US Greenlights Missiles To Finland...What Could Go Wrong?
The US government announced that it's sending half a billion dollars worth of guided multiple launch rocket systems near Finland's border with Russia. The escalation and out-of-control spending continues. The Pentagon argues that the move will "support the foreign policy and national security of the United States." Also today, US HIMARS missiles are said to have hit a major dam in Ukraine and US progressives have found a new foreign policy home...with the neocons!
Hello everybody and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today is Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, welcome to the program.
Happy Monday Dr. Paul.
We had a busy weekend didn't we?
Good, good.
Don't forget tomorrow is Election Day.
Uh-oh.
I bet a lot of people are wondering what's going to happen.
But we'll let out a couple hints, maybe tomorrow, of what's going to happen in the future.
Yeah.
So, but it's good to be back and ready to go.
Yeah, we had a great conference over the weekend.
A lot of people came down to Lake Jackson.
I had a lot of fun.
It's amazing.
I didn't think they'd ever find Lake Jackson on that map.
It's a city of enchantment.
We've had them come from far away places too.
Yeah, we did.
We had a good time.
Great people.
A lot of great people.
They followed the rules.
It's serious business, but you're supposed to have a little fun.
It seemed like they were having fun.
It was a lot of fun.
It was great to meet them.
So here we go.
The first, we're going to talk about Finland, right?
Oh, yeah, we sure better because it annoyed me this morning to no end about Finland.
It says the U.S. Green Lights guided rockets for Finland.
You know, last week we reported that we were opening up the doors to supply things and these are just follow up on their plans because it's so important for our national security, you know, that we have Finland armed.
But they claim it's to bolster Europe's northern flank.
But they also say when they ask for the money and all, they also say this is good for our national security.
It's good for our national security, our economic progress, of course, for the military industrial complex.
And also, this is the stretch.
Political stability.
They're going to do that too.
But all of a sudden, there's a lot of money and there's expansion.
It's no backing off.
The progressives have cave.
Nobody wants to talk peace except most Americans if you had a true poll.
Yeah, yeah.
And more than ever because, you know, the economy is crashing because of this type of policy.
Yeah.
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Still Promoting Liberty00:15:14
We'll be talking a little bit more about them in the future.
But Dr. Paul, back to the program.
As you point out, they floated the idea of sending nuclear missiles to Finland.
Finland said, hey, no problem.
Put them on the border with Russia.
What could go wrong?
And now they said, well, we won't do that.
We're just going to put half a billion dollars worth of regular missiles on the border.
And as you say, it's a big boon.
It's an economic boon for the military-industrial complex.
Yes, and it goes against some of the promises that we had been committed to since the breakdown of the Cold War because we more or less promise that we would not be putting our troops and NATO up on their borders.
And they don't talk a lot about United States.
We pay for everything.
But it's always, you know, the negotiations for the coup in 2014.
It's best, I guess, to think NATO versus Russia.
Of course, NATO is United States, and there's the funding.
And like you say, there's over $500 million for these weapons.
I keep asking myself, I like to try to figure out why, why, why?
Why are they doing this?
It doesn't make sense.
Are they really expecting an invasion?
Are they really doing it for their national security or our national security?
Or what's going on?
Because it leads to chaos.
There's no benefit, it seems, from this.
And it seems to be so destructive to do this, but they pursue this.
And unfortunately, the American people, for so long, have gone along with it throughout my lifetime.
They've always gone along with it.
But even today, I look for the optimism.
And we're having more and more people, as actually was discussed by a few people, in this campaign.
At the same time, we see progressives whipping out and not even standing strong at all about why are we getting into an unnecessary war.
And this is just a small step toward war.
But it's a preparation that I think is wasteful and very dangerous.
You always talked about how disappointing it is that formerly neutral countries who benefited from neutrality have now all of a sudden decided to clamor for one side and to have a war stance against the other side.
And it doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense.
You know, Finland's economy prospered a lot, partially because of the huge Russian tourism.
You know, Russians love to go over to Finland.
Who knows what they did over there?
They had a good time.
Obviously, that's gone.
So they basically kicked themselves in the face, not having, you know, just destroying all of this tourism for what?
For nothing.
And we can actually put that next clip on if we can, what's showing the tank firing missiles.
This is from Zero Hedge.
To reiterate what you mentioned, State Department has approved the potential sale of half a billion dollars worth of guided multiple launch rocket systems, GMLRS, and related equipment to Helsinki.
And it's clearly, Dr. Paul, an escalation.
There's just no way of getting around it.
If the GMLRS, whatever, were put on the border of Mexico and the U.S. and they were ready to fire into the U.S., into Texas, for example, obviously we would view it as an escalation.
And the question really is why?
What's the point of it?
