ATW Live on Monday 2/3/25 (Don’t pick sides, and if you don’t speak up, you are part of the problem!!!)

– YouTube

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

First, I want to point out that I like Matt Taibbi, and I really liked this show. I even liked Walter Kirn. But, as always, there has to be a “but”—since I know too much.

Before I discuss what they say in this program, I want to show you another video fragment from the Due Dissidence podcast, where Weinstein (whom I don’t like) attacked Whitney Webb. Whitney Webb is the person I respect the most, the best source of information, and she was attacked not only by Weinstein but also by Walter Kirn.

“Well, Walter Kern now joins the pile-on. He tweets that Whitney is a black pill artist with a bot army, a live troll army, and many odd munchkins behind her, plus lots of other curious resources.

Following how she does her thing for a little while, her techniques are simple. No one is as radical and brave as Whitney. No one sees the Deep State layers like Whitney. Deep layers—oh, deep—oh, deep layers—oh, pardon me, deep layers like Whitney.

Thank you, optimists and enthusiasts, and people who get a little upbeat about any non-Whitney-approved leader, figure, or policy. They are dupes. They might even be secret agents of the super quadruple Ultra Mega crypto Zion-theal Musk Left-Right everything octopus that only Whitney is truly opposing on this godforsaken, commodified, poison-for-profit Earth of ours.

Not bad, not bad. Follow the responses to this post if you want to see what I’m talking about. And don’t ever let her bum you out or turn you against one another or cause you to suddenly lose all faith in people you used to like or trust before Whitney, the only true seer, came along—she who sees through all the Ops.

I know the game when I see it. I play it now and then myself. We all do—but not like Whitney.”

This is just part of it. Sorry, but I cannot support or look kindly on someone who wants to discredit the person I respect the most.

Whitney Webb previously mentioned that she has some reservations about Matt Taibbi after the Twitter Files, and I agree with her. I’m happy to see some truths coming out through the Twitter Files, but like Whitney, I don’t want people to believe that Trump or, especially, Elon is some kind of savior.

I’ll give you one example: Elon and Trump are trying to dismantle USAID, which I strongly support. But, as I mentioned earlier, there is always a “but.”

I know people have the attention span of fruit flies and no memory, so I’d like to remind you of Elon’s involvement in the Venezuela incident. This shows that while Elon may have stopped USAID, it’s not as if he didn’t want to do the same things USAID was doing.

Elon Musk calls Maduro a ‘dictator’ in tech billionaire’s latest blow-up against foreign leader

Add Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to the growing list of foreign leaders with whom tech billionaire Elon Musk has picked a fight.

The same issue was mentioned before in a Due Dissidence video regarding the WHO. While Trump suspended WHO funding, he later sent all that money to Bill Gates, so in reality, it made no difference—and it could have even made things worse.

This is exactly what Whitney Webb was talking about. Don’t believe there are “good” billionaires or that they are some kind of saviors. Just like the WHO funding was redirected to Bill Gates without meaningful change, today, Elon is attacking USAID. If you think he won’t later try to use it against Venezuela, you’re being naive.

For pointing this out, Whitney Webb was attacked by Weinstein and Walter Kirn, which I cannot approve of.

This attack made me think that Whitney Webb is right to be suspicious of Matt Taibbi’s reporting, and now I’m starting to dislike Walter Kirn. Whitney Webb isn’t saying that Matt Taibbi is bad — only that he is being given access only to what Elon wants him to see, which could be used to shape a specific narrative for future purposes.

I’d like to highlight another fragment of that video:

“Washington—someone, a source whom I will characterize as a longtime intelligence agent—and that could be proved. In other words, I could prove that to myself.

I said, when people know about corruption at this level, they’re dangerous, aren’t they? I mean, they could blow the whistle. Why aren’t they? How do they keep them in line?

And this person said to me, they have to be blackmailed to get to that level.

Yeah, I heard the exact same thing last year, probably by somebody in the same position as your person. But go ahead.

They said that in China, where everything is better organized, the CCP actually has schedules or menus of the kind of blackmail you have to be susceptible to in order to rise to certain levels.

