Romania will at last have a government and government contracts will be awarded again

Shortly after Kimberly Gilfoyle had dinner with the leader of the Romanian Social Democratic Party (PSD), but that was purely a coincidence, the PSD brought down Prime Minister Bolojan who had refused to buy the expensive American gas.

It did so by leaving the governing coalition which President Dan had formed in order to keep the nationalist/pro-peace AUR out of office. That, he thought, was required to defend democracy. 

Today it looks as if a new government of technocrats plus PSD will be formed.

I liked this observation by Sorin Ionita today:

'The Niculescu-Neacşu government will manage the budget with selective prudence and will tell Brussels everything they want to hear, while the public space will be occupied by cultural wars transplanted, to a large extent, from the MAGA repertoire. Some will keep us busy with national values ​​and sovereignty, while others will share contracts and subsidies, including with the former. In this regard, PSD and AUR will complement each other perfectly while they will always deny that they are forming a coalition.'

In fact an alliance formal or informal between PSD and AUR makes perfect sense since in the 1990s the predecessor to PSD was the anti-American party. There's nothing remotely socialist, about the PSD, that party of wicked multi-millionaires, except for the fact that they do things for the poorer half of the population in order to get returned to office (which, if you think about it, is all that social democratic  parties on the left are supposed to do). We are so used in Western Europe to parties on the left being liberals and therefore spending their time working against the interests of the working class that we forget this. 

Energy riots in France

France is the largest purchaser of Russian gas in Europe, and the reason is binding, pre-existing long-term  contracts.

French energy companies are locked into "take-or-pay" agreements signed years ago. If they refuse to lift the gas they must still pay for it. France has chosen to import the fuel until next year. 

Nevertheless expensive American prices are contributing to the cost-of-living crisis, which has had people take to the streets in France.  Media say nothing about this. 

Green policy also means higher taxes and this contributes to the crisis. I expect to see riots replicated in other European countries - it's surprising they're not happening in England. 

Romania has her own gas fortunately and will have much more shortly, thanks to gas found in the Black Sea . 

Israel Katz says 70-80% of Gaza and Southern Lebanon have been destroyed

Israeli Defence Minister Katz:

“The achievements are dramatic. In Gaza, we have achieved our objectives. 70-80% of Gaza is destroyed. The same is true in southern Lebanon.”

Katz said that Israel is actively applying the "Gaza model" to its military operations in southern Lebanon.

Katz stated that 70–80% of Gaza has been destroyed. In southern Lebanon, he claimed the operations have already resulted in the destruction of more than 60 villages, 23,000 homes, and a 700-square-kilometer area, displacing roughly 200,000 residents.

"In Gaza, we don't just destroy what's underground, we destroy all the houses."

The word "holocaust" means "a sacrifice burned completely by fire" 

Joe Kent, who resigned this year as director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, and Pelle Taylor

Joe Kent on X:

“The war is not meant to be won." George Orwell 

Defense contractors & their powerful lobby will never be satisfied with simply aiding the U.S. in building a strong military that is prepared for war. 

The nature of the industry’s existence is not patriotism, but endless conflict. War is their business model—a perpetual state of war ensures a perpetual demand for their products. 

Until we address this issue, we will continue to be subjected to forever wars that only serve the defense contractors—and the warmongering interests wealthy enough to rent the defense contractors.

Stop spilling American blood for profit. 

Here's a germane Substack piece by Pelle Taylor. I too think the war-mongering of the media is something very frightful and very reminiscent of the world immediately before 1914. The Telegraph and the Times in London are exceptionally bad all the mainstream media are the same. I don't really understand why. The mainstream centre-left is particularly warlike about Ukraine. I do know in general why; the papers have a very cosy relationship with MI6 and the British Foreign Office. But why don't journalists stop and use their brains? 

The news today - no comment

Israeli settlers in the Israeli occupied West Bank attacked a French mayor and European diplomats, as well as Palestinians. The head of the British Army has told the country to prepare for war. Supporters of Donald Trump are urging him to introduce martial law and even pause the midterm elections according to Axios, a news outlet very close to Donald Trump and the Trump family: one of its leading journalists is a Mossad agent. Starlink is still restricted in Ukraine, hampering the Ukrainian war effort. Anonymous White House sources say the order to do this came from the White House although Trump denies this. Elon Musk pleads not guilty. He says the US army runs Starlink in Ukraine. France is descending into anarchy because of high prices.

