it's going to be Matt Taibbi again, he might release some more information in the future, but it seems that he released the information to Matt Taibbi and also another journalist, Barry Weiss, if you're in the next article we can see.
so they're both in charge of looking over and releasing that information once they've got everything together.
He said, I gave Bayre Weiss access to the Twitter files an hour ago, he said, during the Twitter space.
At some point, it might make sense to have them publicly available so that anyone can look at them.
That's all of the documents.
The general idea is to surface anything bad that Twitter has done in the past, which is very exciting.
Whether it's left or right, I think this kind of transparency and honesty is really refreshing.
It is, and it's nice to see how people think and what goes on in their minds.
Yeah, and we've got to remember as well, this isn't something that's just unique to the US as well, because other people have been asking him about what was going on in things like in other countries that Twitter might have been influencing the information that was available to people in certain countries.
And Elon himself responded to this, if you scroll down, that I've seen a lot of concerning tweets about recent, and I'll be...
I'll be coy here.
Recent developments in Brazil's politics.
If those tweets are accurate, it's possible that Twitter personnel gave preference to left-wing candidates, which I would not be surprised of at all.
So we might be able to get some more information on stuff regarding that.
So this could blow open not just the US, but also the global political sphere as well, because we want to see how much Twitter has been influencing across the world.
We've also got extra information on Gad, Vijaya Gad, since she's been fired from Twitter.
I think that was one of the first things that Elon did.
He was like, you?
Gone.
Good man.
And Lee Fang says that Taibi confirms, you know, Vijaya played a key role in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story.
After this, Gad was later appointed by the Biden administration to an advisory role shaping the Department of Homeland Security's disinformation policy.
Always funny how it always ends up like that, doesn't it?
She was appointed to the DHS panel in December 2021 as part of a team crafting policy for combating misinformation and disinformation impacting the security of critical infrastructure.
So a blatant partisan who is not afraid to use the power that she's given to censor and just bully other people whose political opinions diverge from hers.
So that's very interesting.
You may be wondering in this, wow, this is a huge story.
The mainstream media must have really just taken the opportunity to jump on...
No.
No, of course they didn't.
Immediately after this happened, the mainstream media was almost completely dead silent about this, because they don't want to acknowledge it, because other than the New York Post, most media organisations were complicit in this.
They were either cheering on the censorship because they were just screaming Russian hoax, or it was a situation where they were complicit in covering it up.
So, we've got Kyle Becker saying, here's the Big Four's recent front page headlines since Elon Musk released the Twitter file showing one of the biggest scandals in US politics since Watergate.
So just click on some of these.
What did these organisations think?
New York Times thought that China and COVID was bigger news.
Alright, you know, that's big news.
Fair play.
The Washington Post was talking about Ukraine.
You know, fair play.
Big news, but also, okay, let's carry on.
That's not anything to do with Twitter.
And Iowa caucus is built on myth, apparently.
And if we carry on as well, Los Angeles Times, horrific crash, law enforcement recruits to cope as they return to class.
I'm sure all of these were big stories and important, but it seems to be suspicious that they were leaving one particular one out.
Yes.
And then there was the...
Not only just one, the main one.
Yeah, the main...
This should be main news.
It shouldn't be just, you know, thrown away.
Gigantic collusion between a public and private enterprise to be able to affect political developments in the US. Yeah.
Pretty important.
That should be published.
It's pretty important that all of these organizations are more than happy to support Hunter Biden being a complete degenerate who's also massively corrupt in China and the Ukraine, but okay, carry on.
And we did see, however, the 27 most embarrassing reactions to Taibbi.
There's a nice thread in this Mediaite article.
Or if you just scroll down, we can see a few of them, because the mainstream media publications may not have wanted to talk about it.
But you can be damn sure that random blue checkmark talking heads...
I know blue checkmark isn't the insult that it used to be because you can buy it now, but still, I'll use it.
You had Ben Collins, imagine throwing it all away to do PR work for the richest person in the world, humiliating S... Alright.
Chris Hayes watching some of the most famous, most powerful and richest men red pill themselves into disaster.
Pretty wild.
And it just goes on like this.
Everybody's just saying, oh, now you're just...
You used to be part of the Occupy Wall Street movement and now you're carrying water for the richest billionaire in the entire world.
How can you sleep at night, Matt Taibbi?
When, obviously, all that's happening is just out of touch.
It's self-serving.
These people just want to ignore that they're pawns of the establishment when Matt is the one who's actually...
And once again, I don't really know much about him outside of this, so I can't really comment on his character.
But in this scenario, he is actually trying to speak truth to power, that thing that journalists always say they like to do.
But carrying on, just because there's quite a lot more to get through, because it's quite a long story, well, there's a few more links...
CNN did eventually cover this, but they said instead of releasing a trove of documents to the public, Musk Big reveal pointed to a series of tweets by journalist Matt Taibbi who had been provided with emails that largely corroborated what was already known about the incident.
Can you believe that?
Yeah.
Can you believe that?
CNN. CNN is just reading through the thread going, this isn't anything anybody didn't already know.
Yeah.
Amazing.
Just reframe it.
Just reframe it to just take all attention off the fact that you and other organizations like you lied to the public.
Brilliant.
They will go after Matt Taibbi and they are really good at character assassination.
Yes, that's one of the things that CNN specializes in.
Exactly.
And then there was the New York Post article that was pointing out the information regarding the FBI potentially being left out, so you can check that article out for more information.
I've covered the broad strokes there.
And then there was one very strange reaction from Trump that got a lot of people's knickers in a twist, which was that he went on to Truth Media, after all this came out, and tweeted out, I don't know what the equivalent of tweeting is on Truth Media, but you'll just have to believe me,
He said,
He said, Arguing that we needed to throw out the Constitution so that this could get solved, kind of like Lincoln did in the Civil War, for instance, but everybody's saying that it's awful that he called for this, it's absolutely scandalous that he would say this, people are immediately trying to change the perspective of, can you believe Trump said this, rather than, can you believe Twitter did this?
You know, trying to take away attention from the actual story.
I don't think it sounds like he's saying that you should be able to throw away the Constitution.
I'm saying that he...
I think it sounds like he's saying in this circumstance it sounds as though the Democrats had, and therefore, if that's the general rule, then I guess we can just throw it out for anything.
That's what I got from it anyway.
But the White House did strike back...
Saying that after he made the statement, the American Constitution's Sacrosac document over 200 years is guaranteed that freedom and the rule of law prevail in our country.
Yada, yada, yada.