No, it’s literally like—two 16-year-olds on film, non-consensual sex—that will get you here, right? And the intelligence agencies and so on in China have specified what sins you must be committing in order to rise through.

That’s fantastic. It’s like Jimmy Johnson’s NFL draft value chart—you can figure out exactly how high you can rank. Like, I’ll trade you two pedophiles and a child murderer, and you trade me what?

What would be the equivalent of that, anyway? But that’s the idea, right? It’s like a formula.

Right, right—so in other words, if you’re going to be the guy who’s peeing sand on all the checks and knows where they’re all going, it would figure, given the system that was described to me, that you might not be your own man by that time.”

This is literally what Whitney Webb wrote books about, and Walter Kirn knows it. He knows it’s true — yet he later attacks Whitney. Walter Kirn has sources and understands that things work this way, but I’ve never seen him write articles or talk about it before. He stayed silent while knowing the truth.

But then he attacks Whitney Webb — a person who, unlike him, actually exposes all this horrible truth.

SORRY, WALTER KIRN, BUT IF YOU KNOW TRUTH LIKE THAT AND STAY SILENT TO PROTECT YOUR SOURCES, YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM!!!

I’m also a little disappointed in Matt because he talks about protecting his sources too. Sorry, but I thought it was said: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” — not “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free… unless the truth will hurt my sources and my social standing.”

We live in such a horrible world built on lies because of this kind of attitude.

FFS, listen to this:

1:53:32

“Adversaries aren’t. It’s a big game all across the world. A lot of dirty things get done, and they all have to be justified at some point—but sometimes only secretly. They can never be confessed.

I know that there are good people who are being hurt in this. I’m sure there are, absolutely. And there are people who are true blue, people who did their best, and people who made compromises. You don’t get inside a gang where they kill people without proving yourself.

You’ve got to beat up the old lady to get in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there are people who are willing to do that. Maybe they’re not me or you, but for us to sit in judgment on them too easily is a kind of arrogance on our part.”

Like, WHAT— are we now defending gang members who beat up old ladies? WHAT IS THIS??

For years, people like me were called crazy conspiracy theorists just for daring to tell the truth — while people like Walter Kirn knew the truth but stayed silent to protect their sources and their own social standing. Meanwhile, people like Whitney Webb risk everything to expose the truth, and now Walter Kirn has the nerve to attack her?

After what Walter did, I can’t look at them the same way. While I still watch their programs, I’ve lost a lot of respect for them and have become more suspicious of what they say.

I want to point something out: Whitney said she is suspicious of them and the whole Twitter Files situation — not because she thinks Matt is evil, but because Elon decides what they are allowed to see and say. This means Matt, even unintentionally, could help shape a narrative that benefits Elon.

I also want to highlight their stance on “protecting sources.” If they see Elon as their source for the Twitter Files, they might uncover damaging information about him but choose to hide it in order to protect their source. That’s something Whitney refuses to do, and that’s why I respect her so much.

I want to share a video I’ve linked many times before. It’s from the Eyes Wide Open channel, where the author almost dedicates the video to Whitney Webb. Her work and her books, One Nation Under Blackmail, were incredibly important to him. I have transcribed the theory he proposes in this video before:

“Now that we have painted this picture and the players are all out in the open, I want to ask one final question: who is blackmailing who? I personally have two answers. Firstly, in my opinion—and this is the boring answer—it appears that the main target here is J. Edgar Hoover. His FBI largely looked the other way while the Mafia grew to a staggering level of power in the United States, and by all accounts, mobsters such as Meyer Lansky owned Hoover.

But this also raises my second answer: what if they were all blackmailing each other? Look at it this way: if each powerful member of this elite circle has dirt on each other, wouldn’t that make them all infinitely loyal to each other? One cannot be the weak link in this type of arrangement, as using the blackmail against each other ultimately compromises the blackmailer themselves.

Thus, we get into a weird situation where the blackmail is not so much active but is passive. By participating in the Blue Suite orgies, these men were binding themselves together on a common mission—in this case, I will argue, to protect organized crime and the global drug trade, two critical elements of Gladio.

As I’ve argued throughout this series, this tactic succeeded. Mob activity in the United States would continue to balloon throughout the 1950s and 1960s, especially as the FBI continued to look the other way while overwhelming evidence showed that the CIA continued to use mob elements for operations across the globe.

