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March 26, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
31:47
Cliffhanger: Assange Gets Temporary Reprieve From UK Court

A UK High Court delivered a mixed bag to Julian Assange and his family earlier today, holding off on ruling for the deportation subject to US "reassurances." But the court rejected key elements of Assange's appeal. We'll break it down today. Also in the program: FDA surrenders in its propaganda war against Ivermectin. Finally: Trump's surprising straight talk on Israel and Gaza.

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Time Text
Assange's Political Case 00:13:48
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, Daniel Daniel?
How are you?
You're here.
Daniel McAdams, and he's here bright and early.
So, Daniel, welcome to our program.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you?
I'm doing fine, thank you.
We have to, not have to, but we have decided to bring up the case of Assange once again.
Yeah.
Because it's unbelievable the harm done and the evil invested in trying to destroy this man.
And it depends on how you count it.
It could be 15, 20 years they've been working on this.
And back to, you know, what they've done in America, you know, for some American citizens is, oh, they demonstrated and they said something wrong and they pushed somebody.
Espionage Act, we're going to crucify them and put them all in prison.
And they find out, well, nobody's ever been convicted on this.
But anyway, they use that.
But here it is.
We have an Australian citizen who was arrested because they said that he was not a good journalist.
He was reporting from, you know, what's the magazine?
The WikiLeaks.
And, you know, so they've been fighting that.
He's been in prison and he's been locked up in an embassy for all these years.
And now it's a legal thing back and forth.
But the thing of it is, they're not dealing with where they arrested him.
They're not going to punish him here, even though they have him.
And they're not going to send him back to Australia, even though Australia is opening their minds or something like that.
But no, it has to come to America.
And I guess in looking at this case, Daniel, the one thing that has astounded me, because I don't remember this happening, but obviously it did, that Trump was, they tried to release Trump.
You know, the American CIA wanted to do it.
And that, of course, failure.
But the evidence is, they talk about, they were going to assassinate him.
I mean, what in the world is going on here?
And I've had somebody a long time ago, he was from the old right, and he worked in the CIA and was involved in when they were, you know, he was worked in the CIA and helped establish that.
But he came to the conclusion that any country that accepts a program like the CIA, it can no longer remain a republic.
And I would say that it's coming pretty close to having happened in our country.
Yeah, certainly.
I mean, the covert action side, I mean, you've always said, you know, we can collect intelligence and analyze it.
That's one thing.
The services probably can do it.
But this is something different.
Well, we previewed it yesterday because Jolyn's wife, Stella, tweeted out that there's going to be a big decision today.
And indeed, it was.
It wasn't a conclusive decision.
And some of the early reporting was, I think, a little bit more positive.
I think our friend Joe Lauria at consortiumnews.com understood that it was a little more nuanced.
Yes, the royal court did not say extradite him immediately, send him to the U.S.
So that was positive.
But put up that first clip, and here's how Joe reports it.
Assange's fate waits U.S. quote assurances.
And so go to the next one.
This is what happened earlier today.
And Joe Lauria writes, the High Court in London on Tuesday gave the United States an opportunity to rebuff Julian Assange's plea that he be allowed to appeal the Home Office's order to extradite him to the U.S. to face espionage charges.
And Joe rightly points out, in a complex ruling at the Royal Courts of Justice, the court agreed with Assange that he had the grounds to ask for an appeal, but he invited the court ruled that the United States is invited to give the court assurances by April 16th that could negate Assange's arguments.
So it's really a curly cue.
He has the right to appeal the offer, if you can actually put it back up, appeal the order to extradite him, but the U.S. can preempt that with its own assurances.
Yes, you know, and I keep thinking, assurances, how much are they worth?
You know, the whole thing is assurances from the United States.
They've done many polls.
It's just not from the right-wing nuts.
But they took many polls in this country when it's just on trust of government.
And, you know, the lack of trust is across the political spectrum.
But 70 or 80% of the people will respond, no, I don't trust what the government says.
They know that.
