Tea at Trianon: The Cheaters

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, September 5, 2026

The Cheaters

From Tierney's Real News:

Authoritarian regimes and their elites do not sell their country’s oil, gas, minerals, or other resources at fair market prices. Instead they:

- Steal or underprice the resource

- Hand it to a friendly dictatorship or handler or terrorist proxy at a deep discount

- Get political loyalty, military help, loans, or cash in return

- Keep their own people poor while the ruling circle and its foreign partners get rich

The commodity becomes a leash, and a bribe, not a product. The ordinary citizens who live in these countries who own the resource by right see almost none of the benefit. Markets, competition, and accountability are deliberately shut out. This is not normal trade. It’s certainly not free trade or fair trade. It is a parallel system designed to dodge the rules everyone else has to follow. (Read more.)