Tag Archives: The Netherlands

Must-see video: In the Dutch Parliament, speaking truth to power, by Andrea Widburg

Posted on January 17, 2022 | Leave a comment

The video is priceless. From Andrea Widburg at americanthinker.com:

As with other European Union countries, the Dutch government has been reveling in the power COVID bestowed on it. In response, the Netherlands has seen huge and violent protests against those draconian strictures. I’m betting that some of those protesters were among the people who voted for Gideon van Meijeren, a young man newly elected to the Dutch Parliament. This young man, during his first appearance on the floor, managed in just two minutes to completely humiliate Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Watching the video will make your day.

For a long time, the Netherlands has had some of the most restrictive COVID measures in Europe. In November, the Netherlands was one of the countries that announced that the unvaccinated were banned from most public places. The restrictions escalated when the Netherlands, a country in which 85% of the adult population was vaccinated, had an upsurge in COVID cases. These restrictions included putting a curfew on all bars, restaurants, and most stores from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m. Immediately after the new year, the government also made it clear that, within a few months, vaccination certificates will be considered void without a booster.

In response to the government edicts, the Netherlands has been roiled by protests. There were massive protests in November, December, and (already) in January. The January protest made world headlines when the police allowed (or ordered?) their dogs to launch brutal attacks against the protesters.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Economy, Governments, Politics, Propaganda, Tyranny

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The Covid Vaccine Pass Slippery Slope, by Eva Vlaardingerbroek

Posted on September 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

Anyone who thinks that vaccine passports won’t happen in the US hasn’t been paying attention to what’s happening in the Netherlands. From Eva Vlaardingerbroek at theamericanconservative.com:

The Dutch must now show their papers to live a normal life; it will not stop with Covid.

(Henk Vrieselaar/Shutterstock)

Beginning tomorrow, September 25, everyone in the Netherlands above the age of 13 will need a “Digital Covid Certificate” in order to be allowed into restaurants, bars, theaters, cinemas, and concert halls. Basically, the things that make life enjoyable for most people, will be limited to those who are in possession of a Q.R. code that indicates they are either vaccinated, tested, or have recovered from Covid-19 within the past 160 days.

What is interesting—and, in my view, incredibly telling—about the Dutch situation in particular is that a whopping 85 percent of the Dutch population is currently already fully vaccinated. More than a year and a half into the Covid-crisis, it is estimated that 95 percent of the population has antibodies, and currently only 200 people are in the ICU. Yet it is at this very moment that our government decides to introduce the most far-reaching and invasive measure the Dutch have seen to date. This is only the beginning.

Apparently, the last 15 percent of the Dutch population needs to be jabbed—whatever it takes. The ones who, for whatever reason, choose not to be vaccinated are either doomed to the social life of a hermit or have to travel, sometimes quite far, to a certified test location to get a Q-tip shoved up their noses every single day. That is, if they want to ‘’earn back’’ their right to partake in everyday activities. So even though people are not yet physically forced to be vaccinated, what the government is doing now is something that can only be called coercion.

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Posted in Civil Liberties, Collapse, Government, Law, Medicine, Politics, Propaganda, Tyranny

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Yellow Vest Riots Spread: Week Five, by Bruce Bawer

Posted on December 18, 2018 | 1 comment

The money quote from the article: “Perhaps the question should not be why Western Europeans are rioting but why they did not start rioting a long time ago.” From Bruce Bawer at the gatestoneinstitute.org:

  • Across Western Europe, ordinary citizens feel ignored and condescended to by their political, business, academic, and media elites. Against the will of most of these citizens, their leaders are gradually surrendering their nations’ sovereignty to the EU.
  • Also against these citizens’ will, their nations have been flooded with Muslim immigrants who embody a major cultural challenge, have caused massive social unrest, and represent a devastating economic burden.
  • Although it is increasingly obvious that taxpayer-funded Islamization is leading Western Europe down the wrong path, the EU, which stands foursquare behind this disastrous development, refuses to reverse course.
  • Perhaps the question should not be why Western Europeans are rioting but why they did not start rioting a long time ago.
“Yellow vest” protesters gather at Place de l’Opera on December 15, 2018 in Paris, France. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

Paris has now seen its fifth weekend of street demonstrations by the so-called gilets jaunes, or “yellow vests,” although reports suggest that things may be finally winding down. Meanwhile, the protests — which in many instances rise to the level of riots, with innumerable examples of looting, vandalism, and arson – have spread. The last couple of weekends have seen disturbances in other major French cities, such as Toulouse, Bordeaux and Lyon, as well as in cities in the Low Countries, including Brussels, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Nijmegen and Maastricht. This weekend, in London, as the tension, confusion, and frustration surrounding Brexit have intensified and the possibility of a second referendum seemed to increase, yellow-vested protesters, most of them apparently supporters of Brexit, blocked major bridges and shut down streets in the city center.

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Posted in Collapse, Debt, Economy, Governments, Immigration, Insurrection, Politics, Taxes

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Winners are Losers and Left is Right, by Raúl Ilargi Meijer

Posted on March 18, 2017 | Leave a comment

The European establishment are so worried about right wing insurgencies that electoral victory for the mainstream means they didn’t do quite as badly as expected, and electoral defeat for the right wing means they didn’t do quite as well as they might have. From Raúl Ilargi Meijer at automaticearth.com:

The Dutch elections on Wednesday have provided a whole bunch of Orwellian narratives. PM Mark Rutte’s right wing VVD party, actually the ‘business’ -or should we say ‘rent-seekers’ in 2017- party, who lost some 20% of the seats they had obtained in the previous parliamentary election in November 2012, down from 41 to 33 seats, is declared the big winner. While Geert Wilders’ very right wing party, PVV, won 25% more seats -it went from 16 to 20- and is the big loser.

