Unspeakably Cruel! US House Votes To Maintain Sanctions On Earthquake Ravaged Syria!
In a near-overwhelming vote, the US House of Representatives voted to maintain the "2019 Cesar Syria Civil Protection Act," a bill imposing additional sanctions on the Syrian people. The iron fist was hidden in a velvet glove, however, which we will explain in today's program. Also today: Biden sees continued decline in support for his Ukraine policy. And...the UN has a "brilliant" plan to block out the sun. What could go wrong?
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.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you?
Doing good.
Good.
Excellent.
Wonderful, wonderful.
I want to start off with a rather unbelievable thing that they've done on how they describe it.
In an effort to express our concerns about what's going on in Syria, we put on sanctions.
Yeah.
And there was a vote.
People say, hey, you know, the House overwhelmingly approves the resolution to get rid of the sanctions.
I mean, they're having trouble over there.
What, they have an earthquake?
Horrible earthquake.
So I would think this is a good time.
Of course, we have to admit, they suspended them for a little bit.
Partially, partially.
Partially, yeah.
And that was just PR.
PR stunt.
To prove the resolution to maintain Syria sanctions after the earthquake.
Doesn't make any sense.
It's inhumane.
It's not under the Constitution that we should be managing the earthquake.
It doesn't give us authority to have perpetual sanctions on Syria.
It hasn't given us the authority to occupy a third of Syria.
It didn't give us authority to just outright steal the oil from them.
And here, the whole Congress, except for two, two people, this should be a shock and a surprise and disappointment.
And the two that voted correctly should be praised.
Unfortunately, that didn't happen.
The country, the Congress, and so many others, our university professors, think that, well, if you have sanctions, you don't have to have any body bags coming back.
They'll just have to be somebody else's body bags.
But right now, we're a powerhouse and we can do what we want, and we can steal the oil, station our troops, and have another perpetual war.
And this one's been going on.
They had to have something.
You know, not many people paying any attention to Afghanistan anymore.
So we had to have Syria.
And that's been going on for a long time.
It'll stay busy.
It's part of a foreign policy that you and I have just disagreed with totally, and that there's a better way to do this.
And everything they do seemed to backfire because they're doing the wrong thing.
In this case, I think this whole argument is backfiring on them because they blame Thomas Massey for voting again.
He doesn't want to have any mourning for the victims.
So he puts on saying, they put on sanctions, and the mourning increases.
It makes no sense, but that's about what you should expect from government authoritarians.
Yeah, it's H. Res 132.
We can put up this first clip if you can.
And to his great credit, Dave DeCamp, who I actually met in D.C. and saw his little boy, great guy, he actually saw through the BS.
He would have been a great staffer if we could go back in time because he actually read this bill and understood that, as you always say, it's always the opposite of what they claim.
So he correctly pointed out, House overwhelmingly approves resolution to maintain Syria sanctions after earthquake.
It was introduced by Joe Wilson, who Dr. Paul, we both know is not the brightest bulb.
He's the one that wants to have a big statue of Zelensky permanently put in the U.S. House with or without his special powder.
We don't know that part.
However, it's a bill that talks about the Mourning the victims, but in an incredibly cynical section, as you point out, at the very end.
And we'll get into this later because I really want to bring the points, the receipts to this whole thing.
But at the very end, it supports maintaining the sanctions, an additional round of sanctions that were included in 2019 against the Syrian people.
Let's be honest, not the Syrian government, the Syrian people were affected by it.
And now, what Dave writes is that it's very clear that the partial relief given by the United States was only cosmetic.
It wasn't real.
And it talked about that the U.S. sanctions are hurting the relief effort after this horrible earthquake that killed probably over 50,000 people, which is just astonishing.
And I clicked on one of his links, if you can put that next one up.
And we can see for ourselves, UN experts are pointing out, this is the UN, UN Human Rights Commissioner, genuine solidarity with earthquake survivors, calls for lifting the sanction-induced restrictions.
