Posts Tagged ‘Netherlands’

Dutch “Perfect” Planned City = Instant Slum

Saturday, February 17th, 2024

Bijlmer, built as a planned neighborhood near Amsterdam, was supposed to be the “prefect city” of the future, with high rise apartment complexes surrounded with green space to make the buildings more warm and inviting for residents.

You know, just like they did with American public housing projects at the same time.

Bijlmer worked out just as well.

  • “The goal was space, green, and light.”
  • The place was laid out in hexagon structure, so I guess it would make a great wargame map.
  • “We have all the benefits of a dense wealthy neighborhood but with the empty space of a rural one.” Or so they thought.
  • The buildings were 11 stories high, with storage space at ground level and communal areas.
  • Transportation? The pitch: “Innovative three-tiered transportation system! Dedicated roads for cyclists and pedestrians! Separate roads for personal cars buses and trucks! An elevated metro line” into Amsterdam proper.
  • The reality: “There you can find a stray junkie who is illegally occupying one of the apartments. A lot of middle class people do not want to live in the Bijlmer. Our apartments are empty, our construction has been delayed, our metro isn’t finished yet, so the Bijlmer is separated and alone.”
  • “The Bijlmer did not attract the amount of people that were expected. Many households were turned off by the large, alienating high-rises, so they left for recognizable suburbs instead.”
  • Oh, and the prices were too high as well.
  • “A place that was intended to attract middle class families just didn’t. It attracted poverty. Instead the Bijlmer’s design and negative stigma created a self-fulfilling cycle. The nature alleys and parking garages helped criminals get away with crime and made people feel unsafe.”
  • And then the Dutch government turned the place into an immigrant ghetto for people fleeing Suriname. Want to guess how that worked out?
  • “Overcrowding made it impossible to take a bath at rush hour.”
  • Two-thirds of the high rises were eventually demolished.

    I wonder if the video of the projected city was actually from the era. I doubt it, because it really gives off a Backrooms vibe.

    Government urban planners always think they can always do a better job than the free market, and they’re always wrong.

    The guy who did that video also has his notes up so you can check his work.

    What F-16s Would Mean for Ukraine

    Tuesday, December 26th, 2023

    With three Russian aircraft downed over the weekend, there’s been some speculation that Ukraine already has some of the F-16s promised to it by NATO members Netherlands, Norway and Denmark. While possible, last word was that the transfer was still in preparation, though evidently the first batch of pilots have already finished training in the UK. And there’s no shortage of weapon systems that might have shot down Russian aircraft.

    It appears the model Denmark, Norway and Netherlands all have is F-16AM/BM Block 15 MLU, which means they’re pretty old F-16s (bad), but were all upgraded (good), but the upgrades arrived in 1996 (not exactly bad, but not great either).

    I would expect them to beat the snot out of anything manufactured in the Soviet Union, hold their own against the Su-30 (and possibly the Su-34, of which the Russians have lost a considerable number), maybe get edged by the Su-35 (though maybe not; that platform has had a lot of teething problems), and should theoretically be outclassed by the Su-57, which on paper is a thoroughly modern fighter aircraft with stealth capability (assuming the Russians will even let it go up against a near peer aircraft; they’ve seemed to use it very sparingly after the early stages of the war). And given the NATO country origins, expect all to be better maintained than their Russian counterparts.

    This quick and dirty comparison analysis, of course, assumes that said planes will be engaged in dogfighting, which we’ve seen precious little of since the opening days of the war. Indeed, the aerial environment has become so deadly in Ukraine that neither side ventures much in airspace controlled by the other, and the favored Russian ground support tactic seems to be to fly up just short of the front live, release dumb munitions in an arc calculated to have it come down someone in the general vicinity of the enemy forces, then hightail it home and call it a day.

    Ukraine getting F-16s would make Russian air activity near the front line even less likely, with AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles and their 60 mile range offering a real threat to splash anything that gets near the contested territory.

    While the lethality of the airspace over Russian-held territory will also discourage too much direct sorties against Russian forces (at least at first), the AGM-88 HARM missile would considerably speed up the destruction of Russian anti-aircraft systems.

    Russia’s S-400 system (their answer to Patriot) is probably good enough to shoot down the pre-stealth F-16, but Ukraine has had some success in destroying those systems. A squadron of F-16s launched from Odessa is easily within strike range of Sevastopol, and either JDAMs or Harpoons would be enough to sink whatever is left of the Black Sea Fleet that Russia has foolishly left there. And Harpoon-armed F1-6s on regular patrol would probably be enough to deny use of the northwest Black Sea to all of Russia’s surface fleet.

    With enough degradation of Russia’s air defense systems, Ukraine might be able to achieve local air superiority in regions like Kherson, which could prove very valuable in future offensives.

