 This is Mises Weekends with your host Jeff Deist. Hey ladies and gentlemen, my good friend Daniel McAdams from the Ron Paul Institute gave a talk last weekend at our event in Dallas about who's funding war propaganda in mainstream and social media and who is preventing anti-interventionist voices from being published on those same platforms. And what we're finding out is that companies like YouTube and Google and Facebook and Twitter are now judging and even banning ideological content like that from the Ron Paul Institute or Mises.org based on the guidance of some really evil organizations like the Atlantic Council, Snopes.com, Southern Poverty Law Center to name a few. So all of this poses serious questions for doctrinaire libertarians not only in the area of free speech but also when it comes to property rights. Remember, these are ostensibly private companies that are free to operate as they see fit. So if you're interested in this topic, stay tuned for a disturbing but really fascinating talk from our great friend Daniel McAdams. Well, I was talking to Dr. Paul the other day and I said, you know, I don't know how to put this together. What should I, how should I put together a talk? He said, just do a liberty report. So I said, so I said, OK, if you've ever watched the show, you know, I have my little, my little prompts. But I'd like to start with a couple of thank yous. First of all, I'd like to thank all of you for coming out on a Saturday to visit with us, to listen to what we have to say. This makes it possible, all of you make it possible. Your continued enthusiasm and the fantastic work that the Mises Institute does and some of the work that we do. So thank you to all of you. I'd also like to thank the Mises Institute and Jeff Dice, in particular for inviting me to join you. The Mises Institute is an absolute inspiration for all of us and we're happy that they're very healthy. I'd also like to thank Klaus and Anastasia Thalsma who helped put this together. They've been wonderful supporters of the Ron Paul Institute as well and we're so grateful for their friendship, ongoing friendship. I'd also like to recognize a good friend of mine, Dr. Robert Paul, another Dr. Paul who's here just looking out for us. So I'm so glad he could join us. He's in Fort Worth. So one of the things that I usually do when I give a talk, excuse me, is I like to read the headlines from antiwar.com and if you've seen me talk, it may sound a little silly, but one of the things we do with the Liberty Report is that we look, we are on a tight news cycle. We look at what's happening that morning. Dr. Paul will send me an email at 6.30. Hey, what do you think about these things? What we try to do in the show is to go beyond what you'd expect depending on your normal flavor, CNN versus Fox, to try to look at a different way of looking at the news, a different way of looking at foreign affairs, of breaking international affairs, to put our view on it, the pro-liberty view, the pro-freedom, the pro-peace view on it. So that's what we do. So for us every day is a news cycle and so I'm going to quickly go through these just to sort of center us in where we are in the world right now. Trump, June 12th Summit with Kim is back on. Kim, North Korea's commitment to denuclearization unchanged. Two Koreas make progress, agree to talks on military reunions. Israelis shoot, kill young female medic. US vetoes UN resolution on protecting Palestinians. Department of Justice, this is a great one. I just put this up on our website. Department of Justice told Trump Syria attacks were legal. No problem. Here's the rationale. Because they couldn't, there's no chance of them fighting back. So therefore it wasn't really a war. So no problem. That's what the Justice Department said. Isn't that great? Russia deal reached to remove Iranian forces from Golan. Taliban categorically reject claim of dialogue with Kabul. US wants to deploy missile, anti-missile system in Germany. So this is the snapshot of where we are today. And so here is the plan for me. I want to give a general talk on war cronyism as Jeff suggested. But after I give sort of a general overview of what it looks like from my perspective, I want to drill down deep into three specific components of, I think, a very dark conspiracy to silence any alternative views, any anti-war views, to silence independent news. It really is, it's not a conspiracy theory. It's a conspiracy fact. So that's part two. So the collusion to perpetuate the institutionalization of our foreign policy, the war cronyism that we have is made up of several components. And these are not anything that you haven't already thought about, but you have the defense contractors. They make billions of dollars, gazillions of dollars, let's put it that way, on things that generally don't work. The F-35, we know all about it, made in all 50 states in five foreign countries. They can't kill it. They make tons of money selling fear, selling enemies. And