It's hilarious.
Absolutely hilarious to hear the Democrats.
The Democrats talk about the sanctity of the beautiful Constitution after...
I mean, the Constitution basically hasn't mattered since the Civil Rights Act anyway, if you actually look into it at all.
So that's ridiculous.
But...
We've got to remember, everybody, there is more to come.
That's the story as it's unfolding right now.
Keep your eyes peeled for Elon Musk's Twitter account and Barry Wise's and Matt Taibbi's because who knows what's going to be coming out soon.
What do you make of Trump's statement?
Because I do agree with you that many times Democrats do not seem to respect the Constitution, and we are used into Republicans.
I mean, this is a brilliant example of them just throwing aside the Constitution in the first place by just using private industry as a means of getting around the First Amendment.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I understand why people are annoyed.
I understand why people are taking that away.
I think it's a little bit facetious to say that he is just outright saying that we should throw away the Constitution.
I think what he's saying is, well, if these are the rules now, the Constitution might as well get thrown away.
I don't think that's what he wants to happen.
But if you actually look at all of the developments in US law since the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the Constitution has basically been an obstacle to get around rather than a steadfast line in the sand you cannot cross this now.
It's been something that instead of just going through the normal government solutions they've been going through, the courts and judges have passed plenty of laws around affirmative action to be able to skirt the Constitution anyway.
And what do you think of the reception of this claim from Republicans?
I think Republicans, most of them seem to be more than willing to throw Trump under the bus any opportunity they get so that they can get mainstream media brownie points.
That's generally how I see it.
There's a lot of neocons in the Republican Party.
It will be interesting to see if Trump gets elected, if they will change behavior.
Well, I don't know what chances he's got after the Ye and Nick Fuentes meeting and Kevin McCarthy.
Was it Mitch McConnell or Kevin McCarthy who came out recently and basically just said, you know, if somebody's meeting with white supremacists and anti-Semites, they've got nothing to do with our party.
They're going to do everything in their ability to try and strike him out of the primaries.
All right.
With that, let's move on, and I think it's time to give over to Stelios, and I can give him an opportunity to fully introduce himself to everybody now that we've got him here.
Hello, my name is Stelios and I have been an academic for some years now.
I have worked on the philosophy of free will and moral responsibility and I'm really interested in politics and especially how the notions of freedom and responsibility bear into it.
And today I'm going to talk to you about freedom of speech.
And it's not incidental because I felt that at the university I couldn't speak so freely about what I believed.
And I feel really good now.
I'm glad to hear that.
That's wonderful to hear.
Okay, so one of the topics that interests me lately is the notion of hate speech and whether it is rising on Twitter.
So as of late, as you know, Elon Musk has bought Twitter and he has initially said that there should be amnesty in previously banned accounts.
And he brought back suspended accounts.
Brought back.
Carl?
Yeah, exactly.
And Jordan Peterson as well.
And now Twitter is much more interesting.
But this has sparked controversy.
And we do have people who voice concerns about increase of hate speech.
And I think it would be really interesting to examine those arguments.
And let's see.
So we could start by...
Sharing Elon Musk's Twitter where he actually presented a graph where he says that hate speech impressions are lower ever since he got it.
But not many people have been convinced and there may be also political motivations behind it.
I'm sure the fact that he decided to lay off many woke employees of Twitter has played a part here.
But there have been watchdog groups that publish reports and they express concerns that hate speech is rising.
So I think it is a good opportunity if we see what they are saying.
So if we could go on to the next yes here, and if we could go down a bit on the third, fourth, and fifth paragraph, a bit up.
Yeah, I think that's all right if you just want to go through it.
Yes, so how can we go up a bit?
This seems fine.
It's on Friday afternoon, right?
Yes, okay.
So it says on Friday afternoon, Twitter must respond to a New York Times article.
Sir, I think it's upstairs.
It is a bit further up, please, John.
Yes.
Okay.
So, on Friday, two watched a group's published research that indicated Musk's claim simply did not hold water, offering one of the clearest pictures to date of the surging tide of hate speech on the platform.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate and Anti-Defamation League both said in reports...
that the volume of hate speech on Twitter has grown dramatically under Musk's stewardship.
Specifically, the Center for Countering Digital Hate said the daily use of the N-word under Musk is triple.
The 2022 average and the use of slurs against gay men and trans persons are up 58% and 62% respectively.
Now, it's an interesting thing to see that no one mentioned the fact that Twitter accounts have increased.
So, yes, we could say that Twitter tweets have been increased, that use racial slurs have increased, but we should also factor in the increase of number in population of Twitter users.
I was just thinking the daily use of the N-word under Musk being tripled could just mean that triple the amount of black people.
Black Americans specifically could be using.
I don't have the figures for that, but they're just taking data and making a complete inference from it.
Yeah, and some hip-hop videos do contain this word as well.
So, I think you're correct.
And there's also another question that no one has asked whether the increase in tweets is to be traced back to one person or...
To an equal amount of persons or not.
So for instance, if there is an increase in a thousand tweets using a particular slur, this doesn't mean that there are a thousand more people who are using this particular racial slur.
So there's a good argument there to be made that it is not exactly certain that...
Yeah, some of my Twitter alts just got put back on the site, that's all.
Yes.
Only kidding.
Yeah.
No, there is a good argument to be made as to what is the methodology that these reports are using to find out whether Twitter has become more toxic.
So how do you think we should go about defining toxicity in Twitter?
Well, for one, I dispute the phrase hate speech in the first place.
I think it's a nonsense term designed to make people ashamed for the words they use rather than their behaviour and the actual spirit of the words that they're using.
And I also think that maybe the best way to determine whether Twitter is an actively toxic place now would be to see the actual reactions of the people using it and also whether engagement is up or down, because engagement going down would be a certain...
Metric to prove that people aren't enjoying Twitter as much as they used to.
And they feel excluded from public discussion.
Because there is lots of arguments on the Democrats to say that somehow Twitter is taking people off, is actually not respecting people.
But I think that if you allow people to have a voice, it works for the better.
What do you think of this?
I mean, being someone who's generally in support of free speech, there's not really much I can say to disagree with that.
Okay, so let's go down a bit.
So I would like to have a conversation about hate speech.
You say you try to...
you are not interested...
you don't think that the notion is...
I think it's a nonsense term created by cry-bullies to try and exert power over those who use language that they don't like.
I mean, one of the first ways that you're able to control how somebody thinks is to be able to control the language that they're able to use.