But then they say this is a legal thing involving somebody's life involves in a case that we shouldn't even be involved in, a case that shouldn't have never existed.
And they say, oh, well, we want to get assurances from the United States.
If he comes back there, they won't use the death penalty against him, that kind of stuff.
Yeah, what it's worth.
You're right.
Yeah, who's going to believe him?
Well, just to the next one, though, because this is, again, it's very complicated, but specifically what the two panel, the two-judge panel ruled was, again, that Assange had the grounds to appeal because his extradition was, and I underline this, incompatible with his rights of expression in the European Convention on Human Rights, that he might be prejudiced because of his nationality and because he had inadequate protection against the death penalty.
So they did recognize that because of these things, he had the right to appeal.
However, Dr. Paul, if you go to the next one, this is where it gets more complicated.
I'm not going to go over each of these points because they're too complicated for me to understand.
But the court is allowing the U.S. to give written assurances that all of these rights that they mentioned won't be violated.
If the U.S. misses this April 16th deadline, then Assange will be allowed to appeal his case on those three grounds only.
How could they take a case that shouldn't have existed and make it so complicated on purpose, probably, you know, to make it a mess?
And that to me is so sad, what's going on.
And the reliability on, you know, world government.
You know, we're not even dealing, well, the British, I guess, but they're all part of the same scheme.
You know, it's not like a case that can be brought forward and tried here.
He wasn't even in this country.
And the whole thing is, probably the big issue here is the intimidation that they place on research, you know, journalists.
I mean, this is thinking that if we don't convict him and really punish him, they've already punished him, that that means that the people who's defending the First Amendment has a victory.
Too late and small.
But I think Assange's wife had it right.
This is such an outrage.
It should just never have been brought up.
And it's just a shame that even the political parties, there are some Republicans trying to help out, you know, in the Congress, but not very many.
And actually, that attempt to assassinate him to the CIA to go in there and assassinate him was done under a Republican administration.
That is so discouraging.
Yeah, I mean, in political terms, I mean, I would say this.
Biden would probably be smart to drop these charges because it would make him look good.
It would appeal to a lot of his base that's very unhappy with his behavior on the Gaza-Israel situation.
It would kind of burn it.
I'm not trying to give him advice, although I'd love to see Julian released.
But politically, if I was advising Biden, I'd say, hey, this is a win.
You could put it in Trump's face.
Look, this guy over and over praised WikiLeaks, praised him.
He didn't lift a finger to help this guy.
I'm going to be the one for human rights to let him go.
Well, that's great if a person were logical.
Yeah.
That's the trouble.
And then the other thing is, does Biden really think for himself and that sort of thing?
But no, I think when you isolate what you just said, I think it would be a tremendous benefit.
But of course, we've been sort of influenced by the tremendous benefit and the good quality of doing something decent with a touch of justice involved and a touch of nationalist understanding that you don't go and send them and use our laws to arrest an Australian journalist for saying something that didn't do one set.
Oh, they claim it did a lot of harm to a lot of people, but we don't hear too much about it because it didn't exist.
So I think it's a real tragedy.
But I think the best thing we can do is he's given Assange a breather.
And something good may come of this, but at least they could have extradited him this week or something, if nothing, if they had not extended this.
And that, of course, would have been another additional disaster because I don't think anybody has made the case.
They haven't even been foolish enough to say, well, you guys are too negative.
Why don't you put a little bit of trust in the judicial system?
They're all not raw.
No, they aren't.
There are a couple.
But I'll tell you what, they're in the minority and they don't control things.
So it would be very universally understood that he could not get a full trial here.
The other people who say, well, I don't know much about it, but give them a break.
It'll work out.
I can't figure out.
You guys admit it's complicated.
So we're not going to get involved in all this mess.
So the law school, you would think, you know, if the law schools, you'd think that maybe we would have debates on things like this and trying to work this out, you know, just an understanding.
But no, it's all political.
And that was one thing that Assange wanted to make it political.
And that's what was denied.
This has nothing to do with politics.
Well, the other thing that was denied, and you alluded to it, if we can actually skip one and go to the clip starting with significantly, this is disturbing.