what do they do? With some of that money, they plow it into think tanks. Increasingly, you see the Institute for the Study of War. It's one of the Kagan family, the neocon princes and princesses. The Institute for the Study of War, you just click on who supports them, and it's Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, go down the list. And what do they do? And I'm not singling them out because you can go to CSIS. You can go to virtually every think tank, Brookings. Left, right, center, it doesn't matter. Look at who supports them, and actually increasingly they're getting rid of that information. But look at who funds them. It is always the defense contractors, first and foremost. So what do they do? They produce very frightening sounding policy papers about threats overseas. This could happen. Oh my God, the Iranians are going to do this. Oh, the Russians are going to do this. And they have lots of experts because these people are on the payroll being paid enormously by the defense contractors to be experts. And so what do they do? Well, then here's where Congress comes in. It needs some experts on a committee hearing. And we've had dozens and dozens of committee hearings when I was working for Dr. Paul. And what do they do? They bring experts in from the think tanks. These are the great guys, the great experts. But they all have the same view. There's never a pro-war guy and an anti-war guy. There's never a neocon and an anti-neocon or a pro-freedom person. It's always the same and they always agree and they're always funded by the people who are going to make a huge profit. If the surge takes place, you know, Fred Kagan, who's the husband of Kimberly Kagan who runs the Institute for the Study of War, he was virtually every time there was a hearing on the surge, here he was sitting right up front giving his expert opinion of how it's going to win the war finally for us in Iraq. Well, guess what? We're still there. Thanks a lot. And then you have the media, of course. The media features the experts, the think tank experts, the people whose living, whose sinecures are paid for by the military industrial complex. If Fox News wants to have an expert, well, they'll call it, they'll call a general, they'll call a think tanker. They never have someone like us. They never have an expert who's not for the war, for the intervention. So the media is part of the collusion. Congress, I mentioned already, Congress is the one who looks to think tanks, but also remember when Congress members resign or lose an election, which is rare, or when they decide that they need to spend more time with their family, which is more common, they will look for lucrative jobs in lobbying and they will become part of this system, part of the system they will work for wanted to defense contractors. And as a little aside, Dr. Paul was known for his gentile and friendly attitude. I only saw him get angry once. And that was when he extended a congressional courtesy to a former chairman of the House International Relations Committee who wanted to come in and talk about a certain defense, I forget what it was, some defense gadget. And as a professional courtesy, Dr. Paul said, okay, I'll see you. So he came in and sat down, well, Ron, we gotta do this, we gotta buy this, we gotta do this. And I can see his face that something was happening. And it's the only time I've ever seen him kick someone out of his office. So this is what they do and they make a lot of money doing it. So this is how the system works. More money from the defense, from the military industry into the think tanks, into the media. And round and round and round we go, that's why we can't break the cycle of endless new wars. Look at our national security strategy for the United States that was just released earlier this year. They basically said, this whole war on terrorism thing, it was great while it lasted, but now we've got a new enemy. It's Russia and China. We gotta go back to this one. So forget all this stuff, forget all this money we've spent. We've got to find someone else. And this is how it works. So that's the system in a nutshell. But now I want to drill down as much as I can in the time that I have. Because I think this media hole, the hold of the media, this whole sort of circle is fracturing a little bit. I sense weakness. And a lot of that weakness comes from the independent media. It comes from bloggers. It comes from social media. It comes from experts who are not featured on Fox News and MSNBC, et cetera, but nevertheless learn a lot about these things. And they're challenging the narrative and that's become dangerous for the mainstream. And how do they challenge it? Well, let's look for an example. Look at the recent chemical attack in Douma in Syria. Well, it was very, very shortly after the U.S. claimed, or 100% sure that Assad did it, that you had some independent voices that were doing research and debunking it. Debunking it right away. And in fact, you had a