The future of NATO

The cornerstone of German defense policy is its membership in NATO, so Berlin has been very disconcerted by Trump's occasional denigrating remarks about the trans-Atlantic alliance and his criticism of what he says is Germany's unfairly low military spending. "The big question is how reliable the American president will be and whether he will make promises to Putin that aren't agreed in advance with his NATO partners."

The status of Crimea

A litmus test of how far Trump hews to the NATO line or cozies up to Putin will be Crimea. Germany has left no doubt of its condemnation of Russia's annexation of the peninsula… Should Trump make concessions to Putin on this score, Germany and the EU would interpret it as an act of betrayal. "If President Trump… recognizes Crimea as Russian, he will be selling out not only the rights of Ukraine but also the security and sovereignty of states in Europe," Harms said.

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline has turned into a bone of contention

Germans also have a very vested interest in Trump and Putin's discussions concerning the two Nord Stream natural gas pipelines from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea. Trump has been very critical of the project, claiming that it will leave Germany unacceptably dependent on the Kremlin.

All eyes now are on the much-anticipated summit between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, which is scheduled for Monday in Helsinki on the final leg of Trump’s European tour. A number of German politicians have long feared that the US president could take actions that are not in line with NATO. 

Moscow has noted that the goal of the meeting is to finally start changing the negative situation in relations between the US and Russia for the better. When asked what the Kremlin thinks about Donald Trump calling Vladimir Putin a ‘competitor,’ Yury Ushakov, the Russian president’s adviser, said that Moscow considers the US president to be a ‘partner.’

Trump is the third US president Merkel has dealt with as chancellor. With George W Bush and Barack Obama, she built close and trusting relationships. Trump, she knew, would be more difficult. Even so, what she experienced during her second visit to the Trump White House shocked her. The president showed no interest in listening to her. Instead, she received a dressing-down over perceived German wrongdoings.

So Trump’s recent meeting with Merkel left no doubt: The current American president does not treat Germany as a partner. He views the relationship as an asymmetric arrangement between a master who is free from constraints and a client who has to obey his orders, or get punished.

Any future US president will believe that the US bears too much of the burden of policing the global order, as do many American voters. This means that Germany must hedge its bets. As Chancellor Merkel has warned several times, Germany can no longer expect America to automatically protect Europe. But how should Berlin adapt?

Germany must reduce its dependence on others by investing in its army, and by balancing exports with more investments at home. Playing diplomatic defense won’t be enough. Germany needs to become more active on the international scene, as risks and rivalries heat up from the Middle East to East Asia. Germany must venture out of its “postmodern” comfort zone, while remaining globalist and liberal in character. In that sense, Trump presents an opportunity.

The common denominator of all these high-level meetings is Donald Trump. That fact was summed up in a widely-reported tweet by EU Council President Donald Tusk on Wednesday: “Looking at latest decisions of [Donald Trump] someone could even think: With friends like that, who needs enemies.”

The fact that Mr Trump has antagonized the European Union with his “America First” policy stance isn’t new. What is new is that Berlin, Brussels and other EU capitals seem ready to fight back. In the words of Mr Tusk: “If you need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of your arm.”

ANSWER: The deep state is the bureaucracy. It is not a global organization. Comey was protecting Hillary and the FBI was against Trump, which are both examples of the deep state. I have said before, up until 1999, I was actually asked to meet with people who wanted to run for president. They were told I was there to brief them on the real world economy but I was to also assess their mental capacity to handle the complexity.

Then I was asked to go meet with George Bush Jr and was told, “This is different, he is really stupid!” I was totally shocked. Everything up to that point in time was all about whether I thought they could handle a crisis. When I asked why they’d make someone stupid president, I was told he had the “name” and it suddenly shifted to just winning.

The deep state rose from 1999 onward. The bureaucracy could now be in charge with a president who is clueless. Obama followed Bush and he missed more than 50% of his daily security briefings. The bureaucracy gained substantial power under Bush and Obama. This is why they are so intent upon getting rid of Trump. They want their power back.

“Four percent [spent] on military spending will, however, not make our world any more secure,” Maas said in the same tweet, a rebuke apparently aimed at Trump. “Instead, we urgently need more respect to the international rules and order,” he added.

More weapons do not automatically mean more security, the minister then told the German dpa news agency, adding that Trump’s demands “have nothing to do with serious security policy.” He also criticized the US for becoming “less reliable” as a partner and called on Europe to take the matter of security in its own hands.

Like the CNN journalist sent to the Syrian town of Douma specifically to sniff its air, following an alleged but then-refuted chemical attack by Syria against its very own people. “If there really was sarin gas that reporter would have immediately fallen on the ground dead and Wolf Blitzer would have an awkward rest of the half-an-hour to fill,” the Redacted Tonight host said.

It would not be the first time the US has been brought into a conflict by lies; there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the Gulf of Tonkin incident before the Vietnam War also never actually happened, Camp reminded viewers.

The same thing is happening with the Skripal case in the UK, where the media has been trying so hard to persuade the people that Russia would, for some reason, try to poison an ex-spy that defected a decade ago while, during the same period, the world’s eyes were on Russia, as host of the FIFA World Cup.

The media is always there to cover corruption in Washington, that shows itself through government lies, its hunger for war and its more-than-close ties with corporations, Camp said.

Here's how to turn off location services for photos on your phone:

iPhone: Settings → privacy → location services → camera → instead of “using the app” click ’Never’

Android: Go to the camera → settings → location tags → make sure it’s off

Trump also blasted Angela Merkel for her role in inviting millions of migrants to Europe at the height of the Syrian refugee crisis in 2015, and for the spike in migrant-committed crime that followed. “It’s very much her (Merkel’s) Germany. I think they better watch themselves.”

“Because you are changing culture, you are changing a lot of things, you’re changing security… it’s a very sad situation but I don’t think it’s good for our country and I don’t think it’s good for Europe,” Trump said.

After the EU was opened to an influx of migrants, almost 40 jihadist terrorist attacks have been committed successfully in Europe and countless others foiled, with 2015 the bloodiest year on record, according to Europol.

IDF Operations Chief Major General Nitzan Alon was named to head it. The outbreak of full-fledged war with Iran was looming larger day by day. On the wider front, General Qassem Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Middle East warfronts, informed President Hassan Rouhani on July 4 that he stood ready to implement Rouhani’s threat to disrupt Gulf oil exports once the US ban on Iranian oil sales goes into effect on November 4.

Since President Donald Trump is unlikely to back down, the specter of Iranian hostile acts was growing larger, including the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz to Arab oil exports – or even attacks on their oil fields and terminals.

“Certainly, threatening those shareholders or threatening Russia and Germany with sanctions in response to the progress of the project is very concerning.” Earlier, US President Donald Trump had chastised Germany for buying Russian natural gas and for working on the pipeline, claiming that such trade amounted to Germany being a “captive” of Russia. His remarks were rejected by German officials.

Peskov expressed the hope that some “rudiments of a political will” to normalize relations between Washington and Moscow will be manifested by the US side during the summit in Helsinki. “You know that our ties are currently in a deplorable state and you know that Russia wasn’t the one to initiate such a collapse of the whole system of our relations,” he said.