Category Archives: Financial crisis

The Coming Elections in the Netherlands

Posted on by
8

Our Dutch correspondent H. Numan has the latest on the convoluted political situation in his homeland.

The coming elections

by H. Numan

In the UK the Labour party lost massively. Their biggest loss in nearly a century. In America the Democrat party is going to lose even more. The signs are all there. The most important candidate is Bernie Sanders who isn’t even fit to sit in a clown car. Much less to drive it. The man has absolutely no authority whatsoever. I’ve seen clips where his radical supporters grab the microphone out of his hands and totally humiliate themselves. With comrade clown standing next to it. Seething, and not able to do a darn thing about it.

Don’t be mistaken: The other clowns are almost as bad as he is. That’s pretty good news, I think. Even Bloomberg isn’t going anywhere. He can’t help it, he simply has the wrong credentials. Just like a child abuser has to live with his past, so must he. He was not only a strict Republican, he’s also a billionaire. Apart from the fact that he is simply bribing his way to nomination, and gloating that he can do it. Voting fraud is now completely legal in at least California. You can collect all the ballots in a retirement home or a town, fill them in as desired and present them as valid votes.

Even so, Trump is going to win. He doesn’t have to do a thing himself. The clowns do all the hard work for him. I hope the Milwaukee police department is planning for some huge riots. Antifa is not going to accept anyone else but comrade Sanders. They’re going to be very angry, as Sanders will not be elected.

Now, in Holland we’re also heading for elections. Officially we aren’t. Elections are due in March of 2021. That’s a full year in the future. The government is basically finished governing. Their goals have been achieved, or need a different coalition. I have no idea what will cause the resignation of the cabinet, but all parties are gearing up in election mode. The conservatives (VVD) and Christian Democrats (CDA) especially are making very bold statements about fewer migrants, stronger borders and — don’t laugh — less money to the EU. That’s a sure sign elections are coming.

It’ll be a very interesting election. In the recent past, first the Christian Democrats got trashed, followed by the labor party PvdA. In both cases after a long period of governing and a string of broken promises. This election will be the same, only now it’s the VVD’s turn to get trashed. Like their Christian and Labor compatriots earlier, the VVD has governed for a very long time, nearly 12 years continuously. The broken promises of Mark Rutte are legendary. As before people had high hopes during the first Rutte cabinet, which over time lessened. Currently the government is a minority government. The cabinet had a one-seat majority at the start in parliament. They lost that seat last year. In the senate it’s already a minority cabinet.

We’ve seen a massive shift to the left in nearly all parties. We used to have three large parties: a big conservative party (VVD), an even larger center party of Christian Democrats, and a large labor party. All of them moved far to the left. They want to woo young, hip and progressive voters. Nothing wrong with that, but there is a price to pay. There are lots of young people who are not progressive. Most of the not-so-young voters are anything but progressive. The price the formerly big parties have to pay is far fewer voters. They all shrank from their position of the big three to middle of the road. Or in case of the PvdA: that’s now a small party. In Dutch politics anything under 10 seats is small fry, 10-25 is middle of the road and anything above is a big party.

Progressive parties want to create a united left front. That won’t fly, because the PvdA party knows very well that will cost their party whatever seats they have left. Of course GL (former communists) and the SP (former Maoists) are in favor. They would gain the seats lost by the PvdA. Two birds with one stone!

That big gap on the right is being filled by two parties: The PVV party and the new Forum for Democracy (FvD). The PVV currently holds 19 seats, and FvD 2. It’s highly likely both will gain a lot in the coming elections. I expect both to grow to about 30 seats each. However, that is not enough for a majority. They will need 76 seats. That’ll be a problem as both the PVV and FvD parties are boycotted by the others.

Continue reading →

And Yet Another Symptom…

Posted on by

Once more Tucker Carlson’s people go out and about to film the homeless human wreckage on the West Coast while he adds commentary. I like the way he stays off the screen for the most part.