U.S. experts, we know that the sanctions are hurting.
The UN agrees that they're hurting.
And if you're the next one really quick, this is from the UN report.
It's imperative for the international community, and in particular, sanctioning states, to undertake prompt action by putting an end to unilateral sanctions against Syria, a country deprived of critical infrastructure and in dire need of recovery and reconstruction following the decade-long war.
Yes, what a tragedy.
You know, the sanction issue, along with trade wars, have been used for tools, you know, of power.
But I continue to argue the case that putting on sanctions and denying the ability for a country to trade things and on trade wars precipitated by this, it's just all wrong.
So we're not even there deciding, are trade wars good?
Are sanctions good?
No, it's automatically agreed that they are good.
Just have to be smart sanctions.
You have to try to get benefits and punish somebody else, and you use it as a political tool.
Right now, this has a lot to do with politics.
The sanctions are already on there.
But this is to try to pick sides in a war that's going on.
But it's the big principle of how did we get to this point?
Because if my memory is correct, I remember not too many decades ago that both parties and most economists were supportive of freer trade.
And they didn't use sanctions in trade wars.
And we had that for a good while.
But this all has come up.
And unfortunately, it's strongly endorsed by Republicans and Democrats.
This vote tells you what's going on.
They either want to play the political game or they have a total misunderstanding.
I think both.
I think they play the political game and they don't understand what sanctions and trade wars are actually doing because that creates the problems that leads to war.
And of course, we're in a perpetual war just about every place.
But right now we're still pretty darn powerful and nobody's going to kick us out of Syria yet.
But someday we will have to leave Syria and that'll tell us that maybe this policy isn't working so well.
And the thing about the U.S. policy, it is so open, it is so blatant, they don't even try to hide their real intention.
Let's look at this next clip.
Now, this is from October of 2021, also written by Dave DeCamp.
Yeah, go ahead and put that up if you can.
This is the U.S. Secretary of State Blinken.
Quote, U.S. policy is to oppose the reconstruction of Syria.
The U.S. literally wants the Syrians to live in a completely destroyed country and in misery because the U.S. opposes any attempts at normalization of the government of Bashar al-Assad.
That is the neocon policy in a nutshell.
They have no reverse gear, even when they've been proven to be wrong.
And our attempts to liberate Syria have, in fact, given it untold misery.
They never go back.
But why are they pushing and pushing and pushing that there's no reconstruction?
Because they're losing control of the narrative.
And the other countries in the Middle East, Dr. Paul, are, I think, starting to realize the mistake of following the U.S. under the Obama administration, of following them into the oblivion of Assad Moscow.
And I would offer this as my example, my exhibit, to say that I think things are changing very significantly in the Middle East.
Put on this next clip.
This is just from the last few days, few weeks.
Egypt's foreign minister visits Syria for the first time since 2011.
Well, that's when the U.S. launched the overthrow attempt against Assad.
So Egypt is on board.
Do the next one.
This is from the AP, I think also recently.
United Arab Emirates top diplomat back in Syria as relations continue to thaw.
This is from January.
So UAE is back on board.
Do the next one, and this is critical, and this continues to move.
Top Turkey, Syria, Russian diplomats to meet soon.
And that is a Turkish official.
So Turkey was the one Erdogan and Turkey initially was on board with Syria.
They had good relations.
They started to follow the U.S. and turn against Syria.
Now they're turning back.
This is, I think, why the U.S. doubles down on a bad bet and wants to continue to punish the Syrian people.
It looks like even in 2011, the Democrats had faded away from an anti-war party.
And, of course, it's been building rapidly since then.
But, you know, I mentioned the fact that sanctions and trade wars aren't good.
But we already have our beachhead in Syria.
And it's not just the occupation of the oil wells, which it is a major issue, but it involves like a third of their country.
Do we have troops there?
Oh, we wouldn't have troops there, would we?
Yeah.
Well, we're starting off with almost 1,000 troops already there.
