Judging Freedom - Lt. COL. Karen Kwiatkowski: A Government that Steals and Lies

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

Lt. COL. Karen Kwiatkowski: A Government that Steals and LiesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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do it with 30% off a three-month supply at ritual.com slash podcast. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, September 3rd, 2024. Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski joins us now. Karen, it's a pleasure. You have a great piece at judsnap.com and lewrockwell.com and elsewhere about government stealing and lying about it. That's nothing new to anybody watching this show, but your poignant observations are worth digging into. But before we get there, I do want to ask you some questions about late breaking news. Earlier today, the Russians fired two ballistic missiles

at a military school outside of Kiev, killed 51 people, students, military students, cadets, and a group of Polish instructors. I'm wondering if you think the use of ballistic missiles to attack a military school is part of President Putin's slow, inexorable drive westward into Ukraine, or is in response to the Ukrainian assault, however brilliant or misguided it may be, depending on what side of the aisle people are on, into Kursk? Yeah, it seems to me, I mean, the timing, of course, would make it, we would think, oh, well, this is in response to the Kursk invasion. And I think the Ukrainians may be holding still a small bit of territory there, even though that is not considered a military success. But to me, it seems like this is a

continuation of what has been going on. The way the Russians have prosecuted this war from the very beginning, it started with the SMO and it had a mission and it had objectives. And again, for Americans who are my age and have seen the Americans go to war, you know, having a constrained mission, having a set of objectives that tie back to the mission, the political connecting with the military, with the strategy and the tactics. That is amazing for an American to see. We don't fight wars like that, okay? But the Russians seem to be conducting themselves in a very, almost a traditional way of war. Their objective is to protect the Russians in the area and ideally denazify Ukraine. And I think that's part of their objective that's been stated. And they have stayed, the Russians have stayed away

from Kiev for the most part. They've targeted, of course, industrial and energy, electrical grid type things and military targets, but they have stayed away from hitting civilian places. And again, this is a military school, so it fits in with the military target, but close to Kiev. A little more, it's just like the slow strangulation of what's left of Ukraine. And it's tragic to watch it. This is not how the American geniuses who promoted this war and promote it to this day. That's not how they envisioned it happening. Does it matter that a number of the instructors that were killed were Polish military instructors teaching young candidates for officership, officer ranks in the Ukrainian military? It does matter because NATO participation in this war has been a constant. He knows it, the Russians say it, the Americans deny it, NATO denies it, but it's true. So when

NATO people, and Poland obviously a NATO member, get killed in the conduct of this war, it drives home the fact that this is a NATO war against Russia, a Russian war against NATO. So that's a point of clarity, in fact. Now, for the Polish, for the Polish citizens who are a little bit tired of what's happening, you know, to their east, they're a little bit tired of the Ukrainian refugees and the cost of this continued war. I think many in Poland would like to get back to normal. For them, in terms of their domestic politics, losing Polish officers here is going to add some more pressure. I think most people in Europe are tired of this. I think Americans would be tired of it if we didn't have an election coming up and we didn't have a non-existent, non-present president. So yeah, it means something. It certainly implicates NATO, but it also impacts Poland specifically and their domestic perspective of this. Switching to Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu did not have a very good weekend.

He was the subject of massive demonstrations of a few hundred thousand people and anguish and bitterness over the deaths of six hostages for whose release he has declined to negotiate in a serious and credible way. He reannounced his efforts to take control over the judiciary. There was a general strike which shut down Israel for most of yesterday. But he still seems to be the most popular politician in Israel. It doesn't seem anybody who can uh replace him none of these people who are furious at him are furious at the war they're just furious at the way he's waging it yeah yeah israel uh their democracy their parliamentary system their set of alliances their ideology for for many of them, certainly Zionism as an ideology,

has put the whole country in kind of a smaller and smaller box. And it's not just isolation from the international community based on things that they do and certainly based on what they've done since October 7th. It's not really that isolation. It is a box of what is allowable, what is an allowable decision that can be taken by Israeli people, because their security is important to them, obviously. But their commitment to doing things which will interminably violate and endanger them and violate their security, they're also committed to that. So the Israelis themselves have to make a choice about, do they want peace? Do they want security? Or do they want to continue to do what they've been doing and losing friends and losing, according to Colonel McGregor on your show, losing a great deal of their population, facing more strikes, facing more global reluctance to buy Israeli products, to invest in Israel, to trade with Israel. This is the price of decisions that Israelis themselves have made over the years. And when you make a series of bad decisions and you're ideologically

blind, and yeah, you know, of course they hate people that hurt them, but they have to realize everybody does. The whole world, you know, it's human to despise somebody that hurts you and to be afraid and angry at people that are scaring you. That's normal, but they're not dealing with it. Do you think that Netanyahu personally or senior people in his government either knew that October 7th was coming or intentionally looked the other way by having that border so unprofessionally secured? Yeah. I mean, seriously, a little tiny country like that, surrounded by enemies with an excellent, excellent intelligence agency, an excellent early warning system, certainly complemented by the United States capability. Yeah. There's no doubt in my

mind that this was allowed to happen. And, you know, it is not ahistorical. It's not unprecedented for things like that to happen. I mean, you know, we have, you know, governments that have political agendas, whether it's to save a person's career and keep them out of jail. Netanyahu certainly has that. Or if it is in the case of Israel, to expand Israel's border and to take more territory, to get more gas fields, to profit themselves. When you have agendas and you're a democracy, quote unquote, you need to convince people of things. We've done it ourselves many times. The United States has done this. You go down the list.

