‘Judging Freedom’ edition of 24 December: The Totalitarian EU

In today’s conversation with Judge Andrew Napolitano, we discuss the terrible sanctions recently imposed by the European Council on retired Swiss military intelligence expert Jacques Baud for what is said to be his pro-Russian disinformation (an outrageous defamation) and the precedents for such extrajudicial violations of citizens’ rights to free speech, to property rights and more. As I say here this goes straight back to the seizure of assets of Russian oligarchs early in 2024 after the start of the Special Military Operations on charges of their ‘being friends of Putin’ and other nonsense that would never be accepted in a court of law. The problem may be said to go still further back to the breach of international law when the U.S. seized embassy and consular properties of the Russian Federation during the Obama administration in December 2016 to hand a poisoned chalice to the incoming Team Trump.

My point is that rule of law works for all of us only when it is defended against each and every violator. Failure to bring legal action and/or high-level lobbying against violators can only lead to escalation and spread of abuses over time. That is how we have reached a situation where none of us in the Alternative Media today can feel safe in the European Union, although as I say here, it is highly unlikely that any American will be put on EU sanctions lists for fear of enraging Trump and putting in jeopardy America’s nuclear umbrella and NATO support for Europe. But if you are a Swiss or some other third country national: watch out!

We also delve into the deeper problem that makes cases like Baud’s so intractable: the absence of any system of checks and balances, of division of powers whereby an independent judiciary could review cases of abuse like this and compel the offending executive to back down. This fundamental problem must be put at the door of the Left-leaning highly intellectual caviar socialists who played a very important role in writing the foundation documents of the EU, and who assumed that their successors would be equally well-intentioned and tolerant of others’ views. Well read, they may have been but they did not pay due attention to the 19^th century political scientists who reasoned that men can be overbearing, oppressive and must be held in check by limitations on the power written into the constitution. In this regard, it should come as no surprise that the EU institutions today lend themselves to totalitarianism. Elon Musk is right: the EU must be deconstructed and rebuilt in a way that better protects democracy and specifically protects all human rights of its citizens, starting with freedom of expression, which is now being trampled upon.

A conversation with Professor Glenn Diesen, 9 December: U.S. National Security Strategy Embraces Kissinger-Style Strategy

Today’s conversation goes on for 52 minutes, and could have run still longer if we were to examine more than the several aspects of the latest U.S. National Security Strategy document. I am pleased, nonetheless, that we had ample opportunity to explore the ways in which this 2025 document compares with Trump’s first NSS of December 2017, to see how there is continuity in thinking from then to now. Trump was then a Kissinger-mentored Realist. He is one today, as well.

His embrace of an interest driven foreign policy means that he is ready to seek compromises and compromises are arrived at by diplomacy, which is why he has placed emphasis on reestablishing communication lines with Russia. The efforts of the Biden administration to break off all contact with Russia, to close down diplomacy and to rely solely on a militarized foreign policy, was not the idiosyncratic wish of one man: it came directly from the Idealist, values driven approach to foreign policy that every U.S. administration since Richard Nixon has prioritized.

In this chat, I explained what insights into the NSS come from close textual analysis of the document, from decoding innocent statements like our favoring pragmatism over pragmatists, realism over realists; or by the mention of how Germany is deindustrializing because its industrialists are moving production to China to take advantage of cheap Russian gas there.

I also had a chance to explain the mechanisms in European politics which make it impossible to reverse course on failing policies, so that the meddling that Trump proposes in the NSS and which the Germans have denounced, is very much needed if Europe is to be saved from its present suicidal course.

There is a great deal more here for the Community to explore.

