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Drole de Guerre

January 30, 2026 //
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1939, September 1. The III-rd Reich invades Poland.
1939, September 3. France and Britain declares war against Germany.
1940, April 8, Germany invades Norway.
1940, May 10, Germany invades Belgium.
1940, June 14, German soldiers occupy Paris.

The British Army in France 1939 Army and French Air Force personnel outside a dugout named ’10 Downing Street’ on the edge of an airfield, 28 November 1939.

OK. War makes no sense. Starting one, that is.
Unless you have to defend yourself, of course!

It was Hitler’s Germany which had started WWII.
France and Britain declaring war on Germany was nothing but a formality.
But what happened next…

Waiting for 8 months while your opponent was busy elsewhere makes even less sense. Than starting the war in the first place…

Counterfactual history is interesting.
Imagining ‘what could have happened if’, we may learn how people think.

We know what happened.
We’re not happy with much of it. It would have been a lot better if WWII was never fought. In the first place. For all of us.
The next best thing would have been a lot shorter war. France and Britain invading Germany while Hitler and Stalin were dividing Poland among themselves.

I’m not going to enumerate arguments. Neither for nor against. I don’t actually know whether the war would have been shorter or not. Whether the end would have been significantly different. Or in which way different…
But I would really like to understand what was going on in Chamberlain’s head! As well as in Daladier’s. The British and French prime-ministers at that time, respectively.

On the other hand…
1936. Hitler had ordered his army to enter the Rhineland region. In breach of the Versailles Treaty.
1938. Hitler had occupied Austria.
1939, March. Hitler invaded what was left of Czechoslovakia, breaching what he had promised in September 1938.
During this time, France and Britain did nothing!

Not so drole anymore, eh…

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, effective communication, In English, skin in the game

All in favor of “gun control”…

January 25, 2026 //
2

Political prisoners and Death Camps can’t exist without “Gun Control”.
Some Americans still feel “Gun Control” is a good ideea.
To prevent a Schindler’s List in America, we must destroy “Gun Control”!!

“Say the words “gun registration” to many Americans—especially pro-gun Americans, including the 3.5 million plus members of the National Rifle Association—and you are likely to hear about Adolf Hitler, Nazi gun laws, gun confiscation, and the Holocaust. More specifically, you are likely to hear that one of the first things that Hitler did when he seized power was to impose strict gun registration requirements that enabled him to identify gun owners and then to confiscate all guns, effectively disarming his opponents and paving the way for the genocide of the Jewish population.“German firearm laws and hysteria created against Jewish firearm owners played a major role in laying the groundwork for the eradication of German Jewry in the Holocaust,” writes Stephen Halbrook, a pro-gun lawyer. “If the Nazi experience teaches anything,” Halbrook declares, “it teaches that totalitarian governments will attempt to disarm their subjects so as to extinguish any ability to resist crimes against humanity.””

Bernard E. Harcourt, On Gun Registration, the NRA, Adolf Hitler… 2001 The University of Chicago

“As the videos begin, Pretti can be seen filming as a federal agent pushes away one woman and shoves another woman to the ground. Pretti moves between the agent and the women, then raises his left arm to shield himself as the agent pepper sprays him.
Several agents then take hold of Pretti – who struggles with them – and force him onto his hands and knees. As the agents pin down Pretti, someone shouts what sounds like a warning about the presence of a gun. Video footage then appears to show one of the agents removing a gun from Pretti and stepping away from the group with it.
Moments later, an officer with a handgun pointed at Pretti’s back fires four shots at him in quick succession, footage shows. Several more shots can then be heard as another agent appears to fire at Pretti.”

“”How many more residents, how many more Americans need to die or get badly hurt for this operation to end?” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said at a press conference.
Trump accused local elected officials of stirring up opposition.
“The Mayor and the Governor are inciting Insurrection, with their pompous, dangerous, and arrogant rhetoric,” the Republican president wrote on social media.”

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”

And you call this ‘a complex reality’…

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, collective identity, effective communication, In English, skin in the game

Words.

January 9, 2026 //
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WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU PUT GOOD PEOPLE IN AN EVIL PLACE?
DOES HUMANITY WIN OVER EVIL, OR DOES EVIL TRIUMPH?
THESE ARE SOME OF THE QUESTIONS WE POSED IN THIS DRAMATIC SIMULATION
OF PRISON LIFE CONDUCTED IN 1971 AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY.
“How we went about testing these questions and what we found may astound you. Our planned two-week investigation into the psychology of prison life had to be ended after only six days because of what the situation was doing to the college students who participated. In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress. Please read the story of what happened and what it tells us about the nature of human nature.”
–Professor Philip G. Zimbardo

1971

A group of California students was divided in two. Half were told to act as prison guards and the other half to obey the first. The experiment was meant to last for two weeks but was cut short after six days.
“I ended the study prematurely for two reasons. First, we had learned through videotapes that the guards were escalating their abuse of prisoners in the middle of the night when they thought no researchers were watching and the experiment was “off.” Their boredom had driven them to ever more pornographic and degrading abuse of the prisoners.” Professor Philip G. Zimbardo.