You know, if this was an honest approach to a very sincere effort for somebody to do great harm to the Scandinavian country or to us, you know, that'd be understandable.
But it makes everything worse.
You know, you add the complications of just our presence there and inciting more antagonism and more challenges with NATO and Russia.
But what about our involvement?
Of course, I think it's our involvement because we run the show, we have the money and the weapons.
But it's also our involvement in the mess with the pipeline.
You know, why would the German people go along with that?
Of course, they're suffering from it now, but the pipelines get blown up.
And if there had ever been a natural willingness to pursue free markets, it would have been after the Cold War.
And Europe should have become good friends with Russia.
And I think the Russians were open to it.
But no, the prevailing attitude of the Hawks has had control of the media.
And they said otherwise.
Yeah, they did.
And in a related way, if we can put on that next one, this is what a lot of people are talking about this morning and yesterday.
Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor to President Biden, a leaked report, I'm sure conveniently leaked, came out that he has held undisclosed talks with Putin's aides.
I think he apparently spoke to his counterpart in the Russian government.
And the intent, according to these unnamed officials who reported to the Wall Street Journal, was to find ways of avoiding increasing escalation of the conflict.
Now, I'm not sure I believe that.
And one of the analysts I listen to a lot, I think he makes a good point, which is that these are the Clinton team.
Jake Sullivan, Tony Blinken, Victoria Newland, they don't know how to de-escalate.
That's not in their DNA.
They're only about escalation.
They're neocons.
They're about ramping it up.
So the question is, why were they talking?
As again, this analyst that I listened to, I think he makes a good point.
Alex Christophoro says, it may be a warning from the U.S. to Russia that if you start this offensive, which we expect to happen, which we know there's been a buildup, they've brought in 300,000 troops in the partial mobilization.
If you do this, these little tripwire Americans that you see over there in Western Ukraine, we're going to actually see a heck of a lot more of them coming in.
We don't know if that's true or not, but we're speculating maybe that's what he's telling him.
Whatever the case, the fact that Jake Sullivan is talking with his counterparts in Russia, normally in a normal world, would be an encouraging thing.
In this case, I'm not so sure.
No, and that is a big problem because no matter what the announcements are and the pretense, you could almost just assume the opposite of what they're doing.
But no, I just think that we are so much less likely to think that it's just purely a partisan system.
You know, we do know you mentioned who's really in charge from previous Democratic administration.
But are we home free if we just have a Republican foreign policy?
I mean, that's where that was identified as the solid front, you know, was the Republicans.
They were the warmongers.
And yet now it seems like on the surface, you could make a case that they're stronger than ever.
And there's just a slight mention in the campaign.
It's not going to be resolved tomorrow, you know, with an election and say, well, you know, anybody who was supporting this war, you know, they lost.
It's such a way that the media pounds on the people if you don't go along with the warmongering stuff, which is tragic.
So that's back to the old thing, who controls the message.
It's the same principle that we had to deal with when we were dealing with the war on COVID.
They scare people and people have to go along and that's a propagandist.
And yeah, it's amazing to me that we can still reach those people.
There's still a source of people out there that know what really is right and that the war is not an answer to it, especially under today's condition.
Why go out of their way to all of a sudden have a pretense that there's a nuclear confrontation in the next month or two?
You know, that's what they want you to believe.
And things are dangerous.
That's why we should be more sensible.
Yeah.
You know, because it is so dangerous.
And for what?
I mean, there is no Soviet Union.
There's no great ideological struggle.
So the question is, why?
What's the purpose of all this nonsense?
But, you know, our next story is somewhat related, I think.
And this is, and there are some good progressives out there, and we know them.
And Aaron Matei is one of them, along with Max Blumenthal and Matt Taibbi and a few others.
But put up this next clip, because this is from his substack.
Pro-war hawks have progressives on their squad.
And this is, a lot of this is about the letter that was sent, and we have talked about it in the past.
But the sad fact, the sad reality that within the Republican Party, as you suggested in your previous comment, there is a debate.
And I feel a little bit optimistic, which goes against my nature, that there are young Republicans who hold the promise.
Now, we don't know if they can withstand the slings and arrows once they get there.
I think so far, Thomas Massey is one of the few who's been able to really hold tight.
But there are people running in Arizona and elsewhere who are questioning.
And I think you wrote about today, Marjorie Taylor Greene said, if Republicans take over, not one more penny for Ukraine.
I'm not so sure about that.
But the fact that there is a debate, and this is what Aaron Mattei is writing, there is a debate in the Republican Party.
There's no such debate in the Democratic Party.
Even the progressives that people like Aaron and others counted on to be in the anti-war camp have now completely given up and joined the pro-war, got on top of tanks.
