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Sept. 17, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
31:44
Bowing (Again) To Biden Pressure, Meta Bans RT

Although Meta director Mark Zuckerberg promised just a month ago that his companies would "push back" against US government pressure to censor, just a week after the Biden Administration leveled unsubstantiated claims against Russia-funded RT he raced to kick the news outlet off of all Meta platforms. Also today: RFK, Jr. teams up with Donald Trump, Jr. to plead for de-escalation in Ukraine war.

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Time Text
Effort to Control Media 00:08:01
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?
Doing well.
Good.
Doing well?
Good.
And we want to find out how well the First Amendment is doing.
Not as well.
Are people hands off and letting people say and think what they want, as long as they don't go out with a gun and tell them what they can't see?
So that's been going on for a couple years, and the founders tried to straighten it out.
But even with the knowledge about freedom of speech, a long time, even before the founders tried to resolve it, people thought about this.
Shouldn't this be a freedom that we have to express ourselves?
That's part of humanity.
You know, it's part of a natural law that you should be able to express yourself, rejecting the whole notion of violence to have your own way.
But in this age of technology where the internet is available, it becomes a little more complicated.
But, you know, the principle I don't think changes.
But the effort to spread messages has changed.
And I think that it also makes opportunities for us to use technology, too.
And sometimes we do use it wisely.
I'm talking in a collective.
People do use it.
And we use it to try to get our message out of why people should be more tolerant of those of us who would like to see a free society, believing that is the road to peace and prosperity, one of our major goals.
But right now, the issue on the table is, I'll read the Zero Hedge with their headline said, Meta bans Russia's RT from Facebook, Instagram, following Biden administration directive.
You know, when I see the RT, it always brings back memory about my first introduction to RT.
And that was when we were in Washington.
And we had a good relations with her, but they didn't, it wasn't, you know, politically correct back then to say, oh, Ron Paul's office is filled with a bunch of communists.
But we had a good relationship with them.
So therefore, today, anybody that wants to get information out, which they're making an honest effort to tell the truth about it, you get painted.
But where we're running in today and what I talked about today is RT, because their reputation is wishy-washy, and they tell us one thing and they do other things.
So many of these large companies have a lot of power, but Twitter seems to be pretty helpful.
Thank goodness that we can occasionally get on Twitter.
So that is worthwhile.
But this whole thing about the American people waking up to what's going on is important, because a lot of people and I too and others welcomed Facebook and these things at the beginning.
But now they've lost their value and people will drop away.
The market seems to weed out some of the nonsense, but there's still something that when the government gets involved, is this a tool the government, is this just the market sorting out and making their own judgment on whether we want to watch something, what kind of soap we want to buy?
And that to me is the important thing is who makes the decisions?
Because there will be no perfection that all of a sudden you can turn a switch on and get the right president, and he will give us the truth and the whole truth.
So that's not the case.
And right now, you know, this whole political system that's been going on, especially in the last decade or so in this country, you know, trying to figure out who's telling the truth, it becomes more and more important because there's a lot of desperation.
We're now bankrupt.
We have a financial moral bankruptcy.
And people are starting to feel frightened.
The wealth is shrinking.
And there's a lot at stake.
And that's why these issues are important.
And we do have some good people that know and understand civil liberties that are on our side.
But still, we see this nonsense on a daily basis because right now, I don't know whether the American people now hate China the most or Russia the most.
But the one thing is, what we're doing, unfortunately, is maybe driving them together is not what we exactly was planning.
But yes, they are the target right now.
And the motivation behind that is various.
And you can speculate what it is, but there's different reasons why people don't turn this way.
And it may be out of desperation because our empire is shrinking.
What are we going to do without our empire?
We better start defending it.
So we need to control more of this media.
We can't allow people just saying and doing things promote and only have that out there which the government permits.
That's the big deal.
And the government looks like they're in the business of it.
They have been.
We realize it.
And they have no consistency in the way they think this should be settled.
Yeah, well, let's put on that clip that you mentioned before because this is what we're talking about.
This is what happened today.
Meta banned Russia's RT from Facebook, Instagram following the Biden administration directive.
Now, this was a talk that Secretary of State Blinken gave a few days ago or last week where he came down and said, well, RT is not a media outlet.
It's just a bunch of foreign propaganda.
It's foreign intelligence operations against the American people.
They are engaged in trying to rig the elections against basically all of the old Russia gate stuff that they said before.
