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Nov. 29, 2022 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
30:52
Finally! MSM Outlets Call For Charges Against Assange To Be Dropped

Five major mainstream media outlets, including the New York Times, have issued a letter calling the US Administration to drop the charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Assange has been a political prisoner in the UK since 2019. Also today: Twitter announced an end to its Covid "misinformation" policy...and the White House freaks out. Also: More demands from global welfare queens in Ukraine.

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Assange Persecution Updates 00:09:05
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you today.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you today?
Doing well.
All right.
Doing well.
Excellent.
We have a few things to go over today.
Exciting in a dangerous sort of way.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But there is some news, and we've brought this name up.
I believe we've interviewed him at times, and we've sort of tried to stick by him.
That's Julian Assange.
But he is in the news, and I want to emphasize the whole thing here because it looks like the major networks that didn't go to bad form over the years have decided, well, here on anti-war says, major news organizations finally urge U.S. to drop charges against Julian Assange.
Well, maybe better late than ever.
But I think that's good news, and it's criminal how he's been treated by the bipartisan group of people in Washington, D.C.
Yeah, let's put up that first clip because this was published in The Guardian, which was one of the original recipients of the information from Chelsea Manning, which made up the bulk of its reporting way back when, back 12 years ago it's been.
And you're right, Dr. Paul, I would say finally these organizations speak up.
And it was a joint letter that was issued by the New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, and El Pais suggesting or requesting that the charges be dropped.
And as our friends at antiwar.com point out, the five news outlets benefited greatly from documents released by Wikileaks and worked with the organization to publish State Department cables known as Cablegate.
And so they benefited enormously.
I remember this.
This is back when Glenn Greenwald was working with them and so much information came out.
And they've been basically silent for all this time about the treatment of Assange and about the treatment of a fellow journalist.
So it's kind of bittersweet in a way, yes, too little, too late, perhaps, but finally they're doing something.
And let's hope, especially with the New York Times stepping up, that there will be some attention paid to this issue.
Yeah, that is good.
You know, the article on anti-war was Dave de Camp, I believe.
And I want to read a little bit from this because he has a couple points here I think is very important.
This is quoted here.
Trump decided to pursue charges.
You know, there was a question on whether they could charge him with anything, but Trump figured out how to do it.
Yeah.
Under Donald Trump, however, the position changed.
The DOJ relied on an old law, which we hear about all the time now, the Espionage Act of 1970, nobody's ever been convicted of disobeying it, designed to prosecute potential spies during World War I, which has never been used to prosecute a publisher or broadcast.
The new organization said.
So it's something they're just grabbing and grabbing anything they can to try to get him.
But there is one other thing that Dave mentioned in here that I thought was important.
He said, last year in a bombshell report, Yahoo News, that's where this comes from, revealed that the CIA under Pompeo plotted to kidnap and discuss assassinating Assange over the release of Vault 7, which has been around.
But they had to use something.
The report has been cited by Assange legal team now trying to get, you know, prevent that extradition to the United States.
You know, why shouldn't he be anxious to get home and get a fair trial?
It doesn't look like he happens to believe that.
Yeah, I wonder why.
Well, here's a piece from the letter.
Let's do that second clip.
And this makes a point that should be obvious to everyone, but unfortunately it is not obvious to many people.
Obtaining and disclosing sensitive information when necessary in the public interest is a core part of the daily work of journalists.
I would add it used to be and should be.
And they go on, if that work is criminalized, our public discourse and our democracies are made significantly weaker.
Twelve years after the publication of Cablegate, it's time for the U.S. government to end its prosecution of Julian Assange for publishing secrets.
And you make a good point, Dr. Paul, because this is really one of the dark spots, one of quite a few on the Trump presidency.
Because on the campaign trail, hundreds of times he said, I love WikiLeaks.
I love what they're doing.
It's great.
It's wonderful.
And then when he got in power, in contrast to Obama, who rightly didn't think it was right and proper to charge Assange for what he did, by contrast, Trump did, as you say, charge him under the Espionage Act, which is bizarre because he's not even an American citizen.
