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June 13, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
29:30
GOP Moves To Defund Ukraine 'Enemies List' NGO - More Political Theater?

Faced with broad outrage after a US government-linked Ukrainian NGO published an "enemies list" containing the names of several Members and Senators, the US House GOP moved yesterday to ban any further funding to the NGO. But...they will leave the rest of the funding for Ukraine intact. That's DC partisan smoke and mirrors for you. Also today: NATO's insane F-16 plan for Ukraine - will it spark WWIII?

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Ukrainian Hypocrisy Debate 00:03:57
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you this morning.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Freddy and Raring to go.
Let's do it.
Well, we have to have somebody watching the program, too, you know.
So let's encourage them to send in a question to us today.
Yeah, yeah, well, I'll keep my eye out.
Okay, but we're going to talk about an issue we have sort of talked about in the past, and that has to do with the emphasis of Ukrainian hypocrisy and propaganda.
There's a hedge, is there a hedge headline today?
House moves to defund the Ukrainian NGO that issued the enemies list.
We've talked about the enemies list here, mentioned it, and then we talked about it more.
The enemy list.
And do we have to apologize for being on that list?
No, I don't think so.
We might put that on our achievements.
We made the list.
Patriot list.
They think we're the bad guys, and yet we're really the good guys.
And this was mentioned, matter of fact, this brought a congressman to light that we had not heard a whole lot about, Jim Banks.
And he took action.
He must be on the Ways and Means Committee or something, because he had got something passed in the Congress that took swift and decisive action against the data journalism agency at texty.org.
That's the group they were trying to hone in.
But, you know, they try to paint this off, you know, an NGO.
They will help the people fight for justice and that sort of thing.
But the first thing they do, matter of fact, I assume, since I'm just looking into this NGO business, that maybe NGOs are created by the temptation that they're going to get money, you know, and all of a sudden we're going to save the world.
We're going to feed the Palestinians and that sort of thing.
Oh, okay, we'll send you some money as long as you say what we want you to say.
And this enemies list was the people, you're correct on that, aren't you?
They put our name on there?
They put your name, they put RPI's name, they put my name.
But you had a bigger circle than me, so I had a little circle.
Oh, you had a bigger circle than the enemy.
You're a real bad guy.
And one thing they didn't like is that we opposed a war in Ukraine.
But all of a sudden, they're in the business of lining up with which group is the good group and which is the bad group.
And we can have an opinion on who we think really started the war.
And we've talked about that.
We think, you know, 2014, a coup that we, United States, participated in, had a lot to do with starting the current war.
Anyway, that's not the whole purpose of our conversation today because what is happening is this list, this list was put together, NGO, but it's part of the government.
And they would like to get us canceled.
And, you know, it's sort of like we're going to indict Trump and he'll be canceled.
And he makes $10 million.
So I hope we can benefit in the sense that people recognize that we're on the side, best of our ability, to emphasize how this is going on, because I think most of our viewers would know this, but this is just to emphasize what they're trying to do and who's doing it and how it works.
And right now, it's not a good system.
It's the mixture of government and business, government and medicine, government and the church, government in communications, the press now.
Motivating Change Through Principle 00:14:35
I think that's a big one when you come and see what the FBI has been involved in and all these things.
Well, it's like it's too much government.
And you know what?
I have really astounding news.
The founders knew exactly what we're talking about.
And they put prohibitions in there.
And if people believed that they ought to read before they take the oath, and all of a sudden, most of this mess that we're in wouldn't happen if they said, what's Article 1, Section 8?
Oh, that's the prohibitions.
And if it doesn't allow the government to do it, you can't do it.
But they've twisted that.
And the left says, you can do anything you want unless the government prohibits it.
So, yes, the Constitution would prohibit this type of funding.
That's a strike back at us.
At the same time, they don't care.
They don't have to have permission from the government to do something.
And that's the big picture of what happens.
Nobody really, not a whole lot of people talk about that.
And they accept what the press say.
Well, there's no prohibition against this.
Well, there's a lot of things there.
There's no prohibition against, you know, doing ABC.
And therefore, we'll do it anyway.
And unfortunately, it violates most of the emphasis of the Constitution.
Well, the NGO stands for non-governmental organizations.