By the way, I perhaps abused my privilege as guest to promote my 2019 book of essays entitled The Belgian Perspective on International Affairs, sales of which are just beginning to take off, six years after its launch. Perhaps prospective readers were turned off by the notion that Belgium dominates the content and Belgium is too small to be of value for understanding world politics. However, I had used a play on words, since the Belgian perspective was in reality, my perspective, now that I had become a naturalized Belgian two years earlier. It is in that book that you will find my detailed analysis of Trump’s 2017 NSS, which largely sets out the thinking he has stayed with in 2025. It is there, in chapter one, that you will find my call for Trump’s impeachment over his vile speech to the UN General Assembly in September 2017 when he proposed to utterly destroy North Korea and obliterate its 22 million population. I am viewing Trump very differently these days, focusing as I do on his top priorities for global power sharing with Russia and China and choosing to overlook his bullying, imperialist ways in Venezuela and his enabling genocide in Gaza.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

You have to have a thick skin to talk geopolitics in the public agora

My chat with Andrew Napolitano on Judging Freedom 7 November has created a lot of commotion in the Russian-speaking world. Hours after the English podcast went live, one Russian platform on rutube already had a dubbed Russian version posted. That did not stay active for long but was replaced by another, and then by still another. Now finally a Russian version has been posted on youtube and my oh my what it shows!

At this moment the number of thumbs up are 10 or more times greater than the number of Comments which are, as usual, very ad hominem and very vicious. These trolls are saying I am MI6 because I live in Petersburg close to a military helicopter base and have dinner with a defense industry ex-employee. That is already a kind of reasoning, distorted but imaginable. Others talk about my dyed ‘brown hair’, the color of you know what. That is more the gutter variety comment. And then there is this utterly unconventional comment which tells me that I have hit pay dirt;

@vitusreihmer3136

5 hours ago

Россия устала от войны! Это Правда, от такой тягуче-клейко тянущейся Странной Военной Операции, когда стратегическая военная Авиация спит на Аэродромах или бомбит полигоны. Да, конечно, Россия устала от странной неодекватности (или предательства!??) Путина в этой.. Странной Военной Операции. Даже действия в Сирии, были более решительней и результативней.. Россия, устаёт от мелкотравчатых белоусовых, набибулиных, герасимовых, шойгунутых, лавровых и ещё ряда безвольных подпевал.. своего главнокомандующего, от которого они же и отрекутся и продадут по первой возможности (дело в цене) Россия, устала не от Войны, Войны за себя – но от странно-вялотекущей и какой-то выжидательной “войны”.

Here below is a machine translation rendering of this comment in English:

Quote

Russia is tired of the war, that is the Truth! Tired of such a lingering and sticky Strange Military Operation, when strategic military aviation sleeps on airfields or bombs firing ranges. Yes, of course, Russia is tired of Putin’s strange inadequacy (or treachery!??) in this…. Strange Military Operation. Even the actions in Syria were more decisive and effective…. Russia is tired of the small-minded Belousovs, Nabibulins, Gerasimovs, Shoigunutsy, Lavrovs and a number of other weak-willed supporters of its commander-in-chief, whom they will renounce and sell at the first opportunity (the price is the issue) Russia is tired not of the War, the War for itself – but of the strange and slow-moving and some kind of waiting “war.”

Unquote

I trust that the author does not live in Russia, otherwise he could expect a knock at his door soon. But keep in mind that this whole Russian version came to my attention from the Search function of Yandex (Russia’s Google) so it is freely accessible in Russia to anyone with VPN on their computer, and a lot of smart people have that so they can watch whatever they want.

Being in the public agora is not for the faint of heart

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Transcript of News X interview

Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY5m7e5wPjw

NewsX: 0:00
China-India bilateral trade does not replace India-US bilateral trade. We lose a hundred billion dollars to the Chinese, OK? What products are the Chinese going to buy from us when they make everything? So the only imports they really have is iron ore, OK? So let’s be realistic, that doesn’t fix that problem.

But away from, as Mitali is saying, from the problems, there’s a fundamental agreement. That yes, we have our problems and we’ll have to settle our own problems and if we can’t do anything serious let’s take the temporary measures, because there’s an even bigger problem that the world is facing. Now, together these countries represent a global GDP, just the three of them represent a global GDP of just over 24 trillion dollars, OK? So even all three together don’t match up to the GDP of America. And nobody’s wishing away America.