So Trump, after benefiting from embracing WikiLeaks, turned on Assange and turned his back on Assange.
And as you point out, I'm going to put this up because you mentioned it, but it really needs reinforcing.
Put up this next clip.
This is an American government official, Secretary of State, top diplomat, and former CIA chief, Mike Pompeo, summoned by court, this is, I think, a couple months ago, summoned by court to explain alleged U.S. government plot to assassinate Julian Assange, say Spanish media reports.
So reportedly, Pompeo was cooking up, as you say, a plot to assassinate Assange.
Well, he wasn't alone.
Let's put up the next one, because this is a tweet from WikiLeaks back in 2016.
To silence WikiLeaks, Hillary Clinton proposed drone strikes on Julian Assange.
And this is a report from a meeting in the White House where she said, can't we just drone this guy?
And it was supposed to be funny and everyone had nervous laughter, but according to at least a report, she remained serious.
So two top U.S. government officials openly planned or discussed assassinating a journalist in the course of his duties.
Can you imagine if one of America's enemies was caught openly discussing and plotting the assassination of a critical journalist?
You know, other countries violate civil liberties, and it's in the news, frequently China especially.
And if you say anything to get a sort of a more modest approach to this and trying to understand the pros and cons of what's really going on, you know, you hate America, you love China, and you're a commie and all these things.
But I think that the real point for me is what kind of hypocrisy is this?
And I can remember bringing this up one time in a committee, and I was so amazed.
I brought up, I said, why don't we deal with our problems of the violation of civil liberties right here in this country?
It had to do with China back then, 20 years ago.
And they said, no.
Matter of fact, they conceded it and they said, good point, good point.
But then they went on and did whatever they wanted to do.
And they have to build this animosity and hatred.
But the problem is they can immediately accuse you of being weak on the principles and that you're weak on America and you're endorsing what they're doing.
But I think hypocrisy is something that we should frown upon.
Yeah.
Well, we talk about journalism a lot.
We talk about the media a lot.
And the question is, why is journalism so bad?
Why do the mainstream media outlets, with very few exceptions, probably no exceptions, why do they act like stenographers for the state, only reporting without question?
For example, a good example is this AP reporter who just reported what a government official said about the Russian missile striking Poland.
Over and over and over, this is the case.
Why is journalism so bad in America?
I would suggest, and I'm sure it goes back further than that, Dr. Paul, I would suggest that the persecution and attempted prosecution of Assange in WikiLeaks has a lot to do with it.
You know, if you attack and destroy an actual journalism outlet, an outlet that actually does what journalists are supposed to do, which is expose the hypocrisy and the crimes of the state, if you persecute them and prosecute them like they've done to WikiLeaks, it has a chilling effect on all journalism.
Maybe that's why journalism is so chunky today in the U.S.
No one wants to end up like Assange.
Well, and it sort of pushes, you know, these journalists that want to survive have to become part of the state.
Persecution's Chilling Effect 00:03:00
Yeah.
And we can condemn the communists because, yeah, that's what we do all the time.
It's part of our philosophy.
But it's not supposed to be part of our philosophy.
But yes, and whether it's the corporatism and the enforcement of the rules on COVID or internationally, they come together.
And yet there was a time, you know, keep thinking, well, is it like this all the time?
Probably to some degree.
There's always been abuse.
But what's going on now, I think, is the worst our country has ever been in trying to defend at least the effort made in the Constitution to protect journalism.
You know, I mean, I get a little depressed when we talk about Assange because it's been so long that we have been championing him and his journalism.
Remember back in 2017 when he spoke at our conference, the Ron Paul Institute conference, I mean, who would have thought even holed up in the embassy in London, who would have thought that things would have gotten so much worse since then?
And it's very depressing.
It's a dark stain on every one of the Western democracies, the U.S., U.K., and Australia particularly.
And let's hope that this letter does some good.
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Dr. Paul?
Very good.
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I was getting a little hungry looking at that, I'll be honest.
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I know.
Do you want to ready to move on to our next little item?