Democracy is a system of control

Brian Berletic today:

It was this exact flawed thinking that led millions of Americans and many commentators to enthusiastically anticipate the Trump administration ending multiple US wars, proxy wars and worldwide interference that has only - very predictably - expanded instead.

'Understanding a problem is paramount to solving it. 

'If one thinks US policy is determined by electoral outcomes instead of by unelected corporate interests, focus will be placed on influencing otherwise meaningless elections only ensuring the problem persists.

'This is by design to prevent corporate interests from being the focal point of public attention instead of endless election cycles and an endless supply of disposable politicians. 

'Western-style "democracy" is a system of control, not one of self-determination.

'While electoral cycles are designed to move us emotionally - empirically they are an exercise in manipulating, not empowering us.'

These last sentences are extremely true of Romania and probably of most 'democratic' countries. 

Fights about social liberalism are distractions.

If an election produces a wrong result it's cancelled. When a referendum produces the wrong result, another referendum is held until the electors get it right, then no further referendums. 

Blair and Mandelson, friend of Epstein, tried very hard to do this in England with Brexit but failed. But they came close.

The Epstein class at war

Left-wing dissident American journalist Max Blumenthal thinks that the Ukraine war is being waged to benefit what he terms the "Epstein class", meaning global financial elites and defence companies.  

Zelenskyy acts as a manager on the ground, sustaining a forever war that keeps profits flowing and checks Russia, which is a threat to  the global hegemon.

The more I talk to people in the defence sector and the more I see the money being made in Romania out of defence procurement - it's a feeding frenzy - the more persuasive his view is. 

A conservative like me finds the left-wing critique of American foreign policy very insightful, much more so than the liberal view 

An American defence consultant who knows people like Elon Musk and all the big players in the American defence sector to whom I spoke had a Hobbesian worldview and said that they, unsurprisingly, and the people working at the top of government are simply interested in power and money and absolutely nothing else. 

That's the universal view of Romanian taxi drivers, and taxi drivers usually know everything, unlike mainstream journalists who are paid to do so. Blumenthal calls them stenographers of empire. 

With politicians I think that there is a often a scintilla of genuine ideals but I might be being naive. But it's power, and the enjoyment of playing the political game that motivate them mostly. In Romania it's mostly money. 

In his latest podcast on Judge Andrew Napolitano's always excellent "Judging Freedom" podcast, Mr Blumenthal makes the point that by attacking Russian refineries Zelensky is driving up the price of diesel in order to blackmail Trump into giving him more money. 

An interesting take. But it could have the opposite effect. 

The world would be better off without Trump, Putin or Zelensky in power but the former two are not going anywhere. 

Actually the man who  succeeds Putin (it will be a man) might be worse. 

A friend of mine said to me that Putin is the best leader Russia could have at the moment but I do not agree. The invasion of Ukraine was a terrible blunder, like the US attack on Iran. 

Xi, despite what he does at home and did in Hong Kong, is the grown-up in the playground. 

He isn't part of the Epstein class. 

Trump yesterday

 

"Zelensky is not a good guy for us to deal with. Biden gave him hundreds of billions of dollars. If Ukraine gonna end up with a settlement of some kind, they're not gonna do it with Zelensky."

Quotations

Barack Obama two days ago in Ireland: “The fact is that the Jewish people, for millennia, were oppressed, discriminated against, killed. Europe was responsible for much of it. They understandably sought a refuge.That is undeniable. What is also undeniable is that they took land off people, and they were excessive. And those people understandably said, This is injustice, and I want my land back.”

Sir Roger Scruton: “If you start thinking about politics in an intellectual way, you are likely to be on the left, because that provides a systematic solution, an answer to the questions, puts it all in a system, and also gives you a rather dignified and self-congratulatory place in the system. But if you think a bit harder and longer about it, you’ll move back to what you would have been if you had never thought at all. That’s my view of what an intellectual conservative is: it’s someone who articulates the real reasons for not having reasons.”

Bunny Sheffield: "Feminism is Marxism in drag." 

Chas Freeman on Glenn Diesen's podcast yesterday says nobody can tell you any more what the Ukrainian war is about

The podcast is here 

"As I indicated, the idea in the beginning was to use Ukraine to take down Russia. Lloyd Austin and the Biden administration said the purpose of the war was to weaken and isolate Russia. It was a bit out of line to admit that, but that was the actual purpose that led to the outset of the war.