0:51
So some balancing act has happened, but clear messaging has happened. So now let’s get Gilbert Doctorow into this conversation. Professor Doctorow was telling us yesterday that it’s a good thing that the eyes of India have been opened and they’ve been made to smell the roses. And if the quad ends with nothing special and the entire bloc system is dismantled, that’s a good thing. And you know, let’s take the positives out of it. With the posturing that’s happened and very obvious posturing that has happened, Gilbert Doctorow, what do you feel now?

Doctorow: 1:30
I think– I was listening to your remarks on the body language of Modi and Putin and Xi. And I was also listening to your remarks about the humiliation of Pakistan, which I think you are overdoing. Pakistan after all is a protege of China, and the remarks made about their terror attacks on India could not have– in the declaration of the of the SCO, could not be made without China’s agreement. So let’s not overdo it.

What I see is not the fall of Pakistan, but the rise of India. I think we have to remember that SCO was created by two countries, by Russia and by China. This goes back to the beginning of the millennium. It was created as a way that these two countries could manage their competition over Central Asia and also keep out intervention in Central Asia by the United States and other interlopers. So it was about security in the middle of Eurasia.

2:42
And let’s remember that this is reflected in the working languages of the SCO. They are two languages, Russian and Mandarin. Small point, but highly significant in who runs this organization. India has been marginal. I think that this new spat with the United States, which Mr. Trump has provoked by his unreasonable tariff policy on India, has given these countries, Russia and China, an opportunity to do something that perhaps should have been done long ago, to raise the visibility of India and the possibility of India being also a full partner in the SCO management, not just a member.

3:35
This is a prospect that I hope India will find attractive now that the SCO is moving beyond its original remit, its original self-description as a security organization to combat terrorism and to combat narco trade and is looking to take on an economic and financial dimension as we witnessed in the creation of a–

NewsX: 4:01
Okay, so I’ve of course been hearing the statements carefully and–

What you learn about the impact of the Ukraine war from your Belgian doctor

This morning, I accompanied my wife on a visit to our generalist to get several prescriptions she needed renewed. The doctor is of post-retirement age. He had plenty of time to chat and became very keen to advise me when I said I am considering recommending to our15 year old grandson that he apply his love for chemistry and biology by pursuing a career as a medical doctor. There is no numerus clausus in Belgium. The university studies are free and the degree is a good one.

Our doctor warned me that here in Belgium practicing medicine is fast turning sour. The new Flemish run federal government of Prime Minister Bart De Wever that took office in January is raising its military hardware contributions to Ukraine, investing in new production of weapons at the Audi factory in downtown Brussels that closed a year ago in preparedness for the war with Russia that the Germans have penciled onto the European agenda. To pay for these war-related items, the De Wever government is cutting budgetary allocations to health and other social benefits.

The doctors will see their consultation fees to patients cut by 20%. Hospitals and clinics are being ordered to retrench. Said our doctor, you can already see the consequences in greatly lengthened waiting times for all kinds of services such as mammograms, now risen from a few days to 3 months; hip replacement surgery now risen from a few months to three years, and so on.

There you have it: a crushing blow to what has been a magnificent medical establishment in Belgium, far better than in neighboring France and Germany, neither of which have recovered their luster from before Covid thanks to budgetary cuts in both countries to pay for you know what. Belgium probably was better situated because it had budgeted for defense at one of the lowest levels in the EU, at just 1.3% of GDP. As that changes with the gradual ramp up first to 2% and then to 5%, we can expect social benefits in this country to go to hell.

All of this is a kind of hidden cost of the war and of rearmament that may bring young doctors out on the street in strikes but will not prompt popular rebellion the way that introducing a military draft would.

****

I use this occasion to share some information about Belgian politics that the Community is very unlikely to know but that reflects a bigger reality of politics within the Member States of the European Union, especially those where corruption festers under coalition governments. In such governments grabbing and holding ministerial portfolios is the primary concern of every politician, without respect to any semblance of policy coherence in the coalition as a whole.