Twitter's Shadow Play 00:14:37
Yeah, this is a big item, too, and it's related in a way, Dr. Paul, because it is still about speech and free speech.
It is a threat.
Now, this headline again, you know, Zero Head is very helpful.
They have a couple.
I wonder if they have more than the researchers we have for our program.
I think so.
It says, Apple threatens to ban Twitter from App Store.
Won't say why.
And this is what most, you know, this is the whole thing.
And the more I read about Tim Cook and Apple and things going on there, it's pretty scary.
Yeah.
Because if you're looking for corporatism where big corporations get in bed with big government and then do their dirty work for them, you know, I think it's just a horrible thing.
You know, even with this recent uprising in China, Cook and them just was on the side of the Chinese government and try to make it difficult for anybody to communicate.
And of course, our position could well have been, if anybody asked us, well, why are we involved in picking sides over there?
But then the pick one side that looks and damage to people who are looking like they want more freedom and they want their First Amendment rights.
They don't call it that, but they're standing up for it.
And all of a sudden you have the top guy come out.
And he's not, Cook is not the epitome of somebody who has a principled stand for libertarianism or free markets or sound money or sound foreign policy.
See, what's happening is so often economically here at home, but overseas, economics and foreign policy are intertwined.
You can't separate them.
And whoever controls it makes the difference.
Well, the president controls that.
We elect him and he does our bidding, which is absolutely not true because it's the deep state, the people who know what they want, you know, they make sure they're people in there.
And that, of course, is why, you know, just getting rid of one party, everything is going to be okay.
Because, you know, just already what we've talked about today is why both parties are involved in the Assange deal.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, you know, we never endorse uprising overseas because it's always so complicated.
But you can't fail to understand or appreciate the fact that China's response and its treatment of its citizens over the COVID policy, their zero COVID policy, which has been a disaster, really shows the ugly side of the authoritarian government there.
And so, as you say, when Apple jumps in on the side of the government to suppress the people who are sick of being locked up in their homes, it is pretty disgusting.
But, you know, you ask, well, why is Apple hassling Twitter?
Why are they so angry about this?
Well, here's one example.
And this is kind of a blockbuster that came out this morning and put up that snooks clip.
This is from Zero Heads.
Why are they so mad at Twitter?
Well, I would say this is exhibit A, Dr. Paul.
Twitter stops enforcing COVID-19 misinformation policy.
And if you remember for a good two and a half years, if you deviated at all from the government's official narrative on COVID, there would be some little person behind the scenes in Twitter who would nuke your account and get you in big trouble.
Well, this has just changed.
And put up this next one.
This is from Twitter's transparency page.
This is their COVID-19 misinformation policy.
Well, they've slapped a label on it, and you can see that toward the bottom.
Effective November 23rd, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy.
And that is an achievement, again, too little too late.
But I think Musk gets the credit for now finally allowing a debate, which we should have had in the first place, if we believe in freedom in any way, shape, or form, a debate.
Was it right when they said, take the shot, you won't get sick?
And they were the ones that were lying.
You can't even question it.
See, I think they've recognized that they have been victorious in really damaging the First Amendment.
But then there's a vacuum out there.
Well, if there's no First Amendment and you have journalists go out and politicians go out and people have discussion and then the people, the average person can look at it and make up their mind.
But they figure that's done for.
So they have to fill the void.
And these are people who are just moving in and they're filling the void.
What is the scenario?
What do you have to believe in?
And what's so disgusting is how they encroached on the practice of medicine, which is supposed to be sort of something special between the doctor and the patient.
And here they have been able to get involved in that.
And the doctors, and as far as I'm concerned, I think you would agree that some of the best doctors we've seen speaking out got the worst punishment because they did believe in something like that.
It should come from a bureaucrat, a super bureaucrat, and other bureaucrats like Fauci.
They're to determine what is right and wrong.
And right and wrong needs a little bit of discussion.
And that's why the First Amendment is so important to sort things out.
But to lock them down and just destroy them, it's the principle that is so bad because it cancels out discussion and the permission to have a debate, whether it's in medicine or whether it's in any science.