So by definition, it's sort of a blanket term for nonprofits.
But by definition, being non-governmental means that you're not funded by governments.
That's kind of definitional.
But the issue is that NGOs are the tool of U.S. foreign policy throughout Central Europe and the Caucasus and beyond.
That's how we control who governs their country.
Because the U.S. pumps a bunch of money into these, the U.S. government pumps a bunch of money into these NGOs, and the NGOs do the bidding of the U.S. government.
Now, this is one case where they got caught because they stepped out of line a little bit.
They named some powerful people.
But this kind of thing goes on on a smaller scale all the time.
And in fact, we haven't reported on it, but there's been enormous domestic unrest in the state of Georgia, the country of Georgia, in the Caucasus, because the Georgian parliament passed a law, a transparency law that says every non-governmental organization and media outlet that is more than 20% funded by a foreign government should declare.
They didn't ban them.
They just said you should declare your source of funding, similar to our Foreign Agents Registration Act.
It's a transparency bill.
Of course, it's passed off as a Russia-type legislation by the U.S. State Department.
But the fact is, it is a transparency bill.
So what happened with this is that this NGO got caught embarrassing people and upsetting people that have power.
And so Banks, to his credit, he did take action.
When we talked about it on Monday, I said a member needs to go down to the floor like Gates or someone else.
It turns out Gates was also involved and demand answers.
So I can't criticize them for doing this.
And so what Banks did is he, I think he put an amendment into the Propes bill striking funding for this particular NGO.
But I think where we would criticize the move is that this is kind of smoke and mirrors.
Okay, you've axed out one NGO.
They can't get money.
What about the 500 other ones?
What about the whole Project Ukraine?
No one wants to talk about that.
They'll have to change its name.
Yeah, they'll have to.
A new address.
That's it.
But you know, you always have to wonder, at least I do, why do these things get started?
There has to be some motivation.
And I think it's clear right here, they've taken the side of a war going on because we've been involved in this war from the very beginning since 2014.
But it's again, it's an operation that is mixed up with the government and a government and a private organization, supposedly.
And a lot of people accept still, carelessly, that the church and state are supposed to be separate.
They at least pay lip service to that.
COVID came along, they didn't follow the rules very well.
So it's the operation of these things that are bothersome because then they are motivated to promote a cause.
They become the bureaucracy that is going to send out the propaganda.
So what do they, what's the one thing they have to do?
They have to bury the good journalists.
They have to lock them up and put them in prison like a Hassan.
And because they can't stand the truth.
The truth is the greatest enemy of this nonsense.
So we're on the side of presenting the evidence because it should discredit so much of what's going on.
Just think how difficult it has been for me over the years to emphasize the importance of the Federal Reserve.
But once people know about it, they really say, that makes sense.
No wonder we're in this mess.
But when they get involved in this, yes, it's talk and propaganda, but there's usually money attached to it, too.
There's a money they send.
So the taxpayers, if they're unhappy with this kind of stuff, well, you're paying for it.
That's why you have to be very precise and very determined about stuff on this stuff.
You can't say, well, if you only cut it down 20%, we'll go along with this and we'll let you have it.
And then next year we'll raise it to 20%.
They tinker around it rather than saying it's illegal, it's immoral, it's not allowed in the Constitution to have a government take money from taxpayers, and some of them are very poor and middle class because it incites the government to inflate the currency and put on the inflation tax.
And it also ends up precipitating more divisiveness.
They talk about we shouldn't be so divisive because some people figure it out and some people are punished more than others and the whole country looks like they're getting punished and people finally realize this is not a good program.
In a way, this was a good program in that it exposed something and I think you mentioned their exposure.
Then all of a sudden somebody did something and we're just arguing the case, be vigilant, you know, and find these things.
You know, a long time before that, where did the appropriation come from?
Some of it is open-ended.
They don't even have precise authority.
It's sort of like, we've been in all these wars, but they say, but they're not wars and we don't have to declare them.
These are just police actions.
So we get along with it.
That's the problem.
But I think, so we do find a little bit of benefit from that by the exposure, trying to wake up people and saying, that's not the kind of people we should have in our government.
That would fit our argument that our government could be reduced greatly by all the bureaucrats that are there by large numbers and large percentages.