"We don't know what the war is about now. Is it about arms sales to Europeans so they can pass them on to Ukraine? Is it about supporting an ideological crusade against some mythical Russian ideological menace? Does anybody really imagine the Russians—who have bogged down in Donbas—could actually invade Western Europe? They could devastate it, yes, but they could not occupy and control it against any serious opposition, and there would be opposition.

"What is this about? Nobody can really tell you at this point. They say it's about democracy, but Ukraine is not a democracy. They say it's about Ukrainian nationalism, but Ukrainian nationalism will not accommodate the nationalism of others or the linguistic and cultural autonomy of others. They say it's about punishing the Russians for a war of aggression, but the Russians started that war because they were denied the opportunity to negotiate.

Arnaud Bertrand: why did China just save the world economy?

[On X just now.] 

This is one of the biggest geopolitical mysteries of the year: why did China just save the world economy?

Because, make no mistake, it absolutely did. Analysts are pretty much unanimous on this: had China not dramatically - and I mean dramatically - reduced its oil imports this year, the price of crude oil would have gone through the roof and dragged the global economy down with it.

As we all guessed, CIA knew about and approved of the destruction of Nord Stream

The CIA knew of plans to sabotage the Nord Stream gas pipelines before the September 2022 explosions in the Baltic Sea, and American intelligence officers initially raised no objections to the operation, according to German investigative journalist Oliver Schröm.

In an interview with German news outlet ntv, Schröm discussed findings from his investigation with fellow journalist Ulrich Thiele for their book Die Sprengung. Schröm claims that CIA personnel in Ukraine were informed about the plans by individuals with whom American intelligence had maintained long-standing contacts. According to him, the American officers initially showed no fundamental opposition to the operation and even indicated that financial support might be available.

Thanks to the late Beverley Little

 

Hugh Trevor-Roper, Lord Dacre. I never met him but I heard him lecture on Carlyle, whom he considered a fascist

Hugh Trevor-Roper (1914-2003), The Wartime Journals (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012), pp. 165-166 (June 1943):
'And books', I asked myself as I stood in Blackwell’s shop in Oxford one day, surrounded by fat volumes on Soviet Russia and the Virgin Birth, and thin volumes on Education and Democracy, earnest pamphlets, flimsy novels, yellow manuals, reprints, Americana and all. There seemed no end of them. And what is in them all? Learned sawdust — vapour trash. And there were historical works too, lives of saints, and lives of kings, and lives of conquerors and politicians and administrators, and chronicles of wars and politics and movements and revolutions, — all the accumulated mundungus of all the centuries of man, stirred this way, stirred that, and smelling now thus, now thus, as the stirrer stirred. Must I add to these? I asked myself; spend perhaps a whole lifetime to increase this great Sargasso Sea by one wisp of seaweed? Vanitas Vanitatum! And over & around me, in the hidden background, in the Bodleian, in the New Bodleian, in the Radcliffe, I was aware of the unseen, oppressive, brooding presence of myriads of musty tomes, hundreds of tons of them weighing me down with their stifling, persecuting bulk. A feeling of hot spiritual claustrophobia overcame me, as in childhood, when I was besieged by a great herd of panting cows; and I turned and left the shop in disgust.

Thanks to https://laudatortemporisacti.blogspot.com

Belloc on P. G. Wodehouse

I CAN'T remember if I ever told you about meeting Hugh Walpole when I was at Oxford getting my D.Litt. I was staying with the Vice-Chancellor at Magdalen and he blew in and spent the day. It was just after Hilaire Belloc had said that I was the best living English writer. It was just a gag, of course, but it worried Hugh terribly. He said to me, 'Did you see what Belloc said about you?' I said I had. — 'I wonder why he said that.' 'I wonder,' I said. Long silence. 'I can't imagine why he said that,' said Hugh. I said I couldn't, either. Another long silence. 'It seems such an extraordinary thing to say!'—'Most extraordinary.' Long silence again. 'Ah,well,' said Hugh, having apparently found the solution, 'the old man's getting very old.'

P. G. Wodehouse, Performing Flea. A Self-Portrait in Letters, ed. W. Townend (Copyright 1953), p. 128.

Mystery

A Russian woman once told me that women like three things in men: courage, a sense of humour, and mystery.

I'm not good at mystery. I talk too much about myself.

The other two, I'm reasonable at and I drop mysterious hints about my past life into conversations on occasion.

Many people tell me I am MI6, which I am not.

Men find mystery attractive in women but for some unknown reason only brunettes can be mysterious.

A moment's reflection told me the reason. It's the same reason why sunlit uplands are not mysterious whereas dark forests are.