But they declare their science.
And you can't talk against me because you're talking against science.
It's so sick.
It just seems like this shouldn't be that complicated.
People should wake up to the point that the government cannot.
And when government gets in bed with the big corporations, pharmaceuticals and the ammunition, the military-industrial complex, it's just a loss of any concept of what is right and wrong.
You know, it's the epitome of totalitarianism when you have a major public policy issue and you use the full force of the government and its proxies in so-called private sector to shut down one side of the debate.
It's something you would expect from Stalinist Soviet Union.
Comrade, is this five-year plan going as well?
Maybe it's not going that well.
No, you shut down that whole side of the debate.
That's exactly what's happened in the U.S. for the last two and a half years on COVID and then on Ukraine.
You simply make everyone who questions the narrative illegal and you make them disappear.
This is something out of the playbook of totalitarian regimes.
And now I think with this Twitter change, we're seeing a little bit of a crack in the Berlin Wall, and that can have huge consequences, I think.
You know, when they have had this misinformation full-blown and they were being individuals canceled out, there's still a lot of that going on.
But it never affected the government's discipline.
Exactly.
It was always somebody who really was working hard at being a journalist.
And that meant a lot of them got weeded out because they weren't real journalists and they were wimps and they whipped up.
But no, there'd be no sense.
Why can't we?
Of course, I would like to see ourselves as pointing this out when the government's lying to us.
We should know about it.
But you know, it's especially bad right now.
But I imagine over the centuries, governments generally resorted to lies.
And the more totalitarian they are, the more they lie.
Truth is treason in an empire of lies.
You become treasonist.
And they use those words.
Yeah, sure.
He's a radical.
He's committing treason.
He's un-American, you know, because he took a different viewpoint.
Yeah.
Well, it's not only Apple that's hassling Twitter, it's the actual U.S. government itself.
And here's a short little video clip of the White House press secretary, who really is a piece of work, I'm telling you.
But she's being asked by one of these sycophant of journalists, aren't you worried that Twitter might be allowing free speech?
What are you going to do about it?
And let's listen to, I think, the first minute of this.
This tells you everything you need to know about journalism and also about the U.S. government right now.
This is a critical moment, really, in terms of ensuring that Twitter does not become a vector for misinformation.
I mean, are you concerned about the, you know, Elon Musk says there's more and more subscribers coming online.
Are you concerned about that?
And what tools do you have?
Who is it at the White House that is really keeping track of this?
So look, this is something that we're certainly keeping an eye on.
And look, we have always been very clear that when it comes to social media platforms, it is their responsibility to make sure that when it comes to misinformation, when it comes to the hate that we're seeing, that they take action, that they continue to take action.
Again, we're all keeping a close eye on this.
We're all monitoring what's happening.
So here she says, the U.S. government is keeping a close eye on Twitter.
That is shocking.
It should be more shocking than it is.
But what mediocrities these people are.
And the thought that came is what we talk about a lot, who's to keep an eye on the government.
And of course, the natural thing is the professionals that could do this in a voluntary fashion are the journalists.
Good journalism.
And that's been taught for a long time.
But I just wonder what the transition has been like in journalism school.
I cannot believe that the majority, large majority of people coming out of journalism school seem to just roll over.
So it must come from there.
But that's where most of our nonsense comes from.
Whether it's foreign policy, whether it's monetary policy, economic policy, it's what comes out of the universities because I don't think things happen by accident.
I think there's ideas and you have to sort out the bad and the good ideas.
But the sorting out can't be part of the enemy because all they do is use it as a tool.
And that's what we're facing and why it's so aggravating.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, if we're ready, let's move on to the last one.
This is kind of an update.
It's kind of the same old, same old.
That's not a good way to open it.
But let's put on that very last clip.
I'm going to skip ahead a little bit.
Let's go ahead and put on the last one.
We're going to skip Musk for now.
The very last one.
Yeah, there we go.
So here's our, as Candace Owens, the conservative commentator, said, the global welfare queen, Ukraine.
Here they are.
This is the foreign minister of Ukraine.