2025-2026

People living in the US have been told that some of them don’t belong there. That if and when those who do not will have been removed, the rest will resume their previously ‘great’ lives.


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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, effective communication, In English, man as a measure for all things, skin in the game, Trust

Which One?

January 7, 2026 //
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Some forty odd years ago, a co-worker asked me: ‘What do you think about the UFO-s?’.

Romania, while Ceausescu was still running the show.
People had time on their hands to consider subjects like that. Unidentified Flying Objects. No TV to watch. Only two hours each day. Most of it repeating what Ceausescu had just said. No vacation to plan. People didn’t have enough money. Nor were allowed to go abroad. No books worth reading. No new books worth to be read, anyway… So people spent their time discussing ‘safe’ subjects.

‘Well, I’m not sure they actually exist. I haven’t seen one myself.
But if they do… that might mean we’re under surveillance.
Not that different from what we do in the jungle. Study the chimpanzee. Without interfering in their evolution!’

?!?

‘Do you feel exploited?’

‘No…’

‘Well… We, humans have been exploiting those who were weaker than us. Remember what happened when the Spaniards had discovered America. Or when the English had managed to conquer India. Control China. When the Americans ‘opened up’ Japan…
Now let’s accept the UFO’s as being real.
They must be controlled by very powerful agents. The kind of people which could, if they so wished, very easily control the entire Earth. Transform it into a colony. Which didn’t happen.
Which means they’re not like us. Like we used to be, anyway.
And let me go further.
If they do exist, and do have a certain technological prowess, they may behave in two ways. Peacefully or aggressively.
We’ve already established that they seem to be peaceful. And probably have been so for quite a while.
Then they’re no longer able to fight. Ready to risk their lives in battle.
Hence they’ll be using their technological prowess to protect themselves. Against ‘fresh’, immature, civilizations. Whose members continue to believe it’s worthwhile to risk their lives if the reward is big enough. Who are still ‘ready to fight’.
According to this scenario, the UFO-s are here to make sure we don’t get out in the space until we learn to behave.

A couple of years ago, I stumbled upon Liu Cixin’s Trilogy. In which he exposes the ‘Dark Forrest Hypothesis’. A couple of weeks ago, I came across the final book of the trilogy, the Death’s End.
Reading it, I remembered the discussion I had with my co-worker.

So, which will it be?
And, even more importantly, will we learn from our own mistakes?

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, effective communication, evolution, In English, skin in the game

Communism

December 25, 2025 //
0

Communism failed. Like all other totalitarian regimes.
Some people, most living in countries where it has never been experimented, consider communism to be an interesting idea. They also believe that what took place in the communist lager was not the real deal. Not what Marx had in mind!

First things first.
According to Marx’s Communist Manifesto, communism – as in the communist regime – was going to be instated by “the most advanced elements of the working class”. The communist activists… And the regime was going to be imposed by revolutionary means.
For a very simple reason…

The whole rationale of communism was that everything bad came from private property.
Abolish private property and everything will be just fine.
Yeah but… who in their right minds would accept that? Those who have only their chains to lose, right, but what about the rest? Hence the need for revolution! Which revolution was to install the dictatorship of the proletariat…

Forget about the proletariat and focus on the idea of dictatorship. Top down decision making, at its worse.
Remember the ‘who in their right minds would accept anything like that’ part…

You might have already recognized Brancusi’s Endless Column. World famous sculpture built in Targu Jiu, Romania. Considered to be ‘decadent’ by a local communist activist in the 1950’s. So, being ‘decadent’, it had to be removed. The recovered iron was going to be melt and used in the industry.

Fortunately, the activist running the show was an idiot.
A smarter guy would have attached those chains higher. Far higher. The results may had been different.
The rig pictured above didn’t accomplish anything. The chains broke and the column didn’t budge.

The whole thing is a perfect example.
For what happens when an ignorant nincompoop tries to remodel the reality.
Nothing if the reality is lucky.
Nothing good in all other instances…


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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, arrogance, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, effective communication, In English, skin in the game

What Democracy Is

December 8, 2025 //
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‘Evolution is not as much about the survival of the fittest
as it is about the demise of the unfit‘.
Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is

As an engineer, I’m more concerned about consequences than fascinated by explanation.
OK, explanation – as in understanding the process – is necessary when trying to improve things. To fine tune. To ‘increase efficiency’…
But ‘survival wise’… sometimes it’s enough to bring things back to square 1. To repair. Specifically when the thing which no longer works used to make wonders.