Former British diplomat Ian Proud on X

The problem with the 'Russia caused Brexit' hoax, is that it isn't really about Russia, but about the tear-filled liberal regret that Brexit happened and the need to blame someone. Not the voters who, on the basis that many in Westminster consider most working class people to be childish, insufficiently educated and gullible, must have been misled. But the Russians, because Russia is the font of all ill. 

Let's be clear, what I am not saying is that Russian intelligence doesn't conduct hostile activity against British interests. They do. 

By the same toke, British intelligence conducts hostile activity against Russian interests.  

Bolt driver today

He told me how much he admired Britain for Brexit. When I asked him whether joining the European Union had done Romania more good than harm, he was quite sure that it had done Romania far more harm than good. Foreign companies have eaten up the Romanian market. 

He blamed most of the world's problems on America and Israel, which he considers are the same country now. 

He blamed Zelensky who he thinks takes cocaine for the Russian invasion of Ukraine and said, as an actor, he is completely unprepared to be a politician. The people behind this war are the defence companies. 

Romanians with good jobs mostly think very differently although you get some free thinkers among them.   

I forgot to ask him what he thought about Calin Georgescu or the sovereignists or about Putin. 

I know 18% of Romanians admired Putin according to a poll in September 2025 but I certainly don't. His attack on Ukraine was worse than a crime it was a blunder, like the American attack on Iran. But both attacks were terrible crimes, to whit mass murder. 

The very compromised Romanian judges

The European Union could insist that, like in Moldova and Albania, external auditors audit the personal wealth of Romanian judges but they won't do this. Romanian judges are not like the judges of 25 years ago: submissive to external pressure . They will declare that this is an assault on judicial independence which, of course, it would be

The PSD would insist that if the European Union does anything to attack the independence of the Romanian judiciary it will enable the far right to come to power, which it would.

The website Recorder that caused all the embarrassment, to use a very weak word for it, for the Romanian judges by broadcasting a documentary in which very courageous judges spoke out about the widespread corruption among their colleagues is in a very vulnerable position.

It's true that because it is crowd-funded it isn't answerable to rich donors. But it only takes one judge to award damages of, let's say, €2 million to some politician who claims to have been defamed by the website for the website to go out of business.

Please bear in mind that the Romanian court that annulled the first round of the presidential election in November 2024 (which the peace/anti Nato candidate Calin Georgescu won) is part of the same corrupt web that the Recorder documentary cast light on.

The European Union very characteristically says nothing about this because they wanted Georgescu to be removed from the scene. Rather as they say nothing about Israeli war crimes, while quite properly condemning the much fewer Russian war crimes.

The European Union is an undemocratic, corrupt, and largely useless institution but unfortunately it will be with us for a very long time. In Romania it does at least provide checks and balances on the appalling Romanian system of government.

Low though the European Union is, the Romanian political and judicial systems are very much lower.

Things that every reasonably well informed person already knows

"The United States is everywhere in retreat." Chas Freeman

"Had it not been for Boris Johnson and Victoria Nuland -- who personally forced Zelensky to reject the deal Ukraine and Russia were about to sign in Istanbul in 2022 -- this horrific war that has killed more than a million and consumed much of Ukraine would have been long over." Glenn Greenwald 

"Thousands are held in Israeli torture camps." Headline in Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz 

Romanian baroque

When I came here in 1998 it was a period when the reformists, the CDR, were in power. I heard many stories about how corrupt the other side, the post-communist PSDR, which renamed itself the PSD, had been in their 6 years in power until 1996. “Nobody can forgive them for what they did”, a friend told me. “Except the electorate.” “Yes, except the electorate.”

The CDR governments made very important and necessary changes but they ran the economy into the ground and the PSD came back to the dismay of all the nice people in Bucharest.

One of them told me that living under the PSD was like living under an army of occupation.

The analogy was a good one. The PSD looted the country with arrogance and made little attempt to hide their depredations.

It was the occupation that began after the war with the liberation, which was no liberation, by the Russians, but the PSD were no longer communists.

In the summer of 1989 leading East European communists came to realise the end of communism needn't be the end of them but a management buyout and the opportunity to make a great deal of money that could be spent in Western capitals. 

This is the story of the National Salvation Front that took power after the revolution, claiming to expunge communism but in fact continuing the communist party in a new form. It became the PDSR and then the PSD. 

Both the main Romanian parties are very corrupt but the National Liberals are thin, more like a debating society. 