[I was under the impression he was a California native, but it turns out Carlson was born and raised in the D.C. area. Back in November, his home was attacked by a bunch of speech suppressors while his wife was there, alone. The Antifa mob managed to break the front door before police arrived.]

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

This time he opens with California’s boat people but then moves quickly on to Eugene, Oregon, where he finds some hope.

Eugene, a smaller city, has a college, making it a liberal bastion. But it also has a group of Vincent de Paul workers who have set up tents for the homeless. Unlike my experience with the Salvation Army – a hard-working group in Charlottesville – the Vincent de Paul workers take in the drunks and drugged out. That’s quite impressive and unusual. Like Jordan Peterson’s advice on how to take charge of your life, the workers do require that beds be made and personal gear be stored away. The large tents they use appear to be old military surplus equipment.

I wish they’d had a longer interview. When I was first placed in an orphanage, the whole routine was healing in the long run. And it included making our beds each morning. The experience made me love routine. This all-too-brief interview left me wanting to know more about the program. [For some reason, I keep thinking of an early poem of the Baron’s titled The Decay of the Social Fabric in Tidewater VA…can’t find it in my files, though.]

For those who are interested, here’s more information on St. Vinnie’s, as they call it.

Another Symptom of Our Growing Social Problem

Posted on by

This is the third in a series by Tucker Carlson on homelessness. He is focusing on the west coast, but the social evil is ubiquitous. [I searched in vain for the second part of the series yesterday. If anyone finds it, please leave a link in the comments.]

In my experience with the homeless, the issues he mentions – mental illness and broken families – are all too true. The roots of those causes are deep and difficult to unravel. For those I worked with who were using only their prescribed medications, family shunning was common and long-standing.

Very often mental illnesses don’t show up until mid-or-late adolescence. When it occurs, families are not prepared to deal with the attendant out-of-control behavior; their child has become a strange monster. Send a teenager to his room? He’ll break up the house. Impulsive, destructive behavior escalates as the mental problems increase. Unprepared families have no idea how to cope. For intact families not riven with their own unresolved issues, things can be turned around but it’s a painful process.

One grassroots group, NAMI, has been particularly effective in resourcing help. This is not a government bureaucracy:

NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, is the nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization dedicated to building better lives for the millions of Americans affected by mental illness.

What started as a small group of families gathered around a kitchen table in 1979 has blossomed into the nation’s leading voice on mental health. Today, we are an association of more than 500 local affiliates who work in your community to raise awareness and provide support and education that was not previously available to those in need.

I found our local group and wanted to attend so I could figure out how to effectively help my daughter. She died of a methadone overdose the day I’d chosen for my first visit. I never had the heart to go back.

Meanwhile, back in Seattle, there are unexpected consequences. One is
contaminated seafood:

As more and more American communities grapple with opioid addiction, the human toll of the epidemic has grown in both scope and severity. And now, scientists at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife have found evidence that drug’s impact has literally flowed downstream to affect marine life, as well.

Specifically, they used mussels as a barometer of pollution in the waters off Seattle and discovered that oxycodone is now present enough in the marine environment there for shellfish to test positive.

The surge in homelessness has many causes. The hollowing out of the American family is one. And the loss of manufacturing jobs which led eventually to the opioid crisis is another. When meaning is lost, people will find substitutes.

I hope Tucker Carlson builds on what he learns about homelessness in America. And I also hope he addresses, however briefly, the surge in the “retired” population, many of whom live in their vans or cars, moving from job to job.

It’s not just a California/west coast problem.

Just a Symptom of Our Growing Social Problems

Posted on by

Tucker Carlson will have an ongoing feature this week, focusing on homelessness. It would appear he’s going to concentrate on the west coast, but it’s a problem everywhere.

Charlottesville, Virginia has a problem with homelessness and drug addiction, but they won’t advertise the fact. I used to work in a drop-in center a few blocks (and a whole world) away from that mess the city cooked up and then spewed out at the unsuspecting. I mean the theater of racial “unrest”, our modern version of the Leftist Theater of the Absurd.