young fellow from a conservative network who went over there to the place where the attack supposedly took place. And he interviewed all the people that were there. They said, we had no idea. There was no attack. So this independent alternative media is debunking things as fast as they're coming around. The Scripple case is another example. I don't need to go into it because here it's just a miraculous resurrection of the Scripples. They had the most deadly substance known in the universe. Even if you look at it, you die in three seconds. Yet somehow they survived. They went and had a long boozy lunch and et cetera, et cetera. Then they passed out on a bench. Now they're fine. In fact, she looks better than ever. But this was been debunked. There was a little blog called the Blogmire, and we featured some of their things on our website. He's an independent guy who lives in Salisbury, a very intelligent guy, and he simply debunked the logic of it. So this is a danger. And because of this danger, I think the danger to the narrative, there's a concerted effort by governments, media, defense contractors to push back against this independent media. So that is the real danger. What you have to do is you have to set up a kind of scenario where if you disagree with the pro-interventionist mindset, if you disagree that we need to have more wars, if you disagree that, no, actually we're always been at war with East Asia. We're always been at war with Russia. If you disagree with this, not only do you just have an opinion that can be debunked or that can be debated. No, you are a bad person. And not only are you a bad person, you are in the service of a foreign government. Therefore, you are a traitor. So this is how you silence, and this is what they're doing. So I want to look at three examples of this. And the first, you probably remember, I think this is sort of how it dawned. And this came from the ferment of the surprise Trump election. It left the mainstream narrative in crisis, I think, because of the things that Donald Trump as a candidate was saying were very threatening to the status quo, to the deep state, if you want to call it that. They were threatening, and I think you all follow this. I don't need to tell you everything that's happened, but I think they're in a panic. And so let's just dial back to November 24th, 2016. The election had just happened. There was a front page story on the Washington Post, front page, the paper of record of Washington. And it was an article called, here was the title, Russian propaganda effort helped spread fake news during election, experts say. You probably remember the piece. It was fascinating because it used this organization that is completely anonymous. We have no idea, we know now who they are. We have a very good idea, completely anonymous. We have no idea what their methodology is, how they came to these conclusions, prop or not. They were going to purport to tell us whether a website is propaganda or not, or whether it's in the service of a foreign government or not. So they listed 200 websites that are, quote, routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season. And that sounds pretty bad. There were 200 websites that were regularly broadcasting Russian propaganda. But then you look at the sites, the dredge report, zero hedge, a lot of us are interested in financial information. We look at zero hedge all the time. Lou Rockwell, the Ron Paul Institute, consortium news. All of these alternative sites that were challenging these narratives were all of a sudden linked on the front page of the Washington Post as agents of a foreign power, not just bad guys with bad ideas or old isolationists, whatever, really bad guys. And this is some of the things I'd like to read a couple of quotes from it, because it really is worth going back and looking at this. Here's what Timberg said. He's their tech editor who wrote the piece. Some players in this online echo chamber were knowingly part of the propaganda campaign, while others were useful idiots. So there's no other option. Either you knowingly did it or you're just useful idiots. Our view was not legitimate. Our view that we need to get along better with Russia, we need to stop having wars in the Middle East. It wasn't legitimate. We were in the service of a foreign power, wittingly or unwittingly, either you're a traitor or you're just too stupid to know. This is the... So here's what the criteria was to determine that we were all secretly Russian agents. We used buzzy, quote, buzzy content to attract readers. Okay, that's called we need to get people to read our stuff. You have a headline that attracts attention. And the other one was their work tracks with popular conspiracy theories about how secret forces dictate world events. Okay, we know what that means, the deep state. And this is my old friend from Capitol Hill, Mike Lofken is the first proponent of this idea of a permanent state. And he knew about it because he lived