Remember that intelligence community product about RT and how they were involved in all these nefarious things?
Well, it really does smack of the worst of the 50s Cold War propaganda that, you know, that here is this, you know, sort of all, you know, all-ending, dangerous thing that we are not allowed to consume.
But the point that we want to talk here is not necessarily about RT.
Now, we've had a relationship with RT, not a professional one in terms of working for them, but the fact that they allow dissidents on their program, which try that on an American network.
Try having going on, try having someone like Scott Ritter on Fox News or MSNBC.
It's not going to happen.
They only have people who agree with the regime.
So if you want to be able to have a voice, sometimes you go to places like RT and other alternative sources.
So this is what happened.
So Blinken came on last week and said, RT is terrible.
They're stealing our precious bodily fluids.
They're making us all terrible pro-Russians.
And then so today, Meta comes up and says, okay, well, I guess we'll buy that.
They didn't offer any evidence.
Put on the next one now.
They didn't offer any evidence.
It's just blinking out there.
Meta on Tuesday announced it's booting RT from its apps globally, agreeing with the Biden administration on its charge of deceptive influence operations.
And here's a quote.
After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets.
Rossiya, Sogodon, whatever.
RT and other related activities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign influence interference activity, they said.
No evidence given, no charges made, no proof of anything, only the government saying so.
Put on the next clip.
Washington started.
U.S. as New Soviet Union? 00:14:50
Now, this is more about Washington than about RT, Dr. Paul.
Washington started last Friday, starting last Friday, took its war against a state-funded English language broadcaster to a global level, urging all nations to block its broadcasts and close down offices.
So this is the purported leader of the free world demanding that the rest of the world block out information that it doesn't like.
I mean, talk about the U.S. sounding like the old Soviet Union.
You know, they talk about protecting liberty in the free world and this sort of thing.
But what they're doing is struggling to maintain their power of the empire.
And if there's going to be more truth-telling, this is a threat, you know, to the empire.
And that's why they're very, very frightened by this.
But I think that the people should be making these decisions, not the politicians, not the people who are going to make money off the foreign policy.
There's a lot of special interests involved.
And sometimes it's just plain old political power that they want.
And they probably change their tune day to day, and they measure all their words.
There's a big campaign going on now, and maybe there will be an election one of these days.
And they want to have influence because I think they're starting to realize that things are going to change.
And the question really is, who should be making these decisions?
Not that there's a perfect answer out there about, well, are you allowed to say these things?
Well, there are some things, you know, even in a libertarian society, you can't commit fraud.
You can't do this.
But just speaking your voice and give an opinion is quite a bit different than people using it for fraudulent reasons and cheating the people.
And that is something that is quite a bit different.
But unfortunately, this is riproar and probably it's going to continue and it's going to be it'll build because we're getting closer to the election so there's going to be a burst of it.
We're in the middle of it.
We have been.
It's been going on for years.
It goes on, especially at the time of war.
Just think of the 80s and the 90s when we were in the early part of this century trying to stop the propaganda of why we had to go to war.
And that was a challenge.
But it seems so often that that's one of the biggest issue for the lying and cheating is when war is at issue.
And I think it represents the desire to protect their empire and their wealth.
And that is why they're so determined that truth, we can't stand truth unless we get to decide what is true or not.
And that's what they're trying to do, decide for all the people what they should be allowed to listen to.
Well, people will say, well, hey, wait on it, wait a minute, because Meta is a private company.
They own Facebook and Instagram.
It's a private company.
If they want to ban RT, that's their own business.
Well, technically, that's true.
But now that we know after the Twitter files and after more information has come out that these companies were acting at the behest of the government.
And we knew what happened during COVID.
The government came in and said, I want you to ban that guy, take down that post.
This guy's got to be gone too.
And they said, okay, sure, sure.
So it was at the direction of government.
It was government censoring people and using these companies as a tool to do it, as a workaround for the First Amendment.
So we know that.
Now, we shouldn't be surprised.
So when we criticize Meta for just coincidentally doing it a few days after Lincoln says with no evidence that they're engaged in covert information warfare against Americans, the fact is, and I wish the judge were here because he would explain it in such a great way.
We're allowed to consume propaganda.
We can read propaganda all day.
You can sit around and read Montcalm to your heart's content if you want to.
That's what it means having a First Amendment.
We don't need the government to protect us against information that they think might be harmful to us.
