Castle Report

The Castle Report

• Alec Penstone Was Right
  Darrell Castle talks about an interview of a British veteran that was conducted on Good Morning Great Britain on Veteran's Day earlier this week and the "viral" result of his comments. Transcription / Notes ALEC PENSTONE WAS RIGHT Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 14th day of November in the year of our Lord 2025. Last Tuesday the 11th was Veterans Day here in America or what they still call Armistice Day in Great Britain. I will be talking about that by using an interview of a British veteran named Alec Penstone that was given on British television and the “viral” result of his comments. Mr. Penstone was selected as the veteran to be interviewed and to represent all British veterans on the British television show Good Morning Britain. His interview was live and obviously intended to convey to the British public that the TV show, its hosts, and the network in general are just as patriotic and honoring of veterans as the general public. In other words, they intended to traffic from his honor and his willingness to serve in a time when service required great sacrifice. Mr. Penstone, now 100 years old served in the British navy on Arctic Convoy duty. The convoys carried goods from Great Britain and America around the Arctic route to Russia. Without those convoys Russia might have been defeated and knocked out of the war and the 3 million men, 3000 tanks, and 4000 aircraft committed by the Nazis to the defeat of Russia could have been used on the Western front to oppose the D-day landings so it was vital service. Yes, it was vital but also very dangerous because ships were hunted by German submarines and surface raiders. Being hit by a German torpedo or naval gunfire was certain death in a freezing Arctic ocean but men like Mr. Penstone were there and willing to endure the conditions to prevail. I tell of his exploits to show you that the man was and is a genuine war hero and not just someone sitting in an office drinking coffee while others were out in the mud and blood. So, the hosts of the show sought to bask in the honor and dignity of the man and I suppose absorb some of it onto themselves but it just didn’t go according to script. The question was ‘what are your thoughts on Remembrance Day and what does it mean for the country”. The old sailor responded like this. “I can see in my mind’s eye those rows and rows of white stones. All the hundreds of my friends, everybody else who gave their lives. For what? The country of today. No, I’m sorry the sacrifice wasn’t worth the result that it is now.” The female host taken aback by the man’s honesty said, “Oh Alec, I’m sorry you feel like that” Perhaps Alec has some mental illness or a touch of dementia, after all he is 100 years old. The male host decided to give him a chance to explain his answer. “What do you mean by that, though? “Maybe this would, give the man a chance to denounce all those British people who have been protesting the fact that Great Britain, the country he fought for, is no longer British. If that is what they expected, he left them disappointed. “What we fought for was our freedom. We find that even now, it’s a darn sight worse than when I fought for it.” Yes, that was his answer and the hosts were a little unprepared for it. I’m going to use a little poetic license and say that he fought so that Western Civilization might endure and he, with tears in his eyes, knows that it has not. The host in conclusion of the interview said, “it’s our job now, isn’t it, to make it the country that you fought for.” I will answer Mr. Penstone and say no that isn’t your job because your job is to make it the opposite of the country he fought for. I don’t think you want this to be a Christian nation with traditions and people who defended that concept against Vikings, Romans, and Nazis, but that is why he fought. Well, I have put my words in the mouth of this Centenarian war hero who fought Nazi Germany to preserve his country’s freedom so I will give an account of why I think he is correct. Mr. Jefferson said in his declaration that when you make such charges you must explain them. “A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” I will, then, give some reasons why I think freedom here in America is not what it was and certainly not what it was intended to be. When people see what is happening in America they know something is wrong and since they have experienced nothing but the globalist-dominated propaganda of what amounts to public education they are driven to grasp at a charismatic leader who promises relief through ideas as dumb as socialism. It works like this, they see that 90% of all wealth and that might be a low estimate, is controlled by 10% of the people and again those numbers are probably a little low but that is what the economists tell us. The young are propagandized but that doesn’t mean they are stupid. The charismatic leader tells them we can just make everything free for you and we can make the 10% or less pay for it. The young suddenly realize that although they hardly have any of the wealth, they have more than 50% of the votes and that gives them the power to attempt the looting. There is an old adage in economics that says money goes where it is treated the best. So, anyone who has any money that will be looted by the charismatic leader flees to safer ground. They see the storm troopers on the horizon and they flee before it is too late. In America, minorities have rights that can’t legally be taken by the majority. The majority looks around and concludes that it can arrange things to discriminate against any people that it wants too. That’s what all the redistricting of congressional districts have been about for the last 60 or so years and what the drive for equity and egalitarianism has been about. It’s all a globalist scheme to mold humanity into an amorphous mess that is