Passeist? Anti-progressive?!?
No, as I already mentioned, I’m just a ‘don’t fix it if it’s not broken’ engineer. And currently … IT is broken.

Democracy doesn’t work anymore. Not like it used to, anyway!
If we want to fix it, we don’t necessarily need to understand what happened. Only to return democracy back to where it was.
For that, we need to understand what democracy is, not what had happened to it.

Looking back, we notice that all authoritarian regimes had failed. Crumbled under their own weight, usually, and failed abysmally when attacked from outside. Usually, again.
While no democratic regime had ever failed as long as it had managed to conserve its democratic nature.

‘But the Pharaohs have run Ancient Egypt for three millennia, give or take. In a very authoritarian manner…. they were absolute monarchs, you know!’
Not so fast. During those three millennia, The Ancient Egypt had been run by 33 dynasties. By 33 different authoritarian regimes… When each of those dynasties were no longer able to run the country – when each regime fell under the weight of its own mistakes, with or without ‘outside’ contribution – another dynasty, the next one, took over. ‘Usually’ not in a nice manner…
Same goes for all other authoritarian regimes!

While under a democratic regime, whenever those at the helm of the government start behaving badly, or commit too many mistakes, they are changed in a peaceful manner.

So, basically, democracy is a social arrangement which is able to change itself. To adapt! To what happens inside or outside it.
While the authoritarian rulers do their best – or worse? – to conserve their own power/position at the helm, the democratic regimes contribute to the survival of the entire society.
For as long as they manage to conserve their true democratic nature. Their openness. Their ability to depose those who overcome their welcome at the helm of the government.

Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, authoritarianism, Choices we make, effective communication, In English, skin in the game, teleology

Let’s talk about: Corruption

December 6, 2025 //
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I argued in my previous post that corruption is akin to decay.
Going forward, evolutionary speaking, we need to figure out what’s driving it. It’s ‘raison d’etre’.

Decay, also known as decomposition, re-allocates resources. Frees resources. Resources previously used in an currently ‘dead process’. Building blocks currently stuck in a corpse. Waiting to be freed, in order to participate in the next living process.
Corruption does more or less the same thing. Only less naturally. Way less naturally, sometimes bordering malignancy…

I mentioned corruption taking place in two environments. In a closed, abandoned, fridge – in an authoritarian environment, or in an open forest. A free society. In the fridge, corruption begets ‘hairy’, aberrant, ‘things’ while in an open society corruption plays a more nuanced role.

‘Intensity’ wise, at the individual level, there is ‘grass-roots’ corruption – like tipping your restaurant server or your hairdresser – and white-collar corruption. Which culminates in ‘pork-barrel’ politics.

‘Consequence’ wise, at the social level, grass-roots corruption sets the stage for the white-collar variety. ‘Educates’ people. Accustoms individuals exposed to it with the phenomenon. White-collar corruption weakens the entire society. Prepares it for take-over. Softens it for ‘revolution’. Not very different from an insidious rot weakening a seemingly strong tree before it is knocked over by wind.

Historically speaking – as in looking back in time – it’s easy to notice that corruption weakens both kind of societies. Open as well as the authoritarian ones.
The difference being that it works in opposite ways!

Corruption frees, eventually, those living in authoritarian societies.
The same process weakens the open, democratic, societies which allow it to grow malignantly.

Let’s remember.
Hitler’s Germany was defeated not only by the valor of those resisting its aggression but also by its inability to adapt. By its absolute corruption.
USSR collapsed, under it’s own weight, like all other empires. The British one included.
No authoritarian regime had ever survived for the long run. Each change of dynasty was, in reality, the advent of a new authoritarian regime. People had no alternative in those times.
On the other hand, no democratic regime had ever collapsed as long as it had managed to preserve its democratic character. What had happened in Eastern Europe after communism had caved in is ample proof for my thesis.

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, authoritarianism, awareness, corruption, democracy, effective communication, In English, skin in the game

Looking back in anger

December 5, 2025 //
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Corruption kills.
Sometimes literally.

Some ten years ago – 2015, October 30 – a fire broke out in a Bucharest night-club.
64 people died on the spot, including 4 members of the band. “The day we give is the day we die” was one of the tunes Goodbye to Gravity played that night.

The inquiry had determined that corruption was the main cause for what had happened. Safety certificates issued outside any norms, dysfunctional health care, unresponsive authorities… Massive popular protest forced the prime-minister to resign.
Things are better now, in Romania, but only slightly. Too slightly…

The point being that we’ve been warned.
Lord Acton: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.“
Frank Herbert: “It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible.“

Both were right.
Power both corrupts and is a magnet for the corruptible!
Hence we need to keep it in check…

Nothing moves without power. We need it. To make things happen.
We also need to survive. To remain alive after things will have happened!

