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Todd wrote:

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

Bob Kagan, perhaps the most prominent neocon is American academics, has written an article in the Atlantic saying the US and Israel have utterly lost the war in Iran.

And in other news, water is wet. ;)

In all seriousness, that was always going to be an unwinnable war. Benjamin Netanyahu has been wanting this fight for decades. Previous, US leaders always said no to him. Trump was finally in a susceptible enough state to say yes. Trump was told this was a bad idea, but he ignored his own military and intelligence people and pushed ahead with it. I saw something this morning where Bibi might leave Trump in the cold with the fight.

Meanwhile, Iran has been preparing for this fight for 47 years. And here’s the thing about Iran: They don’t have to have an outright military victory to win. All they need to do is endure and maintain pressure. Either the US taps out or the whole world collapses. Either is an acceptable outcome to them. Hell, they could have a fishing boat drag its anchor on the seafloor and destroy an underwater internet cable and several Middle Eastern countries lose 80% of their internet. The aftershocks from that would be global.

Make no mistake, Iran is in the driver’s seat.

Yeah for a country that is playing the defensive side in a war scenario all they have to do to win is endure.

 

Iran has a terrible human rights record and I sympathize with Iranians who want regime change, but it’s an interesting country. It’s a sort of mix of theocracy and democracy. All the candidates and laws have to be approved by a council of religious leaders. (Although some people say the military has the ultimate power in the country. I don’t know about that though) Something I wonder about is if you have such a council who have to approve of the candidates, wether you would still get leaders like Trump, or Hitler. That said, maybe Khomeiny isn’t much better.

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Todd

Am I correct that they’re going to do some kind of origin of the Jedi movie? Or am i misremebering that?

 

I would be interested in that. I’m not very enthusiastic about the other projects that are going on…

Bob Kagan, perhaps the most prominent neocon is American academics, has written an article in the Atlantic saying the US and Israel have utterly lost the war in Iran.

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Todd

Some psychos in the Netherlands came with this flag to an asylum centre.

 

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Todd, JRCarter, Uncle Retrospective

I follow some mennonites on bluesky (yes there are mennonites who use the internet) and they have interesting posts sometimes. I like these more peaceful Christian traditions.

 

They also have an interesting online magazine:

 

https://anabaptistworld.org/from-hegseth-to-rfk-jr-leaders-are-using-religion-as-symbol-not-substance/

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Todd

They’re building a bicycle bridge in my town across a canal, that would make traffic between Alphen and villages in the vicinity faster, for some people at least. But the whole project has been terribly delayed, I think it should have been finished more than two years ago. The cost has also spiraled. They already built the pillars on which the bridge should be resting, which looks surreal in the landscape. It’s kind of symbolic for a lot of current day politics.

 

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Uncle Retrospective, Todd

The conservatives are mostly a spent force though. These days they’re cucks. The kids want far right.

Christian wrote:

Our democracies are failing in part because the public institutions are all chronically under-financed, and the reason for that is that about half of the wealth belongs to a handful of people who have managed to make sure that nobody will ever ask them to contribute.

I am seriously losing hope about politics in my country. Honestly I’m not letting it ruin my mood too much, because I’m doing pretty well atm. But the whole narrative is so fucked. Everything is moving to the right.

 

It all benefits Putin by the way. We could see a Europe with AfD en Front National in power. If that happens I think it’s unavoidable that Europe reconciles with Russia, the EU will cease to exist other than as Putin’s toy. We’ll see Putin do a victory speech in the EU parliament.

 

In the Netherlands after the next election, we could see Wilders, Eerdmans or Baudet as prime minister. They’re all jokers. They’re no serious politicians. These people are so dumb, it could be as bad as Trump.

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Uncle Retrospective

The gesundes Volksempfinden in the Netherlands is blaming the current government for the prices of petrol. Which are obviously so high because of the blockade in the Hormuz strait.

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Todd

D66 party headquarters was attacked with a firebomb.