As Carlson mentions, this whole thing started in the 60s with Kennedy’s ill-advised closing of mental hospitals and turning out its denizens into their communities to be preyed upon by the criminal class.

Florian Philippot: “Take France Out of This Pernicious European Union”

Posted on by

Florian Philippot, formerly the #2 leader of the Front National, is the founder and leader of the French party The Patriots. In the following television interview he discusses the Yellow Vests, President Emmanuel Macron, and the need to get France out of the European Union.

Many thanks to Ava Lon for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:


Video link

Video transcript:

Continue reading →

Who Owns Italy’s Sovereign Gold Stocks?

Posted on by

Giorgia Meloni is the leader of the anti-immigration party Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) and a member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies. In the following video she criticizes the current government’s position on the issue of Italy’s sovereign stocks of gold, which have been designated the property of Bankitalia, a private corporation.

Ms. Meloni’s criticisms are aimed at the coalition government of the Lega and the 5-Star Movement (M5S). It’s interesting to note that Matteo Salvini and Luigi di Maio have apparently discovered the same thing that Donald Trump has discovered — being elected to serve as head of government does NOT translate into immediate control over state affairs that are considered the provenance of the banksters and the globalists, a.k.a. the Deep State.

Many thanks to He Ha for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Video transcript:

Continue reading →

Beware the Collective!

Posted on by

Below is another video showing recent events in Venezuela. FouseSquawk, who translated the clip for subtitles, sends this background information:

The video was taken in the town of San Felipe, state of Yaracuy. The governor, Julio Leon, is mentioned in the video by name. Colectivos are gangs of armed vigilantes who support the government.

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Video transcript:

Continue reading →

From Szczecin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, a Razor-Wire Curtain Has Descended…

Posted on by

Immigration-related events are moving rapidly this in Europe summer. The situation is in such flux that now would be a good time to step back and try to get an overview of the process.

Three years ago the dead baby hysteria, followed by Chancellor Merkel’s invitation to the world (“Y’all come in and set a spell, bitte!”), launched the Great European Migration Crisis. Since then I’ve read hundreds of news articles and analyses about the flow of “refugees” and the reactions to their violent and fragrant arrival in Western Europe.

After digesting all that information I created the following map, which presents my subjective evaluation of the different approaches to migration by various European countries. I’ve rated the policies of 28 different countries (the EU 27 minus Croatia, plus Switzerland) on a scale from 0 to 100, from zero (red) for the open-borders attitude of the “Welcoming Culture” to 100 (blue) for the absolute refusal of mass migration by the Visegrád Four (Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic). Data from the last six months weighs more heavily in the score assigned to each country — for example, Spain and Italy recently changed governments, which has strongly affected each country’s migration policy.


Immigration policies in Europe, Summer 2018 (Click to enlarge)

The grouping of countries based on their stance on migration bears a striking resemblance to the division of Europe into East and West by the Iron Curtain. This is especially true if we roll the clock back three months — back then Italy and Bavaria would have been quite red. And the analogy becomes even more apt if we remember that Austria was occupied by Soviet troops until 1955, which gives it one foot in the Eastern camp.

The biggest change in the past three months has been the formation of a new anti-immigration government in Italy. The “xenophobia” of the East Bloc has now broken through the razor-wire curtain and gained a foothold in Western Europe. No wonder EU politics is in such turmoil! After failing to contain the “anti-European” attitudes of Poland and Hungary, Brussels now has to contend with Matteo Salvini. Italy is one of the “big four” pillars of the European Union, so its defection to the anti-migration side carries enormous significance for continental politics.

The situation is metamorphosing rapidly, but before we analyze the process of change — the “delta”, as they say in the military-industrial complex — let’s go over the snapshot of current European migration policies.

The Visegrád Four

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was the first major European political leader to (1) understand the larger significance of the refugee crisis of 2015, and (2) act rapidly to counteract the nexus of globalist actions that threatened the stability of the Hungarian state. In doing so he made himself an obstacle to the no-borders coalition, especially the “American philanthropist” George Soros. The reaction to Mr. Orbán’s building of the fence helped clarify the East-West divide, and strengthened the solidarity of the Visegrád Four. Each country now supports the others’ positions, and each vows to veto any action by the EU (the European Commission requires consensus to implement a sanctions regime) that would harm the other members. Taken individually, each V4 country is no match for Germany or France, but when they act in concert the four countries become a formidable thorn in the flesh of the Brussels oligarchy.