What can I possibly mean by corruption, you may ask? What is there worth stealing in little Belgium? An answer to these questions was set out in yesterday’s edition of the main French-speaking daily newspaper, Le Soir. It was in their article updating reports on the investigation into money laundering practiced for over a decade by a certain Didier Reynders, whose name you may recognize as the Justice Minister (first bit of irony in the case) in Ursula von der Leyen’s Commission from 2019 to 2024, when following Europe-wide elections in June of that year, the Commission had to be re-organized and Reynders was out of a job.

In December 2024, Reyinders was out of a job and vulnerable to police-judicial investigation into crimes he is presumed to have committed not just during his tenure at the Commission but in the decade or more when he was a member of MR party led coalition governments in Belgium. For many years he had been Finance Minister (irony number two in this case) and then for a few years he was Minister of Foreign Affairs, for which he was the perfect candidate since he knew absolutely nothing about the subject.

In Belgium, Reynders had served under a certain Charles Michel, his boss at the MR party, who was prime minister for several years before his government was brought down by the Flemish party that now openly runs the Belgian federal government. Michel moved out of Belgium to become President of the European Council, the second EU executive body alongside the Commission that consists of the heads of state of the Member States. Reynders moved in tandem with Michel to become Justice Minister, as I said above.

And so in early December 2024 we read a very lengthy account of the money laundering operations of this Reynders, who had deposited more than 800,000 euros in cash into long-duration deposit accounts at ING Bank Belgium. Cash! Strictly verboten in large amounts. Had ING followed the law, they would have asked him, as required, where the cash came from. They didn’t till the case was going to court.

The answer he gave in his court testimony was that the cash came from winnings in the state lottery. Probing by the courts turned up the fact that Reynders had for years been buying e-lottery tickets at a gas station not far from his house. He had bought the tickets with….cash and then transferred his legal winnings to his ING bank accounts.

This is a classic model of money-laundering…performed by a Minister of Finance in tidy Belgium where no corruption cases are known about by those who compile the international registers of clean government.

A couple of days ago, the same Le Soir carried an update to the Reynders investigation. It appears that Didier Reynders also told court investigators in December that he had gotten some of the cash by selling antiques from his private collection. Now it was learned that a Brussels antiques dealer whom he had obviously named told the court that he had never bought or sold any antiques to Reynders.

The plot thickens and it does not look like Reynders will clear his name. They may be fitting him for his next suit in vertical stripes as we talk.

*****

However, I would not worry too much about Didier Reynders spending much time in prison. Belgium prefers the death sentence.

Death by old age, I mean, not by hanging, drawing and quartering, gas or whatever other means you can name.

My argument makes reference to another political-criminal scandal that has been featured in the same Le Soir during the past couple of months, that of murder charges being weighed against Etienne Davignon, scion of high aristocracy, business magnate who received high appointments from one Belgian government after another. “Stevie’ as he was known to his great many acquaintances, including in the Harvard Club of Belgium where he came forward as a sponsor of wonderful events like visits to the last functioning coal mine in the country before its shutdown that I enjoyed at the time – is wanted for participating in the murder of Patrice Lamumba, the freedom fighter turned president of the liberated Belgian Congo.

To be sure, Stevie was only one of several conspirators assumed to have been responsible for the liquidation of Lamumba. However, the others have conveniently died before they could be brought to court. Stevie has had the misfortune to live to the ripe age of 92, that is long enough for the slow-turning millstones of Belgian justice to have milled and released a twenty-year-old file against him and proceeded to court hearings. With some luck, Stevie, too, will pass away before the trial begins two years or more hence.

