Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. Today I will be talking about President Trump’s recent conference with NATO member states where he took them to the wood shed for not paying their agreed amount for defense. I will also discuss the President’s meeting with Russian Leader, Vladimir Putin, in Helsinki, Finland on July 16th.

Trump demands reciprocity

The President seems to be operating on a different premise from his predecessors, in regard to his dealing with NATO allies. His premise is, perhaps, best described as one of reciprocity. That is, the United States is no longer willing or able to underwrite the entire security of the West. The Western Allies agreed as part of the NATO alliance to spend at least two percent of their GDP on defense, but of the 28 members, only the United States, and now, Turkey are doing it.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Western nations started cutting their defense budgets to the bone as did the United States, but they all agreed that even if they did not face the Soviet Union anymore, they would maintain the ability to resist armed attack. Article 3 of the treaty requires members not just to spend two percent of GDP on defense, but to “maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack.”

Delinquent allies

The President talked straight to them about their failure to meet the terms of the treaty. He referred to them as “delinquent allies”, and said they treated the United States “like schmucks”, and America like a piggy bank. He demanded from them the treatment for the United States that they expect from the United States; in other words, reciprocity. Trump obviously has a problem with the Germans that goes far beyond what they spend on defense, which is almost nothing. He said to them, “now we see the Germans whom we are protecting from Russia, collaborating with Russia, and deepening their dependence on Russian natural gas by jointly building their Nord Stream 2 pipeline under the Baltic Sea.” He went on to state publicly that other presidents have recognized these problems but didn’t do anything about them, and that is very unfair to the American people.

An obsolete treaty

He’s right about NATO, it is obsolete, as he mentioned during his campaign. NATO is an organization formed 69 years ago in the aftermath of the most destructive war in human history, to defend Europe from an enemy that no longer exists. It was a reasonable fear that the Soviet Union would enslave all of Europe, as it did Eastern Europe, and it did have expansionistic plans. That great cold war enemy no longer exists and the cold war is over despite the Democratic Party’s efforts to bring it back. In light of those facts, if Europe wants to be defended against imaginary enemies it should pay for that defense with its own blood and treasure.

Trump’s appearance at NATO was apparently quite a show. He paid no attention to their whining about Hungary’s, and now Italy’s, harder stance against migration from Africa and the Middle East, and after his tirade started, non-members Ukraine and Georgia, which are being considered for membership, were asked to leave the room. He simply laid bare to the world what NATO has been unwilling to face publicly. Which is, its decline, its non-existent enemies, its self-inflicted wounds, and the fact that, without the United States, it is obsolete and non-existent.

Trump meets Putin

After the summit he didn’t stay for their parties and the usual schmoozing, but instead flew off to Helsinki, Finland for a meeting with Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, and that is what made the Democrats go ballistic. They didn’t go ballistic when John Kennedy picked up the phone and called Nikita Khrushchev in an effort to avert nuclear war but now they have skin in the game.

Permit me to quote from Paul Craig Roberts’s article of July 16^th,

The U.S. Democratic Party is determined to take the world to thermonuclear war rather than to admit that Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election fair and square. The Democratic Party was totally corrupted by the Clinton Regime, and now it is totally insane. Leaders of the Democratic Party, such as Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, my former co-author in The New York Times, have responded in a non-Democratic way to the first step President Trump has taken to reduce the extremely dangerous tensions with Russia that Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama regimes created between the two superpowers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCF68TMqGoM

So, the deep state is in another state now, one called state of panic. Just before this meeting with Putin, special counsel Robert Mueller issued indictments for 12 Russian GRU agents who he apparently believes did something criminal regarding U.S. elections during the Obama administration. Trump raised the issue during his meeting with Putin, and at the news conference Mr. Putin pointed out that the U.S. and Russia have a treaty to cover such things, and that treaty has been in place since 1999, and has worked well. He said we will round up and question the Russians, and U.S. agents, including Mr. Mueller, can attend the interview and submit questions.

What the Deep State really fears: investigation by Russia

In return, Russia would request that it be afforded the same consideration when a few U.S. men wanted for crimes in Russia escaped to the US with a billion dollars acquired illegally in Russia. No taxes were paid in Russia or the U.S. and 400 million dollars of the money was given to the Hillary Clinton campaign.

That is a statement that could prove to be a turning point in human history. Mr. Putin didn’t order these men to be hunted down and killed; instead he requested public hearings that could implicate many of the deep state actors currently and formerly on stage, including those at the highest rank in the Obama administration. Why would John Brennan, former head of CIA, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer accuse President Trump of treason for meeting with the leader of another nation in an effort to find peace and ratchet back the wheels heading us toward war? I suppose the evil corruption in Washington is part of the problem and hopefully Mr. Putin’s offer to conduct an investigation will help with that. One can readily see why those whose deeds were never expected to see the light of day are in a panic.

I can feel the slime oozing out from under the rocks right now and it seems that all the bluster of the deep state has backfired. To accuse a completely innocent man of a capital crime just because you are guilty of one yourself is pretty low, and my hope is that President Trump knows where all the pieces of this jigsaw puzzle are located and it can be solved.

Ike warned us

Now let me give you a few words from a speech given by President Eisenhower in 1953. We all remember his farewell speech in 1961 in which he warned us to beware of the growing power and influence of the military industrial complex and, that if we failed to heed the warning, it would grow until those who feed from it would prefer war to peace. Now listen to the 1953 words of General of the Army and Supreme Allied Commander in Europe as well as President of the United State, Dwight Eisenhower:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, and the hopes of its children. This is not a life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. God created men to enjoy, not destroy, the fruits of the earth and of their own toil.

Will Trump shine a light that needs shining?

Finally folks, we live in an age of corporate empire and not just the military industrial empire either. I don’t know which is worse, the corporations that directly own and control those in government, or the media corporations which assist them in their efforts. The media and its talking heads shouts down all opposition and even shout down and close off any speech in opposition to their chosen path. They conspire together to accumulate vast personal wealth, but that is not enough to satisfy them because then they must gain the power to control others and manipulate them to their will.

I have actually started to believe that some of the nefarious deeds I have mentioned, and that we have all heard rumors of, will see the light of day. My optimism meter is going up that perhaps it will come to pass the sleeping giant that is the American people will wake up filled with a terrible resolve.

At least that’s the way I see it.

Until next time folks,

This is Darrell Castle.