The PSD is not a national party so much as a federation of local parties, which replaced the old communist organisation in the counties where they control power and money. 

Romania you have to understand is a feudal system, but one without charming baronial castles and well-bred aristocrats.

In 2003 I said to a lawyer who was sleeping with many of the leading figures in the PSD and consequently was unusually well informed that the party was a form of organized crime, to which she replied accurately enough, "No, it's not, it's disorganised crime."

I used to follow politics very attentively, read the newspaper carefully, found out as much as I could, and knew a lot of stuff. Then my interest moved to other things: Brexit, Donald Trump, the Middle East.

Recently I woke up from what seems like a long sleep. I feel like a Rip Van Winkle who's awakened to see how things have changed in 20 years. And how have they changed? They've changed enormously and yet they haven't changed at all.

The rich men 20 or 25 years ago were slightly absurd figures, badly dressed with dangerously sexy wives. Husbands and wives alike fitted the definition of nouveaux riches: expensively cheap.

Now they're much more sophisticated and they eat microscopic amounts of food at cool venues like Loft. They visit Monaco regularly. 

In fact the Monaco circle is a very powerful circle of highly controversial people. They are mostly in real estate but a few are underworld. One very rich and famous (non--underworld) member of the group is suspected of murdering a potential whistleblower. Several fled Romania to escape prison but came back and remain free. They are respected if not respectable. 

25 years ago the judges were easily bribed but I was told that a call from the Victoria Palace (in other words the seat of the Prime Minister) always overrode any bribe, however large. The judges, in the time of the PDSR, were subordinate to the politicians.

Now the judges seem to be a power centre of their own. There is a very clear link between the judges and the PSD even when the PSD is in opposition, as it is for the time being since it pulled out of the coalition at the behest of Kimberly Guilfoyle, but the judges do not take orders as they used to do from politicians.

The judges are shameless in a way they weren't 25 years ago, when hypocrisy was a tribute that vice paid to virtue. They complain about politicians who  seek to curtail their independence. This is the approved language of the European Union again, which takes the place of the old limba de lemn or wooden language that Communists used to speak.

Lia Savonea, the President of the High Court of Cassation and Justice, which is the supreme court, is the best case in point.

Honest judges complain about trial rigging and the European Chief Prosecutor, who is a Romanian, backs them but Lia is untouched and untouchable. She is the state.

She dismisses accusations of corruption as inventions of centre-right politicians.

Meanwhile she acquitted a notorious alleged underworld figure who faced a 7-year sentence for robbery while she and her husband did a real estate deal with the defendant's uncle

25 years ago judges would issue nonsensical decisions. Criminal files would simply disappear. 

Files still disappear but more common is prolonging trials for so long that the statute of limitations kicks in.

In 2014 Romania introduced a new criminal code. In 2018 the Constitutional Court ruled that Article 155 was not clear about which acts reset the clock and postponed the operation of the statute of limitations and therefore was null.

For four years the Romanian Parliament did nothing about it.

In 2022 the Constitutional Court ruled that there were no grounds for interrupting the statute of limitations during those four years. In effect it ruled that the clock had been ticking silently since the date of the alleged crime.

Nearly 10,000 criminal cases, indictments, and active convictions vanished. All sorts of high-profile people received a get-out-of-jail-free card, like in Monopoly.

This epitaph in an English churchyard comes to mind: "I wasted time and now doth time waste me."

The solution clearly is to abolish the statute of limitations and to replace the judges with new judges. Neither of these two things is going to happen.

It is not true that nothing can be done because it has been done in Albania and Moldova. In these countries a hostile takeover of the judiciary took place in which auditors from abroad investigated the wealth of the judges and very many were thrown out.

But Albania and Moldova have the advantage over Romania that they're not in the European Union and want to get in and have therefore to do their best to impress Brussels. 

Romania is in the European Union and is at ease in Zion.

Compliance is the name of the game and instead of civil servants being men in crumpled crimplene suits making $100 officially from their salary we have better though still badly paid people who speak the language that the European Union likes and, like rabbits illuminated by car headlights, are absolutely terrified of being accused of corruption.

As ever in Romania, it's baroque: the triumph of form over substance.

I was told that after the PSD left office in 2004 and the so-called centre-right took power, bribery became much less in the civil service. People still wanted bribes but they were frightened of receiving them and they didn't intend to do anything without a bribe so nothing got done.

In fact as we now know, although it wasn't necessarily apparent at the time, the old system carried on, but in a diminished form, under the centre-right government.