 

https://nltimes.nl/2026/05/08/politicians-outraged-attack-d66-headquarters-motive-still-unknown

This is terrible, the US is blockading Cuba and the world is not paying attention:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/may/07/rubbish-health-cuba-us-oil-blockade-waste-collection-fuel-crisis-havana

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Uncle Retrospective, Sean Robinson, Todd

But it seems to fit the pattern. There have also been many reports here in the media, and not just right wing media, but all across the board, about increased violence against medical personnel.

Just in the news here that the Albert Heijn supermarket chain is going to give personnel bodycams to help with the agression against them. Sometimes I doubt if it is real, if the rising aggression that I think I’m seeing in the country is real or something I imagine. But stuff like this seems to confirm it.

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Dave, Martin Smith, Uncle Retrospective, Todd

Honestly in a way I think we’re in a state of war. Politics is being messed with by Russia and possibly other actors (we should also be suspicious about the Israel and the US and even China messing with Europe, with social media, fake news etc) and it is driving some people insane. I am noticing more aggressive people out there. It can be like a web that you get progressively more entangled in…I came across a tweet a while back by some right wing influencer who just for no reason suddenly felt agitated and wanted to punch a random person who crossed his path. That felt kinda symbolic for me for what is happening with part of society.

 

The ineptitude of our own politicians is also radicalizing people. I wonder if we’re bumping into the limits of democracy. I do believe we need governance that is in certain ways more forceful, but that also maintains basic human freedoms and dignity…I hope that is possible within the paradigm of liberal democracy.

 

 

Christian wrote:

This won’t get better until the Left – in all our countries – gets its shit together and we’ve done something about social inequality. So, good luck with that.

The left in the Netherlands is fucked. If you take D66 out of the equation which is more of a centrist party, the left only has about 1/5 of the vote.

 

There are different situations in different countries in the EU but left wing parties aren’t doing well. The worst is Czechia where left wing parties have zero seats in parliament. To be fair they have a 5 % electoral threshold, but the “left wing” party that did best with 4 % of the vote is a conservative pro-Putin offshoot of the old, unreformed communist party. Czechia is truly an amazing country but politically it’s bollocks

 

We have about one third of the electorate right now who would vote for extremist parties. They’re beyond reason. I’m not seeing it shrinking at the moment.

 

Really it sucks…but you can’t do a whole lot about it. I try to do something on a small scale, by discussing with people who I think could be tempted to vote for Wilders. And being kind to people in general.

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Uncle Retrospective

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Todd

These violent anti-asylum protests have really rattled me. It’s an escalation of what has happened so far with the far right here. Gangs of people roaming around, breaking things, settting things on fire and hurling the most offensive slurs about minorities, including black people and Jews…Fascism is here.

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Christian, Todd, Uncle Retrospective

Yes I am looking for other places to ride my bike. Leiden is a bit further, it’s 17 km but it’s a nice city

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Christian, Todd

I made the bike ride to the town where I was born, 12 km away, last weekend. I stopped doing that a while ago, because of physical aches and pains, so I was a bit afraid that it would be hard to do, but it went very well. The weather was perfect for a bike ride.

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Dave, Todd, njerry

I just saw a poll that said the Netherlands was one of the countries most critical of Israel, in the world…this is a huge reversal from the past. We always used to be one of the most pro-Israel countries in the world. On X it looks very different, there are a lot of Dutch posters who attack everything even slightly critical of Israel. Probably not all organic posters.

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Todd, Ben

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Todd, Dave

Roman mosaic depicting a lion:

 

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Todd

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/apr/30/europe-germany-troops-trump-threat-iran-eu-france-latest-news-updates

 

Of course Trump is terrible but Merz sucks as well. He went from saying “Trump is doing our dirty work for us” to “LOL Trump is stupid, Iran won the war”. Seeimingly forgetting he himself supported the war in Iran when it began.

 

It’s all so irrational. Like these people lack the awareness of the consequences of their words and actions.

