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Speaker 2: Hey, Carrie, this is Robert Ian with conker Change dot com.
This past week, there was a State Department interview with
Secretary of State Marco Rubio. I met Secretary Rubio, then
Senator Rubio in twenty fifteen when he was in Las
Vegas for Freedom Fest. President Trump had just declared his
presidential run for twenty sixteen and was delivering one of
his first speeches as a newly minted candidate, along with Rubio,
who was running in the primary opposite to Trump. I
caught up with Rubio not at the conference, but at
a semi private local event where he gave a lengthy,
well articulated stump speech and provided an up close and
personal Q and A session following his talk. Now fast
forward ten years to the interview he gave this past week,
which was all about freedom and referred to a momentous
day in the history of the State Department, as the
US government begins the process of restoring free speech. Rubio declared,
we have ended government sponsored censorship in the United States
through the State Department. From a timeline perspective, he recapped
how followed nine to eleven. The idea was to go
after messaging of hostile geopolitical groups trying to radicalize people,
which he said at the time sounded plausible. This apparatus
was then expanded and escalated to include the idea that
there was quote interference in the twenty sixteen election. Then
by twenty twenty, he said, it evolved into a movement
to go after individual American voices. Here's how it worked.
The State Department was using NGOs, which stands for non
governmental organizations and other third party groups, as proxies and
pass through entities, who in turn were tagging and labeling
voices in American politics as foreign agent's. In other words,
the State Department was funding attack dogs to silent's American voices,
many of whom were deplatformed from social media in the
months leading up to the twenty twenty election and as
a result, rendered unable to communicate their ideas and opinions.
According to Rubio, the censorship group within the State Department,
identified by the host later within the interview as the
Global Engagement Center, was disbanded before Trump took office. An
archived State Department web page says the Global Engagement Center
closed on December twenty third of twenty twenty four. In
my opinion, it should state that it conveniently closed on
that date. Rubio stated the principle by which the State
Department would be operating on a go forward basis, namely
that the best way to counter disinformation is with free speech.
He said, what's true must have an equal or greater
chance to counter what isn't true, in particular when disinformation
gets turned into a political weapon to go after people
you don't like. He said, every day he watches mainstream
media where they put out material they know is disinformation.
He cited instances in Western countries right now where people
are being arrested for social media posts, with officers sent
to their home to tell them they're going to jail
for sixty days for posting something online. Going forward, his
State Department is defunding and restructuring the censorship unit to
share pro American messaging with the world, not attack and
jail citizens for exercising their free speech. An effort is
underway to document what happened and so it doesn't happen again,
he said. People in the US who were harmed not
only need to know how it happened, but also be
able to prove they were harmed to restore their reputations
and livelihoods. He reiterated that fifteen years ago the idea
to combat radicalization may have seemed reasonable enough, but in
a short amount of time that process metastasized into what
we have today. It was turned into something else by
someone else when the people in charge changed. He's promised
that an in depth transparency process is underway, not just
in high profile censorship cases, but with many more everyday
American citizens who were suddenly labeled. One example is when
people were deplatformed near the beginning of the pandemic. He
wants to find out who ordered them to be deplatformed,
who within the State Department and elsewhere tagged people to
be silenced, he said. Unpacking the depth and scope of
what happened will be made known. The interviewer then specifically
asked as the State Department is repositioned as the global
beacon for free speech and liberty. Threats exist from censorship
laws coming out of the European Union, of which many
countries have taken the efforts of what he referred to
as Global Engagement Center ecosystem partners, many of whom were
funded by the US State Department and are now shaping
foreign censorship laws. He asked, how will the State Department
restore free speech in a world where places like the
European Union are targeting Americans and interfering with their free speech.
Rubio says the number one priority is Americans. He doesn't
want to see an American living in London, for example,
post something online about US politics or any politics for
that matter, and then suddenly they are facing ramifications in
the European Union, like being denied entry into a country
or getting arrested because they posted something while living overseas.
He said, one of the things that's supposed to link
us to places like Europe are shared values. One of
those values is supposed to be freedom of expression. If
that's eroded, then one of the fundamental pillars of that
shared interest, beyond military cooperation, is under attack. Apparently, this
very issue was raised with the Prime Minister of England
when he visited the Oval Office. The mere fact it
had to be raised indicates how far the problem has
gone and how big it has actually become. He calls
it a foreign policy irritant and impediment. I call it
escalating totalitarianism that clearly illustrates their philosophical underpinnings. It's not
just that censorship saber rattling is happening with high profile people,
like how the EU Commissioning Body recently tried to strong
arm and essentially threatened both the President and Elon Musk
to not talk about recent protests in the UK. He said,
everyone is at risk, citizens, commentators, journalists, everyday, people talking
about world events, and even officeholders in the US. It's
a very wide and punitive net that could impact even
this discussion on the topic. What I found refreshing, though
and promising about this conversation is the energy and spotlight
Rubio is bringing to this critical issue. He underscored, the
State Department is there to serve the American people and
protect their interests, not use stealth and arbitrary power to
go after those who disagree. For the vague and nebulous
concept of misinformation. The approach is not to shut other
people down. It's to say, here's how they're lying, and
here's the truth in reality. That's always been the way
until it wasn't and hasn't been over the past to
get decades of incremental information weaponization on the surface, it
looks like the censorship gun is getting laid down. Or
is it? Time will tell, But the good news is
we'll be able to tell very quickly and until next time.
This is Robert Ian with conquer Change dot com. Thanks Carrie,
thanks for listening to carry Letz's Financial Survival Network, your
solution to today's trying times.
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