To segue to your column about theft and lying, here's a one-liner from Professor Murray Rothbard. You may know it. There are three models to accumulate wealth. Model one, you trade your talent, the sweat of your brow, the use of your muscles, your intellect for dollars. You go to work. Model two, you were fortunate enough to inherit wealth. Model three, the mafia model. Give us your money or else. Which model does the government use? We know which one it is. I mean, this is the story of America. It's the story of almost every government. And actually, you know, it's part of the mythology of how this country was founded. You know, we talk about the tax on tea. That's not really it. But there was a sense that the British king, King George and his army were taking things without compensation. And we see this in the Bill of Rights. Many of

them address government theft, government stealing, government abuse of liberty. That's what governments do. We revolted against it and created something that's bigger than anything that's ever existed on the planet for Americans, and our government behaves precisely as predicted. So the motto that Jefferson and company coined was taxation without representation is tyranny. How did it work out for taxation with representation? The highest income, well, there was no income tax, but the highest amount of tax anyone paid on anything in 1776 was 3%. If you live in San Francisco, Los Angeles, or New York City, you're paying close to 60%, on your adjusted gross income. That's amazing. And yet no one, you know, we're totally satisfied with that. Apparently we have been indoctrinated forever to accepting that as our, you know, the right to be an American pay 60 percent tax and there's no revolution.

But but but, you know, governments fail. They are when they're bad. And ours is very bad. It will it will fail, much like the Soviet Union system failed. So many top-heavy, bureaucratic, corrupt government systems fail, and dispatched the team of FBI agents and U.S. marshals to an airport in the Dominican Republic to steal the jet owned by the government of Venezuela and assigned as the presidential jet to President Maduro. The alleged purpose of it or stated reason for it was, even though he's not an American, obviously, even though he doesn't live or do any business in America, obviously,

he, as the president of Venezuela, was allowing Venezuelan companies to trade with Russian companies. And that's a violation of the American sanctions. What kind of sense does this make? The same FBI agents that stole this plane prosecute people for stealing things. Yeah, and this is how systems actually collapse from within, because just exactly what you said, the same FBI agents who actively prosecute theft are also conducting and actively conducting theft and not just of Maduro's airplane. But, you know, these raids, you know, Dimitri Symes, he wasn't at his house when it happened, but his neighbors said

that truckloads and truckloads of items were carried out of his house, including furniture. So that's theft, okay? He wasn't there to be presented with a warrant. They broke into his house and took the contents. This was FBI agents. So on the orders of, I assume, whoever the boss of the FBI is, I mean, you know, is it Biden? I mean, who's running our government? We don't know. It's the people in charge. So they're corrupt and they know they're corrupt. And this is the kind of thing that really creates whistleblowers. It creates people who quit. Sometimes they, what is it they call when you're working, but you're quitting, quit working. I forget the name of it. There's a name for it. So this is what our government will be doing, very much like the Soviet Union government did. I mean, people who worked for the government, which when it was the Soviet Union, they enriched themselves and they lived

a life of hypocrisy and contradiction of terms. And when you do that long enough, everything falls apart. We're on that track. Absolutely. Is this what the government does in America? Because Dmitry Symes is an American citizen, as well as a Russian citizen. He happens to be living in Moscow now, but this home of his was not far from you in Virginia. Is this what the American government does to people who reject what it's peddling or challenge what it says is the truth? Well, the targeting of Americans who are vocal in contradicting the government message, it is becoming more and more obvious that that's what they're doing. If you really dive deep into it, you can see that they've been doing this for a long time.

But, yeah, we are seeing more high level people and certainly the way they don't like Elon Musk. You know, he can't say this. He can't say that. Why? Of course, he can say whatever he wants in his platform hosts, you know, millions and hundreds of millions of people who say and can say whatever they want to say. And the government doesn't like that. So they're heavy handed with these people. It's a sign. It's a sign of actually what it's a sign of is weakness. You know, the government is bullying its citizens. And, you know, when we look at bullying in general, who is the bully? Well, the bully is the guy who's the most insecure, who's the most frustrated, who's the least capable. And bullying is kind of the expression that they, it's how they deal with people. And our