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Christian

I heard the actor who played Lord Ichimonji in Ran had died recently. He played an older character in a movie in the 80s so I would have assumed he died long ago. I rewatched it and was again blown away. The soundtrack is probably the best soundtrack ever made.

 

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Todd

https://www.thecut.com/article/false-memory-syndrome-controversy.html

 

This is a pretty interesting piece about Jennifer Freyd, who cam up with the term DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) to describe a tactic abusers use to shove the blame on their victims – and her parents, who she alleged abused her, and came up with the “False Memory Foundation”, a group which alleges many memories of abuse are false, and which has functioned as defense expert in the cases of such people as Ted Bundy, Harvey Weinstein, and Ghislaine Maxwell. Little detail: the False Memory Foundation also featured two psychologists who wrote in a pro-pedophilia magazine that sex with children is not necessarily abusive.

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Christian

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njerry, Todd

Honestly the left has the right answers for most things, but some stuff the left does and says is stupid and works against them. They need to become better at the game of politics and democracy.

 

The Netherlands is becoming ever more right wing. Luckily some of the right wing parties are so crazy that the centre right won’t work with them. But eventually they could go after social security and welfare. It would suck, I can live with a little bit less money as my rent is low but for some people it culd be disastrous.

Yeah that core is always voting right, or today far right. The others just have to bring better ideas to the table. In a democracy you will always have the risk that the middle votes for parties willing to work with the far right.

 

(That is if they don’t vote for the far right candidate, like in the US with Trump)

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Todd

Another violent anti asylum protest here.

 

Part f the problem is that right wing governments have given ever less money to asylum centres. This means many asylum seekers now need to be housed in emergency locations which are often inappropriate. This again strengthens the anti asylum sentiment.

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Todd, Ben

I found some tasty meat substitute products in the supermarket. I want to eat this more often. I also found a vegan chocolate milk (made with oat milk) that is tasty.

 

There was a terrible story here in the media, I won’t even repeat it because I don’t want to upset you guys but it made me reinforce my commitment to eat less meat and and dairy. I will still eat some meat, but I think if people reduce their intake a little (voluntarily), that is probably a good thing.

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Todd

It’s interesting how with the Trump presidency you’re seeing the rising animosity between protestants (calvinists mainly) and catholics. We’re going back to the 16th century.

Todd wrote:

Steven Soderbergh, who says he wasted nearly three years working on the script for The Hunt for Ben Solo (which Driver called “one of the coolest scripts I had ever been a part of”).

How the heck do you spend 3 years writing a script for a Star Wars movie?

I think it’s an endless road if you start forbidding stuff like that…it starts with certain drugs, and you can say, OK we’ll forbid recreative use of fentanyl and crazy stuff like nitazenes because that seldom ends well…but then you get into things liek cocaine and psychedelics and I think really it should be legal to use that. Never mind cannabis. But now they seem to be going further with tobacco. And undoubtedly you will see people calling for stricter measures on alcohol, maybe some even want to outlaw alcohol. And higher taxes on fat and sugar, maybe mandatory courses to lose weight because obesity burdens the NHS. Maybe we should outlaw obesity. It’s a slippery slope.

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Christian, Todd, Uncle Retrospective

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/apr/21/bill-banning-people-born-after-2008-from-buying-tobacco-clears-uk-parliament

 

 

Noooooo don’t have fun

 

Interesting how “being a burden on the NHS” is used to take away rights.

 

Neo-puritan shitstains.

Full Decker??

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Uncle Retrospective, Todd

 

Dates are fantastic but you have to get the right ones. I had dates from the supermarket that tasted like nothing. But the medjoul dates from the greengrocer are delicious.

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Todd

Chuck Schumer : "Of course we say it's our land, the Torah says it. But [the Palestinians] don't believe in the Torah. So, that's the reason there is not peace."