It is difficult to say whether Romania has gained more or lost more from being in the European Union. Probably, on balance, it has lost more because the free movement of people has meant millions of Romanians have left Romania to be replaced, in the case of workers, by badly paid third-world immigrants.

Undoubtedly living standards have risen a lot since Romania joined the European Union and to some extent it's because of European Union subsidies and investments. But prices rose enormously and foreign companies ate the Romanian market. 

The investments tend to favour certain groups, particularly, of course, the rich, but also the university graduates in the cities, and a very large amount of the European money is stolen in clever ways. 

The PSD have become very much more sophisticated. Their children are educated at Ivy League universities.

As G.K. Chesterton pointed out, there are two kinds of cynicism: the cynicism of the young which is unattractive and the cynicism of the old of which he approved. Employing the latter is a very useful exercise. 

Viewed cynically the European Union is as corrupt as Romania but it's corrupt in a much more sophisticated way and the Romanians are becoming sophisticated too.

I am an Englishman who left as Tony Blair started and looking at Romanian corruption from an English pre-Blair point of view it seems terribly shocking but if I were a Frenchman or an Italian, it would not. Nor from an American point of view.

The most interesting aspect of the Kimberly Guilfoyle scandal - the latest development - is that she asked for €100,000 to give access to the Trump White House. How very, very Romanian it seems, say Romanians disappointedly. In fact Romanians are less amateur than Kimberly, who accepts cards. 

The corruption in America, which was always extreme, is now much worse, it seems, than the corruption in Romania.  Think of Jared Kushner receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from MBS in return for what seems like nothing at all. Think of Kushner's father, who was convicted and sent to prison for blackmail, being pardoned and made the U.S. ambassador to France, which he lectures about anti-Semitism. 

The decline of the American Empire

Marco Rubio complains that Iran spends money on weapons rather than on building roads, even though the U.S. does the same.

“Every dollar and every penny that that regime gets, they don’t spend it on roads or bridges or helping improve the lives of the Iranian people. They spend that money on Hezbollah and Hamas and militias that fire rockets out of Iraq and the Houthis. They should have spent their money on their people, and instead they spend their money on terrorism and on weapons."


Since the United States has threatened to bomb Iran into the Stone Age, weapons are something Iran needs, I'd say.


Unlike Iran the USA uses its weapons on the other side of the world, not to defend itself or even its interests. The US launched, without any provocation, the present war with Iran. The Israelis who persuaded the US to do this hoped it would lead to the splitting up of Iran altogether yet little Marco complains that Iran wastes money on weapons. 

Does his American audience notice this? 

Actually not, is my hunch. 


In 2016 he described Donald Trump as a con artist and a serious threat to the United States and he has been proven right but these things are now equally true of Marco Rubio. More importantly, both men are serious threats to the world. 

Meanwhile here's Brian Berletic.


"And in case there is any doubt, the US admits 100s of its advisers are involved in facilitating the war on Yemen, which is obvious even without the admission as Saudi Arabia itself lacks the capabilities to wage such a war.


"It is a US war in all but name.


"The US is an over-extended empire increasingly draining its own proxies to compensate for its own growing limitations.


"This recent development is just another symptom of this process."


Events these days are reminiscent of the late Roman empire. The Battle of Adrianople 378 comes to mind, when the barbarians learnt how to defeat the Roman infantry square and the world changed forever. Compare that with drones. 

As I said before, Donald Trump has something about him of a businessman who got elected Roman emperor by paying the Praetorian Guard. 

Come to think of it Elagabalus's parties were much more unedifying even than Epstein's and Persia played a big role in defeating Rome as she is defeating Trump.


Persia will never be destroyed. Persia is a constant which has seen the founding of all the states in the world, the Roman Empire, the Athenian republic, even China. I think she will outlive Israel and quite possibly the United States.


Marx said, "History repeats itself: first as tragedy, then as farce." The current world situation seems to be a mixture of the two. A tragedy in Gaza, Lebanon and Ukraine, a farce in the Persian Gulf. 

And the Houthis are defeating America again.

10% of Romanian judges are said to be corrupt, but more of the very senior ones. Lia Savonea, "absolute ruler of the court system", is married to a man who declares a minimal income but has made millions in real estate.

"The ongoing fallout from investigative reports exposing systemic networks of elite magistrates—who use administrative reassignments to intentionally delay top-tier corruption trials past their statutes of limitations—continues to plague Bucharest. Public distrust in the independent judiciary remains at a staggering 70%." News item today.