The movement of Italy and Austria (and even Bavaria) towards the Visegrád Four position allows Hungary to — as Barack Obama has so frequently said — punch above its weight.

Austria

The most recent Austrian election resulted in a coalition government headed by Sebastian “Boy” Kurz (ÖVP) as chancellor and Heinz-Christian Strache (FPÖ) as vice chancellor. Mr. Kurz may well be a cynical opportunist who has simply trimmed his sails to the wind, all the while remaining loyal to his mentors in the Davos crowd. However, to maintain his position he has to give at least the appearance of acting decisively to deal with the migration issue — hence the recent law targeting “radicalization” in Austrian mosques (see Christian Zeitz’ analysis). Part of that appearance will of necessity include the reduction of violence and disorder brought to Austria by Muslim immigrants. Any failure to achieve discernible results will endanger his chancellorship. For that reason one may expect him to stay the course, at least for the time being.

Mr. Kurz’ alignment with Italy, Hungary, and Bavaria bodes ill for Chancellor Angela Merkel and the mandarins in Brussels. A counterweight to their power is forming on their southeastern flank, and the resulting political crisis looks to be the most turbulent since the fall of the Iron Curtain and the reunification of Germany.

Italy

The new coalition government in Italy is shaking the very foundations of Barad-dûr in Brussels. The Five-Star Movement is more or less a traditional populist party, but the Lega Nord is full-on anti-immigration. Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has hit his stride early, turning back the refugee ferries and threatening to impound any NGO “rescue” vessels that make port in Italy. Unlike Chancellor Kurz, Mr. Salvini has never changed his tune — almost ten years ago, when I first started paying attention to him, he was the same anti-migrant firebrand that he is today. He shows no sign of being cowed by threats from Brussels; it’s no wonder that emergency summits are being hastily convened in reaction to him.

Since the new government was formed, the Lega has shot ahead of the Five-Star Movement to become the most popular party in Italy. If another election were to be held, Matteo Salvini would most likely end up as prime minister.

Eastern Europe

When I use the term “Eastern Europe”, I refer to the Baltic republics, Romania, and Bulgaria. (The Visegrád Four plus Austria comprise Central Europe. Strictly speaking, Moldova, Ukraine, and Belarus could also be considered Eastern Europe, but their political affairs are more closely associated with Russia, whether for or against, so I’m leaving them out of this analysis.)

Eastern Europe has the good fortune not to be attractive as a final destination for migrants — their welfare benefits are much less generous than those further west, and they are less reticent about dealing harshly with the criminal proclivities of foreigners. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have the added advantage of being largely off the route for most of the migration flowing into Western Europe.

Bulgaria and Romania have their share of migrant camps, full of angry, resentful Third-World “refugees” who are impatient to get out of those Black Sea backwaters and into the promised land of Germany or Sweden. The crime and disease the migrants bring with them spills out of the camps and into the adjacent towns. News outlets in those countries are blessedly un-PC, so the word gets out, and members of the general public who may once have been indifferent are now becoming anti-immigrant.

Continue reading →

László Földi: “The Majority of European Politicians are TRAITORS!”

Posted on by

The following panel discussion is from Tuesday’s Hungarian TV program “Szemtől szembe” [Face to Face]. The moderator is Balázs Somorjai, and the guests are the intelligence analyst László Földi and Zoltán Lomnici, Jr., a constitutional lawyer.

The discussion among the three men concerns the Great European Migration Crisis — its origins, causes, and intended effects. Cui bono? Who stands to make a profit from all these illiterate unemployable Muslim migrants, and how?