    A final advantage: With over 4,000 F-16s built, spare parts should be readily available to keep them flying.

    Some 50-100 F-16s in Ukraine’s arsenal probably wouldn’t be the game changer that, say, HIMARS and ATACMS have proven, but they might be enough to shift the balance of power top further erode Russia’s hold over illegally seized Ukrainian territory.

    Netherlands: Let The Power Fall

    Sunday, July 9th, 2023

    The Europhilic, farmer-oppressing, climate cult-believing government of The Netherlands has fallen over immigration policies.

    The Dutch government collapsed on Friday after failing to reach a deal on restricting immigration, which will trigger new elections in the fall.

    The crisis was triggered by a push by Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s conservative VVD party to limit the flow of illegal immigrants to the Netherlands, which two of his four-party government coalition refused to support.

    “It’s no secret that the coalition partners have differing opinions about immigration policy. Today we unfortunately have to conclude that those differences have become insurmountable. Therefore I will tender the resignation of the entire cabinet to the king,” Mr. Rutte said in a televised news conference.

    Tensions came to a head this week, when Mr. Rutte demanded support for a proposal to limit entrance of children of war refugees who are already in the Netherlands and to make families wait at least two years before they can be united.

    This latest proposal went too far for the small Christian Union and liberal D66, causing a stalemate.

    Mr. Rutte’s coalition will stay on as a caretaker government until a new administration is formed after new elections, a process which in the fractured Dutch political landscape usually takes months.

    News agency ANP, citing the national elections committee, said elections would not be held before mid-November.

    Two parties poised to take advantage of Rutte’s coalition falling: The pro-farmer BBB Party, and Geert Wilders libertarian/anti-Islamist PVV.

    Opposition parties in the Netherlands were pleased with the fall of the Rutte IV Cabinet. BBB frontwoman Caroline van der Plas tweeted a photo of herself smiling asking others to show the face they made when they heard the news.

    “Goodbye Rutte, Kaag and the rest!” writes PVV leader Geert Wilders. He said he has requested a parliamentary debate.

    PvdD leader Esther Ouwehand hopes for “the definitive end of the Rutte era.” She said, “Unprecedented that the prime minister created a new crisis in an attempt to save his own skin.”

    Rutte’s government is the one that tried to seize land from farmers to prevent them from farming as part of their global warming/anti-meat/land seizure agenda. That government deserved to fall. Actually, what it deserved was having angry farmers armed with torches and hay rakes track members down in the streets and thrash them within an inch of their lives, but the Dutch haven’t been much in the revolution business since 1648.

    From this remove, it would be nice if the elections could pave the way for a BBB/PVV Euroskeptic coalition focused on property rights, abandoning insane climate change mandates, restricting Islamist immigration, and protecting free markets and free speech. But European politics seldom proceeds along such (to us) logical lines.

    LinkSwarm for June 16, 2023

    Friday, June 16th, 2023

    More Biden corruption comes to light, California gets even more crazy, and two former European Prime Ministers step out of the spotlight in different ways.

  • “House Oversight Chairman Says There Is Evidence Of $20-$30 Million Of Illegal Payments To Bidens.”

    House Oversight Chairman James Comer revealed Thursday that he expects there is evidence of at least $20-$30 million being made in illegal payments by foreign nationals to the Biden family.

    Appearing on Fox Business, Comer stated “We have more bank records coming in but we’re gonna exceed $10 million this week but I think we’ll get up to $20-$30 million.”

    He further noted that it is becoming clear that the Bidens potentially engaged in bribery, influence peddling, and money laundering.

    “This is going to be hard for Biden to explain, this is not going to go away, and I think eventually the mainstream media is going to start asking the real questions,” Comer added.

    “They know there’s something wrong here. They know all the allegations have merit, because of where Joe Biden was, because of what we’ve seen on tape before, where Joe Biden bragged about firing that prosecutor,” he added,

    “They know that this family created these shell companies. They know this family was money-laundering, they were profiting off Joe Biden’s influence,” Comer asserted, adding “The media knows that – they’re just not covering it.”

    “I can assure you: there is more money that we’re going to be able to identify, that was transferred between foreign nationals in other countries and the Biden family,” Comer further emphasized, adding “I think, eventually, the mainstream media will turn on Joe Biden and start asking the real questions: ‘What did your family do to receive all this money?’”