It's this whole goal that people believe in, that it's the government's duty to protect us against bad ideas and all kinds of issues, protect us against poverty, protect us against wars, and yet they end up doing exactly the opposite.
They're usually destroying those principles that have fought our way to being instilled in so many people over the history of the world that there's always a challenge there.
But to decide who's to make these decisions, that's why the freedom philosophy is so wonderful.
You get to choose.
You can be dumb if you want.
You don't even have to study if you want.
You know, most hardcore libertarians, and maybe you don't have to be real hardcore, is, you know, I know I was raised at a period of time that what made America great was the right of the government to give us free education.
And now all of a sudden, you know, there's a challenge to that.
There's more criticism of that government-free education and more people realizing education could be delivered in a different manner.
So that has to be done through volunteers.
And that's why independent schooling is so important.
It teaches people to look at it and not let them be frightened of freedom of ideas and discussion.
You know, that's the whole thing is, is now it's to have the demagogues have to be there, to demagogue and scare people.
Scaring people is one of their biggest tools and scare people and then also play on the freedom and to play on the whole thing of patriotism.
Oh, if you don't support the troops and you're not patriotic, how can you help us preserve our freedoms?
So that goes on and on and that's going to happen.
But I think people who get tired and worried that things are so bad, in some ways some things are pretty bad.
But in other ways, there's a lot of people out there just looking for a little bit of guidance and think that you mean to say I'm not violating the principles of freedom by saying that RT should be permitted to broadcast in this country.
But they never bring up the subject in this debate is, we do it all the time.
We're the champions of all this stuff that we're going to regulate.
As soon as it comes back, as soon as there's blowback to us, oh, why are they doing that?
They're evil people.
Then they distracted from what we have done by being involved in regulations and controls and initiation of wars and all the coups that occur because the statistics are pretty blunt about how we've been involved in that type of activity.
Well, we just talked about it the other day on this program, how Congress voted by a massive margin to spend millions and millions of dollars delivering propaganda to the Chinese, like literally doing what they claim RT is doing to us, doing that to the Chinese, taking over independent news and turning them into mouthpieces for Washington, D.C. You're absolutely right, Dr. Paul.
This is what they literally do all the time.
Yet somehow, when the light has shined on them, you know, they scream, it's not us, it's the Russians.
You know, see, our motivation seems to be that what we want is to make this country much better that we can be proud of.
And then they turn that into, well, you're destroying the country.
You know, that goes on daily.
You know, if they're getting ready to do something really bad, then they blame the individual first for what they're planning on doing.
So that's the art of propagandizing the people.
And too often the people are gullible, but I still put a lot of blame on the educational system.
It's so, so different than how the founders got their education.
You know, you think, well, they didn't even, they didn't really have that much bill.
It was costly to get a book, you know, in the 1700s, you know, but they had books, they got them and they read and they were well informed, unbelievably so.
And yet, what has seemed to happen in the last 120 years has been the destruction of independent thinking and the dependency on the government.
So that's a condition that people don't think that's a big deal because, well, yeah, we have some bad apples there.
What we have to do is get a better leader in the Department of Education, and then everything will be okay.
And that's the fallacy that they have to look at.
Well, let's look at some of the hypocrisy of Anthony Blinken, probably one of the worst secretaries of state we've ever had.
This is what he says: as he urges the rest of the world to ban RT, to ban that perspective, to not let the Russian government put out as much propaganda as they want.
Here's what he says: he couches it in a freedom of expression language.
I'll skip one and go to Blinken.
Further told reporters.
Yeah, there we go.
So just take this in.
Blinken further told reporters on Friday, our most powerful antidote to Russia's lies is the truth, and that the administration is shining a bright light on what the Kremlin is trying to do under the cover of darkness.
You're not using the truth to counter Russia's lies.
You're pressuring the rest of the world to silence information that you don't agree with.
There is a big difference.
But they use our language.
Yeah.
And he would have said, well, I would let RT broadcast everywhere, and we'll counter it with the truth, and the truth will out.
No, that's not what they say.
They want to shut everyone out.
But we can't let this go by, Dr. Paul, without talking about Mark Zuckerberg, who literally a month ago was before Congress apologizing.
Put this next one on.
This is from Politico.
Literally was before Congress apologizing for caving into White House pressure on censorship.
He went before the U.S. Congress and said, I'm so sorry the government told us to censor about COVID.