The fact that this monstrous genocidal maniac is the minority leader in the senate is a disgrace and an… pic.twitter.com/EPjU5ojtvb

— It's politics (@uspolitics1111) April 17, 2026

 

Chuck Schumer is a blut und boden ethnonationalist for Israel.

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Uncle Retrospective

They’re putting Pedro Pascal in everything, the way supermarkets put beansprouts in every Asian food product they sell.

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Christian, Todd

In the Netherlands 78 % now have a negative view of Israel but this doesn’t translate into the polls. Most voters would still vote for right wing and centrist parties that want to be pals with Israel.

 

I think it’s mostly because of a few economic issues. For instance home owners could lose the tax deduction of interest they pay on their mortgage if there would be a left wing cabinet.

(Still I agree the economic factor is probably the most important here.)

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garjones

I wonder if there is a connection between the modern sense of hopelessness and the decline of the birth rate. We’ve all seen those articles of GenX and millenials saying “I will not have kids, because of the climate change.” Or the more general “It is not fair to bring children into such a cruel world.”

 

Replacement migration is going pretty well though. The Netherlands grew from 16 to 18 million in the last two decades and that isn’t due to births.

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Todd

It’s a conundrum. But Gar is probably right, at its core it’s just capitalism at work probably. Babies don’t make sense economically. That’s the hard truth, and it probably accounts for most of the decline. You can say you should counter that by spreading the conservative message that childbearing is an essential part of life, but many people just aren’t receptive to that. They look at their wallet.

 

It’s noteworthy that even conservative societies, like Iran for instance and Hungary like Gar said, are seeing the decline. Israel is an exception, with a birth rate of 2.92 child per woman on average.

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Uncle Retrospective

There is a bit of a backlash against metoo stuff here in the Netherlands. A Dutch singer, Marco Borsato, who was on trial for sexual assault of a minor and who was acquitted was on tv again for the first time in years, trying to do a come back. Some people firmly believe he did nothing wrng, this despite certain clear established facts, like he apped an underage girl about masturbation. In the trial it sort of didn’t get proven definitively that he did things which can be described as sexual assault, but it’s clear he’s a pervert who was hanging around girls of the “Epstein age”, like 13-14-15, way too much. And yet many people say “oh, that’s not so bad. He should be welcomed back to resume his career”. Makes me sick.

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Todd

garjones wrote:

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Can’t imagine why the Republicans party is chock full of paedophiles

I wonder when people are going to accept we have to work around this?

Essentially this is an issue affecting every developed country, quite a few developing too, and no solution has worked. Even India is now below replacement level. Singapore loosened laws on sex in films to get people friskier, Nordic countries have put in generous parental leave and child support, Korea has given a whopping $280bn in cash or voucher incentives and it still keeps reducing, they are rock bottom globally.

Orban’s right wing autocracy made it a key policy aim to have replacement fertility rate of 2.1 by 2030, spending a whopping 5% of GDP on it and essentially got nowhere much. It remains around 0.3% lower than most western European countries, probably because they clamped down on migration and new migrants tend to have more kids.

So basically short of forced birthing camps or some other fascist nightmare nothing works other than migration. Maybe countries like Japan that are looking at things like how robotics can provide elderly care are being more realistic.

I still don’t really understand why this is happening. It’s really happening everywhere except a fe African countries.

 

I think increased wealth is one factor probably, people don’t need kids anymore to look after them when they’re old, because the state takes care of that.

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Uncle Retrospective, Todd

Yeah ads are really a plague.

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Todd

Christian wrote:

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

Criticizing Israel is one thing, but people should never generalize, saying the faults of Israel prove that Jews are simply bad people. Of course the same is true for all ethnic groups. For instance I think you can criticize certain things about Islamic countries and the religion of Islam, but don’t generalize about all Muslims.

Yeah, right now it’s really important to protect Jews in other countries from anti-semitism. While also calling out Israel’s genocide and further war crimes.