So they're noticing that the language that somebody else is using doesn't compart with their worldview, often a leftist worldview, therefore what's one of the best ways to get you to start to realign yourself into their worldview is to just restrict what they can say.
So I think you're correct.
And it would be interesting to look at it from a variety of angles, which I think we could do in this segment.
So I think that it is interesting to understand what the argument is for free speech restriction, if there is, because some people, they're just really performative in just saying, I hate free speech, we should restrict free speech.
So let us try to understand what it is that they are claiming.
So I think the argument goes like this.
So allowing for a freer expression of ideas makes Twitter more toxic.
The increase of Twitter's toxicity contributes to the increase of hate speech.
Therefore, we should not allow a freer expression of ideas on Twitter.
So what do you make of this argument?
I mean, I have a feeling that you're not going to like it.
Well, yeah, I dislike that argument entirely.
The allowing for free expression of ideas makes Twitter more toxic.
That's just a complete inference.
There's nothing to prove that.
Excuse me.
Increase of Twitter's toxicity contributes to the increase of hate speech, maybe, but once again, you're going to need to prove that.
Therefore, we should not allow free expression of ideas on Twitter.
Well, I think that's all based off, that end point would be based off the idea that hate speech is something to be combated legally in the first place, where I think the actual connection between hate speech, so-called, and real-life violence is tenuous at best.
I think that's a good question to ask ourselves.
But if we go to the next source, I think we could look at the...
Let's try to see how hate speech is defined.
So if we see here, the Merriam-Webster dictionary says that hate speech is speech expressing hatred of a particular group of people.
This doesn't seem to be particularly illuminating, but perhaps we have a better version underneath on the same source.
If we scroll down a bit, John, please.
Yes.
Oh, is it still further down?
Yeah, further down.
Yes.
Here we go.
There's another definition that says speech that is intended to insult, offend, or intimidate a person because of some trait as race, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, or disability.
So there's a question there as to who gets to decide what is insulting, offending, or intimidating.
What do you make of this?
Because when we have a platform like Twitter that is supposed to have, or at least many claim that it is supposed to have content moderation laws that should be transparent, there is this idea that someone has to make judgments in particular cases as to whether particular tweets are insulting, offending or intimidating a person.
And I think that there is a problem with the way that Twitter operated prior to Musk with all those suspensions, that there seems to be a difference between hate speech and moral outrage.
And moral outrage sometimes can be interpreted by its recipients as an instance of hate speech.
Well, yeah, are you talking about, for instance, the way that if you call somebody a groomer, they're saying that this is now anti-LGBTQ blah blah blah blah hate speech, for instance, just because you're observing something that's obviously a form of grooming, and the fact that it's being done primarily by particular types of people doesn't necessarily have anything to do with you prescribing groomer to them, but then they associate it and say it's hate speech and then they can shut you down.
Exactly, and we have to see exactly whether we are going to just stay on the level of generality and abstract principles, like, for instance, free speech absolutists are doing, and they say we categorically want free speech, and we don't care about particular situations, or you're going to focus on the particulars.
And I think if you take the latter course, there still seems to be room for this.
Yeah, I don't know, with the whole hate speech thing, when we're talking about who gets to decide the rules, I think the fact that hate speech laws are often positioned against certain people on behalf of certain people, they always use the claim to justify that those people are being marginalised in some way.
But I'm sorry, the obvious truth of the matter is that if you have the entire force of the law behind you, defending you, making it so that people can't say things that upset you even just a little bit, then You're not marginalised.
You have the entirety of the elites behind you.
Just because you can say that you're an incredibly small part of population, percentage-wise, just because you can say that most of the public's opinions don't align with yours, doesn't mean you don't have elite backing that gives you the actual, real, concrete power that all of this is based on.
So, for instance, you know, that original definition of hate speech just, uh, The one where I was just saying mean things about people.
Well, loads of people constantly say things like kill all white people.
You don't see them getting arrested for it.
If I was to say the same thing about a different race, anyone other than white people, for instance, I could potentially get arrested for it if I was meaning it seriously.
Yes, and there is a bad trend, a very worrying trend, that you cannot express hatred towards a dominant group.
Say, for instance, white people are the dominant group in a particular society.
There are many academics who claim, for instance, that you cannot express hatred at the dominant group because they're a priori wrong and oppressive.
Yes, you can make those arguments, but what's all really being done is just an expression of power.
Exactly.
And you know what is, I think, infuriating, and if we could go to the next link, is that frequently leftists are presenting their case as a defense of democracy.
And I want us to see the next video.
Yes, if we could have some audio.
A platform that is, like it or not, essential to democratic debate is run by a man who cannot distinguish the public interest from his interest.
So, I think we don't need much more.
This is Imran Ahmed from the Center for Countering Digital Hate.
And he actually – he just – he's very clear about saying that Twitter is essential for democratic dialogue.
But I think that's performative.
I wonder who he donates to.
I think that's performative because the thing is that if you basically have such a wide understanding of what counts as hate speech and if everyone who disagrees with the basic moral tenets of your worldview is presented as a hater and an extremist, then there isn't any room left for discussion, is there?
Well, no, not outside of the established parameters of discussion, which is always just going to be in the benefit of those in charge anyway.
And this is the issue because real significant discussions, there are discussions that are ethical, at least in this context.
There are discussions about value.
Well, there are discussions that actively hurt people as well.
For instance, talking about the riots of the mid-2020s regarding BLM, discussing that and the actual reality of the people that it hurt is apparently harmful to those people who are going out and rioting and destroying people's businesses in their own neighbourhoods.
This is exactly the inflated understanding of the notion of harm.
We put forward an idea and we have a very sensitive, let's say, approach toward what constitutes harm.
And this is actually where I think it is important to maintain.
We cannot have democratic dialogue without maintaining that there is a distinction between hate speech, for instance, and moral outrage.
Well, I mean, I was going to say, I think there are things that I have moral outrage on that I don't think that people should be anywhere near as quick to speak about or permitted to speak about.
Sadly, they are nowadays, for instance, the increase in people saying that we need to expand...
Sex education, sexual understanding, so to speak, for younger and younger people, I think that's absolutely disgusting and should be shut down, but there's a very different...
I can draw direct lines between the harm done to actual people there, whereas with this, it's all very tenuous.
It is.
And I think that this is a good case that you mentioned before with grooming, because if we are going to get down to the level of the particular, instead of just focusing on general principles, we have to examine particular cases about grooming.
We cannot just deny them generally.
In what sense?
In the sense that, you know, there is a double standard by leftists.
