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March 13, 2023 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
31:58
Peacemaker China Makes History In Middle East

With successful brokering by China, Saudi Arabia and Iran have set aside years of enmity and proxy war to restore relations. Suddenly the United States seems irrelevant in the Middle East. Also today: Cracks developing in US/Ukraine alliance. Finally: Medical schools go "woke" - what it means for your health.

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Saudi Oil Development 00:15:12
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 this morning?
Doing just fine.
And I'm going to start off today with an announcement, another hint that maybe there's a coalition that is on again, off again.
You know, can the Chinese get along with the Saudis, which would be significant because it would challenge the petrodollar.
And the Chinese have their goals.
And that would be a big thing.
So the article today was pretty significant.
And there is a article considered as a remarkable development.
If it goes through, of course, it's too early to know.
It's not easy to dethrone a currency, but we're capable of doing that.
Every country is eventually capable of dethroning their currency.
So that always exists.
But this is something that has been hinted all along.
And it's sort of a reaction to our policies.
It isn't like all of a sudden out of the clear blue, they're bosom buddies, you know, and they want to do it.
But we get involved over there, and we are divisive in many ways.
And then we put sanctions on the Iranians, and we punish them.
So then the Saudis are participants.
So it's moving away from America.
I think we lose stature when this happens, and we lose some economic clout when this happens.
But I think we're going to hear more about this as time goes on, especially with the banking system here in the States starting to rock a bit too.
And who knows how far that'll go, how far that's going to extend.
And that too will have an international effect on us.
Yeah, it's a big significant development because, as we know, the Saudis and the Iranians have been at loggerheads for a number of years.
And obviously, there are historical reasons, the different branches of Shia, of Islam that are at war with each other, essentially.
But along comes China and brokers a peace deal between the two of them where they will each recognize each other, open embassies, start relations.
And this is something they have been trying to do for quite some time.
And in fact, the last attempt to do it was thwarted because remember General Soleimani, he was on the way to Saudi Arabia to deliver a peace message when Donald Trump blew him up.
So the U.S. obviously does not want Saudi Arabia and Iran to mend their fences and to get back together.
And interesting for a number of reasons that the Chinese have stepped into the breach and acted as an honest broker and brought these two together.
And I think it will be a very significant development for the Middle East, not least which because it really emphasizes what we've been saying all along, which is that aggressive U.S. foreign policy doesn't make the U.S. more relevant to the world.
It actually makes the U.S. more irrelevant to the world.
So a peace can be brought in a very, very difficult situation with implications across the board from the Yemen war to relations with Israel, etc.
A peace deal can be brought with the United States, not only not a part of it, but sitting on the sidelines angrily trying to prevent the development from happening.
So I think it's a very, very significant move.
And oil, again, is a big deal.
And of course, it comes up when we talk about Syria because we have maintained a presence.
We took the part we like the best, and we took the oil.
And that sort of annoys the people who have suffered the consequence of this, but because we have been powerful.
But I always tell people to be aware of the fact as we weaken, there's going to be more.
And this might even be a sign of that.
You know, we are not as strong as we have been in the past.
And they're showing their strength by coming together.
They could have done it a long time ago.
But I think they're sick and tired of us being over there.
And there's no reason for us to be over there.
If somebody could come in here and say, you guys are wrong, because I want to show you how dangerous it is to just let this happen and that we don't pay any attention.
But that hasn't happened.
And that is the reason that, for the most part, our interference will backfire and it will cause more harm.
It will, in the end, run cost money.
Well, we have almost 1,000 troops in Syria protecting the oil.
That has to cost a little bit.
But we'll sell the oil and pay our bills.
But it's not a good situation.
That's why a principled stand for non-intervention sort of solves the problems.
You don't have to weigh this country against this country and how far is this and who has what money and say, well, you can do this and we can negotiate something.
I think the negotiation is, should we be a country that is aggressive enough to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries and get involved by the use of military force and sanctions and tariffs?
And I just think that's dangerous.
Yeah, and the other development, you know, in a related way is that, you know, Saudi Arabia and China have increased trade significantly over the past year.
And there has been talk on and on about being able to trade in one.
So the end of the petrodollar.
And as recently, I'm looking at an article here from Yahoo just earlier, well, late last month, that says, Saudi Arabia says it's now open to the idea of trading in currencies besides the U.S. dollar.
So you're seeing maybe the end of the petrodollar with the rise of China.
So that's a very significant development.