easily controlled by charismatic leaders chosen and funded by them. It can’t and won’t work but it is also the opposite of the freedom that Mr. Penstone fought for. That is freedom of the individual to work, study, and achieve to limits of one’s own merits not to have a person’s status in life dictated by a centralized control mechanism. I could give examples of places socialism has been tried and failed all day long but there is no time for that. I will just say that the new mayor of New York City is sometimes called a communist but he is not because that utopian dream is not achievable. Lenin and Stalin tried to achieve it but they only got to an advanced form of socialism. Yes, Stalinism is just the advanced state of socialism. Let me move on now to other destroyers of the American dream. They are destroyers of the individual and national freedom that Mr. Penstone fought for. They are examples of the surrender of independence upon which concept America was founded. Yes since World War ll at least, if not before, America has gradually come to be controlled by some type of globalist conglomerate. How else could you explain what I am about to describe. The U.S, plans to build a military base in Israel at an estimated cost of about half a billion dollars. That is the prebuilding estimate and of course the actual cost will escalate because it always does. I could stop there and tell you that this idea is perhaps the most stupid idea ever conceived by the minds of people totally controlled by globalists. I need, however, to describe what seems to be happening and of course I still hold out hope that it won’t happen but it is under way as I speak. The base will be located in Israel along the Gaza Strip and will house several thousand American troops whose mission task is to maintain the ceasefire in the region. It is the result of a negotiated agreement between the U.S. and Israel. I have to stop and ask what in the world is going on here. I just can’t understand how and why American parents are supposed to send their children in harm’s way because it’s in some other country’s best interest. This seems like absolute madness to me and is proof positive that the president and through him the entire administration is totally under the control and domination of a foreign country and its advocates here in the U.S. Wait a minute though doesn’t that violate every principle that this country was founded on and that hundreds of thousands have died to protect. Yes it does folks but we are doing it anyway. My guess is that there won’t be too many peeps from congress about this on either side of the isle. Why, well obviously, they are controlled by the same lobby representing the same country that seems to have the president’s full support. They line up at the microphone to compete and debate who is the most pro-Israel among them. Woe to any member who fails this test because he or she will be quickly out of office or at best pushed into a no influence corner of the room. Let’s take a moment to take the 10,000-foot view of this as they say and by the way this base is supposed to house 10,000 troops. So, to summarize, decades of American support, American money, American blood going all the way back to 1948. Washington has destroyed at least 5 countries in the region so now it is being tasked with the cost of rebuilding and rehabilitating the region and all its people from ordinary people to insane terrorists. I’m going out on a limb here I know but I’m going to say that when all those Maga voters voted in the last presidential election they thought they were voting for America first. They voted for what was in America’s best interest not the best interest of another country. This is complete madness and I can’t think of another word for it. I am in a state of disbelief coupled with sadness and topped off with extreme anger so I guess that makes me an extremist. Finally, folks,
• The Marine Corps Lives Forever
  Darrell Castle talks about the 250th Birthday of the U.S. Marine Corps, the NYC mayoral election held last Tuesday, and how a self-described socialist won the election. Transcription / Notes THE MARINE CORPS LIVES FOREVER Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 7th day of November in the year of our Lord 2025. Next Monday the 10th of November is the 250th anniversary of the birth of the United States Marine Corps, an organization that I served with for four years more than 50 years ago. The title comes from a belief drummed into our heads back then, Marines live and they die but the Marine Corps lives forever. I am not going to spend this entire report taking you down memory lane because there are just too many bad things to talk about. This Report that I do each week is in a way a journey through the sewers of the world. People often ask me why don’t you ever talk about any good news and my answer is, because I just don’t see any. Often, good news is in the eye of the beholder and it depends, to quote an old saying, on whose ox is being gored. The point is though that someone’s ox is always being gored and politics seems to be the art of making it the other guy’s ox. I wonder if other people with military experience remember it the same way I do. I remember mostly the pleasant times of friendships with my buddies, of sitting in bars with them all over the world. When I served in the Marine Corps the number of Lieutenants was very small so you could walk into a military bar anywhere in the world and odds are you would see someone you knew. We all had the same thing in common and that gave us purpose and camaraderie. That’s what I remember most of the time and I forget the moments of sheer terror and extreme boredom that went along with it. I take great pride in my Marine Corps service and in its 250-year existence. I guess its one of those, you had to be there kind of things, but this 250th reminds us that next 4th of July will be the 250th anniversary of the United States. That’s right the Marine Corps existed before the country a fact that was pounded into us by our leaders in the early days. Those are some of the things I remember as I look back over more than 50 years but now it’s time to move back into the real world of today.   