Moreover, Rutte’s coalition partner, labor PvdA, gave up 29 out of 38 seats to end up with just 9. That’s a loss of over 75%. Together, the coalition partners went from 79 seats in the 2012 election to 42 in 2017. That’s an almost 50% less. Not that it could prevent Rutte from proudly declaring: “We want to stick to the course we have – safe and stable and prosperous..” Makes you wonder who the ‘we’ are that he’s talking about.

That course he wants to stick to had a finance minister named Dijsselbloem, and his party just lost by over 75%. So he won’t be back. But perhaps the EU can pull another ‘Tusk’, and leave him in place in Brussels as chairman of the Eurogroup no matter what voters in his own country think of him. Still, declaring your intention to ‘stick to the course’ when your coalition has just been sawed in half, it’s quite something.

The only reasons Rutte’s VVD ended up being the biggest party all have to do with Wilders. The anxiety over the election all had to do with polls. Wilders is a one man party and a a one trick pony. If he would leave, his party would dissolve. And his sole ‘message’ is that Islam is bad and should vanish from first Holland and then Europe. He doesn’t really have any other political program points. Ok, there’s Brussels. Doesn’t like that either.

To continue reading: Winners are Losers and Left is Right

 

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Final Statement of Geert Wilders at his Trial, by Geert Wilders

Posted on November 25, 2016 | 4 comments

Gert Wilders asked supporters at a rally in March 2014 if they wanted more or fewer Moroccans in their city. This, according to Dutch law, can be construed as hate speech, and Wilders is on trial. Here is Wilders’ final statement at his trial, from gatestoneinstitute.org:

Mr. President, Members of the Court,

When I decided to address you here today, by making a final statement in this trial against freedom of speech, many people reacted by telling me it is useless. That you, the court, have already written the sentencing verdict a while ago. That everything indicates that you have already convicted me. And perhaps that is true. Nevertheless, here I am. Because I never give up. And I have a message for you and the Netherlands.

For centuries, the Netherlands are a symbol of freedom.

When one says Netherlands, one says freedom. And that is also true, perhaps especially, for those who have a different opinion than the establishment, the opposition. And our most important freedom is freedom of speech.

We, Dutch, say whatever is close to our hearts. And that is precisely what makes our country great. Freedom of speech is our pride.

And that, precisely that, is at stake here, today.

I refuse to believe that we are simply giving this freedom up. Because we are Dutch. That is why we never mince our words. And I, too, will never do that. And I am proud of that. No-one will be able to silence me.

To continue reading: Final Statement of Geert Wilders at his Trial

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Europe’s New Blasphemy Courts, by Douglas Murray

Posted on November 7, 2016 | Leave a comment

Western civilization fought a centuries-long battle for an individual’s right to criticize religion. Now Europe is taking a giant step backward for a religion that’s certainly open to criticism. From Douglas Murray at gatestoneinstitute.org:

• Europe is currently seeing the reintroduction of blasphemy laws through both the front and back doors, initiated in a country which once prided itself on being among the first in the world to throw off clerical intrusion into politics.

• By prosecuting Wilders, the courts in Holland are effectively ruling that there is only one correct answer to the question Wilders asked. They are saying that if someone asks you whether you would like more Moroccans or fewer, people must always answer “more,” or he will be committing a crime.

• At no point would it occur to me that anyone saying he did not want an endless flow of, say, British people coming into the Netherlands should be prosecuted. Nor would he be.

• The long-term implications for Dutch democracy of criminalising a majority opinion are catastrophic. But the trial of Wilders is also a nakedly political move.

• The Dutch courts are behaving like a religious court. They are trying to regulate public expression and opinion when it comes to the followers of one religion. In so doing they obviously aspire to keep the peace in the short term, but they cannot possibly realise what trouble they are storing up for our future.

Europe is currently seeing the reintroduction of blasphemy laws through both the front and back doors. In Britain, the gymnast Louis Smith has just been suspended for two months by British Gymnastics. This 27-year old sportsman’s career has been put on hold, and potentially ruined, not because of anything to do with athletics but because of something to do with Islam.

Last month a video emerged online of the four-time Olympic medal-winner and a friend getting up to drunken antics after a wedding. The video — taken on Smith’s phone in the early hours of the morning — showed a friend taking a rug off a wall and doing an imitation of Islamic prayer rituals. When the video from Smith’s phone ended up in the hands of a newspaper, there was an immediate investigation, press castigation and public humiliation for the young athlete. Smith — who is himself of mixed race — was forced to parade on daytime television in Britain and deny that he is a racist, bigot or xenophobe. Notoriously liberal figures from the UK media queued up to berate him for getting drunk or for even thinking of taking part in any mockery of religion. This in a country in which Monty Python’s Life of Brian is regularly voted the nation’s favourite comic movie.

After an “investigation,” the British sports authority has now deemed Smith’s behaviour to warrant a removal of funding and a two-month ban from sport. This is the re-entry of blasphemy laws through the back door, where newspapers, daytime chat-shows and sports authorities decide between them that one religion is worthy of particular protection. They do so because they take the religion of Islam uniquely on its own estimation and believe, as well as fear, the warnings of the Islamic blasphemy-police worldwide.

To continue reading: Europe’s New Blasphemy Courts

 

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