Oh yeah, of course.
Yeah, so for some reason they want to say that, you know, if you make any allegation that is specific, that a priori is wrong and morally unjustified.
No, no, no, I agree with what you're saying.
I mean, you know, we've gone over for years at this point just how many double standards there are within leftist thinking anyway.
So what about free speech absolutism?
What do you think about free speech absolutism?
Can there be arguments for restricting free speech?
I think Connor and I have discussed this before.
I think that free speech absolutism is a nice ideal, but practically untenable.
Primarily because it's just one of those things where obviously no matter...
What your feelings on the idea of free speech are, there are going to be certain topics of discussion, certain subjects that you don't want anybody to broach because you have to understand that even in allowing the conversation, you're allowing a certain moral legitimacy to those subjects.
So the idea, like I say, if somebody says, I would like to discuss the age of consent and how we should be lowering it or abolishing it, if I was French, for instance...
And I think in even having that discussion with somebody, you're giving them the wiggle room to suggest, oh, we can have a chat about this.
Oh, okay, so there is an argument, a rational argument that I could formulate to convince you that it's an okay thing.
I think we should be saying, no...
I don't think we should be having those conversations, and if you are thinking about having those conversations, you're probably a disgusting human being.
But I don't know necessarily that I would be okay with just arresting them on that basis.
I'm fine with social ostracism, but just arresting them, I don't know.
When you start to really dig into the weeds here, that's when you start to really test people's principles, I find.
I agree with you.
And I think that there can be cases for restricting free speech, such as the case for when a teacher walks into a classroom.
I wouldn't like my kids to be taught just anything that comes to mind of people.
So there is a question here because I think it is important to address that.
Many people on the left, they say that this is cherry-picking from conservatives and classical liberals.
And I think it is not, because we can make an argument that this is not an instance of bigotry, because the reason why we care about children not being exposed to such kind of teaching is that basically they are not old enough to critically evaluate what it is that they are being told.
No, of course not.
Their minds are like sponges, as the old saying goes.
Exactly.
And there is a worrying trend of making academia into a safe space, which is precisely that.
Well, it's a safe place for degenerate ideas.
It's not necessarily a safe space for critical thought.
Yes, and there is this focus there which I think is really worrying that there is this lack of focus on critical thinking and this insistence that university students should be treated as children.
Children that are not going to be prepared for the real world that contains dangers and unsafe places, but citizens that will just demand safe spaces.
Yeah, you're actively setting up a generation of people who are going to be very easy to coerce and very easy to trick and very easily bamboozled.
Yes, and do you think that ultimately there seems to be an issue of extreme pacification?
In what sense?
In the sense that the more we press the agenda of free speech restriction and the more we fail to make a distinction between hate speech and justified moral outrage,
on the basis of which distinction we can have a moral debate, the more we are making dialogue impossible Just because I'm morally outraged over something doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to classify it as hate speech.
But once again, if I feel a conversation needs to be shut down, I'm going to shut down that conversation now.
I think there will always be an Overton window.
The problem is in the society that we exist in right now is that the Overton window has been pulled far, far, far, far, far too much to the left, and somebody like Elon Musk is thankfully doing a job to be able to pull that back towards...
I know he's not trying to pull it to the right necessarily, but he's trying to pull it back to the centre, away from complete lunacy.
Yeah.
Is there anything else you want to discuss there?
No, I think that's...
If you want to check a really interesting article on our website by Helen Dale, you can visit Hate Speech Laws Communism's Poisoned Gift.
Wonderful.
Thank you very much for that.
That was an interesting discussion.
And we'll move on to the final segment of the day.
I'll try and get through this one a little bit quickly, because we've got quite a bit of info to go through here.
So, like the other famous Sam on the internet, Sam Bankman-Fried seems to be getting away with it.
Sam Bank McFried, for those of you who don't know, was a tech crypto CEO of the company FTX, who were a crypto exchange platform which collapsed last month, and it seems that he's been involved in some rather dodgy dealings.
And wouldn't you be surprised that it involves the Democrats?
Before I go any further, because all of this is always related to left-wing, we're often dunking on left-wingers, happily, now, the recent contemplations that Josh and I did...
Showed that science itself actually proves that leftists are bad people.
And now we can see little Dr.
Shapiro there with his anti-communist clipboard telling everybody that facts and logic means that leftists are bad people.
So if you want more information there, check it out.
There are also clips of that on our sister channel, lowtisees.com, that you can check out if you're not sure about it yet before you've subscribed.
So go check that out.
Anyway, so...
We covered this a few weeks ago.
Dan was the one who covered this, and Dan is the specialist in this.
So if I get any of the information wrong, I do apologize.
I've tried to get as much information from Dan as possible regarding this.
So I'll recap a little bit of the information that was gone over in here.
So FTX, as I said, we're a crypto exchange platform.
The CEO was Sam Bankman-Fried, who was also the owner who started it.
He also owned and started Alameda Research, who made investments And were kind of a crypto hedge fund.
They were run separately by a CEO called Christine, I've forgotten her name, Ellison something or other.
People thought FTX was doing great, and Sam Bankman-Fried himself, who I'll refer to from now on as SBF, as everybody else does, was a huge Democratic donor, the second biggest in the US behind Soros, and then during the midterms of the most recent elections, he was their biggest donor.
Economic downturns that have been going on since his party of donation choice decided to take over the economy meant that the company had basically collapsed, but they were hiding it for about six months, until some leaks from the owner of another crypto exchange company called Binance came out that revealed that they were basically bankrupt. until some leaks from the owner of another crypto exchange The company started collapsing and then when people were trying to withdraw their funds and all the chaos that goes when a company like that collapses because people were investing in crypto as a way to try and save money to get involved in trades.
It was a way to try and you know safely hedge your money because you hear that FTX is the biggest crypto platform out there.
Everything is safe and fantastic with them.
They've got brilliant, you know, double thumbs up from everybody, so wonderful, I'll just save it with them.
Suddenly starts to collapse, they start trying to pull their funds out.
Customers finally can't access their funds, and an insider came out and said that the customer wallets were being drained by an insider.
So it seems that an insider, possibly SBF himself, likely SBF himself, was stealing the money for himself.
And then it came out as well that Sam, right before all this happened, was trying to set up a super PAC that could receive donations from the Democrats for climate causes, and then presumably those donations from the Democrats could then be filtered straight back into Democratic campaign funds.
Very interesting.
And FTX were a platform used to send donations over to Ukraine as well.
So there is a rumour...