A civil, lucid, and reasonable discussion such as this one is all but unheard of west of the Iron Curtain. Many thanks to CrossWare for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Video transcript:

Continue reading →

Send in the Idiots

Posted on by

Below is the latest essay from the inimitable Hans Heckel, this time on the financial shenanigans of the EU elites.

JLH, who translated the piece, includes this note:

This is an analysis of, among other things “European” versus “German,” a rather different view of Macron than we are getting here, and a continental view of educational “mainstreaming” (and fun with politically correct euphemisms).

The translated essay from Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung:

State of Fools

How the sand got into the gears, why we can’t waste time, and why the schools are expected to produce idiots.

The Satirical Week in Review

by Hans Heckel
April 21, 2018

Everything used to be simpler. 10, 20 or 30 years ago, when the EU wanted more money from German taxes, it only had express the wish to Bonn — later Berlin. The reply was friendly, and possibly with a solicitous query, “Could you use a little more?” The Bundestag politely stifled any objections. Basta.

Sand first drifted into these well-oiled gears with the save-the-euro shields. Resistance stirred within the Union [CDU/CSU], but even more within the FDP. Nonetheless, the party heads put their agenda through. For the Liberals [FDP], with a deadly result: So many FDP voters defected to the brand new AfD in the 2013 Bundestag elections that the FDP dropped out of parliament. When French President Emmanuel Macron announced his next big fishing expedition in German financial waters a year ago, the FDP remained reserved. Shortly thereafter it returned to the Bundestag with fanfare, while the Union fared badly and, to top it all off, the AfD took over as lead opposition.

That is the situation everyone has to adjust to. Everything mixed up.

Macron wants a European finance minister with an independent budget and a European currency fund. Further on the wish list of the southern European countries led by Paris are a bank union, a debt union and especially a common deposit protection fund through which Germans with savings accounts would help failed Italian banks.

Should the Grand Coalition simply agree to this, as it has done before, AfD and FDP would be the big winners. This calls for skillful handling. CDU/CSU say they want to put on the brakes. The Greens leader Annalena Baerbock sees this as sacrificing European solidarity, and so does the Euro-politician Elmar Brok and his party friend and EU commissioner, Günther Oettinger (“unacceptable”). Even the SPD has a part in the drama: Andrea Nahles is with Macron, while the new minister of finance, Olaf Scholz, on the contrary cites the doubt about what the skeptical voters would perceive and reward as a defense of German interests. To all the theatrics Angela Merkel says nothing, as usual.

From a distance, this looks like a real disagreement. And it is intended to, so that no one who voted for the Grand Coalition parties senses betrayal of his interests as a German taxpayer and savings account holder, and drifts into opposition.

Closer inspection reveals a significant detail. The critics within the Grand Coalition are only asking that satisfying Macron’s appetite, i.e., putting the Paris proposals into effect, should be slowed down. There is no question of a simple “No.”

In other words, the “critics” want to chop this indigestible entree into little bites and offer it to the German mouth piece by piece. That way, it won’t stick in the throat and the Germans will swallow it down. The end result is the same.

It works! So why are Brok, Baerbock and Co, so excited? It is the time problem. There may not be much time left for the bite-size method. Italy’s banks are teetering. Like the “Monte dei Paschi.” Which is said to have loaned an estimated 50 billion euros to people whose names no one knows. The word is, the money is as good as gone. At some point, the time will come when schlepping bankruptcy along will no longer work. Other Italo-banks are said to be deep in the debt morass — as good as done for. When there is a crash, which can happen at any time, someone has to pay the piper. And what does Macron need? He wants to make big reforms, but doesn’t have the money to soften it so his people don’t climb all over him. So he badly needs money, too.

There is no time to waste. Oettinger and Brok know that. They are sitting in Brussels and nervously watching the sweat-covered foreheads of their Italian colleagues.

And these two are Germans, which makes a significant difference. If an Italian politician goes to the EU, he acts as an Italian who wants to get as much from the EU as he can for Italy. If a German politician goes to Brussels, he acts as a “European,” who can get from Germany as much as he wants to for the EU.