Really it just comes down to fairness…I think you can condemn anyone, Jew or not Jew, who does something bad or has horrible opinions. But you can’t attack someone for their group identity. That doesn’t make sense.

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Christian

I watched a podcast with Dutch philosopher Haroon Sheikh about the sinister ideas in Silicon Valley about AI, where society is heading, and how they intermingle with politics. It’s all pretty upsetting.

 

Many of them believe in radically changing human nature, getting rid of empathy, letting the weak perish. Like what Nietzsche says, that which is falling should be pushed.

 

He also talked about Thiel weaponzing “mimetic desire”, and the scapegoat mechanism, ideas he got from the French philosopher Rene Girard. It’s about how people copy each other’s desires, which leads to competition for certain things like resources and power and results in violence against scapegoat minorities.

I kinda like Ossoff, but I don’t know very much about him.

Hopefully…

 

I have my problems with parties that are on the left, but the right is just evil. Sucking up to Trump and Netanyahu and using all foreigners as scapegoats. It’s pretty bad

 

Our King Willem Alexander and PM Jetten are having a meeting with Trump this week. Weird timing.

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Todd, Ben

Orban has conceded. It’s over.

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Todd

Looks like a huge win for the opposition in Hungary! Nice.

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Christian, njerry, Todd

If Harris or Buttigieg is the candidate, I think the dems will probably lose. They just don’t have the right charisma. They look wimpy.

 

 

 

 

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Todd

My current avatar is an enso, a hand drawn circle which is a symbol in Zen Buddhism.

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njerry, Todd

The Dutch Voedingscentrum (food centre) in its new guidelines said we should ideally eat no more than 300 grams of meat a week, of which 100 grams of red meat. That’s about the amount of meat people eat in countries like Togo and Niger. I don’t think people there are healthier than us.

 

The suspicion many have is that it’s not about health, it’s about what they believe is good for the climate. Health is sacrificed for climate goals.

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njerry, Sean Robinson, Todd, Martin Smith, Uncle Retrospective, Dave

It might seems like a good thing that there is so much infighting now in MAGA circles but there is a big shift towards what is pure antisemitism happening. Tucker Carlson is instrumental in this, getting people like Darryl Cooper on his show who is a huge antisemite. And he also had Nick Fuentes on I think.

 

Criticizing Israel is one thing, but people should never generalize, saying the faults of Israel prove that Jews are simply bad people. Of course the same is true for all ethnic groups. For instance I think you can criticize certain things about Islamic countries and the religion of Islam, but don’t generalize about all Muslims.

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Ben

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Todd, Uncle Retrospective

[lorcan_nagle]

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Anti-Catholic prejudice is baked in deep in the US.  It’s not even 100 years ago they were screaming that electing JFK as President would be handing the nation over to the Vatican.

• This reply was modified 1 month ago by lorcan_nagle.

 

People can say about the Vatican what they want but I think their stance on these wars that have been going on, in Ukraine, Gaza and Iran (there are other wars as well but I haven’t heard the pope comment on them) has been very consistently on the side of peace.

 

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Ben

Israel is calling their current actions in Lebanon “Operation Eternal Darkness”. They’re really as crazy as the nazis were.

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Ben, Todd

All the misinformation around this war in Iran has been amazing. Of course from Trump, but the pro-Iranian side also made up incredible lies. Claiming all of Tel Aviv was reduced to rubble.

Apparently the Pentagon threatened the pope. That seems in line with this administration. It’s all very antichristian.

 

https://newrepublic.com/post/208820/pentagon-threatened-pope-criticized-donald-trump

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Todd

You have to remember who the people were that were all in favor when Trump openly threatened to genocide the Iranians but who are now back to saying “we have to save the Persian people from the evil Islamist regime”.

Crazy thing that Alex Jones is calling for the 25th amendment to remove Trump and my own government in the Netherlands is saying, well we shouldn’t demonize Trump, we have to work together.