He had an interview with Politico.
He's furious because we are not making weapons fast enough for him.
Gimme, gimme, gimme.
So this is NATO countries must ramp up arms production for battles ahead, Ukraine says.
We're almost about to win.
We just need some more tanks and some more weapons.
So get to it, hop to it.
It's just amazing what this country has been able to do, what Ukraine has been able to do to the rest of the Western world.
Isn't it amazing?
Most of the time it's sort of done half secretly, you know.
But here we have the head of Ukraine coming over here and rubbing elbows and having dinner with the deep state and the manufacturers.
So it's no hidden message how this whole thing works.
But every once in a while you hear cracks in the wall and somebody said, well, this is a little bit too much, but there's a lot of power because just like if you're talking and passing out decent, honest information, you can get punished.
So if you don't toe the line on foreign policy, you know, they'll crack down on you too.
In almost everything that they do, I am moving in a direction where, yes, all my life, you know, I knew about communism, you know, because I remember World War II and the Cold War and all this stuff.
But I think my, from my understanding, it looks like the hardest enemy to identify and to get the people alerted to is the corporatism.
You know, the corporations, and we, because conservatives, libertarians, well, we're for corporations.
Let them make money, let them keep money.
But they're supposed to be honest, you know, and there could be a referee.
But the whole thing is, is that has nothing to do with it.
Instead of it being a little bit of competition, government and free markets and all, it's the collusion of the corporations and the money talks and special interest talks.
The legislation is driven by it.
And right now, elections.
I think the number of people now, in spite of what you get from the national media, I think there are more and more Americans are saying, you know, yeah, I think the elections are perfectly safe.
And from personal experience, not that I participate, but personal experience, I know that lying in elections has been going on for a long time.
It's just more sophisticated now than ever before.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I do think this Ukraine is going to go down as one of the biggest fiascos in world history.
The idea that Western countries are depleting their own military reserves cannot defend themselves against a potential foreign adversary because they've given it all to Ukraine to be blown up and then send more and then demanding more.
Newsflash, they're not about to win.
Ukraine is not going to win this.
Colonel McGregor from day one has been correct about this and others like Scott Ritter, all of these people have spoken at Ron Paul Institute conferences.
They've been right from day one.
It's throwing good money after bad.
And, you know, at the end of the day, this is going to make Afghanistan, I think, look like a walk in the park.
But I'm going to close up, Dr. Paul.
Encouraging Media Shifts 00:03:48
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Dr. Paul?
Very good.
I want to finish off this morning by re-emphasizing something we just talked about a few minutes ago, and that is a reversal of attitude by the May several four, five, six, depends on how you count, major news networks have changed their tune because they have not come forward.
If they did come forward, it was usually not to defend Assange, but they have come forward now and recommending dropping the charges against Assange.
And this is a significant event.
Does that mean all of a sudden they have come to know the truth and that sort of thing?
Now, we don't know that, but they should be encouraged.
I mean, it's a blip.
It's a blip there of saying, well, you know, maybe we ought to look at this again.
And this has been going on for a decade.
And it's so absurd.
And even to the point where they talk about, you know, why didn't our government, United States government, you know, assassinate Assange?
Because he's a nuisance.
And so I think the fact that these news media have come forward and have talked in this way, that's a good sign they should be encouraged.
And I just hope it isn't just a political strategy blip.
But I would say that let's hope that this momentum will build and some sanity will come and that we will get back to the point where there's a lot more respect for the First Amendment.
Because I tell you what, there's controversy in language all the time.
But my simple answer to that is we got the First Amendment not so that we have the right to talk about the weather.
We have the First Amendment because we can discuss openly and honestly anything that we want to as long as it doesn't provoke violence.
And we have too many policemen now, but the police are on the wrong side.
They come in, the speech police come in, and if you're on the side of peace and prosperity and a foreign policy that is different than what we have and more in line with the Constitution, those individuals shouldn't be punished.
So I think that there are people out there.
I'm still convinced that the majority of the American people, if they had the truth and were asked to say and speak clearly on what side they would be on, I think peace will always win.
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