The Dutch cabinet has decided that urgent military trains will be given priority over passenger and freight services from late 2026, a shift that could halt regular rail traffic for hours at a time, as the government also warns that the country’s rai…
Mensen lijken niet te weten dat de nr2 van Ja21 een keiharde nazi is.
De schuld hiervan ligt, naast bij de mensen thuis, voornamelijk bij al die slappe opinisten die volkomen verzuimd hebben om het te benoemen en te duiden.
"Maar even serieus, meneer Eerdmans, waarom duldt u een openlijke antisemiet in uw partij?"
En dan even doorvragen en de tweets voorlezen... Ik hoor het kokkelmans zo doen.
Een coalitie met D66, CDA, VVD en JA21 is momenteel het meest realistische scenario voor Henri Bontenbal. Dat zei de CDA-leider na besprekingen met D66, VVD en de nieuwe informateur Rianne Letschert.
Zou het met het redactioneel commentaar van de NRC dan eindelijk eens doordringen tot kabinet (en formerende partijen) dat Nederland echt stappen moet zetten (en een aantal stappen terug moet zetten)?
De wereld verruwt, en dus moet de overheid nog beter opletten welk buitenlands bedrijf over haar data beschikt. Dit vindt NRC: nrc.nl/nieuws/2025/12/07/waakz…
Dankzij bestuurders van onze eigen Haagse #maga - de #vvd - kan vergiftigende topvervuiler #TataSteel nog een miljardengreep in de schatkist doen. somo.nl/nl/tata-steel-deal-to-… Nog erger, hun 'vergroening' bestaat uit het vervangen van kolen door Amerikaanse LNG (gewonnen met extreem vervuilende en broeikasgassen opwekkende fracking) om daarna vervangen te worden door bio-methaan, een greenwashing product van de industriele landbouw op basis van mest = #stikstofslot @PartijvoordeDieren #nlpol
The Dutch police have secretly used controversial AI intelligence software by the American company Palantir since 2012, the Volkskrant reported, based on documents obtained through the Open Government Act after years of trying.
The Dutch royal couple are packing their bags quickly when they heard that "the USA will attack any nation smuggling drugs to it's territory". They are now trying to find a destination that doesn't smuggle drugs, allegedly, to the so-called US of A
The dispute between semiconductor company Nexperia and its Chinese parent company Wingtech is escalating. Latest accusation: China is being completely bypassed.
Deze week in Buitenhof met Joost Vullings: oud-staatssecretaris Financiën Marnix van Rij, voormalig VN-gezant Midden-Oosten Sigrid Kaag, advocaat Gerard Spong, theatermaker Dewi Kasmo.
Just learned that there are hundreds of buildings in Amsterdam that are empty above the ground floor because removing the stairs for extra square meters on the ground floor is more profitable than providing people with a place to live.
Countrywide there are apparently around 70.000 empty homes above shops, quite often large enough that they could be split into multiple units.
There are other reasons why space goes unused as well, including regulatory nonsense such as unnecessary parking requirements, but we really do need to start taxing empty buildings 😒
Woningbouw: Nederland kan een miljoen woningen toevoegen door lege winkels en kantoren om te bouwen, maar vooral door bestaande woningen te splitsen. Nederlandse huizen zijn groot, terwijl er vooral behoefte is aan woningen voor een of twee personen.
I am really tired of this year and am expecting it to still get worse in the remaining time, but one small positive is that the newly elected Dutch House ousted the fascist asshole who had been its chairman/speaker for the past two years, Martin Bosma, and replaced him with someone who has been, so far, not nearly as bad.
Took three rounds, and my party's candidate once again did not make it, but hey, I'll take it.
At one particular polling station in Dordrecht, the Netherlands, a total of 84,2% of the vote went to far-right parties 😬
Geert Wilders' PVV party was the largest party at 37,4% of polling stations, well ahead of the overall winner, D66, which came in first at 25,5% of polling stations.
Oproep: zou iedereen als de bliksem willen ophouden met de rare gewoonte om extreemrechts aan te duiden met de term centrumrechts? #extreemrechts #rechts #centrumrechts #fascisme #nlpol
Re mijn laatste boosts over liegende politici en de lobbycratie hier in Nederland: volgens o.a. Jason Stanley, in How Propaganda Works, laat dit soort propaganda zien dat er geen werkelijke democratie is Nederland is.
De klassieke Atheners zagen verkiezingen daarom als ondemocratisch. NB hadden zij een paar pittige manieren om verantwoordelijkheid af te nemen, iets wat wij helemaal niet hebben.
Iedereen die "harde afrekencultuur" in de Nederlandse politiek in de mond neemt liegt of leeft in een andere wereld. O.a. Toeslagenaffaire en de herverkiezing van Rutte daarna laten zien dat politici/bestuurders hier gewoon wegkomen met het schenden van de Nederlandse en internationale wetten en het ondermijnen van de rechtsstaat.
Hieruit kun je ook opmaken dat politieke partijen veel machtiger zijn dan kiezers, en dat kiezers weinig keus hebben, zoals ook Hakverdian en Schakel stellen in hun boek Nepparlement?
Voor alle mensen die graag kiezers of niet-kiezers de verantwoordelijkheid voor de daden van politici geven, een goed punt om te overdenken, IMNSHO.
Voor mij zijn partijen in het politieke midden deel van de problemen, en niet alleen voor hun salonfähig maken van extreem-rechts waar o.a. onderzoekers al meerdere jaren voor waarschuwen. Want wat hebben deze partijen *als deel van vorige regeringen* gedaan tegen de klimaatverandering? ...