So they rejected all five of his.
So remember, going back a little, in late February, there was a hearing, and his legal team brought up five objections.
Today's hearing, they rejected all five.
And this is one of them.
Significantly, Tuesday's ruling did not allow Assange to introduce new evidence in the case that came to light after the lower court ruling, namely that the CIA plotted to kidnap and assassinate Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he had asylum before being arrested and thrown in Belmarsh prison, where he continues to languish.
So, you know, the information that the CIA was plotting to assassinate him and kidnap him, that isn't enough to show them that they're not going to respect his rights here.
I mean, that should just be on the surface.
But they weren't even allowing to bring it up, which is significant, I think.
Yeah.
Well, you made a suggestion for what Biden could do.
I wonder if it's too late for Trump to say something different because he would be changing his position.
He does that on occasion.
But I don't know whether it would work for him.
I mean, neither of them are decent for human rights, but just on the political basis, not because they're decent, just for hard politics.
One of them could make it a political.
Which means they're appealing to decent people, though, on this issue.
Well, you mentioned Stella Julian's wife, and here's her reaction if you go to that next clip.
She said, today's decision was astounding.
Julian's wife told reporters outside the Royal Courts of Justice.
The courts recognized that Julian has been exposed to flagrant denial of his freedom of expression rights, that he is being discriminated against on the basis of his nationality, and that he remains exposed to the death penalty.
But, she said, the U.S. has been invited to, quote, send a letter saying it's all okay.
So, I mean, this is, you know, it's a crazy ruling.
Again, it could be worse, but this is not, unfortunately, one in the wind column quite yet.
Boy, that's for sure.
Yeah, well, let's move on.
Yeah, let's move on to something that we have been talking about, unfortunately, for at least three years, maybe four years.
But this is probably a good news story because it's a good news story too late because it's a slight victory.
If you put this next one up, sorry, sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, I just want to put up the headline.
This is from the Epoch Times.
FDA settles Ivermectin case, agrees to remove controversial stop-it posts.
And, you know, one advantage here on this little incident that we're talking about, it's a little bit easier to talk about than the one we just got over because that was very complicated, a lot of legal stuff in there.
Fda Removes Ivermectin Posts 00:08:08
But really, when we narrowed, you know, when you narrow that whole thing down about Assange, it isn't all that.
If you get rid of the chitter and what you can do, can't do, and all the shenanigans that go on legalistically.
But I think you can narrow that down to about three sentences of what's going on.
But here, this one's a little bit easier.
We're dealing with an illegal institution that regulates medicine, and in a free society, it wouldn't exist.
You wouldn't have an FDA.
You would have an FDA principal that would be a voluntary thing that could be worked out.
But no, you don't have an FDA that's owned by the pharmaceuticals.
And that's part of the combination of big business and big government.
And there is a medical-industrial complex, FDA.
And you hear so many stories of people being in the FDA, and then they're into research, and they get out of the FDA, and they have a good living afterwards.
Oh, yeah.
Because it makes a big deal.
But, you know, we talk about the FDA right now for the prohibition of use of drugs.
And that happens routinely over the years.
And sometimes they might fall accidentally on doing the right thing.
There are some bad things out there that they'll come across and they don't approve it.
But that's not the way it's supposed to be done.
There are other ways because the one thing that they had to exclude when COVID hit was to exclude any discussion of it or anything that was known for 30 years in medicine.
And people would appreciate the medication.
They say, you can't use it and you'll be in trouble.
You will be canceled.
And it was a disaster.
And I would say it'd be safe to say that a lot of people died because of their regulations.
Yeah.
And it was worse than being canceled because doctors were losing their licenses, being forbidden from practicing medicine because they said, why don't you give this a try?
I mean, what the FDA, as you say, in bed with the pharmaceutical companies, what they demanded is that there can be no treatments from the time you contact this supposed virus to the time you're in the hospital.
You can't do anything but lie there and wait for it to happen.