But you know how Washington is going to use this little episode as a limited hangout.
OC, we identified a bad actor and we X the money out from this person so we can proceed with the project.
We can keep funding Ukraine.
We can keep going toe-to-toe with Russia.
We can keep this threat of nuclear war because we've gotten rid of this bad apple when in fact the entire project is a bad apple.
So in a way, it's the GOP playing politics on this whole thing.
Let's look at a couple of clips now.
You can put that first one up.
We've already pretty much overtaken this, but this is Representative Banks who takes action.
Again, no criticism of him.
I'll go to the next one.
Now, here's he went to the House Appropries Committee, and they passed a provision that the U.S. would sever its ties with that NGO.
Okay.
Well, there are lots of other ones.
So go to the next one now.
So then here's on a separate track, Senator JD Vance and Representative Matt Gates.
Now they also, we talked about their letter yesterday, I think, where they sent a letter to Blinken and they demanded all releasable material related to the State Department's support for the founder of Textee, which is the organization.
They want all the agreements and what have you and this and that and the other about this particular group.
Again, that's good.
That's fine.
But here, I'm going to put this out, Dr. Paul, and see what you think about it.
I think Fox News kind of spills the beans on how the GOP is going to play this.
Enemy list of Trumps and communists published by Biden-linked Ukraine group.
And I highlighted that.
Lawmakers charge.
So it wasn't U.S. government funding.
It was a Biden.
We lost that group.
Being politicized.
I can't believe it.
No, that is it.
And I think that's one of the reasons I don't have my way, and the country doesn't go in our direction of dealing on a principle, because you can't defend the idea that they don't have a principle, but they don't have decent principles.
Their principle is fibbing and lying and cheating is legal.
The Constitution is something that is a living document.
You can change it at will.
And they go on and on doing the same thing.
And they see this as a benefit to the country.
They don't lose any sleep over this.
That's one thing.
There's no shame.
Even when over the years, how about, have you been working with me how many years, 20 or something?
We see so many innocent people dying.
Just think now.
Right now, the American people have enough on their hands because they've allowed so much to go overboard because we have Americans sometimes getting poorer and not having a place to live and getting hungry.
And it's hard for them to conceive of what's going on over there.
But they have to become aware of it.
So those people who are suffering, I think the information that is to come out here and banks deserve some credit for this because more people are saying maybe this is a bad idea.
And it is connected toward an attitude that we saw and was terrible during the COVID deal, which is still in existence.
They haven't given up the idea that the pharmaceuticals have to make a living too, you know.
And they're still benefiting from that, which is sad.
Instead of, you know, how are we going to be guided by this?
Well, everybody should be guided.
And the best manner, not perfect, is by promising to follow a set of standards and to go into government.
You take an oath of office with your hand raised that you will follow the Constitution.
And I would say there's less than 10% of them that really care that much about it.
Maybe that's a high number.
Because you don't get 10% of the votes.
We get a few here and there when they wake up.
But when somebody does stand up and says something about it and they're moving in the right direction, they deserve the credit.
And you already mentioned positively about Jim.
And one thing we haven't talked about is Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced an amendment a few days ago to defund NATO.
And I think there were 46 Republicans that voted yes.
So even though we're disappointed, we wouldn't have seen that when you were in there, I don't think.
It must have been my job.
They're watching the show.
No, they're watching our show.
That's what's going on.
But speaking of bad ideas, here's another really bad idea.
And that is this boneheaded idea that we're going to send F-16s for Ukraine to use.
We've been training the pilots.
You can put this next one up.
We've been training the pilots.
We're going to send the jets over there.
And the title of this is written by Andrew Korybko, who is, in my opinion, a very astute analyst.
I read his stuff, and I encourage everyone else to do so as well.
Can't believe how much he writes.
He must have a big coffee bill.
Nevertheless, Kiev's plan to store F-16s in NATO states raises the risk of World War III.
And I'm going to try to just kind of briefly outline what this crazy idea is.
They know that if they send these F-16s to be housed in Ukraine, that Russia will just simply blow them up.
They'll blow up the airfields, they'll blow up the planes.
And they'll be dead on the first day probably, and that would look bad for NATO.
So they came up with a scheme, Dr. Paul.
Here's a great idea.