Yeah it’s the same in the Netherlands. People blame Labor party PvdA for screwing the country, but they haven’t been in power for 15 years or so. VVD, Rutte’s party, is the real devil of Dutch politics. They’re “conservative liberals”, but they’re really worse than Wilders in how they fuck things up.

 

VVD is also the party that fellates the US the most.

njerry wrote:

If people wanted what was best for the country, then multi-millionaires and billionaires would happily pay their fair share of taxes to improve our infrastructure, our education system, and especially our health care system.

Well I think most people vote for what they think is best for the country, but that doesn’t mean they’re right. Some think Musk etc are good for the country but obiously they’re wrong.

I guess you can be mad at people voting out of malice, to hurt people, usually minorities. Or liek when they vote for a candidate who threatens to attack some peaceful neighboring country. But I really believe that’s rare. Most people vote for the candidate they think is best for the country.

 

Maybe happening more than it used to though. I am not sure.

It’s also a question of an individual’s responsibility versus the responsibility of society. We can blame the individual voter for voting wrong, but that’s kind of like the neoliberal “bootstraps” ideology where everything that happens in your life is your own fault. Isn’t it also the fault of the larger community as well? It’s the responsibility of schools, the media, etc  to steer people in the right direction.

 

Instead we’re bombarded by messages that exploit our vulnerabilities, 24/7. It’s kind of like blaming someone for catching a virus.

njerry wrote:

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

Honestly it’s tough to blame people for their votes. People are often raised in a bubble and influenced in ways that make them vote some way, like evangelical Christians. To some extent it overrides free will.

I’m sorry, Arjan, but that’s just bullshit. I cannot excuse people who vote mindlessly.

Every person who has the right to vote also has a responsibility to make an informed choice about which candidate they should give their vote to. Many Americans spend more time deciding what teams to pick on their March Madness betting poll, or what color to pick for the new car they buy, than they do on choosing who to vote for to run their country for the next 4 years.

I want my vote to reflect the issues and national direction that matter to me, not what matters to my employer, or my union bosses, or to the archbishop of my church, or the guys I play poker with on Thursday night.

Well there’s a lot of propaganda ot there influencing how people vote, and that is outside of the voting individual’s control. (As well as other factor’s outside of our control, like what religion one is born in, one’s education, how parents and friends and loved ones influence them etc)

 

For instance in Russia, which is saturated with Putin’s propaganda, Putin’s approval rating, according to reliable polls, is very high. Can you blame the voting Russian for that? Can you say a Russian who supports Putin is just a bad person? He is in a closed off information bubble. Obviously it’s not that bad (yet) in Western countries, but still we are not immune to our own propaganda.

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Al-x

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

I think there is a connection with modernity and capitalism. People seem to be losing, I dunno, nuance. Everything is about short term gratification of desires. Getting a quick dopamine hit. Concern for others, for mutual benefit, the building of societal trust and the overall good, are dropped to some extent. It blunts the skills we use for such things. We function more on primal emotions.

 

I also think the “social distancing” during covid is damaging because of this. We lost some of the skills we use in communicating and having social connections.

 

It is actually cruel, especially to kids who are still acquiring those skills, to do social distancing. In a time of trouble, as corona was, you should encourage people being more social. You need social connection, not social distancing.

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Christian

I think there is a connection with modernity and capitalism. People seem to be losing, I dunno, nuance. Everything is about short term gratification of desires. Getting a quick dopamine hit. Concern for others, for mutual benefit, the building of societal trust and the overall good, are dropped to some extent. It blunts the skills we use for such things. We function more on primal emotions.

I think it’s also a kind of cultural degeneration. The IQ in Western countries is dropping. It’s not really clear what is causing this. But if you look at the level of discourse in talk shows, political debates etc, the stuff delivered by the mass media, it’s clear things are getting dumber. This is not just true for the right wing of the political spectrum although it’s more pronounced there. Again you can’t really blame individual voters for this.

 

“Vibes” are getting more important in politics. It’s not so much about the issues or rational solutions, for many people it’s more about which candidate is less cringe.

