“Israel doesn't want peace but dominance”

Ronald Lauder, the billionaire American Zionist, heir to the Estée Lauder scent company fortune, announced in time for the Israeli election that he has broken with Bibi. “I realized at the end of the day that Israel really didn't want peace, but they wanted dominance.”

How odd that he formerly thought Israel did want peace, at least after Rabin was murdered at the incitement of Netanyahu and the latter took power. 

Tribal feeling is blind, I suppose. 

Melania Trump's past

I followed the story of the former Prince Andrew, who is still the Duke of York though he does not use the title, and bought and read my old friend Andrew Lownie's book Entitled, then lost interest.  Now X just thrust in my face Andrew Lownie saying Harper Collins made him cut two lines: about Epstein claiming he introduced Melania to Trump and a diplomat telling him it was “very well known in Milan she was a high-class hooker.” 

The unnamed diplomat later said he was fine to go on the record.

I had heard this before but I'm not sure if I remember Andrew Lownie saying this explicitly and thought it worth noting.

I don't like repeating these stories about a woman who seems to me the only person in the Trump entourage who behaves with dignity. 

I didn't like it when a Hollywood film producer told me this story as Trump became president the first time. 

I don't think it matters what she did before she married. She had her way to make and she could not have been a bigger prostitute than her husband. 

Bucharest 'high society' is full of girls like that who marry well, though they usually trade in expensive presents rather than cash down, which is considered quite another thing altogether in the best Bucharest circles.

Mrs Trump also dresses better than Mrs. Kennedy, although nobody mentions this. 

But I do think anything that reminds us of the links between Epstein and Trump should be disseminated as widely as possible. That's why I am doing so. 

I'm talking about the way Epstein ran a blackmail operation in favour of Israeli interests. 

The links between Epstein and Trump are essential to understanding why America made an unprovoked attack on Iran, though admittedly the Americans have been trying to destroy the Iranian government since it took power in 1979, long before Epstein appeared, always unprovoked. 

As for Melania, I'm put in mind of the words that Walter Savage Landor used about Catullus.  

'Such stains there are—as when a Grace
Sprinkles another's laughing face
    With nectar, and runs on.'

What they said

Jeffrey Sachs:

“How many wars has China been in, in the last 40 years ? Let me count them. That would be zero. Not one war in 40 years.”

The last one: a month-long border war with Vietnam, 1979.

Now count America’s wars in the same 40 years >

> Panama, Iraq twice

> Serbia, Afghanistan, Libya

> Syria, Somalia, Yemen

> and this year, Iran

So who is the threat ?"

Zhai Xiang: "The most dangerous crisis for any civilization is not when its economy stops growing, but when its younger generation stops believing in the future."

Alessandra Bocchi: "Both immigration and the cost of living are leading to Europe’s demise. Addressing only one at the expense of the other wouldn’t stop the train from traveling on that railroad. Both must be addressed for Europe to be saved. There is no Left or Right in any meaningful sense anymore; this is merely another divide-and-conquer trap by our elites. Seeing right-wingers patrol the streets to guarantee safety is part of the plan for new guerrilla warfare to unfold among citizens while the government emerges as the saviour and the status quo continues unabated. The debate today is about our survival. The ruling class wants you to think it’s about us fighting each other. Change only takes place when our voice can no longer be ignored. We need that change, and our chance is now."

Pierre de Gaulle, the grandson of Charles de Gaulle:

"It makes me smile when people talk about Russian interference because it suits our political elites and allows them to avoid telling the truth to the French people. Most of our politicians took part in the Young Leaders program, sponsored by the CIA"

The Romanian defence bonanza is a feeding frenzy

"Corruption has evolved, it has become much more refined. We no longer find situations where someone takes a bag of money or an envelope in the middle of the street. Instead, there has been a shift toward hiding these amounts through consulting contracts, payments through offshore accounts, or consecutive commercial transactions." Laura Codruța Kövesi, then head of Romania's National Anticorruption Directorate, in an interview with ProTV September 30, 2015

The corruption involved in Romanian defence contracts is particularly hard to uncover and no doubt particularly widespread because defense contracts are confidential for reasons of national security. The bonanza in defence spending is going to involve very widespread corruption of a kind that hasn't been seen for years. 

In 2025 Romania spent almost €9 billion on defence, over 2% of the country’s GDP,  most of which goes to Western defence contractors. A lot of money is stolen at the level of sub-sub-contracts to Romanian companies. 

This is where politicians come in. The whole thing makes a great deal of money for their friends and associates. 

The new PSD-dominated government will busily award contracts after a hiatus of five months when there was no government to sign off on contracts. (It is also required to sign off on incredibly large amount of cash the judges have awarded themselves for pensions but that's another story. That's why other parties didn't join the government.) 

The USA gets a very good deal indeed because it spends only about $200 million a year on defence in Romania. The American empire in Romania is more than self-financing. It makes the American economy a very big profit as well as providing America with an obedient satellite in a strategic position. 

The term "deep state" comes from Turkey where it described a network of military officers and intelligence agents close to NATO that were more powerful than the government. Organised crime is in the mix too. The phrase was borrowed by a Swedish academic Professor Ola Tunander to describe the security state in Sweden, which had close covert links to NATO even though Sweden was neutral. The Swedish deep state achieved the entry of Sweden into NATO after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

NATO is, of course, the American empire, so I don't think it's fanciful to describe it as the military extension of the U.S. deep state, at least until the advent of Donald Trump but still today.

The Romanian deep state includes the various very powerful secret services and their alumni reaching back to the Securitate of communist days, as well as the generals. All of these, including the generals I'm afraid to say, are often corrupt. 

But is the American sector very much less corrupt? 