  • Speaking of Biden family corruption: “House Oversight Panel Subpoenas Former Hunter Biden Associate Devon Archer…[The committee] is particularly interested in Archer’s involvement in the family’s international business deals, which included countries like China, Russia, and Ukraine.” Archer was in Global Seneca Partners with Hunter Biden and John Kerry’s stepson.
  • Meanwhile, Robert Hur, the special council charged with investigating Biden, seems to have fallen off the face of the earth.
  • Biden recession update: Average real weekly earnings have dropped for the 26th consecutive month. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • California advances bill to help shoplifters steal.
  • “Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison stepped down this week as the progressive-run city struggles with homicides, a drug crisis, and a troubling rise in violence involving teenagers.” Time to pull this out again:

  • Illegal aliens try to hijack merchant ship with knives. Italian commandos demonstrate that’s a bad idea.
  • Jihadis kill nine in Congo.
  • The Netherlands are closing the largest natural gas field in Europe.
  • Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s longest-serving prime minister, dead at 86. Berlusconi revived Italy’s economy, but then couldn’t keep it out of the PIIGS. But for a whilehe kept the wolves at bay.
  • Also stepping out of the spotlight this week: Former UK Tory Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigned from Parliment. Other than getting Brexit accomplished, Johnson’s tenure seemed all sizzle and no steak.
  • California’s unrealistic environmental policies are creating a trucking nightmare.

    In April 2023, an unelected Board in California voted to force trucking companies to buy zero-emission trucks. This technology is at early-stage adoption in limited segments, and infrastructure buildout is lagging behind what is required to support electrification in our industry. The Board unanimously advanced the Advanced Clean Fleet rule to accompany California’s equally tough electric vehicle sales mandate regulation, the Advanced Clean Truck rule, that would require truck manufacturers to sell zero-emission vehicles. These two regulations together are designed to create an artificial electric vehicle market sooner rather than later.

    This new rule was made at the behest of the environmental lobby, which pushed for unrealistic targets and unachievable timelines that will undoubtedly lead to higher prices for goods delivered to the state and fewer options for consumers. ATA has strongly opposed this rule from the outset and testified at a hearing in Sacramento to express the trucking industry’s concerns directly to the Board.

    Snip.

    Today’s clean diesel trucks can spend 15 minutes fueling anywhere in the country and then travel about 1,200 miles before fueling again. In contrast, today’s zero-emission trucks:

    • Have significantly less range of about 150-330 miles between charging or refueling;
    • Need to be charged or refueled more often and for longer periods of time leading to unproductive downtime;
    • Cost two to three times more than a comparable clean-diesel truck; and
    • Weigh thousands of pounds more, reducing payload capacity and requiring more trucks and drivers to move the same amount of freight.

    Also: “The California Energy Commission estimates that 157,000 chargers will need to be installed by 2030 to support California’s heavy-duty vehicle electrification goals.” Assuming there’s enough Lithium in the world for the batteries… (Hat tip: TPPF.)

  • Hope for San Francisco? Residents replace drug-addicted transients on their local sidewalks with large planters.
  • Two Russian oil tanks collide for exactly the reasons you would expect.
  • “DNC Generously Offers To Host Rally For Robert F. Kennedy Jr. By Grassy Knoll.”
  • “Satan Asks LGBTQ Community To Please Tone It Down A Bit.”
  • LinkSwarm For March 17, 2023

    Friday, March 17th, 2023

    Another packed week with no time for a big LinkSwarm!

  • “Biden Family Members Paid by Chinese Firm with Ties to CCP.”

    A Chinese company based out of Hong Kong which paid at least $3 million to several members of the Biden family has since been revealed to have ties with the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

    According to the Daily Caller, State Energy HK Limited sent $3 million via wire transfer to Robinson Walker LLC, a company run by an associate of the Biden family named John Robinson Walker. The wire transfer took place in March of 2017, shortly after Joe Biden’s term as Vice President came to an end, according to a report released on Thursday by the House Oversight Committee.

    One of the direct subsidiaries of State Energy HK is State Energy Group International Assets Holdings Limited (SEIAH). At the time of the wire transfer, SEIAH’s chairman was Ren Qingxin, who previously worked for the CCP as a representative at a business organization.

    Shortly after the $3 million transfer, Ren was succeeded in his leadership position by Lei Donghui, who had been a member of the CCP since 2002, where he served as Secretary General of the International Engineering Business Bureau of China State Construction (CSC). CSC has since been designated by the Department of Defense as a “Communist China military company.”

    Subsequently, the $3 million sent to Robinson Walker was then transferred to four different members of the Biden family: Joe Biden’s son Hunter, brother James, daughter-in-law Hallie, and a fourth unidentified family member, the Oversight Committee reports. The transfers were sent in several transactions, both to the family members directly and to several of their companies, including Owasco PC, JBBSR Inc, and RSTP II, LLC.

    The previously-unknown involvement of Hallie – the widow of Biden’s elder son Beau, who later became Hunter’s girlfriend after Beau’s death – has proven to be one of the biggest bombshells yet in the GOP’s investigations into Biden family corruption.