We will keep the planes in Romania and Poland, and that way the Russians won't touch them.
But we will take off from Romania, land in Ukraine, arm the missiles, go shoot inside of Russia, and then go back to Romania.
And Russia is supposed to sit back and watch this happen.
It's the craziest scheme ever.
Yeah, they want to be morally clean because they're trying to follow the silly rules that they design.
But it says sort of like, we don't have troops on the ground, no boots on the ground.
We're staying out of there.
That's a principle that we believe in.
And we're not going to get into trouble.
Well, I think most people in this country, certainly our audience, would understand that we've had plenty of troops involved.
And just the fact that you don't have World War I troops marching across a border doesn't mean what we're doing now is a lot more destructive, you know, by supporting so much with military equipment.
And they don't measure the cost of the innocent people from our policies of hiding airplanes and then bombing them.
How many innocent people die and how much money it costs?
That is lost because they separate the two.
And I think you cannot decide on a foreign policy and say, well, it's national security, has nothing to do with the money.
Well, if they look at the big picture, they better think about the national security because I tell you what, one of the bombs they better be looking out for is the dead bomb.
And when that explodes, that's going to be a big deal.
And what they're trying to say is that we're not a party to this war, so Russia dare not respond.
We're not a party to this war.
But if you're taking off from a NATO country and you are ending up bombing inside of Russia, it's something even during the Cold War would have been astounding.
Nobody would ever have thought of doing such a thing, of dropping American bombs on the Soviet Union at the time or on Russia today.
NATO Bases and Risk 00:05:42
Back then it would be unconscionable.
But now we're going to do it and we're assuming that Russia won't retaliate, even though Russia has said we will view those bases as legitimate targets.
Now the worst part about this whole thing, Dr. Paul, is if you will do that next clip, all of this risk, the risk is unbelievable.
Listen to this though.
Although U.S. Air Force Chief Frank Kendall claimed last summer that the F-16s are, quote, not going to be a game changer for Ukraine.
So the U.S. government realizes and accepts the fact that these F-16s are not going to change the outcome of the war.
Yet they are still willing to literally risk World War III because they have no ability to back down and say, we lost this one.
They want to politically satisfy the Hawks.
And then they pretend the Hawks run our country.
And a lot are very instrumental, but they get the attention on the TV.
Have you ever watched TV, the ordinary mainstream media, where they'll have experts, people who have spent 30 years in the military, and they're going to come out and they're going to be experts, and then they tell them this is it.
So people get lolled into sleep about that, and they say, Yeah, we have to go along with it.
Even they make the exception: well, this is a big deal.
We have to do it.
And, you know, this whole idea of NATO being involved in hiding these airplanes and playing that game.
But, you know, NATO is a bad organization.
I'm glad there are some people who are saying just get out of it, like Robert Taff once said.
So that is it because NATO now they were the group that worked through various U.S. organizations after World War II and even more recently in the 1990s of saying, look, we've got to get along.
We have to trade with Russia.
The Cold War is over.
And what we'll do is we'll just, we're not going to go out and just aggravate and look for a war with Russia.
We're going to keep our missiles away.
We could send missiles from the ocean.
We could do all these things.
We don't need missiles one mile or 10 miles or 100 miles away from Russia.
And that was sort of an understanding.
It gets a little muddied when they say, well, it wasn't an absolute treaty, but that was an understanding.
It was a very clear understanding.
Republicans and Democrats accepted that, especially the Bush people.
They like this idea, but that was not intended.
That was just gearing up.
And, you know, there were so many benefits coming from the end of the Cold War.
I mean, we were, I just thought it was delightful that the steps were good at the beginning because we started talking about trade with China, and now that's turned into a war on terror.
And now we have Russia that we have to turn into an enemy.
And what are we doing?
So they're looking for enemies.
Well, what if they get together?
What if China and India and Russia get together and they become our opponent?
Could be difficult for a country that's losing control of its own foreign policy and also control of the reserve currency.
And they've already come together.
That's been the result of our Project Ukraine.
Well, skip ahead to that map if you can, because this will give a visual representation of what they have in mind.
And this is absolutely crazy.
And you can see these are NATO bases in Poland, in Romania, and there's a couple in Slovakia.
I don't believe Slovakia, I don't believe FISA is going to allow his bases to be used.