And also this rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia opens the door for the Saudis to follow what has been a trending development in the region, which is one by one countries in the region are restoring their ties with Syria.
Now, Saudi Arabia was a big part of the overthrow Assad movement starting from 2011.
And if they're reverting back to where, like the United Arab Emirates, you had Egypt, you have one by one, Turkey, countries moving back toward normalizing ties with Assad in Syria.
And I think you'll probably see that with Saudi Arabia as well, which again freezes the U.S. out of the region and makes us the odd, not us, but our government, the odd man in the room.
Here you are occupying part of Syria, stealing their oil, and the rest of us are making peace.
Yeah, and I think they can move in that direction without having a final say about, oh, this means the dollar will no longer be used.
No, dollar may be continue to use it, may be used less significantly.
But if you have two countries that are getting along and they are protecting their currents to a degree where they can come up with an exchange rate, there's no reason why one country can't sell oil to another country without us being involved and using dollars to do it.
The petrodollar has been just like so much of the international banking, the IMF, and the monetary system has been beneficial to us.
But I think that this could be a move of great significance, but we might not know how significant tomorrow or the next day.
But with the shaky banking system that we have, that system is rather fragile.
And if there are two countries doing a lot, if the Saudis and Iranians are doing a fair amount of exchanges, maybe India might do it.
They keep hinting that they will do some of that too.
So I think that people's needs, they're going to finally get to the point where their personal needs will dictate it rather than their fear of what the United States might do to them.
And we often say on the show that, you know, while the U.S. comes with threats, with bombs, with sanctions, with color revolutions like we're doing right now in Georgia, trying to overthrow the government there, the U.S. comes with all these tools, and the Chinese seem to come with business contracts, with the negotiations.
And I think you can see that clearly in actually, if you go to the second clip, because we've kind of overtaken the first one, you can kind of see this in the Chinese reaction.
China's most senior foreign policy official, Wang Yi, celebrated the signing as, quote, a victory.
And here's what he said.
This is a victory for the dialogue, a huge victory for peace, and is major positive news for the world, which is currently so turbulent and restive.
And it sends a clear signal.
Now, when is the last time you heard an American sincerely, an American diplomat sincerely talking about a victory for peace, you know, that didn't involve conquering or bombing somewhere?
And what happens, if you even hint at a softer statement in Washington, they turn on you like you're un-American, you're committing treason and the nonsense, and they really pour it on the individuals, but they won't look at it objectively.
And, of course, the freer the markets there are, the more the decisions are made outside of government.
And certainly when other governments are doing something, we don't have a responsibility to deal with it.
And I think overall, if somebody studies, especially since World War II, our involvement in all the overseas activity, it's amazing that we had enough wealth to squander.
But I think the squandering is nearing the end.
And that's why I think our banking system is very fragile, because we've been able to extend credit, but there's always a limit to how much you can extend credit.
And we've been able to do it, but that'll come to an end, too.
Yeah, for sure.
Well, the other big player in the region that's going to certainly feeling the repercussions of this rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia is Israel.
And we're looking on anti-war.com, and there's an unnamed senior Israeli official who's angry.
And I think that's probably the state of a lot of Israeli politicians right now.
They're angry about this.
They blame the weakness of the U.S. government and the previous Israeli government, at least according to this article.
And you might say weakness, but weakness can be measured in many ways.
Sometimes weakness can be measured in being too aggressive, in being too cocky.
But I actually happen to think that this is a good news for Israel.
Because Israel has been able, or has unfortunately been on a course of making enemies with the other countries in the region because they've always felt that the U.S. is the strong big brother that will always have their back.
It's almost like a moral hazard.
And I think now seeing that the trend in the region is making peace, and Israel has had some overtures to Saudi Arabia in that area.
So I think they may see that this is the trend.
And without the U.S. carrying that big stick behind them, maybe they'll find that diplomacy is the way to go.
Little pragmatists.
A little pragmatist.
They have to live with what's going on.
So I think that things are being shifted.
Yeah, I think the most important thing we try to do is sort it out to try to convince people that you don't have to defend on the militarism and the strong, tough talk or obedience to the military-industrial complex or saying it would be bad for our economy.
The oil prices might go up and all that nonsense because so often the opposite happens.
I think in this case we're seeing some things happening that they probably didn't expect the system to be softened a bit.
And it's also becoming abundantly clear that the State Department is not a tool of diplomacy and peace, but is a tool of war under the Biden administration.
And certainly it was when we had people like Pompeo in as well.
So the contrast is very interesting.