As we continue to unpack Gladio next time, we will see mob figures shine through as key members of the Gladio stay-behind networks. Furthermore, narcotics profits will continue to be an unaccountable funding source for Gladio operations across Europe, as will become evident in our investigation of the establishment of the French Connection and the beginning of French Gladio in the next episode.

Most importantly to the topic today, sexual blackmail continues to be a main fixture within the history of intelligence and, more specifically, within Gladio stay-behind networks.

Just as a few examples, if you want to see what I mean, let’s start with Marc Dutroux, who created a depraved network of pedophiles in 1990s Belgium that involved several high-ranking Belgian and NATO-affiliated figures. During the same period, Belgium was shaken by the Brabant attacks, which many researchers have argued have dubious ties to NATO, the CIA, and Belgian officials.

Another example is that of the Stockholm brothel. According to sources in Stockholm, Sweden—which, keep in mind, wasn’t even a NATO country—the CIA operated a honeypot brothel used to blackmail and entrap people within the Swedish underground. People affiliated with this brothel have been alleged by Olof Palme researchers to be connected to the assassination of the Prime Minister in 1986.

Finally, my favorite example—and one that my Turkish viewers will appreciate—is the case of the Susurluk car crash, where a prominent Turkish politician was in a car wreck with a high-ranking member of the fascist Turkish paramilitary group, the Gray Wolves, who have deep alleged ties to NATO, and a famous beauty queen. The Turkish deep state is infinitely complex and dense, but this small incident shows how the worlds of organized crime and NATO stay-behind organizations are tied to the larger power structure through sexual blackmail schemes.

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the Epstein case, the true depraved pinnacle of sexual blackmail.

I want to end on this point: I would argue that what was alleged to have taken place in the Blue Suite is a miniature version of what has been alleged in the Epstein case. The use of blackmail not as an active measure to get someone to do what you want, but as a passive tool to maintain cohesion across an entire network.

When people say conspiracies could never happen because there would inevitably be people who would fall out of line and either go against the conspiracy or speak out, remember that often behind these vast, seemingly endless conspiracies and networks lies a lot of dirt—and since everyone is dirty, everyone looks out for each other.”

I agree with the theory that this is one big circle of blackmail, which is essentially confirmed by what Walter Kirn said in the quote from the main video I posted.

The author argues—just as I have before—that some people who, for example, went to Epstein’s island to do horrible things didn’t necessarily want to, but did so because it was the only way to do business with those in power. Of course, there are truly horrible and evil people, like Bill Gates, who I’m almost certain wanted to engage in these horrific acts and even enjoyed them. But there were also people who didn’t want to participate—yet they had to in order to make deals with these powerful figures.

Walter Kirn’s attitude on this matter is well explained in this video about Orwell:

9:08

“All of these forces work in tandem to stifle free expression and critical thought. On the one hand, the Press Lords, film magnates, and bureaucrats ensure that only a few ideas are circulated to a wider audience. On the other, the spirit of totalitarianism can sneak in, supported both by people who think that it will genuinely give them a better life and also by the intellectual class, who are particularly susceptible to being convinced that liberty and free expression are just not good ideas.

These restrictions can be as minor as social taboos or as major as legal declarations, but Orwell opposes both of them in pretty stringent terms. In his essay The Prevention of Literature, he says even a single taboo can have an all-around crippling effect upon the mind because there is always the danger that any thought may lead to the forbidden thought.”

11:15

“But they might also attack the person who said it as evil or the fact itself as simply too outrageous to contemplate. Importantly, they might also dismiss it by labeling it as something the enemy says. Anything the enemy says is unthinkable—not because it’s necessarily untrue but because its truth would benefit the other side.

This is a pretty extreme example, but Orwell thinks that most of us are prone to behaving like this in one way or another. He examines this tendency in detail in his essays on nationalism. He uses the term nationalism because of his historical context, but he’s clear that this encompasses more than a simple bias toward one’s own nation. He identifies it among communists and capitalists, among ivory tower intellectuals and the working class, and among all the major political parties. Today, we would probably call it group bias, and Orwell has a pretty neat definition: the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests.