And I imagine, without having the documentation right in front of me, I would be willing to wager that the CIA knows exactly what's going on over there.
So we have CIA agents over there, special forces over there.
And it's open knowledge that there are 900 to 1,000 troops over there.
And that's why the shift in attitude is a long time coming, because I know what side I would be in in a country if we had China occupying even California.
It would annoy me a little bit.
But no, this goes on, and we expect them to be obedient to us.
But then we come along and say, oh, are you suffering this stance?
This is an opportunity.
We're in trouble.
We've just had an earthquake.
The American people help people when they have earthquakes and different things.
But no, it's turn it on more, more force, because maybe this is the time we can get rid of Assad.
Even though right now they don't even brag so much about getting rid of Assad, because I would think issues like that would strengthen Assad because there is still this natural tendency for nationalism.
Most people like to live in their own country and have something to say about that.
And most people are annoyed when someone else occupies the part where the oil is.
What a shocker.
I just want to clarify one thing because I went and looked because I wanted to find Thomas Massey's statement on why he voted because I suspect obviously he voted against this because he is against sanctions as we are.
And I was surprised what I saw.
All of a sudden there was a huge, huge groundswell of criticism, massey votes against sympathizing with the suffering people of Syria.
And I thought, what the heck is going on?
I'll just give you one example.
I don't know who this person is, but there are many, many like him.
Shameful.
Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tom Massey voted no on resolution mourning the 50,000 plus earthquake deaths in Syria so much for pro-life.
Reminder that organizations like etc.
Okay, so it's like, what on what in thunder is going on here, as you might say, Dr. Paul?
So I went and I looked at the resolution because we read a lot of them and we know how much they lie in these resolutions.
So this is the actual text of H. Res 132.
And I'm putting this first one on to show you that it is from Congress.org and it does the whereas clauses which introduce it and talks about how the earthquake was horrible and terrible, et cetera, et cetera.
And then you scroll down a little bit.
This is the resolve clauses, the action clauses.
Resolve that the U.S. House of Representatives mourns the horrific loss of life in Turkey and Syria caused by the earthquakes in Turkey on February 6th and expresses its deep condolences to the families of the many earthquake victims.
And you read this and you say, what a monster Thomas Massey is.
Is he happy that they died?
And so you go to the very end, the second to last clause in the bill, and this is the kicker.
This is where they kick the Syrian people in the teeth, Dr. Paul.
Urges the Biden administration to remain committed to the protection of the Syrian people, including by implementing the Caesar-Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019.
Oh, what is that?
Civilian protection?
That sounds great.
Well, go to the next one because this is a summary of that bill.
This bill establishes additional sanctions and financial restrictions on institutions and individuals related to the conflict in Syria.
You can look it up yourself, the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, and read the rest of the summary.
So this is how they hide support for a nasty sanctions bill underneath this outpouring of sympathy for the people.
Pure lies.
Yes.
Pure lies.
But how many times have they done that?
I wanted to see how your memory is on this.
How many staffers, because the member of Congress wouldn't likely get to that last paragraph?
No, no way.
And if they did, they would want to be blinded for it.
But how many of your fellow staffers that you had to put up with do you think might have gotten to the whole line and given their member an honest assessment?
I think the ones that support the sanctions would have maybe glossed over that part and they would have called it a Civilian Protection Act, you know.
But I think it would have taken a few smart staffers.
And I know that Massey has smart staffers.
I think Justin Amash was known for having careful staffers.
And I think there are a few of them like that that would look, but the majority know.
China Buying Up Food00:02:10
They would just go, you know, we used to get a list.
Okay, here's what leadership recommends.
Okay, da-da-da-da.
You just go, and it's easy to brief your boss.
Recommend, recommend, recommend oppose.
Here, sir, here's your briefing.
But you know, what other number staffers will respond to is, well, how many phone calls did you get from constituents from our district and saying, hey, look, this is what's going on.
They probably didn't get any.
