Desperation in Ukraine

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Darrell Castle talks about the war in Ukraine and how the NATO forces opposing Russia are growing increasingly desperate as Russia continues to grind down the Ukrainian military.

Transcription / Notes

DESPERATION IN UKRAINE

Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 12^th day of April in the year of our Lord 2024. I will be talking about the war in Ukraine and how the NATO forces opposing Russia are growing increasingly desperate as Russia continues to grind down the Ukrainian military. The state of the war is becoming obvious and hard to ignore to all but the most ardent anti-Russia types.

My beat is war again and this time it’s a war that is all but forgotten with the war in Gaza starting to take Ukraine from the minds of the media. The increasing desperation is evidenced by the threats of French President Emmanuel Macron to send French troops to Ukraine. The Russians, in response, said that French troops would become priority targets if they entered Ukraine. These French troops would be independent of NATO, but that would still put the U.S. on a dangerous path that could lead ultimately to nuclear war.

It should be obvious to any rational person that Russia has thousands of nuclear weapons and if Russian backs are against the wall by NATO on its border would use them. Unfortunately, it appears that there are a lot of irrational people running foreign policy in the U.S. and other NATO countries. Things could and probably would escalate quickly if Macron sent French troops to Russia’s border. The vice president of the Russian Duma which is the equivalent of Congress or parliament is Pyotr Tolstoy, a descendent of the great Russian, Leo Tolstoy. He warned that it would take only two minutes to nuke Paris.

The Russian air force is becoming more and more active in Ukraine because Ukraine’s air defense system has been degraded by the war so, in response, NATO says it will step up the schedule for delivery of F-16’s. I’ve mentioned before when the F-16 decision was first announced that Ukrainian airfields cannot accommodate those aircraft. They would, therefore, need bases outside Ukraine in NATO countries and Putin has warned that those bases would be legitimate targets. Russia has hypersonic missiles that are extremely difficult to defend and that would, of course, require a NATO retaliatory response. Where would all that madness lead, I wonder.

The listed reason for all this escalation is that Russia poses some existential threat to NATO and/or Europe but that premise is clearly absurd. The U.S. has already caused severe damage to the economies of most European countries, especially Germany by destroying the Nord Stream Pipeline, so who is the bigger threat to Europe. Isn’t that destruction a message that says obey me or else. The reason I say that the idea that Russia could invade other countries in Europe is absurd is that Russia has nothing to gain by it. The Russian military has struggled for more than two years to occupy a small territory on its border with Ukraine.

Why would Putin want to trigger an Article 5 NATO response when none of those countries can do anything for him and would put him on a fast track to nuclear war. Sometimes people point out that Putin once said, “whoever doesn’t miss the Soviet Union doesn’t have a heart.” They conveniently leave out the rest of the sentence which was, whoever wants it back doesn’t have a brain.” He has a brain and he has no intention to restore the Soviet Union. Russia does, however, have strategic interests like any great power.

Ukraine, and especially Crimea, have always been strategic interests of the most vital sort to Russia. So, Washington says that Ukraine is a free and independent nation and can join NATO anytime it wants and doesn’t need Russian permission to do so even though it is on Russia’s border. The U.S. is free to declare the entire Western Hemisphere off limits by way of the Monroe doctrine which means keep out because it’s ours. A great power like Russia has no say at all in the decision to allow an enemy alliance on its border. Given Russia’s long history of being invaded especially from the west, its no wonder Putin may be a little paranoid. Just look at a map and you will see that parts of Ukraine are east of Moscow and less than 300 hundred miles away. The U.S. was famously not interested in allowing Russian strategic missiles in Cuba about 450 mile from Washington.

To me, this war is total and complete madness and anyone who supports continually funding it should never be allowed to hold an office in the U.S. government again. Ukraine cannot continue fighting without U.S. aid and therefore would be forced to make peace through some accommodation to Russia. That fact leaves Washington totally responsible for the continued deaths, destruction, and risk of nuclear annihilation caused by the war. Will Washington continue its funding even though it is destructive and totally pointless. Yes, of course it will. Another $60 billion will soon be on its way to who knows where to accomplish who knows what in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S.A. according to the Congressional budget office (CBO) the net interest on the federal debt exceeded defense spending in the first half of fiscal year 2024 which began in October with the six months including March. It seems that the federal government has no money to give away, only debt. So, I ask you to consider the insanity of a country that votes to give away over $100 billion in military aid so another country can fight a war against a much bigger opponent. The country has no money, only debt so it funds other people’s wars with debt the interest on which has now, at least for the last six months, exceeded its own defense costs.

That seems like both insanity and extremely irresponsible behavior. Let’s say you sit down with your wife to figure out a budget for the upcoming year. You write down your mortgage, your average utilities, your fuel costs, your food budget and all the other things families need to take care of themselves and send two children to school. When you get it all added up and match it with income your wife says wait a minute we don’t make enough to fund all this. You tell your wife, yes, I know, but we will fund it anyway, and we will borrow enough to give our neighbor a few thousand so he can fight a long, pointless legal battle against our other neighbor.