A quite strong rumour that the Dems were donating money to Ukraine.
Obviously they've been sending off these billions and billions and billions of dollars over to Ukraine since the war start.
So they were donating through FTX and then Zelensky was investing the money back either through Alameda or FTX themselves and it was ending straight back up in the Dems' pockets.
Nice little scheme, if you can set it up.
He was in a relationship, Sam was, with the CEO of Alameda, who's that Christine woman, his other organisation, and she was also the daughter of a lecturer that he knew at MIT, where he went and studied, where he had also met and knew the head of the SEC, one of the biggest financial regulators in America.
So there was a massively incestuous relationship between all of these different sectors, academics, Finance, regulators, you name it, they were involved.
Oh, and also he'd been to events with the Clintons and Tony Blair, as you would expect.
Very diverse group of people.
He had a fantastically diverse portfolio, I'll just say that.
And then something else funny came out about it was that he had a house in the Bahamas, a $16.4 million house in the Bahamas that was supposedly meant for FTX staff that was also signed up under his parents' name.
He definitely wasn't hoping that he could just inherit that down the line or anything.
No, this is a complete write-off.
It's for the staff.
It's for the business.
Don't worry about it, guys.
And something even funnier came out about the obvious fraud that was going on off in XL. Because Sam has been going on a bit of an apology tour recently to try and clear his name of any wrongdoing.
Everything bad that happened with FTX was just down to his bad decision making.
It wasn't intentional.
It wasn't malicious.
he just desperately wanted to do the right thing and there was this amusing clip that came out and WallStreetSilver has been really good on this so if you want more updates follow WallStreetSilver he said here's the part where SPF admitted on a Twitter space that when customers were buying and selling Bitcoin on FTX they weren't buying Bitcoin they were just getting a fake entry in their account saying that they had bought Bitcoin so just play this clip just to confirm it yeah
Because that makes sense as to why there were no more Bitcoin to withdraw where customers like that I know had Bitcoin balances because those Bitcoin actually didn't exist because it was just notional.
You were just letting us buy notional tokens that didn't actually really exist.
Yeah, or another way of phrasing that.
Because otherwise you would have had to have the USDC somewhere.
Right, yeah.
I believe that what you're saying is in fact part of what happened.
Yeah, so if you were using FTX to trade Bitcoin, you didn't actually have any Bitcoin.
All that happened was he was taking your money, saying you've got Bitcoin, and then doing whatever, because it also turned out that about half of the money that FTX was trading in had been invested in projects for Alameda.
His research company, which shouldn't have had any access to that money, especially given that in a lot of the interviews that he's given since then, he's come out and saying, I had nothing to do with Alameda.
It was all this Christine woman.
I had nothing to do.
I had no idea of what any of the decisions were going on there.
And quite soon after all of this started to come out, A Vox journalist got in touch with him via Twitter DMs, and it seems that SBF thought that this was just going to be some kind of, you know, just private conversation.
But the journalist, being a journalist, decided to leak the whole thing and write an article about it.
And so it starts off with a disclosure.
Because Sam has his hands in literally every pie that you can think of.
This August, Bankman Fry's philanthropic family foundation Building a Stronger Future awarded Vox's Future Perfect a grant for 2023 reporting project.
That project is now on pause.
Big surprise.
I wonder if the money dried up.
Before his empire collapsed, Freud was actively engaged in lobbying in Washington for a regulatory framework for cryptocurrency.
Cryptocurrency, everybody remember, was supposed to be set up to be purely decentralized.
that was supposed to be set up as something that was away from government hands, and now the government is trying to get its greedy little paws all over it.
And you can be sure with somebody like SPF in charge of trying to organize all of this, whatever regulations would end up be putting in place would be absolutely beneficial to FTX and FTX alone.
It would screw over all the other competitors, I'm certain.
Many crypto CEOs, like Bankman Fried's nemesis Binance CEO CZ Zhao, are openly skeptical of government regulation.
Fried had largely avoided criticizing regulators, on the other hand.
In our conversation, he dismissed their role.
He basically is acknowledging in this conversation that, yeah, you've just got to go jump through the hoops.
And even then, I reckon he's still being a little bit coy because the likelihood is he's like, well, you've got to jump through these hoops so you can get the benefits from them.
He characterised his past conciliary statements like when he said just last month that some amount of crypto regulation would be definitively good as a little more than PR. In doing so, he all but confirmed the views of critics who have argued that his overtures to Washington were more about image than substance.
At one point in these messages, he just says right there, F the regulators.
That kind of based, not going to lie, kind of based, but also he's a scumbag.
So I return to those questions in our Twitter conversation, those now well-considered ideas about balancing ethical imperatives, and this is talking about all of the philanthropy he does, and even ESG, scroll up for a second there, John, for me...
He talks about how ESG has been perverted beyond recognition, basically the whole woke capitalism idea that they're only doing it so that they can maintain loans and good scores from hedge funds like BlackRock.
Has he made any donations to human rights groups?
I'm sure he's made millions upon millions of dollars of donations to those sorts of groups.
He's probably on the board of most of them.
We should see also whether he has donated to previously the watchdog groups we were talking about previously.
Maybe.
Probably has, to be honest.
So, these ethical imperatives, he said, it's not true, really.
He continued to insist that FTX did not use directly any money in the way that people have suggested, either being fraudulent borrowing.
He said that Alameda, which he also owns, had borrowed far more money from FTX's balance sheets for investments than he had realised.
You know, being an owner...
And CEO of FTX and owner of Alameda.
You'd think that he would know about such things if there were gigantic transfers of billions of dollars between these two organizations.
But apparently, you know, what a goofy guy.
He just wasn't keeping track.
I guess he was just feeling really sleepy that day.
And it eventually left FTX vulnerable to the crypto equivalent of a bank run.
Why didn't Bankman Fried realize what was happening until it's too late?
Sometimes life creeps up on you, he said.
Just a simple goof, guys.
It's just one of those things that could happen to anybody.
You know when you're trading in billions of dollars and you just lose track of a couple 12 billion or so, 32 billion?
Who wants to squint over the numbers, guys?
It's ridiculous.
The man's entire defense in his apology tour has just been like, well, I guess I just wasn't keeping track.
I think that shows complete indifference to the public and the people he got money from.
Well, the funny thing is I've seen some people say that, oh, the public's not going to care about this.
The only people who are going to listen to what you're saying are judges and members of the judiciary.
And it's like those are the only people who need to listen.
But how are they not going to care about it if their money has been taken away?