And they would support, you know, the horrendous problems they have with the people suffering from the earthquake.
They'd be more likely to ask how many calls we get from lobbyists.
Well, I want to take a moment, Dr. Paul, and I did send some additional clips over, and I apologize.
I didn't include them in my original section.
If our friends in the back behind the scenes will take a look.
But before we do that, I just want to mention again our sponsor for the month, our good friends at 4Patriots.com.
They make some great points in a directive they send us, which is that China is buying up food.
They're the number one fruit importer.
They're stocking up on food.
They're having tons of food.
They obviously see something coming.
We see supplies lines disrupted.
We see Europe in turmoil.
They understand if you can't support yourself, if you can't support your family, if you can't eat.
For the Chinese, obviously, it's about social problems.
You know, you got problems that they don't want to face.
But for us, it's about survival.
The good folks at 4patriots.com, the number 4patriots.com, have a solution, and it's a great solution.
It's a very flexible solution.
You get a full food kit, breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, dozens, thousands of servings, however much you want.
It's good food.
It's very easy to prepare food.
And it doesn't have to be a world-ending disaster that makes you break out some of this food.
So for your first purchase, 10% off if you use the code RON-R-O-N, go to 4Patriots.com, enter in RON, try it out at least, see what you think about it, stock it up, put it away, be prepared.
You don't know what's coming.
4Patriots.com.
Biden On Ukraine Spending00:06:26
And let's move on to our second, if we can.
I do apologize to our poor overworked staff, but if you found that second group of JPEGs that I sent over, this is for our second story, and it is a follow-up on some of the things that we've been talking about, which is sinking support for President Biden on his Ukraine policy.
I don't know if we have that first one up, but it is from, oh, there you go.
Extra brownies for the back after the show.
This is from the New York Times.
Biden challenged by softening public support for arming Ukraine.
New York Times.
You know, in one way, the first item we had on Syria, plus this one, one is moving in one direction that we detest or rather maintain the one direction on Syria and wanting to increase the punishment on the people of Syria after they're suffering from the earthquake.
So the demagogues won on that.
But on this next issue, Biden challenged.
So what is he looking at?
He's looking at polls.
He's looking at the number of people.
I said, if the letters would go to the members of the Congress, maybe they would stop and think about it.
But these things come up rapidly.
And sometimes they can bring them to the floor and there'll be unanimous consent.
And they very often would try to do that at the end of the day and the last minute.
They'd bring something up like that.
But in this case, the public opinion is coming our way, man.
And it says that Biden is challenged.
And I was impressed with where it appeared because there was a time their control was an iron fist.
Nothing going out, especially when they were dealing with COVID.
Oh, yeah.
They really punished on that.
But here, it was a New York Times article, and it appears in Yahoo.
They're not exactly libertarian allies.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, here's the thing.
You know, Biden went to, he had a surprise trip to Ukraine just a couple of weeks ago, and that was meant to really shore up support among Americans.
Here's a brave Biden flying into Ukraine into a war zone.
Of course, we had to ask the Russians for permission.
Please don't shoot the plane down.
The president's on it.
They said, okay, whatever.
We won't shoot it down.
Well, the trip was a total failure.
It did not show up support.
On the contrary, it actually ended, it added an element of goofiness because there's this image of brave Biden and Zelensky walking through Kiev.
Air attack sirens go off, and they continue walking confidently.
And other people point out, if this were really genuine air raid sirens, the Secret Service would be grabbing him, putting him into his armored car, and speeding off at 1,000 miles an hour.
So the whole thing was fake.
He had a fake speech in Poland where he jumbled every single word.
He could barely get it out of his mouth.
So this sort of desperate attempt to shore up resolve among Americans did not work.
And I think the New York Times article recognizes that if we can put up that next clip here from the article, he said, when he made a surprise trip to Kiev last week, Biden assured the country with great confidence that the Americans stand with you.
And then the author of the article writes, but the question that remains unanswered is, for how long?