  • Arrest Warrant Issued For President Putin By Hague-Based ICC.” Maybe ICC can hire Dog the Bounty Hunter…
  • Truth:

    (Hat tip: Not The Bee.)

  • DeSantis administration revokes Hyatt Regency Miami alcohol license after it hosted “A Drag Queen Christmas” in front of children.
  • Dutch Farmer’s Party poised to win 16 or 17 seats in parliament thanks to opposing that country’s mad global warming anti-meat mandates. “The Boer-Burger Beweging (BBB), or Farmer-Citizen Movement, is set to become the largest party in the country’s senate, winning more seats than Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s ruling conservative VVD party.”
  • Baltimore Democrats want to decriminalize murder for anyone under age 25. Evidently they’re jealous that New Orleans took their crown as murder capital…

  • Red Guards come to Maine. “Kristen Day said students affiliated with one of RSU 14’s Civil Rights Teams harassed her daughter. When her daughter refused to speak about her sexuality, two students affiliated with the club began to bully her and call her homophobic.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Oklahoma State Rep. Regina Goodwin: “‘DEI’ as in ‘deity.’ Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is god!”
  • Roy McGrath, the ex-Chief of Staff for former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, is evidently still on the run after an indictment on wire fraud charges. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Eric Weinstein on Joe Rogan about what really happened with Kayne West. He suggests that West’s Hitler comments were simply him trying to channel Thomas à Kempis.
  • Tiger Woods’ girlfriend is told to pack for a short vacation…at which point he locks her out of his mansion and said she’s not allowed to return. Cold. Also effective.

    Cue up the Bill Burr rant about “gold digging whores.”

  • The first rule of cemetery machete fight club is you don’t talk about cemetery machete fight club. The second rule is you don’t drive over the headstones.
  • Man lives in a tiny house in a dumpster in London. Sadly, his name’s not Oscar.
  • Cockatootle doo.
  • The Nightmare Before St. Patrick’s Day.
  • Why Dutch Farmers Revolt

    Thursday, August 4th, 2022

    Those who get all their news from the MSM may be unaware that Dutch farmers are staging a revolt against attempts to seize their land and force them out of farming.

    Americans should start paying closer attention to the ongoing farmer protests in the Netherlands, which this week transformed long swaths of Dutch highways into what looked like a post-apocalyptic warzone: roadside fires raging out of control, manure and farming detritus heaped across highways, traffic stalled for miles, and massive protests across the country in support of the farmers.

    Why is the Netherlands, of all places, experiencing such unrest? Americans need to understand what’s happening over there because the ruinous climate policies that triggered these protests are precisely what President Joe Biden and the Democrats have in mind for the United States.

    Specifically, Dutch farmers are protesting a government plan to cut fertilizer use and reduce livestock numbers so drastically that it will force many farms out of business. Earlier this month, farmers used tractors and trucks to block highways and entrances to food distribution centers across the country, saying their livelihood and way of life are being targeted by the government.

    And they more or less are. The ruling coalition government claims its radical plan, pushed by Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who branded the protests “unacceptable,” is part of an “unavoidable transition” to improve air, land, and water quality.

    “Unavoidable” because European elites have decided their virtue signaling transcends the rights of mere peasants to earn a living and feed people.

    The goal is to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxide and ammonia, which are produced by livestock but which the government is labeling “pollutants,” by 50 percent nationwide by the year 2030.

    The only way to do that, many Dutch farmers say, is to slaughter the vast majority of their livestock and shutter their farms. The government knows this and admitted as much earlier this year, saying in a statement, “The honest message … is that not all farmers can continue their business,” and that farmers have three options: “Becoming more sustainable, relocating or ending their business.”

    The genesis of the scheme was a court ruling from 2019 that said the Dutch government’s plan for reducing nitrogen emissions violated EU laws protecting its Natura 2000 network of supposedly vulnerable and endangered plant and animal habitats — basically a bunch of EU-governed wildlife preserves. These sites span the EU, covering 18 percent of the bloc’s land area and 8 percent of its marine territory.

    To protect these wildlife preserves, Dutch farmers are being told they must submit to their government’s ruinous emissions plan.

    But the Natura 2000 preserves are only part of the story. European leaders such as Rutte are environmental ideologues who want to transform global food production and eliminate private land ownership, and he sees an opportunity in this court order to reshape agriculture and land use in the Netherlands.

    Indeed, Rutte — a walking embodiment of the Davos Man if there ever was one — is a big proponent of the United Nations’ “Agenda 2030” and its Sustainable Development Goals, which aim to squeeze farmers and ranchers around the world in order to reduce “emissions.” The policies that flow from these goals, such as drastically reducing the use of fertilizer, contributed to the recent economic collapse of Sri Lanka, which triggered mass protests that toppled Sri Lanka’s government and ousted its president earlier this month.