Of course, this is most clear when someone is explicit about it—when they are a card-carrying member of some organization that they openly identify with and whose fortunes are tied to their own. As Upton Sinclair once pointed out, it is incredibly difficult to convince someone of anything if their salary depends on them not being convinced. But Orwell argues that we are all prone to more minor forms of this fundamental group bias.

He observes that if we identify with a group, either implicitly or explicitly, then a whole host of other things naturally follow from this. At one level, our group’s enemies become our enemies, and the group’s friends become our friends. It means that, in all cases, the group is initially assumed to be in the right, and whoever is in conflict with them is assumed to be in the wrong.

In a more severe form, this moral feeling may be resistant to any contrary evidence, but in more minor forms, it might just be that the standard of evidence for “my group is in the wrong” is placed an awful lot higher than the one for “my group is in the right.” If there is even a tiny scrap of evidence favorable to the moral cause of the group, then it is seized upon and treated as extremely reliable. But any evidence that paints the group in an unfavorable light is subjected to severe scrutiny.

A kind of epistemic double standard emerges, where critical thought is all but abandoned when looking at one’s own group, but suddenly, a modern Socrates emerges when criticizing enemy groups. This initial prejudice then cascades outward to a whole heap of other cognitive mistakes. Orwell even prefigures the idea of confirmation bias when he explains how these groupists will decide on an answer based on their group’s interests and then deliberately seek out information that confirms that answer.

This may not even be conscious, and they may think that it’s just the right thing to do. After all, if you’ve already accepted that information contrary to your view is unreliable, compromised, and destructive, then looking for reliable sources and looking for sources that agree with me become basically synonymous.

This means that a lot of groupists will be true believers. That is, they will not just think that certain information should be promoted because it is beneficial to them or their group, but they will claim that this is the God’s honest truth—and they will believe it. In one absolutely cracking quote, Orwell comments on how thinkers are respected by groupists even when they are repeatedly wrong:

“Political or military commentators, like astrologers, can survive almost any mistake because their more devoted followers do not look to them for an appraisal of the facts but for the stimulation of nationalistic loyalties.””

Doesn’t this sound exactly like what Walter Kirn is doing by attacking Whitney Webb? Walter Kirn has picked Trump’s side, and since Whitney is criticizing Trump, it doesn’t matter that her arguments have merit, are logical, and are truthful — because Walter has chosen a side, and now he will attack anyone who goes against it.

Meanwhile, Whitney doesn’t pick sides, and I also try not to. Like her, I strive to be objective. I criticize both Democrats and Republicans when they deserve it, and that’s why so many people hate me.

The same thing happened when I explained my perspective on World War II. I pointed out how both America and Russia were responsible for starting the war, while also making it clear that Hitler was a horrible idiot. Because of that, communists hate me, Westerners hate me, and Nazis hate me. But I don’t care—I’m searching for the truth, not for approval.

To quote the great philosopher Kant: “If the truth shall kill them, let them die.”

In closing, I’d like to share a great philosophical and psychological video based on the work of another one of my heroes, Huxley:

“The only difference between you and the children in the brave new world who are conditioned to hate flowers, beautiful things, and books in that way is that your conditioning is happening while you’re wide awake—or are you? Is the current lifestyle of the consumer, in fact, a kind of waking dream?
What Huxley understands only too well is the conditions under what we might call late capitalism—in other words, the kind of neoliberal capitalist societies we live in now. What Huxley understood only too well was that in an economy defined by consumption, where advertising is the form of behavioral conditioning, everybody will be perfectly pacified as long as their needs and wants are conflated in their own minds.
That is very much the world we’re living in. You don’t need to be a Marxist to understand that you’re a commodity fetishist. You don’t need to feel that you’ve been conditioned to be conditioned.
I think that’s the real genius of the dystopian future that Huxley summons up in Brave New World—there’s no strife, there’s no angst.”
– Will Self

“I ate civilization. It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then,” he added in a lower tone, “I ate my own wickedness.”

― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad.”
― Aldous Huxley

“There is no better breeding ground for the bacteria of falsehoods and legends than the fear of truth and the lack of will.”
― Józef Piłsudski source: 1863, Introduction, 1924