Dr. McCullough's one suggestion on working these things out, the principle of patients being allowed to have a little bit say in their care and to have medications on hand because something like ivermectin might be the earlier can.
But now we have to do, you go to your general practitioner.
You can't go to a specialist.
If you go to your general practitioner, then he can recommend you to go to a specialist and then you can go and find out which drugstore is going to, oh, we don't serve that.
It's hard to find that drug.
And it's just a mess.
And there are some things that have been used.
This ivermectin had been around a long time.
What a Nobel Prize.
Yeah.
So what a tragedy.
So this is a type of victory here.
And I think the people who have been fighting for it know it, too.
They had to remove a lot of things from the internet where they were just bashing it.
I mean, and that is not the answer to all our problems when they start messing around.
And the government, well, if the government's saying it, yes, you can go after that.
But if somebody else makes a statement and a position, it should be attacked in the marketplace, which the ivermectin was handled in the marketplace all this time.
The chloroquine was that way too.
And it was used and very, you know, it's still being used by millions of people around the world.
Yeah.
Maybe Americans just got some of their freedom back.
I mean, people are going to look back on this time.
They're going to say, I can't believe this happened.
Some virus apparently came, and then the medical community, well, the medical industrial complex, said, you can't do anything to treat it.
Sorry.
Even if it's the best treatment.
Turns out it was the best treatment for it.
Yeah.
Well, let's do a little bit more.
This is from the FBA Times article.
This is what happened.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has agreed to remove social media posts.
Go back one, please.
Remove social media posts and web pages that urge people to stop taking ivermectin to treat COVID-19.
According to a settlement dated March 21, the FDA had already removed a page that said, should you take ivermectin to protect or treat COVID-19?
No.
Within 21 days, the FDA will remove another page titled, Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19.
The ruling was a little more nuanced than I think we're presenting it here, which was, or a little more simple, I should say, which is that FDA is not a medical association.
They don't have the right to give medical advice.
So I should say narrow.
It's a little bit more narrow than we're presenting it.
Yeah, and that would be handled quite differently in a free society because you'd be allowed to.
You know, the whole idea of licensing and the controls and the division of labor for more natural medicine and the allopathic medicine.
I mean, They were designed by government and the medical community too.
Some of the people who are so-called in charge of the medical community.
So it never permitted, even though it exists.
It still exists today because you can't quit that completely.
But over the years, I've become much, much more sympathetic to more natural things and with common sense.
And there are people out there that have been talking about this for years.
And it makes a difference.
You know, I always marvel because when I started medical school, they said, well, here's your PDR, and you can look up all your drugs in here.
And I said, how in the world could there be that many drugs?
You know, a thousand pages of this.
Oh, they said, yeah, but someday it's going to get easy.
They'll have computers and you can even have more choices and let the pharmaceutical industry direct you.
Yeah.
Well, here's a tweet about it.
Jeff Carlson tweets.
The FDA has reportedly changed their position on ivermectin and agreed to remove all negative posts, if we can put that next one up.
And he makes a point.
I think you made it and it's correct.
They should, at a minimum, if we can put, there we go, they should at a minimum issue a formal announcement, an apology.
How many people might have been saved if the FDA had acted honestly?
That's a good question.
And here's one of the ads they're going to take down.
We talked about this on the show, how absurd and ridiculous this is.
Turn the next, put the next one on.
This is one of the ads they're taking down.
It's a picture for those of us just listening.
It's that famous ad where a woman is holding a horse and a doctor is holding a man.
It says, you're not a horse, you're not a cow.
Seriously, y'all, stop it.
Why you should not use ivermectin.
They had to take that down.
It was such a disingenuous recommendation saying that this is only for horses and cows when it had been used, as you say, for humans for 50 years.
You know, they have to know they're defying common sense and what has been the practice of medicine for years.
But why they do it?
You say, well, what is their motivation?
Did all of a sudden they forgot all the things that they should have known?
Or could there have been a monetary benefit from doing this?
Stay alive.
Yeah.
You remember what it was like when we were doing the show during COVID?