    Last year, Rutte spoke to the World Economic Forum about “transforming food systems and land use” at Davos Agenda Week, announcing that the Netherlands would host something called the “Global Coordinating Secretariat of the World Economic Food Innovation Hubs,” whose job would be to “connect all other food innovation hubs.”

    In Davos-speak, that means agricultural production and the supply of food will be centrally controlled by intra-governmental bodies and “stakeholders” consisting mainly of the world’s largest food corporations and international NGOs. Private farms and independent farmers will be a thing of the past, supplanted by global bodies making decisions about how much and what kinds of food are produced. The private sector and the independent farmers will have no place in the future that the UN and the WEF are planning.

    Dutch farmers understand this. They know Rutte and his ministers want above all to eradicate their farms and way of life. But they’re not going down without a fight.

    And fighting they are:

    How bad is it? One farmer says he’ll have to get rid of 95% of his herd.

    In the Netherlands, dairy farmer Martin Neppelenbroek is near the end of the line.

    New environmental regulations will require him to slash his livestock numbers by 95 percent. He thinks he will have to sell his family farm.

    “I can’t run a farm on 5 percent. For me, it’s over and done with,” he said in a July 7 interview with The Epoch Times.

    “In view of the regulations, I can’t sell it to anybody. Nobody wants to buy it. [But] the government wants to buy it. And that’s why they [have] those regulations, I think….”

    There’s a sword of Damocles hanging over them: the possibility of compulsory seizure of property by the government.

    NOS Nieuws reported that Christianne van der Wal, the country’s minister of nature and nitrogen policy, has not ruled out expropriating land from uncooperative farmers.

    According to a report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agriculture Service, the Dutch government has said its approach means “there is not a future for all [Dutch] farmers.”

    You would think that with the world facing the prospect of widespread famine later this year, that the the commissars might pause their radical, agriculture-destroying policies until that problem is dealt with.

    You would be wrong.

    And the Dutch government seems to be escalating their violence at the same time Dutch farmers are hanging themselves.

    This Dutch farmer thinks the real reason is that radical left-wingers want to get rid of all animal products.

    The Dutch farmer revolt is especially important, since a lot of leftwing environmental activists want to import the same seizure tactics here.

    This week news broke that congressional Democrats had finally reached a deal on the largest piece of climate legislation in American history. The bill is a tax-and-spend cornucopia of some $369 billion for wind, solar, geothermal, battery, and other industries over the next decade, along with generous subsidies for electric vehicles and incentives to keep nuclear plants open and capture emissions from industrial plants.

    After pretending to oppose Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s climate legislation, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin relented this week, clearing the way for the bill to proceed. Senate Democrats say the bill will allow the U.S. to cut greenhouse emissions by 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 — matching up nicely with the UN’s “Agenda 2030.”

    Understand that the Senate bill isn’t the end, it’s the beginning. Climate activists and ideologues are working at the highest levels to transform not just the global food supply, but the nature of private property and property rights, all in the name of saving the planet. What Rutte and his government are doing to Dutch farmers, Schumer and Biden are planning to do to American farmers and American industries.

    So pay attention to the roadside fires and blocked highways and mass civic unrest in places like the Netherlands and Sri Lanka. America is next.

    Overstatement? Probably. But you know that a lot of Democratic politicians and environmentalists see such radical actions as a model to implement here.

    Two Doses of Neil Oliver

    Wednesday, July 13th, 2022

    First up: Scottish commentator Neil Oliver wonders about all the questions we’re not allowed to ask about Flu Manchu.

    Daily Mail online carried a headline on the 8th of June: Healthy young people are dying suddenly and unexpectedly from a mysterious syndrome – as doctors seek answers through a new national register.

    This is SADS – an acronym that stands for Sudden Adult Death Syndrome – and according to the Royal Australian College of GPs, it occurs most commonly in people under 40. This is properly scary; I don’t mind telling you. Healthy young people are going to their beds of an evening and not waking up ever again, or otherwise going about their everyday business and dropping dead, for no identifiable medical reason.

    The best anyone in the health professions can apparently do is describe it as mysterious, baffling even, that there are people under 40 dropping in their traces for no known cause. At the same time, around the world, there have been reports of many hundreds of sports men and women dying suddenly and unexpectedly in the past year – super fit individuals uniquely focused on their own health – keeling over dead, often on the field of play.

    Here at home we have had updated information campaigns about how important it is to be aware of the incidence of heart attacks and strokes. It has been deemed appropriate to remind us as well that heart attacks are not unknown in children. It’s almost as if we’re not to be unduly alarmed by the sight of passers-by dropping to their knees and clutching at their chests. Elsewhere there is a poster campaign about a rise in the number of cases of shingles. The small print on the posters mentions shingles may strike people with lowered immune systems. Fancy that.