it. He worked on the Senate side, he worked on the House side. He lived it and I lived it. I knew the people that were there forever that wrote the legislation no matter who was elected. So anyway, if you suggest there was a deep state, well then, there you go. So Michael McFall, former U.S. ambassador to Russia, he chimed in in the article. He said, Russian propagandists, they don't try to win the argument. It's just to make everything seem so relative. There's kind of an appeal to cynicism. So that's essentially if you challenge the perspective. You're just appealing to cynicism. You're a bad guy. And so I think this was the marker that was laid down. And it was, in fact, they had to issue two retractions since the article came out. And I think there were threats of lawsuits and I think they should be sued. Because think about the damage it does to your organization, which is your business, which is your livelihood, which is what you do. If all of a sudden the Rumpall Institute is not just a site for people to read information with a different perspective, a pro-peace perspective, a pro-pospirity perspective. No, no, you're actually doing the bidding of a foreign power. Who is going to give you a donation? Is the FBI going to come knock at your door? Hey, we heard that you were giving money to this foreign power. It's a dangerous thing that they've done. So that's proper not. And so then what we found out later is that they have had ties, this anonymous proper not. They have ties to another group, a very nefarious group called the Atlantic Council. You may have heard of it. It's a pseudo think tank. It's a hybrid media outlet. It's funded by western governments. And I'll give you a little bit of info because it's always good to have the stats. Here's from their own website, Atlantic Council, Honor Roll of Contributors, a million and above, United Arab Emirates, 250 to a million, foreign and Commonwealth Office of the UK, NATO, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Japan, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Chevron, Ukrainian World Congress, US Department of State. Then you have a little lower down, Ministry of Defense of Latvia, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Montenegro, Cyprus, on and on Lithuania, United States Air Force, United States Army, United States Marine Corps, Navy, and on and on you go. This is where the money comes from. And what do they do with this money, with this tons of money? Well, they do a couple of things. They call for places like RT to be listed as foreign agents because they're paid by foreign governments. It's interesting because this is an organization that itself, the bulk of its budget, is coming from foreign budgets, from foreign governments, urging that RT is listed for that. So, here's a couple of things that they've done. They did an article recently in May. We need NATO to fight the information war. They were worried. This is an article they put out. They said they're worried that if Russia invades the UK, people are not going to be enthusiastic because they're reading too much Russian propaganda. So, they just sort of lay back and let it happen. This is one of their arguments. RT should be forced to register. Hold all social media accountable. Here's a great piece they did. How to hold Facebook and Google responsible for fake news? Written by a fellow called Yakub Yanda. I think he's a Slovak. He found a much better gig because he used to be a homosexual pornography actor. So, he's now in NATO's payroll. Here's what he wrote. Online platforms have become the world's most important editors-in-chief. 51% of people access news through online social media, allowing these platforms to curate their news intake through personalized algorithms. So, this is a bad thing to him. For us, it's a great thing. We personalize our news. We personalize what we get to read and what we get to watch. And he says these platforms have simultaneously gained economic leverage. Google and Facebook controlled three-quarters of the advertising budget responsible for 90% of the growth. Traditional media companies are struggling to define a new business model amid lower advertising revenues and decline in readership. Well, I wonder why, right? This has negative consequences for the quality and independence of media. Here, we're getting to the point and can accelerate the spread of inaccurate, low-quality news, disinformation, and hate speech. Given the challenge to shore up quality journalism, Western governments must now create a regulatory framework that forces online platforms to take a greater responsibility for their content. There you have it. People are not listening to our garbage anymore. They're reading other stuff. They're going to Mises. They're going to other places. We've got to do something about this. You think, okay, this is just the raving. This is just crazy. This is just some weird guy. But what happened? Facebook hired the Atlantic Council to monitor