Sometimes even the real world doesn’t seem real or we might say that can’t be real and with AI you never know for sure. We try one fantasy and when it fails we try another. We use one imaginary problem to escape from a different problem that perhaps was not a fantasy but was caused by reliance on a fantasy. For example, last Tuesday New Yorkers tried to escape from one of those fantasies by embracing an even more toxic fantasy. Time will show the results but if history is any indicator the results will be horrendous. That is the result history has given each and every time populations have tried to indulge in the New York fantasy. Yes, the people of New York elected a self-described socialist as their mayor. The race was not very close and Republican Curtis Sliwa did not get enough votes to deny the second-place candidate the race, but Andrew Cuomo lost despite spending more than $65 million. He did not have the message and New Yorkers apparently are tired of the same old corrupt politicians so they voted for a new George Sorus funded candidate.  Yes, George, it seems, owns a lot of American politicians. I obviously don’t know the mind of each individual New York voter but apparently Mamdani found his appeal among the young and that generation, the one coming behind my daughter voted him into office. That generation knows they are struggling and they know that what they were promised turned out to be a fantasy that could not deliver anything but promises. Go to college using debt to obtain a meaningless 4-year degree and have a pretty good middle class job which doesn’t provide nearly enough to live in this new credit-based economy, especially in an expensive Democrat city. These young people know that the average age of first-time home buyers is now 38 years old and that is the generation ahead of them not their generation. So, they are struggling and the promises they have relied on, the promises that gave their parents a good life are just not there for them. No matter what happens with interest rates, and despite the efforts of the federal government to stimulate the economy with more debt it just gets worse because debt is the economy and debt is toxic. They turn to a man who is basically foreign to all those promises because he comes from a different place and he is backed and funded from different sources that, in my carefully researched opinion are intentionally destructive. He has a different answer for them and his solution is very simple. Why has no one before him thought that these problems could be alleviated by just making some things free. City run grocery stores should solve the high cost of food, right. What about the cost of running perhaps the world’s biggest public transportation system, and the cost of using public transportation. Pretty simple, just make it free along with free childcare and we can reduce rent with a rent stabilization freeze. Now, we know from experience that rental real property will not be maintained or upgraded because landlords can’t raise rent to cover it, but oh well.  How do we pay for all of it. Well, that is simple too we just take the money from the rich and give it to the poor so that makes the new mayor a kind of modern-day Robin Hood. There are problems out there in this economy that will be solved one way or another. If they are not solved through some type of action, they will solve themselves in some version of collapse. The fantasy of everything free will not solve the problems I am talking about because this economy is based on credit and debt and that is getting out of hand. Everything free is the opposite of the correct solution which is to pay down debt or at least do something to stop or even slow down its increase. I don’t see any evidence of that solution being tried in fact it just gets worse and worse. Delinquencies in debt are rising rapidly, in auto, credit card, and student loan debt. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, delinquencies hit a record $18.4 trillion in the 2nd quarter of 2025. The national debt hit $38 trillion which causes strain across the economy as service on all that debt puts downward pressure on our standard of living. So, those are a few of the problems that confront the general government and now confront the people of New York City. The new mayor makes it very clear that he wants to be a national figure by declaring war on Donald Trump and by making his successful campaign about Trump. He seems to have convinced his supporters that there is a vast pool of money and they are not getting their share and that is because of greed. If the people who control the vast pool of money were not so greedy and so selfish then they would release the money so the New York voters could have their financial problems relieved by getting things they used to pay for free. All this greed seems to make the new mayor very angry and he finally revealed that anger in his victory speech. He seems to be an egalitarian as well, this mayor, because he intends to cancel New York’s school programs for gifted students. So, the gifted students will join all the others at the bottom so we can’t have meritocracy whereby a young person is able to achieve all that a free society allows. Instead, your gifted child will be confined with all the non-gifted ones hopefully in the middle, but more likely at the bottom. If that is your message, Mr. or Ms. politician, apparently those at the bottom and in the middle will support you in large numbers. There is a possibility that this socialist victory in New York City will turn out to be a positive for Republicans nationwide. The