The U.S. is proposing a budget which is almost twice as much as revenue and still funds other people’s wars around the globe. Bread and circus at home I understand because it is how power addicted people maintain their power. For example, Joe Biden’s economic policies are so bad he is ruining the lives and futures of young people and he obviously knows that as well as I do. What does he do, does he change course and preserve their futures, no, he tries to buy their votes by cancelling student loan debt thus making them prostitutes and him their pimp.

Net interest on the U.S. public debt cost an estimated $440 billion in the first half of this fiscal year or the period from October through March according to the CBO. That was an increase of 43% over the same period last year so things are rapidly spinning out of control. What is left for Social Security, the biggest source of spending which also increased from $652 billion in six months to $711 billion this year. The costs of Medicare and Medicaid both dramatically exceed last fiscal year’s numbers. What is left for those items that the American people need to live after all the funding for other people’s wars and other people’s chaos and calamity around the world, not much except more debt for our children to bear. To illustrate, in February, the federal government spent $567 billion against revenue of $271 billion so does that make sense to anyone.

Those who think it makes sense tend to look at the situation like this; many people who have serious disease and/or obesity continue to eat too much unhealthy food, thinking I suppose that nothing has happened so far. Their eating habits may be unsustainable, and their children may be left without parents, but so far, so good. Those who ignore the accumulation of public debt with the idea that well we haven’t killed ourselves yet so it must be OK are very reckless people who are leading us to destruction.

The people who purport to lead us today seem to have learned nothing from history. Well, perhaps they did learn that if you oppose the military, intelligence, security, industrial complex you just might pay with your life, but very little else. The trust between the U.S. and Russia coming out of the Cuban missile crises should be an indelible memory because when the world saw the brink of nuclear war, they took steps to calm the tension. Today, so many promises have been made and broken that there is no trust anymore. Nuclear disarmament treaties painstakingly built over many decades by many people on both sides have all been dismantled. The attitude about nuclear war now seems to be oh well, let’s push a little harder and see what happens.

If anyone with decision making authority in Washington cared or had any sense at all they would stand down, seek peace and disarmament, but no, they would rather continue the brinksmanship and their insane push to nuclear war. Its so bad right now I’m starting to think Biden is taking orders from George Sorus who has publicly said that direct war between Russia and the U.S. would be necessary. I suppose it is necessary for his doctor Strangelove dream to be fulfilled.

The think tanks in Washington are starting to send people to the Sunday morning news shows to give their opinions that it might be necessary to send NATO troops into Ukraine to avoid a catastrophic defeat of Western efforts. That is straight out of the Robert McNamara playbook entitled how to lose 60,000 dead in Vietnam. First you talk about it just to get people used to the idea, then you are just advising the indigenes people, then you have 500,000 troops committed and people are being drafted right out of high school for war is a young man’s game. It helps if the young men are uneducated and naïve, if possible.

The U.S. currently has soldiers in Moldova which is on the border of Ukraine between that country and Romania. Romania has been intimidated into a new law that would allow them to intervene in a foreign conflict, even when Romania is not threatened. There is no Russian army with enough soldiers and weapons to defend the entire Russian border with NATO at least with conventional arms so that leaves only nuclear madness as a possibility.

I suppose the average normal person cannot stare very long at reality or else he would experience suicidal depression. There is no shortage of conmen and pitchmen waiting to deceive him so he goes to the polls and does his duty and votes. He votes because he thinks he has found the difference this time and his vote will make things change. I conclude that he wants to be deceived because reality is just too painful. He cherishes his deceptions such as the laws of economics can be repealed by the wise people who inhabit Washington. Deficits do not matter and income never has to equal or exceed expense. Prosperity really does come from a printing press and money comes from that press; therefore, money and wealth are the same thing.

 All the examples of history like Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Argentina (many times), Weimar Germany,  count for nothing because its different here.  The U.S. is predicted by the CBO to exceed 130% debt to GDP ratio in the next presidential term, and that has only happened 52 times in world history. 51 times the nation has collapsed at least economically and only Japan carries on by buying the debt of the United States as a reserve. The Japanese use their debt to buy U.S. debt and then use the interest payments from the U.S. to buy more U.S. debt. Yes, folks if that sounds crazy, that’s because it is. I wonder if any politician anywhere is concerned about the growing debt as I am. There might be a few others because I understand that economist David Stockman, who favors drastically reducing debt, is now advising Robert F. Kennedy Jr. but unfortunately, he has close to zero chance of being elected.

Finally, folks, if none of this makes any sense to you, well then, you must be normal, but look at it like this. Each dollar printed increases the demand for increased interest rates and increased inflation. Events that happen follow patterns that have occurred over centuries. We are supposed to learn from past trials and errors and not repeat them but those are hard lessons. You tell your kids that you made the mistakes so they don’t have to, but sometimes they don’t listen.

At least that’s the way I see it,

Until next time folks,

This is Darrell Castle,

Thanks for listening.