    Deaths have been attributed by coroners to the Covid vaccines. The numbers are disputed, but people have died on account of the jabs. That much at least is undeniable. Around the world there are millions of cases of alleged adverse reactions to the jabs – lives severely compromised in some cases. I won’t get into the numbers, because those are always disputed too – but the facts remain. People are dying.

    The elephant in the room here is the Covid-19 vaccines – and again I make no apology at all about banging on about this topic week after week. The push to move on, to leave all talk of Covid and pandemic behind us, is palpable and, I would say, downright sinister. I am nowhere near ready to move on – not while there is still so much we do not know, so much we are not allowed to say, think and ask.

    We are told all about Covid 19 – and all manner of ways in which it might affect health long after a person has recovered from the initial infection. But as well as the pandemic, the other momentous arrival among us – indeed in just the past year and a half – is the biggest mass vaccination campaign in the history of the world – vaccination with products that had emergency approval, but in my opinion are experimental and for which no long-term data is available – on account of their being brand new and just out of the box.

    Billions of people around the world have submitted to the procedure. In a coercive and bullying atmosphere created by politicians and the media, that was mandatory in feel, if not in fact, unknown and unknowable numbers of people did so simply to keep their jobs, to get on a plane and go on holiday or to a gig – and yet in the midst of one report after another of otherwise unexplained sudden deaths in the past 18 months or so, the only emergent variable, the only new thing in the world that we are not allowed to discuss, absolutely not allowed to discuss far less point accusatory fingers at, is the mass vaccination programme.

    Again, I ask the question I posed at the top of this piece – are we stupid? Or are we just being treated as if we’re stupid? Which is it?

    Next: Oliver notes how mass protests and even open revolt against the green globalist/Build Back Better agenda are being downplayed or ignored by the media:

    Sri Lanka was a product of that government following, you know, the the madness of [World Economic Forum] inspired policies: Net Zero, the stripping of fertilizers, and all the rest of it…wholesale strife, collapsing crops and all the rest of it. You would think in a sane world the politicians in each of the countries would respond to the people, but I suspect they won’t. We saw something similar in Canada with the trucker’s freedom convoys, but look what happened there. Obviously Justin Trudeau was was told to get a grip of that situation. He clamped down on it violently, arrested bank accounts and took away the funding for that movement.

    Bit on Sri Lanka skipped.

    I think what you’re looking at in The Netherlands, for example, is the deliberate dismantling of the land owning class. 85% percent of the of the land in The Netherlands is held by farmers, and has been for generations, and that’s an inconvenient situation for globalist leftist politicians who’ve got other ideas for the land, which is specifically to build houses to cope with the with the levels of immigration that are going on. They’ve empowered themselves the politicians to help themselves to 30 percent of the Dutch farmer’s land, and surprise, surprise! Just as I suspect you would or I would, if the government came into our homes and said they were taking 30% everything we had we owned and had worked for, the farmers have said no…It’s a blatant land grab.

    It gets harder and harder to ignore the intent by by leftist globalist governments to return us to some form of feudalism. All these people like us owning property, owning homes, living lives independent of the state. You know what the intention is there, to take people’s independence away. Take away their property, take away the land, and if you control the farmland, you control the food. And if you control the food, you control the people. So you can plainly see what the agenda is.

    One need not agree with every one of Oliver’s conclusions to agree that the pattern he deduces, of elites acting against the best interests of the countries they govern and the people they ostensibly serve, seems very real.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

    LinkSwarm for November 27, 2020

    Thursday, November 26th, 2020

    This Black Friday LinkSwarm is coming to you absolutely free!

  • President Donald Trump pardons former National Security advisor Michael Flynn. Good. He was railroaded and then held prisoner by a rogue judge long after the Department of Justice ordered him released.
  • The thing that really bothers the establishment about Trump is all his supporters they prefer to pretend don’t exist:

    Election Day definitively confirmed the existence of hidden Trump voters. Undetected by polls and long denied by the establishment media, Trump’s surprising surge had to come from somewhere. Either these supporters were hiding from pollsters or pollsters were hiding them. Regardless, their existence raises disturbing questions about the role played by the establishment media and pollsters in influencing this election.

    Election Day provided the startling revelation that a contest that supposedly had been over for months, actually would not be decided for days, and perhaps longer. In reality, the “blowout” proved a nail-biter. More unsettling is the fact that the race probably had been this close all along and that the false impression likely influenced the outcome.

    As recently as October 12 the RealClearPolitics average of national polling had Biden at 52.3 percent and Trump at 41.7 percent. The average on Election Day was 51.2 percent to 44 percent. As of November 18, the actual popular vote figures are Biden at 51 percent and Trump at 47.2 percent.