new mayor sees himself as a national figure as I said and that might not be such a bad thing. The Democrat victories which seem so significant are concentrated along the coasts and in the large Democrat cities. In other words, this self-described socialist mayor obviously made significant inroads with his audience and his message resonated with them. On the other hand, it’s the same audience and doesn’t indicate any new trend. This new mayor then, is the new face of the Democrat Party and we will see how that plays outside the coastal Democrat strongholds. The elite of the current Democrat Party don’t want this socialist as their new face, but he claims it anyway so they spend time distancing themselves from him after he won. The Republicans should learn from this because the message is that people are concerned about bread-and-butter issues, literally. Sometimes the elite in Washington seem unable to relate to ordinary people who care more about the cost of ground beef than what new missile the Chinese are testing. The government shutdown which is interfering with food stamps is a good example. People are dependent on them and can’t seem to live without them since most of their lives have been spent eating food courtesy of other taxpayers. I’m just saying that the current officers of our government in Washington have not taken advantage of what the Democrats have done. My message might be, they admit they have forced this government shutdown to obtain political leverage so they get their leverage and you don’t get food. The people on the other side of the politics of the new mayor need to understand that there are legitimate reasons why people voted for him and those reasons should be addressed. It’s not much different from when Trump was elected and instead of asking why, and what are the voters concerned about, Democrats developed only one message. Trump is bad, he’s a racist, he’s a fascist and other than that we have nothing to say. So,
• The Best and Worst of Times
  Darrell Castle speaks to the best and worst of times as a good description of our times, today. Transcription / Notes THE BEST AND WORST OF TIMES Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today’s Castle Report. This is Friday the 31st day of October in the year of our Lord 2025. Yes, this is Halloween day, a traditional spooky, bad news day, but I have decided to use this spooky day and borrow a bit from the classic novel written by Charles Dickens entitled “A Tale of Two Cities”.  Mr. Dickens opened his novel with “It Was the Best of Times; It Was the Worst of Times” and that is a pretty good description of our times, today. Dickens wrote those words in 1859 as the title and opening of his novel which was set in London and Paris during the French Revolution. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity.” That sounds so much like today because the more things change the more they stay the same and as we all know technology constantly changes but human nature does not. The setting of Dickens’ novel was an age of radical opposites that faced each other much like today, but today they are not cities but political divisions. Here in present-day America, we have opposing forces and contrasting views everywhere you look. In New York City, for example, there seems to be a very good possibility that the people of that once great city will elect a man named Zohran Mamdani as mayor in the upcoming election. The man is often described as a communist as well as an Islamic fundamentalist at the same time. Those two terms are, of course, contradictory because communism was founded and still is based on atheism while Islam is obviously based on a belief in God. He does seem to have some radical ideas based on economic theories which have been failures everywhere they have been tried. He is not the first to suggest that public transportation be free without any corresponding explanation of where he would get the money to pay for it. See folks, nothing government does is ever free because someone always pays and the politicians want the people to give them the authority to decide who they will steal the money from. I suppose that is true democracy whereby the mob is empowered to loot anyone not voting with the majority. Once again it proves the wisdom of the founders who believed in individual rather than collective rights. Just wind the clock back a century or so and you will find the words of Thomas Paine who wrote a revolutionary pamphlet called Common Sense. One article or series of articles in the pamphlet was called The Crises. He began that section with the words, “These Are the Times That Try Men’s Souls” and that phrase seems more appropriate today than ever. That phrase is especially true here on Halloween Day as many vitally important things hang in the balance such as NYC and whether that city will ever be great again or whether it will continue its slide into the abyss. So, Mr. Mamdani is an example of the worst of times. The best of times is an amazing contrast whereby the people of Argentina, after decades of socialist experiments, which left that once powerhouse of an economy in a state of collapse decided to change course. What could be more wonderful than the joy of seeing voters reject the allure of socialism for the second time. Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, has led his party to a landslide victory in the elections held last Sunday. Radical spending cuts and free-market reforms defined the two years of his presidency and the people of Argentina have endorsed his efforts and decided to continue the road to recovery. That’s the very good news from Argentina. The bad news or at least I have decided to see it as bad news is that Donald Trump agreed to extend a $40 billion loan to Argentina which has defaulted three times since the year 2000. Never mind the chances of repayment, the president told the Argentine people that the money would only be coming if Milei was reelected which as I said, he was. Does that sound like an open bribe, yes it does, but at least it is open for anyone to see and at least the money is for Argentine trade with the U.S. It is not a Joe Biden kind of bribe whereby he and Hunter get the money personally. So why is the bribe a bad thing. Well, for one thing this is a bailout and the American people voted for America first which means no bailouts. They especially did not vote for a bailout of a foreign country which might involve lower prices for their soybeans, beef etc. Oh well, we move on, and anyway, encouraging free markets, especially in this hemisphere, is not such a bad thing.  Milei, in office for a little less than two years, has reduced inflation by 90% and cut the budget by 100%. Argentina is no longer in the desert as Mr. Milei described its condition when he took office. The nation has climbed out of its permanent recession and now has the fastest growing economy in the Americas. GDP growth is more than twice that of the U.S. Real wages have tripled and poverty has been cut by 40%. So, why is the $40 billion necessary? That’s a very good question. In the meantime, the president is on a trip to the Far East where he has made trade deals with five countries that will bring, reportedly trillions in trade and hopefully more work for Americans. He stopped in Malaysia to sign a peace deal he helped negotiate between Cambodia and Thailand. He also met Japan’s new prime minister Sanae Takaichi who is a lot closer to Mr. Trump on how she views the world than most Asian leaders. The trade deal with Japan, worth billions for the U.S, includes rare earth minerals thus reducing the U.S. dependence on China. In a gesture of friendship and trust, Prime Minister Takaichi donated 250 Japanese cherry trees to help with President Trump’s beautification of Washington efforts. She mentioned in her glowing speech that Japanese fireworks will be used in D.C. as part of the July 4th celebration of the 250th anniversary of the U.S. thus the 250 trees. She and the president watched part of the world series game together and that was I believe the 3rd game which went 18 innings won by the Dodgers which has many Japanese players. She knew that Trump and former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe were close friends. Unfortunately, Mr. Abe is now deceased so she gave Trump his putter as a gesture of goodwill and she told him Shinzo would have wanted him to have it. Trump obviously appreciated the touching nature of the gift and expressed sadness at Mr. Abe’s death, and he said he accepted the gift on behalf of the United States. So, these nations, once enemies in a long and bitter war which ended in a nuclear explosion are now good friends so I’m going to put that down as some of the very best of times. The bad times always seem to happen at the same time, and this time they were on the other side of the world. Despite the peace agreement brokered by President Trump the Israeli Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu apparently used the cover of Trump in the Far East to attack Gaza with American fighter jets and American bombs. The Israelis accused Hamas of killing one Israeli soldier so the attacks reportedly killed 104 people according to the Gaza Health Ministry which of course is run by Hamas. The Israeli attacks came after Israel accused Hamas of shooting an Israeli soldier which caused Mr. Netanyahu to order an “immediate and powerful” attack on the rubble already destroyed by powerful Israeli attacks over the last two years. The health ministry announced that 46 of the dead were children and 20 were women. This area of the world is a difficult to impossible place to find peace, and good times are hard to come by.  The problem or at least part of the problem, seems to be that both sides in this dispute feel religiously entitled to all the land in the region and neither will be satisfied with anything less than the total departure of the other side. This might be a good time for the U.S. to stop its involvement including furnishing the weapons for the attacks. Such a policy shift would indeed be the best of times for America. Continuing our examination of the worst of times the U.S. proxy war against Russia seems to be on the verge of expanding into Eastern Europe and other NATO member states. President Trump has made some policy changes taking a harder line against Russia in any possible peace negotiations and that is reportedly due to the influence of Marco Rubio who seems to be very good at the job of Secretary of State but who also may have more than a little neocon in him. U.S. sanctions on Russian oil haven’t worked that well, but now they have intensified and seem to be having their effect, and some of the drone attacks inside Russia have been against Russian oil and oil storage facilities. Some of the European countries seem to be at odds with the European Union’s position with regard to Russia. Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania are three which have expressed such reservations. You probably remember that Joan and I founded and run a Christian Mission/Orphanage in Romania for orphaned children, mostly but not all Gypsies. I tell you that to explain that I pay particular attention to any news concerning Romania because it could affect our mission which is home to about 50 kids who have no other home to go to. So, on the good news front the U.S. just announced that it plans to withdraw 800 U.S. soldiers stationed in Romania, as part of a broader restructuring of its forces in Europe. One thousand troops as well as aircraft, drones and other assets will remain in Romania. The U.S. Army 3rd infantry division took over command of U.S. forces in Romania replacing the 1st Armored Division. Perhaps that decision is a recognition of my theory that the tank is an anachronism on today’s battlefield.