It is staggering that 30% of Romanians do not express distrust in the judiciary.

It is deeply shocking.

I was speaking yesterday to a very senior competition lawyer who told me that if she no longer believed that the Romanian justice system did justice she would stop being a lawyer.

It showed a very good heart on her part but her faith in the system surprised me. Then again competition law is very much cleaner than other areas of law.

Competition law is something very important to the European Union because it concerns major international companies and it's very carefully scrutinised from Brussels. In competition cases the judges, unlike in most areas of law, are well trained. The room for bribing judges is very small as most of the firms that work in this area are either international firms or very well-known and famous Romanian firms. Cases are very high-profile.

When I came to this country in the 1990s I spent a lot of time talking to lawyers and heard innumerable stories of open, overt corruption. I could say much. 

After Monica Macovei became justice minister under President (and former Securitate agent) Traian Basescu we all understood that things became clean but in fact they did not.

There was a wonderful documentary in December by an outfit called Recorder, which broadcast judges openly talking about the occult influences that were brought to bear on them. (How wonderful a thing the internet is in enabling all sorts of things to be exposed that formerly would have been buried. Let us hope the European Union does not succeed in muzzling it.)  

This resulted in a remarkable public scandal where one very brave judge Raluca Moroșanu stood in front of the judges of the Court of Appeal who gathered together to reassure the public on television and to condemn the Recorder report. Without preface and without being invited to speak she accused them of widespread malpractice and talked of rigged trials and systematic retaliation by senior judges against less senior ones who were not biddable.

The judges had been ambushed. 

They were recorded by journalists talking audibly on their telephones saying they'd received messages from the PSD adjacent head of the Court of Cassation (the Supreme Court) who was giving them orders in absentia. She owns two very expensive houses, by the way, bought by saving up her salary. 

Like baddies in cowboy films the judges started to argue among themselves and became laughing stocks. It was very funny indeed. The Court of Appeal’s first press conference was meant to bury the exposé but instead the Court was hoist by its own petard. 

Thousands took to the streets across Romania, demanding the state protect honest judges. President Nicușor Dan bypassed the compromised judicial councils to consult directly with reformists. 

Now, the battle rests before the Supreme Court which is, of course, a judge in its own cause.

Nothing will be done about this in the end.

By the way almost three quarters of the judges on the Court of Appeal are women and 20 years ago the figure was almost two thirds. The very few women taxi drivers in Bucharest are almost always more honest and better drivers than their male counterparts. When it comes to judges, unfortunately, women are not more honest than men.

In England judges can be impeached, although no judge has been impeached since 1680 and he was not removed from office.

Judicial corruption in England isn't prevented by the threat of impeachment, but a sense of honour amongst the elite to which judges belong, even now despite the egalitarian social changes brought about by Tony Blair.

The pre-Communist Romanian elite was very unsatisfactory. But something nobody says is that the worst thing that communism did was to destroy the elites and any sense of noblesse oblige.

Most Romanian lawyers will tell you that some judges, who do not become judges as a result of a career as a lawyer, like in England, but like in France are trained specially to be judges, are venal.

10%, according to one judge speaking to Recorder.

There have always been honest Romanian judges. I was told in the 2001 about one judge who happened to be a gypsy and sat on the Supreme Court that he was one of the minority of honest judges on that court. That was in the old days.

What is fine is for Romanians to complain about this but when a foreigner like me does so people may be unhappy.

Google no longer makes it easy for chance readers to see what's written in blogs so not many people will read this.

Quotations

"The French Revolution was not made not by hungry peasants but by hungry lawyers." Anonymous

"The Revolution was not made by down-and-out wretches... The Revolution was the work of a bourgeoisie that was strong, intelligent, and rich." Jean Jaurès, in his Socialist History of the French Revolution

"I always say to people if you fall on your backside, get up and try again. You’ll fall on it again but you’ll get up again. Get on with it.” The late Jeffrey Archer

Has it occurred to you that we are living in the most interesting period in the world's history?

"He comes, nor want nor cold his course delay;
Hide, blushing Glory, hide Pultowa's day:
The vanquish'd hero leaves his broken bands,
And shows his miseries in distant lands;
Condemn'd a needy supplicant to wait,
While ladies interpose, and slaves debate.
But did not Chance at length her error mend?
Did no subverted empire mark his end?
Did rival monarchs give the fatal wound,
Or hostile millions press him to the ground?
His fall was destin'd to a barren strand
A petty fortress, and a dubious hand;
He left the name at which the world grew pale,
To point a moral, or adorn a tale."