We were afraid to use that word during the show because even using it, YouTube would take down your show and give you a strike and you could lose your entire show.
Now, YouTube should give apologies for all the people they took down for saying this.
And look what they did to Rogan.
Remember when Rogan got COVID and he said, look, I'm taking some ivermectin?
Losing Lot of Support? 00:06:50
They treated him like anathema.
They treated him like the worst disgusting person on earth.
CNN famously ran a clip of him.
They put a filter over his face to make him look gray and sick because they wanted people to think that he was taking horse paste, taking horse medicine.
Turns out he was right.
You know, the principle of malpractice should exist.
It does exist.
But there's a lot of malpractice suits.
You know, it gets really cluttered up for various reasons.
But you're not allowed to sue the people who did this.
Put these ads up.
No, you can't sue that.
Like that horrible ad you put up there.
It's a blatant lie.
And somebody died because of it.
But no, that's not permitted.
Yeah.
The only thing we can hope, and I don't know, maybe it'll happen that people will be more skeptical and they'll get angry a lot quicker.
Because as you always say, they did start waking up, but it was very, very late in the game.
So wake up early.
So let's move on to the last one.
If we can skip ahead to that, Trump says, this is fascinating.
And this is really Trump being Trump.
Because as everyone knows, Trump himself will say it over and over again.
He's the most pro-Israel president in history, you know.
But he also has an interesting way of making sense.
And this article is originally from Dave DeCamp on antiwar.com.
We're looking at it through Zero Heads.
So Trump gave an interview with Israel Hayam, which is a right-wing newspaper in Israel started by a, what's his name, the right-wing funder of Republicans, super pro-Israel.
Anyway, so he gave an interview.
And he said, this is the headline.
Trump says Israel has to finish the war as it's, quote, losing a lot of support.
So former President Trump said in an interview with Israel Hayom, Sheldon Richmond, sorry, that's it.
No, not Sheldon Richmond.
Sheldon Adelson.
Adelson, sorry.
I'm losing my mind here.
He has said an interview over the weekend that Israel made a big mistake by broadcasting images and videos of the destruction of Gaza Strip saying it's losing Israel a lot of support.
Go to the next one.
Here's what he said.
You got to get it done.
I wish I could do his accent.
Our friends, anyway, you got to get it done.
I'm sure you will do that.
And we've got to get the peace.
You got to can't have this going on.
And I will say, Israel's got to be very careful because you're losing a lot of the world.
You're losing a lot of support.
You've got to finish up.
You've got to get the job done, Trump said.
You know, when Trump comes up with this and sees it, and he makes a quick analysis, many times he's on target.
But it doesn't fit into, because he doesn't come together on many of these things with a basic principle, because he might be right on a foreign policy issue in saying something that we would agree is non-interventionist, but he's not a non-interventionist.
You know, it comes and goes.
But all we can do is encourage him when he does the things that we think he should.
And so he blurted it.
What's great about him is when he sees something and it's really outrageous, he will blurt out the truth.
And that's what drives the media nuts.
Oh, we should punish him.
We'll get rid of him.
We're going to sue him.
We're going to arrest him and charge him with all kinds of things.
Before you know it.
Steal his money.
Before you know it, we could make him the most popular presidential candidate ever.
Well, you know, I've a few times used this somewhat crude analogy, which is that Israel is like the guy in the bar that's had too much to drink.
And he needs to have a friend to come over and put a hand, has to be a friend, put his hand on his shoulder saying, come on, friend, let's go home.
You've had enough.
And I think Trump can play that role because he is a huge friend of Israel.
He did tons of stuff for Israel.
He moved the embassy for Israel.
He's done everything for them.
He could be that person saying, hey, I love you guys, but you are, not because of morality, because it's not about that.
You guys are starting to look bad.
This is a bad thing, you know.
The only thing they come back and say, you know, Palestinians aren't perfect people either.
And make that comparable to what's happening right now.
And I guess he was looking at some of those pictures that just got his attention on the destruction there.
And, you know, whenever there's, you know, the bombing of the hospitals, you know, are they exaggerating that or is that true?