Nevertheless, you've got several bases in Poland and Romania from which, and this is Agentis Geopolitics on Twitter X makes a couple of good bullet points about what the idea is.
Here's the plan.
Some F-16s are to be transferred to Ukraine.
They will be based in NATO air bases to avoid strikes, or so they think, I would say.
These fighters are likely already in Romania where pilot training is ongoing.
The test flights from Romania towards the Odessa region have occurred multiple times.
So they're already testing the waters, Dr. Paul.
The fighters will be safer on NATO territory, making attacks on them less likely.
Now, that's the thinking.
Russia has said the opposite.
And then some fighters may carry the JASM and AIM-120 missiles and be based in Romania, etc., etc.
Russia has made clear that because the F-16s are capable of carrying tactical nuclear weapons, they will be considered to be nuclear-armed, which could trigger Russia's nuclear policy as well.
So all of this escalation in the U.S. admits it's not going to really change things there.
So it makes you wonder how much they value our lives as Americans.
So when I look at that, in a way, they're dealing with the past, but they're dealing with more like where are the troops going to go and how are they going to invade.
And it's to me that they don't understand technology at all.
I think a lot of those planes and things, with all the technology that's available, they can control drone missiles and drone flights any place in the world.
And they can do that from some spot in the United States.
So all this buildup is not a promotion for liberty.
It's not a promotion for peace.
It's so destructive because we could list it.
Cancer Treatment Debts 00:05:02
Does it help the kids?
Oh, yeah, it really has helped the kills in Palestine.
And it just goes on and on.
They don't measure the cost and they don't measure the potential danger of making mistakes.
And they just go on.
But we're well-intended.
So, you know, I don't think that gets them off very well because good intentions is not a good idea.
Oh, it's a good idea to have it, but you ought to understand it and follow it.
But good intentions cannot substitute for a little bit of knowledge.
Yeah, and common sense.
Well, I'm going to close out and once again put up our logo for the conference.
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Very good.
You know, I'm going to talk a little bit about what I've talked about just a little while ago, the problems that we face.
And because we don't follow rules, and we are very aggressive in saying that we have an empire, we have the reserve currency of the world, and it's endless.
And even common sense doesn't wake up and say, well, maybe there's too much there and there's going to be a repercussion from it.
And I would say that, but a lot of people will ask me, well, when's this going to happen and what does it mean?
Can we do anything to change it?
Certain things is no.
No, you can't do much about working off the debt.
An individual can do that.
They can maybe declare bankruptcy.
They can get another job and various things.
And if it's a company here and a person there, debt can be eliminated.
But not when you're the greatest power, probably in the history of the world, have this reserve currency of the world, having a dollar standard.
And this debt explosion is just unbelievable.
And the one thing is, is we're not going to get a bunch of new members this year.
We may see some improvements into Congress and all, but we're not going to get enough to reverse the trend because even the people who have become dependent on it won't accept a trend And an initiation of shrinking the size of government.
And that's why every year it goes up, you change parties, and that doesn't do any good.
So it's a thing that is very, very important.
And the collapse of our foreign policy and our entanglements around the world, they aren't going well.
So we're going to have a lot of problems.
But I think the thing to look at and say, well, what can we do?
It's overwhelming.
Well, many nations, unfortunately, have gone through this, and we never seem to learn about it.
Empires do disappear.
And I think of it as how do you preserve it?
You can't stop the trend, but you can preserve some of the principles that are good.
So that's, I think, up to people to preserve it by protecting liberty the best we can, you know, preparing, you know, in the sense of survival and finding allies.
But eventually, there will be a rebuilding.
The transition is what is not known.
But the more people, and this is where we see maybe the media activity, where although we're complaining in the media all the time, we do reach a lot of people and a lot of organizations do to get the truth out.
So maybe, you know, like the truth did come out during the COVID example, and attitudes did change.
So that is the job: getting the opinions out there and getting people to accept the necessity of the treatment that is necessary.
It's sort of like talking to somebody that has cancer, needs cancer treatment, but oh, I don't want to do it, I don't want to do it, but it would be a life-saving treatment.
No, people will be very leery of cutting back.
But I'll tell you what, cutting back means that we're expanding liberty, and that's good.
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