Johnson, Samuel not Boris, on Charles XII of Sweden’s invasion of Ukraine in 1709, which was then part of Russia, and his defeat.


This is a very interesting article by Dominic Sandbrook on Poltava and Putin. I agree with quite a lot of it. 

                                  *

I wrote this very short post four years ago because I love The Vanity of Human Wishes and Dr Johnson. No doubt I intended it as the start to a post I never wrote.

Mr Sandbrook's article still seems to me extremely topical. Do read it. 

I agree with it entirely except for one mistake - Putin did said he might want to join NATO - and this paragraph which as is out of date:

"Today it’s very common to regard Putin as a kind of anomaly. We think of the Western-dominated, rules-based international system as the norm. The West represents order, and Putin represents disorder. We stand for continuity; he represents change and chaos."


I certainly don't mean that it seems out of date to regard Putin as representing disorder. Very obviously he does. I am not in any way an admirer of Putin or an apologist for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, quite the contrary, but the rules-based order did not exist and it is a phrase that is archaic after the U.S. attacks on Venezuela and Iran and threats to Panama, Cuba and Greenland.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said something similar at Davos in January (so recently but it seems so long ago):


""We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false, that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically... This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes."

Has it occurred to you that we are living in the most interesting period in the world's history since the Reformation or more probably the fall of Rome? 

I hope this is a period of creative destruction. The fall of Rome was obviously not. 

If Europe were Christian

People can't think the way they want to in Iran. They have to think the way they are told to. At least that's what I'm told by one British person who lived in Iran. 

We can't think the way we want to think in Europe either. We have to think in terms of equity, diversity, inclusion, feminism, etc. It's a kind of godless religion.

But Iranians do believe in God.

Years and years ago I read somebody say that if countries took Christianity seriously they would resemble, in many ways, Iran. 

I guess if Europe was really Christian there'd be no bathing costumes, no mixed colleges or mixed schools and divorces would be considered scandalous. 

Divorce is considered nothing at all in Muslim countries of course. 

It's a mistake to think that Islam and Catholicism resemble each other except in the sense that they're both hard religions as opposed to soft religions like Anglicanism. Islam resembles Calvinism.

The reason why the Iranian birth rate fell vertiginously and is now one of the lowest in the world is because the government in Iran spent a lot of time and money encouraging birth control in the first years after the Islamic Revolution. They are not like Catholics. 

If Europe were genuinely Christian, it would have a very high birth rate. 

LNG gangster shakedown

I was reading shortly after the beginning of the Ukrainian war that America was pressing her allies (vassals) for sanctions against Russian energy in order to sell LNG. 

I'm deeply ashamed to say that I thought that, at the time, unnecessarily cynical, which was, of course, absurd of me. War fever, I suppose, got the better of me. It can be infectious although I think I'm inoculated against it now. 

Great Britain is the biggest European importer of American LNG if you consider that Britain is in Europe. Of course, as an island it can't be any more European than Cyprus or Malta but that's considered pedantic. 

Most EU countries now buy very large amounts of exorbitantly priced American LNG, particularly Germany, Italy and Spain.  Ireland, Denmark, Cyprus. Malta and Latvia do not and nor do the Balkan countries which is why Miss Guilfoyle is so actively trying to sell LNG around the region from her embassy in Athens.

The question of her exact relationship with the good-looking man constantly at her side who is working for the company selling one particular brand of LNG is really irrelevant. 

She's working on behalf of the U.S. government, meaning Donald Trump and I'm quite sure that he thoroughly approves of her brutality in bringing about the downfall of the last, recalcitrant Romanian government. 

France, to her credit, continues to import Russian gas as well as buy LNG.

South Korea is negotiating about buying exorbitantly expensive Alaskan LNG because it wants US defence support. India has increased its imports of LNG from $10 million to $25 million in order to avoid punitive American tariffs. Vietnam, Taiwan and China have bought massive amounts of the American gas. 

It's pretty much agreed that Ukraine destroyed the Nord Stream pipeline with the knowledge of the CIA and it's not cynical but common sense to see the connection between this and selling LNG.

Yet people talk about the threat to the world economy from Iran. 

People are curious. 

No that's not true. People are incurious.

Quotation from the Persian poet Saadi

 "However much you study, you cannot know without action. A donkey laden with books is neither an intellectual nor a wise man."