Well, of course, the public really desperately want their money back.
He doesn't really care that much, it seems.
He has said in some interviews that he can make people financially solvent again on the US side.
He says, we've still got all the money we need to make people solvent on the US side, but all those foreign people who invested in the organisation, you know, screw them.
Nothing we can do about them.
And we can see here the general media response is summed up from this one.
Bankman-Fried admits, we kind of lost track.
With this person saying, no, SBF did not F up big.
He committed fraud.
Financial Times, can you get it?
And you think most people would be...
Aching to rake a billionaire over the coals over such a thing.
Instead what we get is this.
The next link was a New York Times deal book summit where they did an hour-long interview with SBF where the guy threw out, the interviewer threw out the most softball questions imaginable.
Where he kind of pushed him a little bit.
He was like, oh, don't you think you've kind of got a responsibility to those people whose money you took from them?
And he was like, yeah, it's really bad.
I think we can make it solvent on the US side.
And the guy's like, well, sounds good to me.
All right, you know, fantastic.
He also admits to a few weird things here, including Alameda made a $1.15 billion investment into an organization called Genesis Digital Assets.
Despite SPF previously having claimed to have no involvement in the running, he would have had to know that this was happening, given that, you know, that's a big amount of money that Alameda's transferring.
But he also served on the board of Genesis Digital Assets.
So claiming to have nothing to do with this gigantic transfer of money from one organization I own to one organization I'm on the board of...
I mean, it's just ridiculous.
So, in this interview, it's very clear that he can't really get out of this.
So he just confirms that, yeah, okay, I did know about this investment.
They even have a little joke about it on stage.
He's like, because he's over video call, they have a little bit of laugh about it.
It's just disgusting.
Absolutely disgusting to see.
He said it.
He kind of lost track.
Yeah, I just kind of lost track of it, bro.
He had a hangover and saw something.
Yeah, you know, it's like when you lend a friend a fiver, except that friend is you.
You know, when you do that to yourself.
Basically, he'd found the equivalent of a tenner in his pocket from the night before.
He was really chuffed about it, I tell you.
And it's very telling, some of the other reactions.
So here's one of the reactions we can see.
This is when somebody, when the interviewer mentioned funds were suspiciously transferred from FTX after the bankruptcy.
That kind of evil impish grin...
He does that like there.
I did do that, didn't I? Oh, I can't say that out loud.
Like I said, he also mentioned that basically foreign investments don't matter because we can get the...
If you go to the next one, John, please.
Yeah, there's money to pay US-based FTX users.
There's no reason for the US government to investigate me.
Who cares about non-US users who've lost everything?
Likely a coordinated strategy with major recipients of SPF donations in the US governments, which is...
Absolutely true, because if we carry on...
So, here's his official statement about it.
When I filed, I'm fairly sure FTX US was solvent and that all US customers could be made whole.
To my knowledge, it still is today.
I was expecting that to happen.
I'm surprised that...
He's still playing the fool!
He's still playing the fool!
It's ridiculous!
I was expecting this to start.
I'm surprised it hasn't yet.
Can you guys believe that you've not got your money back yet?
What a strange coincidence.
Anyway, on with my media apology tour...
We've got more media obfuscation, where this one, Vice, if you scroll down just so we can see the full headline.
No, scroll up please, John.
Yeah.
Sam Bankman-Fried is trying to find the guy who did this.
You know, who did this?
He's had all mirrors removed from all buildings he occupies.
He's wandering around going, who did this?
He's got his little Davy Crockett hat on, he's smoking a pipe.
Hmm.
We can get to the bottom of this.
Hmm.
Absolutely ridiculous.
Wall Street Silver is absolutely right here.
I can't take it anymore.
It's like O.J. Simpson vowing to find the real killer.
Can you imagine?
You know, ten years from now, Sam Bankman is going to be writing a book called If I Stole the Money.
That's what he's going to be doing.
It's ridiculous.
And then, of course, we have the Congress, not Congress, the House of Representatives hearings about the crypto regulation and what's going on there.
And this article has some good information regarding that.
That'll go through less than a month.
After the stunning collapse of FTX, Congress held its first hearing on Thursday on what Washington should do amid the fallout.
Senators called for swift legislative action to safeguard consumers, but many disagreements still exist over the shape of those actions.
Debates will likely continue for months on how exactly crypto should be regulated in the US.
As I mentioned, the whole point of crypto was it would be decentralized, deregulated in the power of the people.
People like Sam came, screwed that whole system up because sadly it seems that you can't have nice things anymore.
And now everybody's going to be screwed over as a result of it.
The hearing was hosted by the Senate Agricultural Committee and didn't feature the person at the centre of the FTX saga, SBF, who is expected to testify at a House hearing later this month.
and I think it may be on the 13th.
The only person invited to testify on Thursday was Rostin Benham, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, CFTC, an agency that regulates the derivative markets and is among those lawmakers who are considering tasking with reigning in the freewheeling world of cryptocurrency. an agency that regulates the derivative markets and is among Benham pressed the Senate to give his agency oversight of most crypto markets calling for comprehensive market regulation.
However, Benham's testimony was complicated by his close working relationship with Bankman Friday over the last year.
He's been everywhere!
He said in the interview that he did with the New York Times on the Dealbook Summit that he'd spent thousands and thousands of hours in Washington lobbying for regulation.
So, Every single person involved in this, in my eyes, is corrupted, is completely compromised by the fact that they probably have a close relationship with him, like this guy does!
And the bill that Benham and other senators advocated for on Thursday was the same one championed by Bankman himself!
He's the proof of the claim that it is who you know that is most important.
It really is.
And it's also a proof that if you've got billions of dollars, you can just buy your way into Washington.
At that moment, the CFTC is jockeying for regulatory control over crypto with the Security Exchange Commission, which is the SEC, and other agencies.
The hearing was the first in a series of congressional hit meetings about FTX.
The House Financial Services Committee will hold a meeting on its collapse on December 13th and expects Bankman-Fried to testify there.
As Congress mulls over whether to pass legislation, federal agencies including the CFTC and SEC and the Department of Justice, DOJ, have reportedly launched investigations of FTX, which presumably will either go nowhere or end up in a very public, very performative slap on the wrist and a hefty fine, which very performative slap on the wrist and a hefty fine, which will probably make up for maybe 50% of SBF's total donations to the Democratic Party this Interesting.
And funnily enough as well, Maxine Waters, our favourite, the one who in mid-2020 and I think last year as well was calling for fires and riots in the streets and how Whitey needs to be taken down a peg, will be presiding over the hearing on December 13th.