Well, I guess move on to our next one, because this is also an interesting trend that we're noticing.
If we can go ahead to the Politico article on Ukraine, this came out over the weekend, and it was written about by Dave DeCamp in anti-war.com, but the origination is Politico.
It says, little fishers, the U.S.-Ukraine war unity is slowly cracking apart.
And it's a very interesting article because it points out what we've been noticing and discussing.
And there have been a lot of indications now that there is a big strain in the relationship between the Biden administration, the Republicans, and Ukraine.
And it looks like it might, you know, continue to crack and may endanger Biden's determination to stick with Ukraine as long as it takes whatever you need.
Especially when you're talking, I was looking at a funny meme before this started of Biden and Zelensky on the phone, and Biden said, I need that money back because the banks are all crashing.
So it's interesting to see this development.
And, you know, this is something that I think will continue for a while longer.
And it's something that can't be beneficial to us.
It's going to cause us problems because the people are disgusted.
They say the U.S.-Ukraine unity is cracking.
But the people are backing off too.
But there's people in the administration.
They're not the second in charge or anything, but there's some that's pretty high up that's giving, you know, in a military position, might advise, you know, the president, you can't wait until Ukraine gets Crimea back again before we talk about peace.
I mean, this is not going to get anybody anything.
That's the position that, and that's Zelensky's position.
You know, wait till we get our property back and then we'll talk.
And meanwhile, they keep losing more.
Well, the one thing that's interesting in this article, and if we can put on that next clip, is that Michael McCall, who, as you know, is extremely hawkish, particularly on this issue, he would like to be at war with Russia, I'm sure, right now.
Extremely hawkish, probably out of step with certainly some of the up-and-comers in the Republican Party.
But here's what he says.
Even McCall, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is getting concerned.
He says the administration doesn't have a clear policy objective and a clear goal.
Is it to drag this thing out, which is precisely what Vladimir Putin wants, he said.
Is it just give them enough to survive and not to win?
I don't see a policy for victory right now.
And if we don't have that, then what are we doing?
And now that, of course, is his way of talking, meaning that we should have given them everything they want.
The attacks, missiles, B-52s, you take it.
Just give us your shopping list.
That's what he means.
But it also means, I think, maybe I'm reading too much between the lines, Dr. Paul, that he is starting to get nervous.
Bakhmut Siege Chaos 00:07:07
And the idea of what's your strategy, well, Congress should have asked that before they passed $100 billion.
What's the strategy here?
Why are we giving you this money?
They didn't do it.
And I think now they're trying to cover their rear ends when they see things aren't going as well.
Well, I'd like to reverse some of that foreign policy stuff, at least back to 1945, and say, we're turning over a new leaf.
We're not ready to go to war like we do all the time.
And the enthusiasm has been diminished.
The people aren't in support of it.
And that's why I think ultimately that's very important.
But people don't like what's happening with our economy right now.
And when they hear these figures, you know, $100 billion, where'd they get it?
Well, they got it by charging you a lot more for your food.
And they raise your taxes.
And that's why we have these problems.
And so I think there's a lot of reluctance developing there.
But it's also a big job to confront and reverse the pattern of the military-industrial complex, which involves a lot more than just a couple bankers in a secret room dealing with it.
I mean, it's a big deal.
It is a big deal.
And, you know, some of the fault lines in Ukraine are pretty obvious now.
The article talks about Bakhmut.
And that's been under siege for a long time.
For months, the Russians have been trying to take Bakhmut.
And it looks like now they're succeeding.
They have the Pincher movement, and they have it pretty much encircled.
Apparently, one of the disagreements is that the U.S. has been urging Ukraine to abandon Bakhmut.
They call it irrelevant.
It's an irrelevant.
It's a symbolic city.
Well, obviously, Ukraine seems to know a little bit more about it than the Pentagon or the advisors in the Biden administration because they've been tenaciously holding on to that.
They've been dumping thousands and thousands into it.
And people that we listen to who know a little bit more than the average bear at the Pentagon, like Doug McGregor, they say that Bakhmut is critical because it's a critical component of the defensive line that they've been building up since 2014.
And so they say when Bakhmut goes, it'll be a lot easier to move into Slavyansk and Kramotorsk and other areas.
So there's clearly a disagreement.
I think the U.S., my own opinion, I think the U.S. is downplaying Bakhmut's importance because they know it's a lost cause.
Even Jen Stoltenberg said, the NATO chief said they're going to lose Bakhmut.
I think the U.S. is trying to save face by saying, ah, no big deal.