Since they are flexible, that we see they go back and forth, and the progressives aren't always progressive.
But if the people would send a message to show that you don't win by just voting for more, war automatically, anything the military-industrial complex wants, you vote for it, and we've seen the switch.
You know, the progressives, you know, are soft, and they were much better, I think, when I was in office and we worked there.
Especially when Bush was president, yeah.
I think that, yeah, they were, that's probably it.
So the sincerity might be questioned.
But it also means that people change their tune because of for pragmatic political reasons, but they also will change your position, a few of them, when eventually the people wake up and you can appeal to some common sense.
But right now, even the common sense of spending is just barely becoming the issue.
And I don't know where they get this lackadaisical attitude about trillions and trillions of dollars of debt.
Oh, we made a mistake.
We'll go down.
We're going to eliminate it.
We're going to lower the deficit this year for a trillion dollars.
It's all this gimmicky stuff.
But they throw a trillion dollars around like it's nothing.
It's going to be something big time soon.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I think the thing to remember, a good thing to remember, is that our progressive friends like Aaron and the others, they're as dismayed as we are on the other side, perhaps, if you want to say it that way.
They're dismayed that they look around and they don't have allies or very few allies.
We feel the same way.
And I think that's one of the things that people may not understand is that the Ron Paul Institute is not a libertarian organization at all.
It was explicitly formed to bring together that coalition, again, of progressives, conservatives, of libertarians, and others.
That's the whole point of what we're doing is to have a home for all these.
And that's why we have such a diverse board in the real sense of the word, real diversity on our board, but united in the principles of opposing war and empire and understanding that that brings prosperity.
But here's, this is from Aaron's piece, and it's just an example of the absurdity.
If you can put that next clip up, the absurdity in U.S. Congress, the lack of seriousness in the U.S. Congress.
Vladimir Putin would have signed that letter if asked.
One member of the House Democratic leadership sneered to Politico.
And that letter indeed is the very milquetoast letter that that dozen or so progressives sent to Biden.
And then they unsent it to Biden, and then they tried to get everyone to forget that they sent it to Biden.
But Aaron makes the important point that, but if Putin would indeed sign on for a call of direct engagement in order to reduce harm and support Ukraine in achieving a peaceful settlement, which is what the letter said, it is unclear why that would be worthy of the senior lawmakers' opprobrium.
So what if you would sign it?
If it de-escalates, if it brings peace, people stop dying, then so who cares if you'd sign it?
Maybe the guy next door will sign it, the barber down the street.
Who cares?
You know, the coalition that has been around and it's still partially there, but it's become weaker, and that is, you know, Republicans that have an anti-war instinct.
We even saw that in the war vote going into Iraq.
But today, you know, there's disorder in the Democratic Party.
The progressives are all over the place, you know, and leaving and changing.
And I think it's in disarray.
But I don't think that means that we shouldn't have plans and efforts made to bring people together from different factions.
Because I still think that there will be constitutional conservatives that will be close to us.
I think there will be Democrats in spite of what's going on right now.
There'll be a reassessment after the election.
Because if they, especially if some of those wishy-washy hawks progressive switching over, if they lose, that might send the message.
There's still a lot of independence in this country.
That's why I think polling isn't really reliable as it used to be.
Who really brags of what party they belong to?
I don't know how these polls can be absolutely, they recite them like they're absolutely accurate.
You can't get anybody on a telephone online.
I'm kidding.
But then you have people who are instinctively libertarian that they might not be a libertarian party member, but the libertarian message of leave us alone and we don't need to fight these wars.
So I think people, The message is we have to bring people together in a coalition wherever we can find a sympathetic person.
And we should assume everybody, if they have the information and they have a little bit of common sense, they'll come around to the position that our organization has, that unnecessary war makes no sense at all.
It's all a profit-making organization for the people who manufacture weapons.
That's the message.
And that should wake up some people to come together for something that I consider very, very worthy, peace and prosperity.
It's being constitutional.
It makes a lot of economic sense.
Potential Catastrophe: Dam Bombing00:03:59
So I still think the opportunity is there is to continue our efforts.
Yes.
And the other thing is there's nothing patriotic about defending and supporting the military-industrial complex because you're getting corrupt people rich on the backs of the rest of the Americans.
So there's a sense that being pro-military and pro-war is patriotic.
Well, no, it is in a sense, but supporting the war machine like this is not at all patriotic.
Well, the last piece we want to talk about today, under the general, I think, theme of escalation, has to do with a major dam in eastern Ukraine.
And here we go.
Russia says major dam hit by U.S.-supplied high-Mars rockets.
And that's important because if these rockets that the U.S. is sending and presumably also providing targeting information with our vast intelligence capabilities, if they are looking to blow up infrastructure facilities like dams, which can have an enormous effect on civilians, it's a big problem because, like it or not, the ownership of those rockets is the U.S.