Go ahead and put the next one on.
This will show you the date.
Just a month ago and go to the next one.
Here's what he said to Congress.
I believe government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it.
I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any administration in either direction.
And we're ready to push back if something like this happens again.
One month later, what does he do?
He does it again.
He does it again.
So if the market were left to function, people who are paying just a little bit of attention should look at this.
And it doesn't need another dictator to tell you what to believe and not to believe.
But when you listen to this, he has just totally destroyed any credibility that you can see.
And yet, you know, money talks and power talks and the politicians like people they can manipulate no matter what they call it.
If they call it advancing the cause of liberty, and unfortunately, too many people have been conditioned to, if, well, it's the Secretary of State, you know.
But to add to it, though, it's shifting.
It's not as easy to defend the government and the state.
And now that we're looking at, again, more assassination attempts and things like that, the credibility of the government is going to continue to go down.
But we have to work very hard because there will be enough chaos that some rebuilding will have to be done.
And that is our job to help contribute to that rebuilding.
Well, here is the, you see, the given reason is we have to protect Americans from propaganda.
Therefore, we have to shut down any dissenting voices.
But that's the given reason.
The real reason comes up.
Now, Jamie Rubin is the State Department spokesman.
He gave a briefing a few days ago, and he spilled the beans on the real reason that they are shutting down RT and they want to silence RT.
Put that next one up.
This is Jamie Rubin.
This is a briefing from the State Department.
Well, one of the reasons, not the only reason, but one of the reasons why so much of the world has not been as fully supportive of Ukraine as you think they would be, given that Russia has invaded and violated rule number one of the international system, is because of the broad scope and reach of RT, where propaganda, disinformation, and lies are spread to millions, if not billions, of people around the world.
So the reason most of the world does not buy Washington's claims about Ukraine, does not buy Washington's claims that we had nothing to do with, or Russia just invaded.
There was no 2014.
None of this happened.
None of this.
It's all RT's fault.
If it hadn't been for RT, the rest of the world would be lined up sending troops, fighting Russia.
It's such an infidelistic view of the world.
Sounds like advice coming from a dictator.
Yeah, yeah.
Tell them one thing, do the other, and undermine liberty because there's not to be any challenge.
And I think it happens so often in economics and the whole work.
People who get involved and it's supposed to be a freedom of exchange.
Both sides have to volunteer associations, whether they're personal or economic.
All of a sudden they say, well, that doesn't work out that well, so therefore we have to have referees.
And we are so smart, the average person is not smart enough to know.
And people shouldn't roll over that easy.
Because believe me, I've been there.
I've been exposed to it.
I've talked to a couple.
Believe me, their motivations, and this doesn't go for all of them because there are a lot of people there trying hard.
But the people who get in a leadership position, matter of fact, the rules to move up so often in the leadership weeds out the people who are independent thinkers.
Putting the Shoe on the Other Foot 00:07:45
Yeah, that's for sure.
Well, let's touch on one other thing before we go.
And that is an op-ed that we saw in The Hill.
And I'll fast forward a couple clips.
I put in too many there.
But this was written by RFK Jr. and Donald Trump Jr.
The two juniors got together and wrote an interesting article.
The title is Negotiate with Moscow to End the Ukraine War and Prevent Nuclear Devastation.
If you go to the next clip, they're talking about what happened about the agreement to allow Ukraine to fire long-range weaponry deep inside of Russia and the warning that Putin said, which is that that will mean that NATO countries, the U.S. and European countries, are at war with Russia.
And so the two of them got together and penned this article saying, we need to put the brakes on right now before we end up in a nuclear war.
And it's an interesting argument that they make.
It's an important argument they make.
But I think it caught both of our attention because of who was making the argument.
Yes, and you know, there's pretty good evidence that some of the major assassinations that have happened in the last 40, 50, 60 years or throughout history, but especially in our history in the last hundred years or so, because there's been a few assassinations, presidents and senators and leaders like Martin Luther King.
And one thing that is common, it's not identical, but they all seem to have a position against the wars going on or stopping a war, and they speak out on it.
And that seems to be one of the themes that go on.
And just these recent episodes, there's people, they're not identical, but there are people that are saying that, you know, why don't we, this is, I'm trying to defend this because it's not quite so radical.
Like, negotiate with Moscow to talk to Moscow.
Two people, Moscow sitting over there, they get attacked by NATO and they defend their borders.