government is a big bully. Now, the rest of the world is probably like, of course they are. They've known that for decades and decades. But Americans haven't really seen their government as a bully. But it is. It is. And it's expressing it more openly now. Again, a sign of the problems inside the system. Your piece at Judge Knapp is not only about stealing, it's about lying. Could you argue that the culture of is the case. When people, large numbers of people or individuals believe things that are not true, that don't match objective reality, they are false. They are fantasy. And you believe that and you construct your life around those things. And you live your life around those things. At some some point you're going to bump into the truth. And when that happens, you can lose everything. In fact, kind of, it's a form of insanity to constantly and always believe things that aren't true. Think that they're true, invest in them as if they're true, put weight in them as if they're true. And they're not true. That's insanity, okay? There are people in asylums whose reality is so unreal, the world they live in doesn't exist, and they can't live in the

open. Well, guess what? Americans, I think, increasingly are having their eyes opened, but a great many Americans have no idea how our government operates. They have a belief. They see the flag, or maybe they see the flag and see something they don't like. But whatever it is they look at when they see the flag, that's not reality. That's not how our government behaves globally. And it increasingly is not how it behaves domestically. So people are going to be in for a shock. And people don't like shocks. You know, people like us who are kind of, we're concerned about the directions and we're observing this stuff. We think we're prepared for the shock and even we are not. But people who have believed

in their heart, this country has done great things and abides by the constitution, protects our liberties, preserves, you know, all these good things. If you believe that, there's going to come a time you're going to get slapped in the face and you're going to also all of a sudden wake up, find out it's not true. And you're going to be very, very unprepared for it. Is the American government's commitment to Israel unconditional? Or if it turns out that Netanyahu is lying and deceiving, will the U.S. government hold back? Or is he allowed to lie and deceive and still get what he wants? Well, he has been up to this point for sure, a lie and deceive. There's no doubt that people in Congress, when they speak privately, even those

that are bought and paid for by AIPAC, they understand what's really happening here. When resources become short, and I say that we have a big deficit, we have a lot of domestic commitments. There's an America First movement. No matter who's elected, we want to keep our money here in America. Those forces will demand results from Israel. And Israel, I think, is incapable of providing those results. I mean, I think they're going to have to keep killing and killing, and their population will keep decreasing, and people won't trade with them. And they're going to become more and more dependent on what we have created. And as that happens, I think there will be pushback. When it becomes popular enough to cut ties with a losing country, at least by American

perspective, when it comes time to cut ties, when Americans feel this way, our Congress will reflect that. Up to this point, it has really been a cost-free exercise. You know, supporting Israel, even if it's, you know, billions and billions and billions, almost a trillion over 40 years that we've spent in Israel, for most people, that's not real money. They didn't feel it. But as Israel fails, and it is failing, okay? There's no doubt it's failing. It has had a bad strategy, and that strategy is coming to fruition. So as it fails, America is well known for not liking to be linked with a failed state. We don't like that.

So I think the attitude will change a little bit. Here's somebody who has a solution to all of Israel's problems. I won't even tell you who it is. You'll know in a heartbeat. Sonia, cut number three. If you want the hostages home, which we all do, you have to increase the cost to Iran. Iran is the great Satan here. Hamas is the junior partner. They're barbaric religious s, Hamas. They could care less about the Palestinian people. I would urge the Biden administration and Israel to hold Iran accountable for the fate of remaining hostages

and put on the target list oil refineries in Iran if the hostages are not released. What an anti-American. Wow. I mean, that is as bad as Bibi's lying. It's so over the top. Yeah, he is a compromised individual and I don't have the details on how he's compromised. Obviously, he's morally compromised, but I think also he is compromised in other ways politically. You know, obviously, there's the first volunteer to go forward. You know, the real problem is, and Americans may not as a large group recognize this, but Israel's allies include China and Russia. So, you know, I don't know. You mean Iran's allies include China and Russia?

Yes, yes. I'm sorry, I misspoke. But yeah, to bomb Iran is very much similar to what Lindsey Graham says with Ukraine. You know, Ukraine needs long-range, you know, strikes into Russia. And he doesn't realize, or maybe he does and he doesn't care. I don't know what his problem is, but that is global war. That is global nuclear war. It doesn't help Lindsey Graham. It doesn't help the people of South Carolina. It doesn't help this country.

And it doesn't help Israel. It doesn't help Ukraine. So he's on a bad track. Compromised individual for sure. All right. People are complaining I'm showing too much of this clip. It is super annoying, but I had to have your reaction to it. And I got the message. Colonel Kwiatkowski, thank you very much, dear Karen. Always a pleasure.

Thank you very much for joining us. We'll see you again next week. Sure enough. Thank you, Judge. Okay. Looking for tomorrow's calendar for you, just to let you know who we have. Ah, at 11 in the morning, Colonel Douglas McGregor. At 12 noon, Ambassador Charles Freeman.

At 3 in the afternoon, Phil Giraldi. At 3.45 in the afternoon, Aaron Maté, All Times U.S. Eastern. Justin Napolitano for Judging Freedom. At Ritual, We'll see you next time. focusing on supporting foundational health with a clean vegan multivitamin, or supporting your gut health with Symbiotic Plus, do it with 30% off your first month at ritual.com slash podcast. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.