all of the postings on Facebook to ensure that all of the election postings are okay. They hired the Atlantic Council to do this. Oh, to improve election security. That was a quote. To improve election security, they hire the Atlantic Council to monitor things. And so what does that mean? That means that the Atlantic Council, in charge of this, wants to get rid of alternative views paid by NATO, doesn't like anti-war views. Here's an interesting little tidbit that happened for the first time in five years. We take out little micro ads when we put up articles, sometimes on Facebook, for the Ron Paul Institute. Because although we have like 250,000 people who follow us, Facebook's genius algorithms only give it to this many people. It used to be this many, and now it shrinks and shrinks. In fact, our traffic is down about 80% from what it was. So to try to make up for that, you can do little micro mini advertising for articles to try to boost a little bit, you know, to try to get the machine to boost it a little bit. So for the first time in five years last week, I got to notice your ad was not approved. It's a political ad. It was something about Memorial Day. You know, remembering the cause, the wars, how bad they are. So just like this. No, this is a political ad. It relates to political campaigns and political issues. You now have to submit two pieces of photo ID, your social security number, and a street address in order for you to pay us to put an ad up on our site. So if you don't think this is related to the Atlantic Council coming in and saying, don't worry guys, we're going to sort out this fake news problem once and for all. You know, then you've got another thing coming. But I'm going to skip the German Marshall Fund, although just for a second, they do the same thing. You may have heard of the Hamilton 68 dashboard. This purports to follow 600 Twitter accounts looking for Russian bots, looking for fake news. And they have become the go-to source for Congress. Senator Lankford cited this Hamilton 68 as a source of information that the Russians were trying to get us to lose faith in our institutions because at the time of the NFL season last year, the two trending hashtags were take a knee and boycott the NFL. Two completely opposing views. So it had to be the Russians getting us to lose faith in our institutions, to become demoralized, and to lose our unity. You know, and I'm thinking, is this a bad thing? What institutions are we talking about? The institutions that lie us into war continuously? I mean, I lost faith in institutions when I saw how Ron Paul was ripped off in 2012 from his delegates. I mean, you don't need to have the Russians to help us lose faith in these institutions. So who's behind Hamilton 68? A group called the Alliance for Securing Democracy. It sounds great. These are the watchdogs there. They don't tell us how they do it because that's secret, but they're going to protect democracy. Well, who's behind this? Who are these wonderful people that are going to save our democracy? Well, I hate to break the news. It's Michael Chertov. You remember him? He made a big fortune selling junky scanners and turning the Department of Homeland Security into a Gestapo. Michael Chertov is involved with it. Bill Kristol. Oh, he's a great friend of democracy. Michael McFall, the ambassador to Russia, is with them. Who else? What's his name now? The former CIA deputy director. Michael Morrell, openly for Clinton. He sort of broke tradition with the CIA by openly endorsing Hillary Clinton as a candidate and saying that Donald Trump is an agent of Putin. He said that. So these are the guys who are going to go through all of our social media, all the things that we produce and decide whether it's fake news or not. So this is a full frontal attack, I think, on what we are trying to do. And frankly, I am frightened. I look at our numbers. I look what they're doing to us. I look at other organizations and what's happening to them. This is a very nefarious thing. And where did they get the money for this? Well, Congress appropriated $100 million recently to fight Russian propaganda. And as Dr. Paul says, if you subsidize something, you're going to get a lot more of it. And so what's going to happen? All of this appropriated $100 million that goes to these places like the Atlantic Council, Hamilton 68, Prop or not. This money is... It changes the purpose. It changes the legitimate opposition to warfare state, to militarism, to military welfareism, to the global military empire. The opposition to that, which is normal, we think. It's a normal... It's patriotic Americanism. It turns that into something nefarious, Russian propaganda. It's very dangerous. It doesn't matter what you think about Russia. That's not the point. What you think about Putin is not the point. What's happening is not about Russia. It's about silencing us. And it's happening right before our eyes. And I think the news is tightening around us. Thank you.