Well, there might have been some bad people in there in the destruction of the hospital.
And I think the number of kids that have died in this war, so 15,000 kids.
Not good.
Well, here's a couple more things from the interview, and it's fascinating.
So when asked by the interviewer about how would he respond to the waves of anti-Semitism since October 7th, Trump replied, quote, well, that's because you fought back.
And I think Israel made a very big mistake.
I wanted to call Israel and say, don't do it.
These photos and shots, I mean moving shots of bombs being dropped into buildings in Gaza.
And I said, oh, that's a terrible portrait.
It's a very bad picture for the world.
The world is seeing this every night.
I would watch buildings pour down on people, Trump said.
And then, so the next one, the interviewer then claimed that the terrorists were hiding in the buildings.
But Trump replied, if you go to the next one, terrorists are hiding in the buildings.
And Trump said, go on, do what you have to do.
But you don't do that.
And I think that's one of the reasons there has been a lot of kickback.
If people didn't see that every single night, I've watched every single one of those.
And I think Israel wanted to show that it's tough.
But sometimes you shouldn't be doing that.
He's sort of a pragmatic politician.
It sounds like, I wonder what he'd be like advising a candidate.
You could probably give him good advice.
He would probably.
But he couldn't do that.
He has to advise himself.
But no, that's good that he recognizes this.
And I think there's going to be a lot more opportunities.
In terms of politics, Trump taking this position, I can just see the steam and smoke coming out of Biden's ears because Biden is going down because of his complete blind support for what Netanyahu is doing, for what Israel is doing.
He gave him a blank check starting right after October 7th, and he has not been able to criticize him in any way, shape, or form since then.
And so here you have Trump writing and the most pro-Israel person saying, you guys are really messing up.
You can't keep bombing buildings and kids, you know.
So the Biden people must be going nuts politically.
I think it's a smart.
You know, we'd like to get more support from the progressive, but this stuff will be heard by the progressive, and they'll be aware of it.
They're not going to get up and cheer Trump.
Why Biden Is Worried 00:02:43
But that's the whole thing.
And that's why I think what you're talking about is why Biden is a little bit worried because that'll increase the division.
You know, they keep talking about this terrible division among Republicans and all, but I'll tell you what, that division in the Senate, I mean, with the Democrats, it's much greater than I ever remember because, boy, they are different.
They are too.
But that is a result of the type of immigration that has occurred for a good many decades.
And there is honest disagreement with us.
But our answer to it is a little more simple.
And that is, just mind our own business.
We don't have to go and make these decisions on where the bombs should drop.
Well, yeah, drop there, but not over here.
That's disgusting.
Well, I think it's not even only going to appeal to progressives, but I think there are a lot of conservatives and Republicans who will see what Trump said, and they'll realize now it's okay to be critical.
It doesn't mean you're an anti-Semite.
It doesn't mean you hate Israel.
Sometimes, if you're the best friend of someone, you're telling you guys that you've got to back down a little bit.
So I think it's actually going to open up a lot more reasonable, reasoned criticism of Israel on the conservative side.
Yeah.
Well, I'm just going to close out by thanking everyone for watching the show today.
I'm just looking at the numbers.
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Over to you, Dr. Barbara.
Very good.
And I too want to thank our audience for tuning in today.
And I'm going to close with a quick comment about an item that was in the bill, the budget bill that was just passed.
And this is sort of like a joke, I guess.
And this is on politico.
Congress approved $300 million for Ukraine last week.
That was a big thing, you know, whether they were going to get money.
But our borders didn't get anything.
That was the big argument.
But it adds that $300 million had already been spent four months ago.
They're cleaning up their books.
Well, anyway, We'll keep at it and keep pushing for the cause of non-interventionism and the promotion of liberty because it does give us an answer.
Fortunately, we have a Constitution that generally defends us on all those issues and a little bit of more concern about individual liberty and non-intervention overseas especially and a sound monetary system would help us in our plan to have more peace and prosperity.
Thank you for calling in and viewing today.
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