Something tells me she's not going to give him a hard time, guys.
I'm sorry to break it to you.
I don't think that she's going to be grilling him particularly hard.
When she's tagging him on Twitter, saying, We appreciate you've been candid in your discussions about what happened.
Your willingness to talk to the public will help the company's customers, investors, and others.
To that end, we would welcome your participation in our hearing on the 13th.
And Rita Panahi at the bottom there, just saying, Are you drunk, insane, or complicit?
Pick one.
Probably all three, to be perfectly honest.
And it's very, very dangerous what's going on here.
Because, like I said, anybody saying, oh, the public's not going to listen to this, that's the point.
The public don't need to listen to this.
They don't need to have their money given back to them.
The only people who need to hear it are the people who are going to be in charge of the consequences he face.
And he's not really going to face any consequences, guys.
So he's setting his own deadlines.
While the hearing like this, would you not be expected to show up?
He's like, eh, I could make it.
Maybe.
You're in the crossfire.
You're in the crosshairs.
He doesn't act like he thinks he is.
No, he really doesn't.
He thinks he's going to get away with it.
And it's no surprise that he does, because there's nothing to see here, folks.
All we've got here is Benny Johnson, last month, posting a video from inside the courtrooms of Maxine Waters blowing him a kiss.
This is after the FTX collapse, by the way, so very interesting that...
This is just how they treat it.
Okay, I see her as a completely impartial bystander in this whole scenario.
There is only one thing, only one thing, that could really derail the whole thing, though, which is that there is a possible double-cross in the works, which is, that's her name, Caroline, I think her surname was Ellison, Caroline Ellison, the Alameda CEO, is reportedly in New York City right now.
She was in Hong Kong when this all began.
The only reason to come back and resist arrest is that she already has an immunity deal to testify against SBF. They give the best deal to the first one who spills the beans, just my opinion, so that's Wall Street Silver, but you've got to remember as well that in just claiming, I had nothing to do with this, I had no idea, he's basically been throwing her under the bus as the CEO of Alameda the whole time.
So, despite the fact they were going out...
Once again, this whole is a big, big thing scenario.
Despite the fact that we're going out, it seems that he's tried to throw her under the bus and she might have shown up to throw him under the bus because there's also rumours that she has hired one of the Clinton lawyers.
So she is going to have a lot of power behind her if she's done that as well.
So, but barring a complete double-cross, we can only assume that Sam Bankman-Fryde has been getting lessons from Sam Hyde because he just keeps getting away with it.
And with that, let's get into the video comments.
If you're a drag queen and you know it...
Blow a kiss.
If you're a drag queen and you know it, blow a kiss.
If you're a drag queen and you know it and you really want to show it.
If you're a drag queen and you know it, blow a kiss.
Not sexual, guys.
If you're a drag queen and you know it's Dragapose.
If you're a drag queen and you know it's Dragapose.
Oh, you thought this was the only one.
No, no, no, no, no.
It's a series now, guys.
Yay!
Now, Sophie, I know you've said before that your sister runs an LGBT bookshop.
Did you buy those from there, or, you know, borrow them from there?
And if so, is there any way you can convince her to not sell any of those to anybody ever?
Because I don't think that children should be reading such subversive material.
But anyway, let's carry on.
Honestly, we should be having more fun with all this gender identity stuff.
Like so.
My gender is Orc.
Me pronouns is daka daka.
Duns is my gender expression.
So if you ban zadaka, use crumpin' me.
That's so...
You know what?
That's the one exception.
I'll respect your pronouns, Daka Daka.
I respect it.
On the subject of euthanasia, I find myself expecting that there's going to be a lot of Doctors browbeating their patients into basically killing themselves and trying to isolate them from their families as much as they can and possibly giving them misleading diagnoses that make them think they're going to have very painful lives in the future.
They only have to keep the charade up long enough to kill them.
Remember, these are CRT trained doctors.
They're not like the old ones and they've been trained to hate very specific groups of people in their countries.
Keep an eye on the demographics of the people that are being euthanized.
All very good points.
It's terrible what's going on nowadays, sadly.
But with that, let's get on to the written comments on the website.
And I will read these to you, Stelios, because we have a few directed straight for you.
So we've got Dean Parker saying, Well, I mean, you know, if you're ever interested in doing something like that, hit us up.
That was mainly my idea.
I forced him to watch the new Black Panther.
It was awful.
It was a terrible idea.
I've regretted it more than he did.
Baystate says, "Hey Stelios, welcome to the team.
I'll find a fun way to troll you soon.
Nothing personal, it's kind of a rite of passage around here." That's true. - Okay, I accept it willfully.
Just don't have any old videos lying around on the internet earlier, or he will have reappropriated them.
No, I'm very careful in that respect.
That's alright then.
Much more careful than I was then.
Jordan Turner says, it's good to have you here, Stelios.
I'm sure you'll make a good addition to Lotus Eaters crew.
Thank you and I hope that's right.
And finally, Albie Quirky says, welcome Stelios.
I look forward to more of your segments.
Thank you very much.
So everybody's really happy to see you here.
How are you feeling so far?
If you want to give a little...
Well, to be honest, I feel a bit nervous.
Oh, of course.
But I have had a wonderful reception by the team here, and everyone has been absolutely supporting.
And I appreciate that very much, and I really hope I do good things here, and I like it.
I know you're going to do good stuff here.
I believe in you as well.
Let's get on to the comments for the actual segments then.
So George Hap says the Twitter files don't really have any huge revelations to those paying attention and possessing a brain, but if this wakes some normies, all the better.
Now if only Elon could buy the court system so that the people violating the First Amendment could face actual justice.
Baby steps.
Baby steps.
One step at a time.
But yeah, I think one of the important things for this is that now it's just absolutely confirmed.
We've got access to the emails that all say that this is something that was being coordinated from inside Twitter.
because even though you've had people come out and say that this was happening you could still you could still obfuscate it you could still have people in the media saying like oh you know they're just saying it for their own benefit no now we've got the emails and once elon releases all of the emails to everybody who knows what information people are going to be able to dig up from all of that it's going to be ridiculous Shaker Silver says the one disappointing thing is that Taibbi stated that he didn't find any government collusion.
Supposedly Twitter just acted for a purely partisan reason by helping the Biden campaign and DNC, which aren't officially part of government.
However, the FEC filing showed that the FBI directly came to Twitter to direct them in taking down the Russian information that they called the Hunter Biden files.