In order to do that, we need to understand something.
About the thing which may derail the whole thing.
About corruption!

Current events – Andriy Yermak resigning his post in Ukraine and Federica Mogherini being detained – are hailed as being ‘flaws’. As highlighting the weakness of Ukraine and the EU, respectively. Their ‘unworthiness’.

I forcefully disagree.
Corruption, like decay, is a natural thing.

Let me put it in a different perspective.
Decay may happen in an abandoned fridge. A closed space in which all kind of ‘unnatural things’ will happen if left unattended.
Decay naturally takes place in a forest. Where ‘no longer living’ organisms ‘turn back to dust’.

A fridge – which is a dead thing, specially when abandoned – is incapable of managing anything. Including a process of decaying.
A forest – which is a meta-living organism, if you’ll allow this expression – thrives as long as natural processes can take place. Decaying being one of the most important ones.

Same thing goes for societies.
Open societies – the ones known as democracies – are no more and no less ‘corrupt’ than the closed ones. The ones usually known as autocracies. In the sense that those in powerful positions are equally tempted by corruption. Equally tempted to misuse their power…
The difference being that the open societies deal with corruption in an open manner. Above the board. In public. In a court of law.
While autocracies deal with the corrupt people only when the autocrat allows it. Only when the autocrat feels that a particular act of corruption is detrimental for his own well being…

So.
Every time an open society exposes an act of corruption, that society becomes stronger.
While autocratic regimes are corrupt from top to bottom. By definition. Very much similar to an abandoned fridge brimming with ‘hairy’ things.

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Categories 1989, alternative ways of acquring knowledge, authoritarianism, awareness, Bounded rationality, Choices we make, effective communication, In English, skin in the game

Lost Lessons

November 21, 2025 //
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Winning the war is not enough.


At the end of WWI, the vanquished was left to her own devices. After having been saddled with huge war reparations. The US – whose President, Woodrow Wilson, had been the brain behind the League of Nations – went back into its ‘splendid isolation’.
Adolf Hitler rose to power. Conquered the western part of Europe and then attacked the Soviet Union, convinced that the US would not intervene into the conflict. Convinced that ‘Western Civilization’ had become weak. That the good life enjoyed by those living there had ‘mellowed’ the people. Read ‘castrated’.
Japan was convinced that attacking the US was a good idea. For more or less the same reasons used by Hitler to convince himself that America wasn’t going to fight back.

America had to fight on two fronts. For otherwise all her partners would have been conquered. For otherwise America would have been left alone…

Any resemblance with the current situation, when America seems to be extracting herself from the European front and when Russia has been left to her own devices after loosing the Cold War, is purely coincidental. And since there’s no such thing as a coincidence…

Doing business is not enough.
America and Nazi Germany did a lot of business.
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union did a lot of business.
The EU and the US did a lot of business with Russia.

WWII is ample proof.
Winning a war is useless unless followed by a workable peace. Which comprises the integration between the victor and the vanquished.

Yet winning the war comes first.
Any attempt to integrate an unrepentant aggressor is doomed to fail.
1938 Munich Agreement and 2014 Crimea should be enough.

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Categories 1989, authoritarianism, awareness, Choices we make, effective communication, In English, skin in the game

Back and Forth

November 20, 2025 //
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‘Revolution’ might be sexy and hype but our lives are shaped by counter-revolution.
Ilie Badescu, PhD

Marx, Karl Marx, is considered the quintessential revolutionary philosopher.

Ilie Badescu – a Romanian Professor of Sociology, proud of his reactionary convictions – makes a very poignant argument. ‘We live in counter-revolutionary times. Almost always. After each revolution, whatever was changed during the upheaval has been mitigated by the survivors to fit with the existing circumstances.’

“The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only:
1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality.
2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole. The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.
The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.
The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.
They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes. The abolition of existing property relations is not at all a distinctive feature of communism.”
The Communist Manifesto

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote this in the first half of the XIX-th century. During quite revolutionary times… Or rather?!?

‘The communist ideas have not been invented or discovered by this or that would-be universal reformer’…

Those familiar with the history of communism know – or should – that both Marx and Engels had been born and raised in Prussia. At that time, until 1848, Prussia was run as an absolute monarchy.
Engels came from a wealthy merchant family who owned textile factories in both Barmen, Prussia, and Salford, England.
Marx was born into a well off family. His father, Heinrich, owned a number of vineyards and was an attorney. Eventually, after an engagement spanning 7 years, Marx married the educated daughter of a liberal aristocrat, but not before befriending his future father-in-law.

Neither had any blue-collar experience. Yet they co-authored the Communist Manifesto…

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Categories 1989, authoritarianism, Bounded rationality, complementary ways of attending knowlege, effective communication, In English, skin in the game
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