We didn't want it anyway.
So that's one big one.
And also the Nord Stream when we talked about that last week.
How all of a sudden out of the blue the U.S. is saying, the Ukrainians did it.
Don't look at us.
The Ukrainians did it.
And I think it might be these two together and a few other things that are in the article.
I think they might be signifying the fact that they're looking for some kind of an off-ramp.
We've got to get out of this mess.
And I think that's probably a good sign.
I think the worst things have gotten.
The argument is pretty strong that this is not just a bad choice.
It's not an accident that there's chaos in our streets within our country.
And it's a result of people who are really looking for chaos and they want to benefit from it.
And that serves the interests of militarizing domestically and the loss of civil liberties here at home.
But internationally, it's the same thing.
There's some people that might say that, you know, if we wanted that war to end, we might be able to do it in a week or two.
Maybe they just want to drag it on.
It seems like chaos over there is also benefiting the military-industrial complex.
If they keep doing this, and then they can brag about, well, Americans aren't dying.
We have enough other people who are going to sacrifice for our policies.
Yeah.
The other interesting thing about this, too, Dr. Paul, is that, you know, all this talk about we're going to help Ukraine win, Ukraine's winning, Ukraine's going to win.
Well, that tone is kind of changing a little bit.
And this is from the political article.
It quotes the National Security Council spokesperson, Adrienne Watson.
And listen to what she says.
This is a real shift, I think.
She says, the best thing we can do is to continue to help Ukraine succeed on the battlefield so they can be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table for when the time comes.
So they're not, when you win, you don't go to the negotiating table.
So they're basically admitting that Ukraine is not going to win this, but we want to give them at least a little bit of leverage when they're forced to sit down and talk with the Russians.
That seems to be a significant thing.
Our hawks.
Our hawks aren't going to accept that.
Because, you know, the hawks still exist for Vietnam.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, the Vietnam is, we didn't do the job right.
We should have been there.
And, you know, just pursued that forever.
So they will continue to do that if the money is there.
And that's one thing that's coming up short.
And the people are getting tired of it all.
And I think the people are restless.
I think that there's a limit to how much they'll put up with, especially if they're having some pain and suffering here at home.
And I think that's one thing that has been accomplished.
There is a connection with our foreign policy, with some of the problems that we have here.
The chaos overseas, whether it's in Syria or wherever, that comes back and haunts us.
How much did we pay in Syria?
$100 billion?
What do we get for it?
That's a lot of money.
And the market keeps moving along.
Yeah.
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Medical School Dismantlement 00:08:54
And we thank them for sponsoring the show.
Well, let's move on to our final topic.
And this one I know is near and dear to your heart.
Let's put on this first, this next clip if we can, because this is from Real Clear Politics.
And we saw it on Zero Hedge, code red, downplaying academic excellence in med school admissions.
Dr. Paul, that does not sound very good to me.
What do you think?
This is put out by people, though, on the past.
They've identified and said, we don't like the principle of affirmative action.
We just need to help some people along.
You know, if you disobey and don't follow the rules on foreign policy, they charge you that you're unpatriotic.
You're pro-Russian, pro-Soviet, and all that kind of nonsense.
But here, if you don't agree with what they're proposing here, and that is the tremendous effort to have to promote the students in medical schools, then you're a racist.
You have no defense whatsoever.
But when you look at this and when I look at it, it's all a facade.
Everything that they do does exactly the opposite, the opposite effect, just because they manipulate who gets to go to medical school.
And they say, well, you know, we have to help people because there's a discrepancy, you know, in how the numbers get into medical school.
So they do that.
And there's a lot of downside to this because it undermines the whole system.
If people say, well, how did you get into medical school?
You know, it'll be completely, it can turn out to be negative.
And even the universities that go along with this whole thing of motivation, they say that they make the point that this is good.
This is right.
This is the right thing to do.
It's good.
It's good for, it's not racist and all that kind of stuff.
But their goal is to, what they want is diversity.
They want equity.
And they want inclusionism.
Can you tell me what is it if you have the magic of a free market volunteeristic system, what wouldn't we be able to accomplish?
You know, it's just a fake is what it is.
And it's also going, I think it'll undermine the medical profession.
I think it'll undermine the whole system.
I think the universities are going to be undermined.
But they don't even test them anymore.
But people are going to eventually resist this.
But right now, I think it all started when they started manipulating all the way back to 1910 with the Flexner report.
Because there was some independence.
There were some private schools.
And there were schools for minorities and there were schools for women when they weren't going to the regular schools.