War Diaries, Volume 1. The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022 – 2023

It is a pleasure to announce the publication today of my latest collection of essays in a paperback edition. The book is available for inspection and purchase on Amazon websites globally. The link to the book’s webpage on the USA site is here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F9VK1WM2/ref=sr_1_1?crid=10FL4JGJQ8SXI&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.dY8TQWRTDcjoqfQOi-MFjQ.kuhSnf_vSO6gt51bTH7l4fpsUNYlUMGSSv8W78p-tvM&dib_tag=se&keywords=war+diaries+doctorow&qid=1748198341&sprefix=war+diaries+doctorow%2Caps%2C293&sr=8-1

The Look Inside function allows you to peruse the Table of Contents and a few pages of the very first chapter. Regrettably, Amazon did not make available on Look Inside the Foreword and Introduction which explain very clearly what this book is and what it isn’t. However, the book description below can serve as a brief guide:

Quote

Volume 1 of War Diaries presents the author’s essays on the Russia-Ukraine war from the period immediately preceding its outbreak in February 2022 to the end of 2023. The material is diverse. It includes the author’s travel notes on the home front in Russia from his periodic visits to St Petersburg. He records the availability of consumer goods and services on the market of a country under the most severe sanctions in history. He records the changing mood of the man in the street and of the intelligentsia as the war progressed and an upsurge of patriotism changed Russian society, bringing forward new elites. The author closely monitored Russian media, in particular the state news and political talk shows whlch have a wide audience in Russia and reflect the views of Kremlin insiders. His observations fill the void left by the departure of mainstream journalists from Russia following the start of the Special Military Operation. There are also links and summaries of his appearances on television programs of commentary broadcast by major global English-language media such as TRT (Turkey) and WION (India) as well as on widely watched private U.S. internet channels. This book is essential reading for all those interested in how Russia fared during wartime.

An e-book edition will be added to the amazon websites in about two weeks

Unquote

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Kriegstagebücher, Band 1. Der Krieg zwischen Russland und der Ukraine, 2022–2023

Ich freue mich, heute die Veröffentlichung meiner neuesten Essaysammlung in Taschenbuchform bekannt zu geben. Das Buch kann weltweit auf Amazon-Websites angesehen und gekauft werden. Der Link zur Buchseite auf der Deutschland-Website lautet:

Mit der Funktion „Blick ins Buch“ können Sie das Inhaltsverzeichnis und einige Seiten des ersten Kapitels durchblättern. Leider hat Amazon das Vorwort und die Einleitung, in denen sehr klar erklärt wird, worum es in diesem Buch geht und worum es nicht geht, nicht in „Blick ins Buch“ zur Verfügung gestellt. Die folgende Buchbeschreibung kann jedoch als kurze Orientierungshilfe dienen:

Zitat

Band 1 der „War Diaries“ enthält die Essays des Autors zum Krieg zwischen Russland und der Ukraine vom Zeitraum unmittelbar vor dessen Ausbruch im Februar 2022 bis zum Ende des Jahres 2023. Das Material ist vielfältig. Es umfasst die Reiseberichte des Autors aus Russland, die er während seiner regelmäßigen Besuche in St. Petersburg verfasst hat. Er berichtet über die Verfügbarkeit von Konsumgütern und Dienstleistungen auf dem Markt eines Landes, das unter den strengsten Sanktionen der Geschichte steht. Er dokumentiert die sich wandelnde Stimmung der Bevölkerung und der Intelligenz im Verlauf des Krieges, als ein Aufschwung des Patriotismus die russische Gesellschaft veränderte und neue Eliten hervorbrachte. Der Autor verfolgte aufmerksam die russischen Medien, insbesondere die staatlichen Nachrichten und politischen Talkshows, die in Russland ein breites Publikum haben und die Ansichten von Kreml-Insidern widerspiegeln. Seine Beobachtungen füllen die Lücke, die durch den Weggang der Mainstream-Journalisten aus Russland nach Beginn der „Sondermilitäroperation“ entstanden ist. Es enthält auch Links und Zusammenfassungen seiner Auftritte in Fernsehkommentaren, die von großen englischsprachigen Medien wie TRT (Türkei) und WION (Indien) sowie auf weit verbreiteten privaten US-Internetkanälen ausgestrahlt wurden. Dieses Buch ist eine unverzichtbare Lektüre für alle, die sich dafür interessieren, wie Russland während des Krieges abgeschnitten hat.

Zitat

Eine E-Book-Version der Kriegstagebücher wird in etwa 10 Tagen auf den Websites hinzugefügt.