Yeah.
And, you know, in this article, it brings the subject up, how long, how long?
And it says, despite Biden's pledge, he's over there, I guess, in Poland, Ukrainian government has grown concerned about the president.
And Zelensky is trying, he's trying to set up a telephone call with the speaker, Kevin McCarthy, to make his country's case.
You know, what my thoughts was, well, if I was on the receiving end, what do you, you must have a wrong number.
I'm a United States president.
I'm a congressman from the United States.
What are you calling here about?
Exactly.
And then, yeah, but the other question is, why does it even get this credibility?
Because they've been doing it for two years and they get the call through and everybody sends them more money.
Even up last week, Yellen was over there sending more money.
Yellen, of all people, yeah.
She has the control of the public.
Exactly, exactly.
Why are you calling?
That's a good answer on the phone.
Well, here are a couple numbers from the New York Times article, if you can put the next one up.
And this is the first one.
Overall, and we've talked about this, but it's worth repeating.
It says, overall, public support for Ukraine aid has fallen from 60% last May to 48% now, according to surveys by A.P. Nork Center for Public Affairs Research.
The share of Americans who think the UNS has given too much has gone from 7% to 26%, according to Pew.
So two polls really showing how badly he's losing in his attempt to court the American people to continue support for war with Russia on the back and in the blood of Ukrainians.
And I don't see it going anywhere differently because things aren't looking very good on the ground in Ukraine either.
But I wanted to do one other thing before we move to the last one, if you don't mind, because this is how Biden explains this.
Oh, well, it's just the MAGA people who were opposed to it and put this on.
And this is setting up an interesting roundup between the two.
If you can put that last one on, I don't know if we have, here we go.
So when David Muir of ABC News noted in an interview last week that many Americans were asking how long we can keep spending in Ukraine, the president quirled with the premise, quote, I'm not sure how many are asking that.
I know the MAGA crowd is.
The right-wing Republicans are talking about we can't do this.
Well, he's going to have to be careful because Donald Trump and Adam Dick from the RPI has written about this, is clearly trying to position himself, Dr. Paul, as an anti-war candidate right now.
So actually Biden is doing him a favor.
As the war becomes unpopular with Americans, he's pushing those Americans into Trump's camp.
He better be careful, I think, what he's trying to do.
But anyway, next to this next segment, Dr. Paul, is the goofiest news of the day segment.
And I'll turn it over to you.
You want to call it the goofiest?
I was going to call it a crazy segment.
And, you know, I was looking for one that we could use, and I found one, but I think I found two.
Before I know it, I could find lots of things.
That's all the crazy segments.
So we might search them out to have a little bit of entertainment, even though it's serious and tragic.
But the one we picked to start with, the UN discusses, this is ridiculous.
Crazy Segment Protection00:02:52
The UN discusses darkening the skies to combat climate change.
I wonder what kind of black smoke they're going to put up there.
It just you can't even think about that as being a practical thing.
And how can you do that?
What about all the effort we put forward that a little sunlight on our body gives you vitamin D?
What are you going to do?
You know what?
These are the guys conspiracy, conspiring to make sure that these viruses really do damage.
They're going to wipe out vitamin D.
So, well, that's just crazy.
So I don't think that I hope that wakes up people.
But you know what happens?
It's so absurd.
You know, the Nazis said, make the lies so absurd.
They'll say, well, nobody can believe that.
That can't be true.
But they were true, you know.
So there was one more that I want to bring up, and then they'll see, get your comment.
This has been a run, but it's a real aggravator.
Transgender athlete wins four female running competitions in a row.
Wow.
What an athlete.
Transgender athlete who now identifies as a woman has won four different females running competitions so far this year alone after smashing a woman's 5,000 meter run.
You know, what is, you know, they do it in the name of civil liberties.
Everybody deserves a chance.
And you can't exclude people by rules.
But what about when you're wrestling, they have rules about size and scope.
What about age groups?