And there was also a challenge by the homeopathic school against the allopathic school.
And the ALA didn't like that.
So they have this revision under the Flexner report and they outlaw all of this.
And I think right now, this is one thing that I think the homeopathic, the more naturalist, won a little bit of ground with COVID because if you would have followed those rules, you would have been better off if you've sent your loved ones to have a ventilator put on because they didn't know what else to do.
That's a serious problem.
But this is just total rejection of common sense.
Because there were private schools and things back there, my son's going to a medical school right now.
It's a private school.
And I didn't even know they existed anymore.
But it's a private medical school.
It's expensive, but it was something that he wanted to do.
So they're still out there.
It's not an absolute.
But I'll tell you, they make it so that it's very difficult for the average person to get into one of those schools for financial reasons.
But I think that this is a lot more serious.
They pan this off as being so holier than thou.
We care about people.
You don't care about people.
It's sort of like anything, any social welfare program you don't support, that means you'll, how many times have you heard Hillary say, you're not going to let all the babies die?
But we'll take care of them our way.
So it's a pity.
And eventually, the evidence will come out that this stuff doesn't work.
The quality of medicine is going to go down.
And I think it's still good in places, but it's still vulnerable when it's regulated like this.
And they Pick students for social reasons rather than whether or not they know what chemistry is all about.
That's unnecessary.
That's being racist.
Chemistry is racist.
Yeah, it's really alarming.
And put up the next clip.
This is from the article.
Because what they're doing is they're doing away with the MCATs.
They're doing away with these tests that are objectively measuring your skills in biology, biochemistry, organic chemistry.
These are kind of important if you're going to be a doctor.
And this discrimination, by the way, is not necessarily against whites.
I would guess that Asians and maybe even folks from India are going to be discriminated most against because they tend to do very well.
And that's just a fact.
But they're dropping the tests, but by dropping the test, they're also getting into trouble because their rankings as universities, as medical schools, are going down.
We put up that next clip.
So what they did is they got together and they decided to all withdraw from the U.S. News and World Report rankings, hoping to cover up the fact that they're no longer using MCAT scores to let people in.
Now, what are they using to let people into the schools, to medical schools?
Put on the next one because I couldn't believe this, Dr. Paul.
Medical schools are calling equity and lived experience.
I would rather your lived experience include learning chemistry and biology.
My lived experience tells me I should be in medical school.
It's funny, but it's not funny because next time any of us are going under the knife, we might start wondering whether this person's lived experience included studying.
They're arguing that it's equity is the golden diversity and all this, which is really nonsense.
But in a freer market, what the goals are is striving for excellence on a personal basis.
And you know what?
Patients are pretty smart.
I think most, until you get into all this insurance and government and which doctor you're allowed to go to, in the past it was always by recommendation by other family members or by friends because they would want to know what they thought.
But that isn't it.
And the idea that the government can regulate and make sure they only get the people they want, and it eventually is going to decrease quality.
I don't think there's any doubt about that.
And if you want independence in medicine and innovation and disgust, just think of this nonsense in COVID.
If you even talked about natural immunity, you could lose your job.
It's really insane what we put up with.
And yet, the number of doctors that stood up were few.
There's more now, but some of them suffer a great deal of consequences, you know, because they said, this is wrong.
You're doing the wrong thing.
But you're not supposed to think under their system.
You're supposed to march to the tune of Dr. Fauci and the bureaucrats.
And that's how you would get ahead because you will be rewarded with money.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it's pretty disturbing.
Well, I'm just going to close by saying that again, June 3rd, mark the date.
We're going to hopefully have tickets on sale in a couple of days.
We're just waiting for a couple of things to happen.
But we're taking the show on the road, but we don't have to go very far because we're going up to Houston for the Ron Paul Institute Spring Conference, June 3rd.
I will let you know when tickets are on sale, but hopefully within the next couple of days.
Over to you.
Very good.
And I want to thank our viewers once again very much for tuning in today.
And we look forward to having these seminars and getting together because I think it benefits both ways.
It's a two-way street because I like it because I like to find out what people are thinking and what their questions they have.
Looking Forward to the Conference 00:00:30
And others will meet other people.
And I think there's a lot of people that have long-time friendships when they go to these conferences because it brings like-minded people together, and you don't have to quite be intimidated by the nonsense that's poured down our throats, you know, as far as what you can say and do and what doctors you can pick, and all this stuff.
It's just nonsense.
So, we look forward to the conference, and hopefully, we see all of you there.
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