    From his October 12 level, Trump’s support increased over 13 percent. How could an error of such magnitude occur? Clearly a lot of hidden Trump voters came from somewhere. The question is whether they were hiding or were hidden.

    Whether this was a sin of omission or one of commission has enormous implications for America’s elections. After years’ worth of concern about whether there had been Russian interference in our elections, it bears considering whether America has just fallen victim to internal tampering to a far greater degree.

    The establishment media’s preferred answer to how the polls failed to detect millions of Trump voters is that the error was stupid, not sinister. “Whoops, we just missed them” — despite this being pollsters’ business, their assurance that they had “fixed” their polls’ problems from 2016, and the mistake being of incredible size. As results show, 2020’s error is greater than 2016’s.

    The establishment media has readily blamed the pollsters, essentially exonerating itself by saying that it was just reporting what it was told. Yet neglected is the fact that the polls’ results were confirming the establishment media’s own bias. This bias has been repeatedly cited for decades and has never been clearer than over the last four years. As testament to the miraculous coincidence of pro-Biden polls and establishment media’s pro-Biden bias, consider the reverse: Would the establishment media have so readily regurgitated polling data showing the race as close as it turned out to be?

  • An obituary for the Trump-era press:

    We say goodbye, then, to journalists elevating as worthy of public notice obvious liars and lunatics, including convicted felon Michael Avenatti, gossip columnist Michael Wolff, mental health quack Bandy Lee, and conspiracy theorist Louise Mensch — all because they oppose the administration.

    Goodbye to weekly “bombshells” that land with a “splat!” instead of a “boom!”

    Goodbye to near-daily input from presidential historians turned political assassins.

    Goodbye to members of the press acting as if the cover artwork of the latest edition of a prestige news magazine is in some way provocative, stunning, or even particularly interesting.

    Goodbye to White House correspondents pretending as if they are reporting from an active war zone or claiming they feel safer covering authoritarian regimes.

    Goodbye to the Holocaust being invoked against the administration on a near-daily basis.

    Etc. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • If Biden makes it to the White House, get ready for more green crony graft. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Governor Abbott sends the Texas Rangers to Dallas.

    Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered the Texas Rangers and other officials to help the City of Dallas respond to a spike in murders and other violent crimes that has gripped the city.

    Abbott directed the Texas Department of Public Safety to send help to the Dallas Police Department (DPD) which will include special agents, state troopers, two helicopters, and two patrol planes.

    “The rise in violent crime in the City of Dallas is unacceptable, and the Texas Department of Public Safety will assist the Dallas Police Department in their efforts to protect the community and reduce this surge in crime.”

  • Fifth circuit to judge to Planned Parenthood: No, you don’t have a right to Texas taxpayer money. Not yours.
  • Six MS-13 Gang Members Indicted in Houston for Murder Could Face Death Penalty.” Good.
  • Why does the media keep trying to make a saint of commie Angela Davis?
  • Williamson County Judge Bill Gravell fined $1,000 for violating his own stay at home order to visit his grandson’s birthday party. Not quite a lobbyist-funded trip to The French Laundry, but still not a good look…
  • Austin leftwing journalists go after (checks notes) moms and sex trafficking victims for daring to oppose police budget cuts. Next up: The cishetronormative oppression of apple pie.
  • What real hope and change looks like in the Middle East:

  • More on the same theme:

  • Social Justice Warriors have to get rid of meritocracy because it doesn’t let them discriminate against Asians.
  • How Erdogan’s Turkey destroyed the value of the Lira.
  • “Google, Facebook and Twitter threaten to leave Pakistan over crackdown on speech offensive to Islam.”
  • The modern welfare state in action: “Dutch Doctors Can Now Drug Dementia Patients Before Killing Them to Prevent Resistance.”
  • “Walmart-exclusive router and others sold on Amazon & eBay contain hidden backdoors to control devices.”
  • Over at Penguin books, the inmates are trying to run the asylum with staffers in “revolt” over publishing Jordan Peterson’s new book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.
  • Fleas from rescued squirrels bit Johnny Rotten’s sex pistol. (Hat tip: Daddy Warpig.)
  • Florida man who wrestled puppy from an alligator speaks.

  • Dancing Weasel.
  • Like a boss:

  • Most Shocking fodder.
  • I don’t know how I missed this rare actually funny Funny or Die bit when it came out in 2013. “Try parodying one of my songs now, you stupid bastard!”
  • “State Governor Frees All Drug Dealers To Provide Prison Space For Families Celebrating Thanksgiving.”
  • “Never Trumpers To Be Granted Special VIP Section Of Gulags When Dems Take Over.”
  • “Just Hours After Being Placed In Cuomo’s Possession, Emmy Statue Dies Of COVID.”
  • Joseph Stalin To Receive International Emmy For His Outstanding Hunger Relief Efforts.”
  • Not news: Dog reunited with owner thanks to microchip. News: After seven years.
  • Nice one, Muttly:

  • LinkSwarm for October 25, 2019

    Friday, October 25th, 2019

    Welcome to another Friday LinkSwarm! Lots of China and technology news this time around.