The authorship of whatever happens when they blow it up is on the U.S.
And it's, I think, a dangerous escalation, Dr. Paul.
Yeah, two things.
Get rid of NATO, get us out of NATO, and come home and save our money.
And a lot of people would benefit from this.
But, you know, it is rather annoying when you realize that the civilians are the ones who are going to suffer.
And it's sort of like excessive bombing during the war and only hitting civilian cities.
But that's been used a lot.
If the people get hurt, they're going to change their home government.
That's the way we've always argued over the years about Iran.
If we punish the people, they'll get rid of their government.
But there's been a dissent in Iran, and that usually unifies it.
The opposite works on it.
So it doesn't work.
But this whole idea that we can take the water away from Crimea, it'll backfire on them.
And the full message isn't out yet how much damage was done.
It's conceivable that they didn't close that.
They didn't get the results because some of those missiles were intercepted.
But I think you made the point right off the bat, which I think is important.
In a very moral way, we're responsible.
The American taxpayer is responsible.
Our politicians are responsible.
Our military is responsible because we support all of this, even though fortunately we have no Americans dying on this like we did in Vietnam.
But that's half of a message, really, that we should think of all people unnecessarily being killed in war as the issue, not only the people that we finance.
And I'll tell you, it's really, really a shame that so many people go along with this so casually.
And yet this problem has been around for a while.
Yeah, it has.
And, you know, we can put up that next clip.
It's just a map of where this dam is.
And you can see a lot of water is going to spill out and it's going to drown a lot of people if it happens.
And indeed, you know, these numbers come from the Russian government, so we have no idea how accurate they are, but they claim out of six rockets that were launched, only one hit the target.
Of course, they're apt to exaggerate the efficiency of their anti-missile capabilities.
But it does supply water to Crimea.
But the other thing that's so weird, and you talked about it before, and they've done this before, the claim now is, well, Russia's bombing the dam, Russia's bombing the dam.
It's absolutely objectively true that they control that dam and they control that area.
So the idea, again, just the same with the nuclear power plant, which they control, the idea that they would bomb themselves, it kind of stretches credibility to suggest that.
Maybe they are that dumb that they will just say, hey, let's drop some bombs on our own guys.
That might be fun.
But the fact is, it seems like pretty crude propaganda to me.
Encouragement and Support00:03:01
Yeah, that is just amazing.
It was sort of like trying to prove the Russians destroyed their pipeline.
Yeah, to go to that extent.
But it makes no sense.
You know, the big picture makes no sense either.
Then the strategy makes no sense.
And sometimes I am just dumbfounded why the European people just roll over on anything that the globalists who are finding themselves really in charge of the empire, which means NATO, United Nations, and our money, they just go along with it.
But it just has made no sense.
They're all worrying about being warm this winter and finding food.
It just goes on and on every day.
There's more potential negative stuff out there.
And as long as the policies don't change, it's going to keep getting worse.
Yeah, for sure.
Well, I'm going to close out by returning.
Now that we've got our conferences done and out of the way, I want to return to, if we can put that last clip up, to remind our audience to join the Ron Paul community on locals.
If you're watching this on Rumble, it's easy just to click that.
You can be a paid subscriber or an unpaid, a free subscriber.
But to join, that's our Hangout.
That's our community.
We're going to be able to focus a lot more on locals now that we can catch our breath, now that the conference is over.
And thank you, all of you, that came out to the conference, all of you that support us and watch the program.
We're moving ahead.
We're getting a lot bigger numbers.
And it's thanks to you.
So we appreciate that.
Dr. Paul?
Very good.
And I too want to thank those of you who tuned in today and didn't make it to our conference, and all those of you who did, because we think that is very, very worthwhile.
It gives us encouragement.
Most people are so appreciative of coming and getting information and meeting other people.
But I'll tell you what, I appreciate the people who support us because it's very, very good for us to have that support, not only financially.
Matter of fact, it's the encouragement that we get.
So we're delighted to do it.
So we're going to be around and we're going to be watching closely.
It'll be interesting tomorrow because after the election, there will be a lot of talk and anticipation and figuring out what's happening.
And we won't have all the answers tomorrow, of course.
But the next day, we're going to have, I'm sure, a few comments to make about what we think can and will happen with elections like this because they are special.
Maybe this one will be a little bit different.
Maybe it will have a lot more significance than most of them.
Because for the most part, I've been pretty cynical.
The more we change the political parties, the more the political parties get the same.
But the lines are a little bit sharply drawn this time.
So we'll be anxious to see it.
And hopefully we'll move in the right direction.
And I want to thank all of you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.