Honestly it’s tough to blame people for their votes. People are often raised in a bubble and influenced in ways that make them vote some way, like evangelical Christians. To some extent it overrides free will.

 

There are also voters who focus on one issue, and don’t have the capacity to see the broader picture. For instance they vote Republican because they don’t like abortion or they are afraid of losing their job, for instance in the coal industry. And there were people who were naive and thought Trump was truthful when he said he would make peace in Ukraine or Gaza.

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Christian

Yeah they can be bigoted. I am not excusing that of course. I just think for some voters voting right wing somehow mitigates some sexual insecurities.

 

Maybe it’s similar to how some religious people might pray for forgiveness after some perceived sin.

I believe that a significant part of right wing voting men have some secret sexual thing, like being gay or having some fetish, that they can’t accept, something that they feel they can exorcise, cleanse themselves from by voting right wing.

 

Umm Kamala has some good points…but if I vote for her…I might be homosexual!

njerry wrote:

I know Belgium and the Netherlands are two different countries

Only since the Union of Arras in 1579! One day we’ll get it back.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_Arras

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Todd, njerry

That seems to be a technical issue, some fatbikes can be hacked to make them go faster. Officially they have to be limited to 25 km/h but it’s easy to make them faster. I think they can do it with their smartphone even. I have no idea how it works.

 

I think the EU is trying to fight that, they made some fatbikes illegal. I have to be honest and say I have seen fewer fatbikes that go very very fast.

A speaker at a small pro-Palestinian demonstration by an Islamic organization in Amsterdam said it was a shame Hitler didn’t finish the Holocaust. I’m pretty sure the large majority of pro-Palestinian protesters are not anti-semitic, but some definitely are.

The cane sugar in Mexican coke is broken down by the acid in the coke into the same molecules that are in high fructose corn syrup. There may be some difference in taste, but that is not because of the sugar. And for health it is just the same stuff.

njerry wrote:

State government in New Jersey (where I live) have cracked down hard on motorized bicycles and scooters. New rules that came into effect last year include: * Riders must be at least 15 years old * Riders must have an official driver’s license or a motorized bicycle license (effective July 2026) * Vehicles must be registered and insured * Vehicles are prohibited on sidewalks

That seems great. The problem in the Netherlands is that politicians want to make a difference between “decent” electric bikes that look like normal bikes, and so called fatbikes that look like this:

 

 

And that’s legally pretty much impossible. They’re just normal electrical bikes but a bit more macho looking and with thick tyres.

 

 

They seem to attract antisocial folks, somehow. They look big and tough, like a motorbike kind of, so I think that’s why the teenagers who are prone to being a bit antisocial get them

 

But if you just keep to the rules and behave politely in traffic there’s nothing wrong with fatbikes.

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Christian

Honestly it is kinda amusing the weird circles politicians talk themselves into with fatbikes. It is not the fatbikes that hurt people, it’s the antisocial scum that rides on them, in an antisocial manner. That’s who you have to get off the street. It’s not the fatbikes, stupid.

lorcan_nagle wrote:

Also, Euronews exists

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euronews

 

Ah OK I didn’t know about that one, thanks for pointing that out.

Right that’s true…I was thinking about DW, but I wasn’t sure it was anglophone. The Netheralnds doesn’t have anything comparable to this. I think France has a similar thing too, France 24. But I think DW and F24 are focused on Germany and France rather than the EU as a whole.

 

Still I am not sure they make such a big impact as RT and Al Jazeera seem to do. I could be wrong about this.

Ads are totally fucking insane. I got an ad on twitter asking me to invest in the South Chinese power grid and I just got an ad on youtube for real estate in Monaco, specifically a 5 million euro apartment…

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Todd

Of course state media and private media could coexist, as well as social media etc. I’m not saying the state should have a news monopoly.

 

I also believe the EU needs an anglophone media platform to represent itself to the rest of the world. Al Jazeera kind of does that for part of the Arab world.