  • How much public, firsthand evidence is there of this so-called Ukrainian quid pro quo? Right now, zero: “The problem with this narrative is that all we have to rely on is Mr. [William] Taylor’s opening statement and leaks from Democrats. What we don’t know is how Mr. Taylor responded to questions, or what he knew first-hand versus what he concluded on his own, because like all impeachment witnesses he testified in secret. Chairman Adam Schiff, with the approval of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, refuses to release any witness transcripts.”
  • RedState has been doing the heavy lifting on the Katie Hill story. You know, Ms.-I-Had-Sex-With-A-Female-Staffer-And-Brushed-Her-Hair-In-The-Nude.

    Now there are further revelations:

    We all know that if she was a Republican, this would dominate news cycles for weeks on end…

  • In the other big viral news this week, a Texas judge has blocked inflicting tranny madness on a 7-year old boy. This was right after Governor Greg Abbott threatened to intervene in the case.
  • “Moloch Announces Forcing Your Kids To Become Transgender Is Acceptable Form Of Sacrifice.”
  • Durham is coming.
  • 17 Democrats who weren’t held accountable for scandals by their constituents. Lots of familiar names. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Public employee pensions are bankrupting state budgets. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Huge protests by farmers against global warming tax hikes in The Netherlands.

  • A California gun law so bad even the ACLU opposes it.
  • USA Today may cease print publication.

    (I had forgotten this meme came from The Critic…)

  • “Trump Rids Major U.S. Container Port of Chinese Communist Control.”
  • This is a bad look: “Apple CEO becomes chairman of China university board.” What’s a little widespread rape and torture next to the almighty buck? (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Quintin Tarantino refuses to recut Once Upon a Time in Hollywood for China. Good for him.
  • Was Russia’s August explosion a nuclear-powered cruise missile’s reactor exploding? Color me skeptical. By the way, there’s a Wikipedia page for Russian military accidents.
  • Squid bomb drone.
  • “The Universe Is Made of Tiny Bubbles Containing Mini-Universes, Scientists Say.” An elegant, worm ouroboros structure which answers many questions, but since it’s from vice Motherboard, a salt shaker is probably in order.
  • Quantum supremacy? Maybe, maybe not.
  • MIT Media Lab scientist Caleb Harper straight up lies about delivering a “food computer” to a Syrian refugee camp. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • China may be suffering a pork shortage, but America is enjoying a bacon glut. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • Why do our global elites hate meat?

    Today, the vegetarian ideology is not a stand-alone philosophy. It is tied inexorably to other ideologies such as socialism, globalism and extremist forms of environmentalism. There are very few vegetarian promoters that are not politically motivated. This has caused a rash of propaganda, attempting to rewrite the history of the human diet to fit their bizarre narrative.

    Even though human beings have been omnivores for millions of years, the anti-meat campaign claims that humans were actually long time vegetarians. They do this by comparing humans to our closest evolutionary relatives, like chimpanzees and gorillas, and arguing that these animals have a strict vegetable diet (which is not exactly true).

    Of course, Native American tribes, living closest to how our prehistoric ancestors lived long ago, had meat heavy diets, but don’t expect the environmentalists to accept this reality. What they conveniently do not mention is that over 2 million years ago human ancestors broke from their vegetable diet and began eating meat. Not only this, but the diet changed our very physical makeup. We grew far stronger, and smarter.

    Yes, that’s right, the rise of meat in the human diet tracks almost exactly with the rise of human intelligence and advances in tools and technology.

    My theory is that “ethical humanism” among our chattering classes is a low-calorie substitute for traditional religion, and forgoing meat is our punishment for environmental sins. Either way, I say it’s spinach and I say to hell with it. Speaking of spinach…

  • Russian fighter with freakishly large biceps nicknamed Popeye gets clock cleaned by guy 20 years older. You’ve seen those “Skipped Leg Day” memes? This guy looks like he skipped everything but biceps day for five years.
  • I regard GNU Foundation head Richard Stallman as a fanatic who’s just a few steps shy of being a complete lunatic. But he’s right to defy Social Justice Warrior-types who want him removed for objecting to the lynch mob regarding the late Marvin Minsky’s minimal ties to Jeffrey Epstein.
  • “Florida man arrested for having sex with stuffed ‘Olaf’ at Target.” I doubt police will just let it go…
  • For Halloween, please enjoy this review of The Night Stalker, the TV movie that introduced Carl Kolchak to the world.