And then there's also the, we get over here, and then we go 6,000 miles looking for a fight.
It goes on and on.
So you suggest, maybe we ought to just talk with Russia.
And of course, how this should settle should be a talk because the power mongers are U.S. and Russia, and they should talk together.
But no, that is not the case.
They want to have a large body like NATO will talk and the United Nations will talk and it will go on and on.
But this is considered by some people treasonous.
Some of the ugly stuff.
And then all of a sudden, when push comes to shove, like that vote that was on China, there's so few Republicans avoided.
Otherwise, if it wasn't so universally accepted that people support this warmongering, that we wouldn't have so many wars.
But there were times back in the 70s and 80s when I would vote and try to call attention to spending on foreign policy.
Back then, you could finally never get, I used to never be able to get a Republican, generally speaking, but you could get some progressive Democrats.
But you might have a handful, 15 or 20.
But now, now there's much more organization because it's so deadly thinking about what is going to happen if we just go looking for wars to fight.
And I think when they start talking about these negotiations and things and not willing to talk, that they're gambling.
Our leaders are gambling.
And they're gambling with something that they have their own evil policy and that we run the world.
And we don't follow the rules, our own rules about freedom of speech.
So when they come down hard on this and criticize those individuals, because there's a lot of that, there's a lot of people in this country that are challenged and just thinking, I think you already made the point, you won't find certain TV companies letting somebody on their station.
And in a way, they have a certain right to it.
But when it comes to the government supporting that kind of position, then we're in trouble.
Well, we're under no illusions about Trump.
You know, during the debate, he mentioned Pompeo again in a positive way.
So we don't have any illusions that he's going to make peace or be a peacemaker.
However, I think if Donald Trump Jr., I don't think would pen an article like this that would be at odds with his father's position.
So I think if you're reading the tea leaves, it's a good sign that he teamed up with RFK.
Now, maybe it's just an election era sort of scam.
But nevertheless, I think it's a good look.
I just wanted to highlight a couple of sentences from this article because it makes a point that we often make, which is putting the shoe on the other foot.
Put this one on because it's important.
Go to the next one, please.
So imagine, this is what RFK and Donald Trump Jr. wrote.
Imagine if Russia were providing another country with missiles, training, and targeting information to strike deep into American territory.
The U.S. would never tolerate it.
We shouldn't expect Russia to tolerate it either.
The game of nuclear chicken has gone far enough.
There's no remaining step between firing U.S. missiles deep into Russian territory and a nuclear exchange.
We cannot get any closer to the brink than this.
And for what?
To weaken Russia, to control Ukraine's minerals?
No vital American interest is at stake.
To risk nuclear conflict for the sake of the neoconservative fantasy of full-spectrum dominance is madness.
Now, I love him calling out the neocons here.
I just wish his dad would listen and identify the neocons.
Well, let's hope this article gets some coverage because it represents, you know, nobody has a perfect philosophy, and we go back and forth and trying to refine it.
But here you have a Democrat, you know, not the kind of Democrats that the Democratic Party wants.
But, you know, we have RFK Jr., you know, representing theoretically, you know, the Democrats.
And we also have Trump on the other side.
So there is a subtleness here.
And I think they meant it to be that way.
But neither one of them, I would say they are good people for the peacemaker because if you have the radicals to get out and, you know, all those things on each side, it's more difficult to negotiate.
So I think this is great.
I just hope that there's, I hope there's more coverage on this.
But what are the likelihoods that it will be on major regular television?
Yeah, yeah.
Void this out.
Well, I'm just going to close out, Dr. Paul, by thanking all our viewers for watching the show and asking you again to hit thumbs up or like or whatever you have on the medium that you're watching the show.
And we appreciate you watching the show and your support.
Over to you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
And I want to thank all our viewers today for tuning in.
Philosophy Practiced, Even to a Small Extent 00:00:51
And there's no reason to be despondent because I think there's still enough freedom left in this country to continue to struggle to expose the world and our country and our voters with the ideas of liberty.
Because it seems so strange that we don't do a better job because it is a philosophy that when practiced, even to a small extent, the benefits are so outstanding.
And when you go the opposite direction and look at tyranny and looking at the government to tell us what to do, how to protect us, how to make our lives better, and set the stage for that, once we turn that over to the government, things don't work out so well.
Whether you look at medical care, education, or the economies of the world, the more government, the less prosperous, and the less free the people become.
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