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Christian

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Todd

I heard a journalist I do have some respect for on a podcast say he is so pissed off about journalism in the Netherlands being destroyed, while he says in the same interview he wants to protect liberal values. Guess what, the liberal system also destroys journalism. It delivers everything over to the market forces, which cut everything down.

 

I think we need something like the BBC or Al Jazeera, and use that model for newspapers as well. State funded and state supported.

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Todd

An old high school friend of mine became a banker and works for a trading firm in Dubai now, trading oil futures. It’s too bad I have no contact with him anymore, I bet he could tell interesting stories now.

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Todd

Christian wrote:

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

Also Israel has in the past attacked Qatar, who is also supposedly a friend of the US.

And that’s when Trump put a stop to Israel’s attack. Fuck, he forced Netanyahu to humiliate himself by calling the Qataris from the Oval Office to apologise.

The US will go a long way in their support of Israel, and they certainly don’t give a fuck about a genocide against the Palestinians. But you fuck with their oil money, and that support will be gone in the blink of an eye, that’s for sure.

Also, don’t forget the Saudis let him touch their magic ball.

(Kidding, really. This isn’t even about Trump. Like I said, the US have never been quicker to start a war than when Saddam annexed Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia.)

Well Saudi Arabia is a stretch, but it is a goal that has been expressed by ministers like Smotrich and maybe Netanyahu himself. At least I’m sure Netanyahu has expressed this sentiment with regard to Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and Egypt.

 

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/netanyahu-embraces-greater-israel-vision-including-parts-jordan-and-egypt

Todd wrote:

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

Well as this war is showing, oil income is not guaranteed.

Oh, on the contrary, it is very much guaranteed. Saudi Arabia was with Israel in pushing Trump into this war.

SA is making a bank with the spike in oil prices. It is also giving them an opportunity to renegotiate a lot of investment deals to give themselves better terms. This war also will give them better leverage in the oil markets.

 

Shipping of oil has stopped because Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz. And if the US and Israel attack Iranian infrastructure, Iran has said it will attack Saudi oil infrastructure. I’m not sure Iran can knock out the pipelines Saudis and the UAE use, but if Iran can do that, their oil transport will stop entirely. I don’t think they make any money if they can’t deliver the oil to the client.

 

And I think Qatar has completely stopped its LNG production.

Todd wrote:

Arjan Dirkse wrote:

With the Saudis a military occupation would probably be unthinkable, so I believe they would use political influence. I think they want to be regional hegemon rather than occupying the whole area that is biblically claimed to be part of Israel.

While Israel has some political influence (and I believe that is waning each day), the Saudis have oil money. They can buy and sell Israel while turning a profit on the deal. People will back the Saudis because they need oil way more than Israel’s bullshit.

Well as this war is showing, oil income is not guaranteed.

 

Also Israel has in the past attacked Qatar, who is also supposedly a friend of the US.

 

I think Israel has a strong influence on Trump and many of his cabinet members. Of course things would probably change to some degree if a democratic president would be elected in 2028.

 

It would border on antisemitism to portray Israel as an all controlling power, but I think it is fair to say Israel has a certain degree of influence. Also Republicans are strongly influenced by Christian zionism, which is a big thing for many protestants. Also there is probably a tendency in US policy circles to believe Israel being the hegemon in the Middle East would benefit the US, as it is perceived to would be less likely to turn against US power than an Islamic hegemon.

With the Saudis a military occupation would probably be unthinkable, so I believe they would use political influence. I think they want to be regional hegemon rather than occupying the whole area that is biblically claimed to be part of Israel.

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/germanys-far-right-afd-demands-withdrawal-of-us-troops/3884583

 

There have always been Germans saying “Ami go home” and certainly the German far right believe they’re occupied by the US, but sounds like these will become more common with Trump being this unhinged and Israel going crazy. This benefits Putler of course…but maybe a scenario like this is becoming unavoidable.

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Christian