I did mention that throughout that, so thank you for bringing it up again.
I don't know why he would say that.
Maybe just the information that he's found and looked into didn't corroborate that, but we know it happened, so there will be something there.
So either he's hiding it or he's just not found the emails that correlate to it yet.
I can only speculate there.
I remember when journalists would have killed people to get that kind of story.
Now the media and DNC are actively working to suppress the story of their suppression of American citizens.
When the Babylon Bee writes a satirical article, there's more representative life instead of the real media.
Yeah, that's all true.
Jordan Turner says: Yeah, but this...
It's not that the information would already come to light.
It's the information was already obvious.
They just didn't care, because they didn't think there would be any consequences.
And as it stands right now, outside of Elon having bought Twitter and exposed them, there still isn't any consequences.
The same as there isn't for somebody like SPF, because they are already in control of all of the power centres.
We need to unseat them from those...
Excuse me.
Unseat them from those power centres like Elon has done with Twitter before any real change can be made.
I think one needs to happen, you know, as we often complain that the Tories didn't in the UK, is you get in power, you get full power, and you start repealing laws.
You start repealing all of the laws that allow them to put action against people without having to do it through official government means.
Because if you can do it through the courts, then you can just throw up your hands and say, government had nothing to do with it.
We're not restricting your liberties.
It's just the law, bro.
And we'll go on to the ones for yours.
So, hurty words on Twitter.
Nice little subtitle there.
Tal Bell says, You have to be willing to have the discussions about things you find repugnant, Harry.
Because people are born every day and they're not going to have the understanding that you have developed without these discussions.
You need to remember that you're not at the end of human history.
Never claimed to be.
I do have these discussions.
The problem is that you're talking about discussing them with people who aren't aware of them.
Obviously, I understand that if I've got my own child, I'm going to say to them, here's how you behave.
Here are the sorts of behaviors you want to avoid being.
What I'm talking about is people with obviously subversive intentions who obviously want to destroy your culture, who you don't want to have a space at the table so that they can obviously subvert your culture.
That's what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about the moral permissiveness that's been going on since the 1950s and beyond.
Because I think we were open to subversion.
You know, this is the sort of stuff that...
What's his name?
The guy who went on about Soviet subversion because he was a former member of the KGB. This is the sort of stuff that he was talking about.
You get in the school...
Yuri Bezmenov.
Yes, Bezmenov.
Thank you very much.
Uncle Yuri.
Yes.
This is the sort of stuff that they were talking about all the time.
You go in, you take over the institution, you subvert.
We should never have given them a position to get in in the first place.
That's what I'm saying.
I'm not talking about...
You know, oh, is it entirely principled?
Maybe it isn't.
I'm talking about the practical reality of what you need to do if you don't want these people getting in.
Lord Nerevar, the age-old question, is hate speech rising on Twitter?
The age-old answer, I bloody hope so.
Hate speech makes things more fun!
What seems to be the problem, officer?
Bald Eagle, 1787.
Hate speech is not increasing on Twitter.
All that's increasing is the amount of leftist insurgents that are being dunked on by people with common sense and morals.
Remember, hate speech is anything that points out how a leftist is wrong and is either a paedophile in waiting or a full-blown paedophile that wants to tear down the system so they can have free access to everyone else's kids.
Yeah, sadly that seems to be the truth.
Freewill2112, if you are hard left, virtually everyone who doesn't agree with you is guilty of hate speech.
Yeah, I think that's one of the points that we're trying to get across.
That's entirely correct, I think.
Yeah.
And why would you say it is that they've been so effective in convincing people of that?
Do you think it's just playing on people's rote sentimentality that we tend to have over in the West?
I think that they are...
We generally are...
I think that human beings are a bit lazy in some cases.
And there is some laziness attached to trying to outsource responsibilities for protecting the public sphere and engaging people.
Actively in public discussion.
And I think that the leftists are really good at trying to, you know, whisper at our ear and say, okay, listen, I mean, I'll appeal to your laziness.
Let me do it for you.
I always think of it as they appeal to your principles so they can get you to fail on your principles and they don't even care about your principles anyway.
Exactly.
And then they say, let me do the job.
You're not good enough to make decisions for your life.
Let us tell you how you should act and decide.
This is, I think, where they're getting it.
Yeah, it's like one of the Reddit atheist soyjack memes I've seen where it's like, oh, Jesus wouldn't behave like that, would you?
You're letting Jesus down, aren't you?
But of course, I don't believe in Jesus and I think your entire prehistoric religion is disgusting.
You know, that's the kind of attitude that these people are approaching things from.
I'll go on to one or two last comments now.
So Lord Nerevar on Sam Bankman-Fried says, I can't even say I'm surprised that Bankman is being allowed to walk away scot-free.
The elites look after their own.
Despite not being useful anymore, he's fulfilled his duty to the new order.
He'll be just fine.
Absolutely he will.
And then Wolf Grillington, great little handle there, says, I wouldn't say SBF has gotten away with it just yet.
This kind of thing always takes time.
For example, Enron and Theranos both took three years to see any real movement.
People point to Bernie Madoff as an example of fast prosecution, but he made the mistake of confessing to his family who turned him in.
Yeah, well, obviously, I'm not saying that he will get away with it in the long run, but he is certainly getting away with it right now, And it seems that he has all of the institutional apparatus on his side.
So...
I kind of hope that him and that Caroline girl flip on each other and end up syncing themselves in tandem.
I mean, I would like for the whole system to sync, in a sense, not in a way that would obviously destroy the average man on the street's livelihood, but I do think we're living in such a corrupt system that we kind of need a bit of a...
I'm not going to say great reset, not in the WEF, not in the World Economic Forum sense, but we do need to have a certain type of reset to get all of these people out, like the drain the swamp thing.
Yeah, but if they split, and as you said, his girlfriend has Hillary Clinton's lawyers, that seems to me pretty much establishment.
Yeah, that's the thing.
So maybe this is a way of having the establishment fighting itself.
Yeah.
And I'm willing to bet that we will see many people performatively claiming that SBF is...
You think he's going to get some allegations thrown at him?
Yes, at some point.
Oh my lord.
I do think people who backed him will stop doing so when they think that it fits their narrative.
Of course.
I guess we'll just see when that is and how that happens.
But that's all the time we've got for today.
Thank you very much for tuning in.
I hope you're all very kind and welcoming to Stelios.
We're all really happy to have him here.
So thank you very much for tuning in again.
We'll be back at 1 o'clock tomorrow.
Take care.
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