As things are now, whenever the failing Italian banks go under, they should be “saved” by Rome or their Italian shareholders. What a scandal that would be! What an uproar! It would be good only for the populists. It would be far more “European” and far more “common-good” to take the money from a security fund made up of rock-solid German savings accounts. Right?

Continue reading →

László Földi: Tens of Millions of Migrants Will Mean the Destruction of Europe

Posted on by

Below is the second part of a TV panel discussion from Hungarian TV (part 1 is here). The participants are the journalist Zsolt Bayer and the national security expert László Földi, who is a former intelligence service agent and a former operations director.

Many thanks to CrossWare for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Video transcript:

Continue reading →

Are We Approaching the End Game?

Posted on by

Emmet Scott’s latest is a provisional historical overview of Western Europe’s current Decline and Fall.

Are We Approaching the End Game?

by Emmet Scott

It is becoming more apparent by the day that the end game, in Europe at least, is now imminent. Things cannot go on like this much longer. Something has to give, and soon. To all appearances, what we have come to know as “European Civilization” is doomed. The proximate cause of this, however, is not the mass colonization of Western Europe which has stepped up several gears in the past two years. Not is it primarily the chaos, lawlessness and terrorism which these colonists have brought with them. These things are effects, not causes. The primary cause is the wholesale rejection by the ruling elites of the values upon which Western Civilization was founded and built. Since at least the 1960s these same elites, which include the political, intellectual and judicial classes, have worked untiringly to excise these values — those of Christianity and Hellenic rationalism – from the public sphere.

Whole volumes could be written (and have been) on the reason for this historic development; and I have no intention of adding to the literature here. What is important is that it has happened. Western (i.e. Christian) Civilization has been replaced by what might be termed Social Marxism — a creed (for that is what it is) which rejects in its entirety virtually every institution and cultural norm upon which Western Civilization was based. This includes everything from the traditional family and the very idea of gender norms to the whole concept of patriotism and public duty.

In accordance with this new creed, the Western elites have been quietly working to abolish Western Civilization since the middle of the 1960s. This program has included, among other things, the actual replacement of Europe’s native populations with immigrants from various parts of the world — especially from Africa and Asia. Europeans were encouraged in every way possible not to have children, then immigration was foisted upon them as necessary because of Europe’s low birth-rate.

The stresses caused by this mass immigration never affected the elites who engineered it, so they ignored the spiralling crime-rates which the working classes — the lucky recipients of this ‘cultural enrichment’ — had to endure. The rise of widespread Islamic terrorism in the past couple of decades has pushed those stresses more into the public eye, but has had little or no impact upon the belief-systems of the politically correct elite. The replacement of Europe’s native population will continue unabated. And this is something that needs to be emphasized. In the ‘Clash of Civilizations’ debate the ruling elites are NOT neutral; they are firmly on the side on the Islamists. Indeed, every tool that can be employed to crush all opposition to the Islamization of Europe is being employed: Everything from the crude power of state compulsion to the more subtle and insidious power of blanket media propaganda. As long as the present elites remain in control, the Islamization of Europe will proceed — irrespective of how many atrocities the Islamists commit.

The situation thus looks extremely bleak. Those who hold all the power are Europe’s most insistent and dangerous enemies — and this includes all of the mainstream political parties, whether of the “right” or the “left”. (Angela Merkel, it should not be forgotten, is the leader of Germany’s supposed “center right” party). The elites have the great majority of the state-employed professionals — whether in education, medicine, social welfare or the civil service. They have the mainstream media in its entirety. (And it must not be forgotten that there is no equivalent of Fox News in any Western European country. All that exists are wall-to-wall copies of CNN, NBC, etc.) This leaves the opposition — such as it is — in a very bleak place. The ‘opposition’ is composed in general of the most powerless and despised members of modern Western society. There are the small groups of traditional Christians — those that have not followed the politically correct lead of the mainstream churches (including now the Catholic Church); there are a few professionals (usually working in the private sector), and there are the remnants of what used to be the urban working classes (now sadly debased through habitual welfarism and unemployment). How are such marginalized groups to save the West?

Continue reading →