I mean, you don't let seven-year-olds play football against high school teams.
So it's just very crazy what they do.
But this whole thing makes absolutely no sense.
And it's been going online.
But there was, I think in this case, the normal girls, you know, they resist it.
They say, we're not going to do that.
But why is it that people accept the basic principle is, well, you know, they play on people.
If you do, if you don't allow it, you're a vegan.
You won't let everybody participate.
So you have to protect the minority.
Well, you protect the minority at their idea of protecting a minority to do something, even no matter what it is, special privilege to do something, you take away the liberty of the 99%.
And that's what happens.
And all these examples are done at the expense of somebody else's civil liberties.
And that's why libertarianism is so important because every single person has the same amount of liberty and you don't get any benefits and no punishments because you belong to a group.
Protecting Minority Liberties00:03:48
And that would solve a lot of problems.
But here, this is an effort.
They play on it.
And people go along with that because, well, what we have to do, I mean, that's their lifestyle.
And we can't say, oh, you can't play girls' sports ever again.
You know, that wouldn't be fair.
Maybe I could go out for the NFL.
I'm a little old, but I could finally get my dream.
I hope we're getting to the high watermark of that, Dr. Paul.
But I wanted to just comment on the blotting out the sun thing because I have to confess, when you first sent it over to me, I thought, I don't know, this might be from the cookie files.
Can you put up?
I don't know if you can find it now, but it is that.
Here we go.
So this is the article you found from Igor Chudov.
UN discusses darkening the skies to combat climate change.
And go to the next one.
This is what they're talking about specifically.
They're talking about injecting reflective nanoparticles, sulfur dioxide, into the atmosphere, sending seeding ocean clouds with sub-micron salt particles and using space mirrors.
Many giant mirrors launched into outer space to reflect sunlight.
It sounds insane.
I thought this can't be true.
This Igor guy's been puffing on some funny weed.
I don't know what.
So I went to the UN itself, and this is from that report, key findings, and you can read it for yourself, talking about the need for solar radiation modification.
They literally are seriously talking about this.
I felt ashamed for doubting you a little bit, Dr. Paul, but there you go.
The UN wants to blot out the sun.
But you know that I mentioned the vitamin D. Some of us need that.
Yeah, really.
But what about agriculture?
Everybody depends on agriculture.
And if you do this, it has to affect the agriculture as so much government rules and regulations right now have injured, you know, the agricultural industry.
But they're teaching people how to eat worms and a few other things to replace meat.
Yeah.
Well, we know that Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab and all the others, they want a few billion less people anyway, so they'd be thrilled to have the sun blotted out and have all of us.
You ruined my argument again.
You know, that's what they want.
They probably love the idea of nuclear winter.
That's probably why they're pushing all this war stuff.
But not for them.
Yeah, no, no, they'll be fine.
They'll be just fine.
So anyway, I'm just going to close out then if we're done and just thank all of our viewers for watching the show.
We appreciate it.
We've had some couple of really good weeks and we hope to continue those.
We hope we can provide you with what we think is important in the world, but with our own special flavor into it, with our own special perspectives that we have to offer.
And your being here gives us the energy to continue doing it.
So thanks very much to you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
And as usual, I too want to thank our viewers for tuning in.
And we are very pleased with the way things are going, you know, personally in a way of getting our message out.
But we also recognize the job ahead.
And the reason why I don't get discouraged is because there's an unknown element out there that if you have an individual possibly watching this show or listening to Daniel's very good speeches, and they get converted, and they go out and start talking about it one-on-one, one-on-ten, and the message is spread.
You can't even measure it.
So I believe very sincerely that the ideas do have consequences.
I think we're winning that fight.
I think the majority of the people, if they ever had an honest polling of what people really think and want, I think they'd vote for freedom and they'd vote for peace.
And yet we don't win that.
So I think it's up to us to be more creative and invite more people to be more creative in their own way to spread the message.
The spreading of the message of liberty is what our goal is.