None of this as far as the actors in the defence sector are concerned is about fighting for democracy or other ideals. That's just the shop window. It's about power and money. 

The world crisis stretches from Cuba to Albania

From Donald Trump's speech at a midterm election campaign rally in Fort Myers, Florida:

"We'll take care of Cuba on our way back from Iran. We'll do a little stopover. No, we'll do a little stopover. Actually, what we're going to do with Cuba is we're going to come back from Iran, those beautiful ships will pass Cuba. We'll have one of them stop about 50 yards off the coast. They'll raise up their hands, and then we're going to send Marco Rubio in to finish up the deal."

What Trump says "should be taken seriously but not literally".  I hope he is being a stand-up comedian. His crowd loved it. 

A Romanian politician said to me recently that there's no way the United States will attack Cuba and I hope and think that that's right. I can't be sure. 

As John Mearsheimer says, we can be sure that Fukuyama's "end of history", which was never going to happen, is a long way back in the past. It was predicated on the idea that the final victory of America was the final victory not of American force but of liberal democracy, freedom and free markets. 

All these things are in trouble as France burns, there are riots in Belgium, Portugal, Spain, and Italy and Albania is in turmoil. 

Who guessed that the revolution would begin in Albania? This wave of unrest did, provoked by the behaviour of Jared Kushner. 

Albania is playing the role that Tunisia played in the Arab Spring. 

Are we looking at another 1848? This time a revolt not against absolute monarchy, but against green policies, expensive fuel and in the Albanian case corruption linked to the Trump family including its former member Kimberly Guilfoyle (her again)? 

The comparison with 1848 highlights how fragile European monarchies were then and how powerful the police and the military and security apparatus are in Europe today and how the media plays its role in supporting the established order. 

To repeat an obvious point: the Cold War which was always pointless and unnecessary did not come to an end because of American force but because Gorbachev had the good sense to bring it to an end. 

Communism failed because the people who were administering it ceased to believe in it. 

The great Romanian historian Nicolae Iorga described the Balkans after the Ottoman conquest as "Byzantium after Byzantium". What we have in Romania now is the communist structure of power after communism. The PSD are the children, usually literally, of the communists who executed a lucrative management buyout. 

What we have throughout the West is Cold War thinking after the Cold War. New enemies are found to take the place of communism, except in Cuba where it lingers on. China is the biggest threat but not because she is communist. 

But the new spectres haunting Europe may not be potent enough to keep the population quietly paying for expensive gas. 

I think this is the most interesting moment in European history since 1945 and possibly even for centuries, primarily because of AI but for many reasons. 

Everything has changed. Except the things that haven't changed including the PSD. 

Peccavi

'When a Protestant sins he has no one to whom to confess except his solicitor.' Philip Guedalla

Quotations

"Any city, however small, is in fact divided into one city of the poor, the other of the rich." Plato

"One does odd things. You see, when one's young one doesn't feel part of it yet, the human condition; one does things because they are not 'for good'; one thinks everything is a rehearsal – to be repeated ad lib, to be put right when the curtain goes up in earnest. One day you know that the curtain was up all the time. That was the performance." Sybille Bedford

If it keeps going at this rate, we might, for (I think) the first time in history, be about to witness the first continent-wide youth revolt in Europe - a "European spring" of sorts.

From two podcasts I just heard as I walked to the office

Former US Ambassador Chas Freeman: “In an exchange between Ansarallah [Houthis] and the Saudis, the Saudis lose, because they have so much to lose and the Ansarallah has almost nothing to lose.”

Professor John Mearsheimer on Glenn Diesen's podcast which was released on October 17, 2026: "There was always a very important moral dimension to the Fukuyama argument [about the end of history] because the idea is that liberal democracy is a positive end and liberal democrats or countries that are liberal democracies are the good guys and everybody else is the bad guys. We have moral virtue on our side. That was the basic underpinning logic behind “The End of History.” The good guys won. We are morally superior to the rest. But afterwhat happened in Gaza where the West basically is complicit in a genocide, and this is certainly true of the United States, it's hard to make the argument that the West is morally superior to the rest. Not a serious argument."

News is not really about information but part of the entertainment industry and the intellectually brilliant podcasts with which YouTube abounds are also a form of entertainment. They eat up so much time that I have given them up except occasionally in the bath or walking, but when walking I now rarely listen to them. There's very much to be said for silence and observation, being part of a dying breed a flaneur. 

Why Trump wants rid of Zelenskyy

Talking on the Judging Freedom podcast US Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski says that Trump is cooling on Zelenskyy because he's slowly losing and Trump only likes winners. That is psychopathic of him though I do not think he is necessarily a psychopath. He might be.

The war, she says, was about degrading Russia and making money but the Russian army is "bigger and better than it ever was" and massive amounts of money are being stolen in Ukraine. 

Russian victory she thinks inevitable and Trump knows it. 

Zelenskyy meanwhile is disobedient, attacking Russian refineries. 

Brivael Le Pogam: The French owe everyone an apology for the scourge of wokism

This apology by a Frenchman for the harm modern French philosophers have done is extremely worth reading.


'We must understand what they did. Foucault taught that truth does not exist, that there are only power relations disguised as knowledge. That science, reason, justice, the medical institution, the school, the prison, sexuality—everything is merely a staging of domination. Derrida taught that texts have no stable meaning, that every signifier slips away, that every reading is a betrayal, that the author is dead and the reader reigns supreme. Deleuze taught that we should prefer the rhizome to the tree, the nomad to the sedentary, desire to the law, becoming to being, difference to identity.

Rosy-fingered dawn over the Dâmbovița this morning

 

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 Ilie 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 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. The one redeeming feature the PSD has is that it has no trace of liberalism.

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.  

The 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.

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."

Note: 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. 

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 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. 

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.