Het politieke midden in Nederland heeft zijn stem hervonden. Dat is en blijft het verhaal van deze verkiezingen. Ja, de meeste mensen stemmen nog altijd rechts. En ja, de formatie wordt gecompliceerd.
This is your regularly scheduled reminder that susceptibility to authoritarian, fascist and/or populist rhetoric isn't determined by 'intelligence', or education.
There are plenty of university-educated assholes out there who, despite being perfectly capable of reaching the logical conclusion based on the data available, reject that truth because it is inconvenient to them and their underlying convictions.
That is how a hate preacher with a Hungarian wife campaigns on closing the borders and a 'This is YOUR land' slogan, a Turkish refugee who came to this country as a child tries to outcompete him as the leader of the VVD, framing the party she once worked for as 'the radical left', and a gay man with an Argentine partner decided to move to the right for this campaign, and start waving Dutch flags at a time when they are very much a symbol of nationalist fervour, and hate.
People aren't being snookered into this. It is not because people aren't being 'heard'. It is a CHOICE, plain and simple, and one they keep making, over and over.
The fracturing of the Dutch far-right, after Wilder's reminded everyone that bigots are bad at compromise, is definitely a relief. Dutch folks I've talked to definitely see D66 as progressive, so there's no question this is a hard turn to the left (even if it's not a total flip to the far-left).
While this is a useful example of how a democracy can be far more resilient to fascism than the US, that is, perhaps, not the most interesting thing about Dutch politics. The most interesting thing is something Dutch folks take for granted and never think of as such: there are two "governments."
The election was for the Tweede Kamer. This is a house of representatives. The Dutch use proportional representation, so people can (more or less) vote for the parties they actually want. Parties rarely get a ruling majority, so they have to form coalition governments. This forces compromise, which is something Wilders was extremely bad at. He was actually responsible for collapsing the coalition his party put together, which triggered this election... and a massive loss of seats for hi
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The fracturing of the Dutch far-right, after Wilder's reminded everyone that bigots are bad at compromise, is definitely a relief. Dutch folks I've talked to definitely see D66 as progressive, so there's no question this is a hard turn to the left (even if it's not a total flip to the far-left).
While this is a useful example of how a democracy can be far more resilient to fascism than the US, that is, perhaps, not the most interesting thing about Dutch politics. The most interesting thing is something Dutch folks take for granted and never think of as such: there are two "governments."
The election was for the Tweede Kamer. This is a house of representatives. The Dutch use proportional representation, so people can (more or less) vote for the parties they actually want. Parties rarely get a ruling majority, so they have to form coalition governments. This forces compromise, which is something Wilders was extremely bad at. He was actually responsible for collapsing the coalition his party put together, which triggered this election... and a massive loss of seats for his party.
Dutch folks do still vote strategically, since a larger party has an easier time building the governing coalition and the PM tends to come from the largest party. This will likely be D66, which is really good for the EU. D66 has a pretty radical plan to solve the housing crisis, and it will be really interesting to see if they can pull it off. But that's not the government I want to talk about right now.
In the Netherlands, failure to control water can destroy entire towns. A good chunk of the country is below sea level. Both floods and land reclamation have been critical parts of Dutch history. So in the 1200's or so, the Dutch realized that some things are too important to mix with normal politics.
You see, if there's an incompetent government that isn't able to actually *do* anything (see Dick Schoof and the PVV/VVD/NSC/BBB coalition) you don't want your dikes to collapse and poulders to flood. So the Dutch created a parallel "government" that exists only to manage water: waterschap or heemraadschap (roughly "Water Board" in English). These are regional bureaucracies that exist only to manage water. They exist completely outside the thing we usually talk about as a "government" but they have some of the same properties as a government. They can, for example, levy taxes. The central government contributes funds to them, but lacks authority over them. Water boards are democratically elected and can operate more-or-less independent of the central government.
Controlling water is a common problem, so water boards were created to fulfill the role of commons management. Meanwhile, so many other things in politics run into the very same "Tragedy of the Commons" problems. The right wing solution to commons management is to let corporations ruin everything. The left-state solution is to move everything into the government so it can be undermined and destroyed by the right. The Dutch solution to this specific problem has been to move commons management out of the domain of the central government into something else.
And when I say "government" here, I'm speaking more to the liberal definition of the term than to an anarchist definition. A democratically controlled authority that facilitates resource management lacks the capacity for coercive violence that anarchists define as "government." (Though I assume they might leverage police or something if folks refuse to pay their taxes, but I can't imagine anyone choosing not to.)
As the US federal government destroys the social fabric of the US, as Trump guts programs critical to people's survival, it might be worth thinking about this model. These authorities weren't created by any central authority, they evolved from the people. Nothing stops Americans from building similar institutions that are both democratic and outside of the authority of a government that could choose to defund and abolish them... nothing but the realization that yes, you actually can.
This is not a shift to the centre, but a shift to the right. D66 campaigned on their rightward shift on migration and refugee policy, and their gains are in part based on that. They gained people who voted for Wilders in 2023, for example, and also gained quite a bit from the VVD, which shifted even further rightward 😒
The second article claims that Volt will disappear from the House, which is unlikely; they currently stand at over 109.000 votes, which is well above the minimum required for a seat.
Centrist party D66 and the far-right Freedom Party (PVV) are neck and neck with nearly all of the votes counted, signaling a setback for Geert Wilder's PVV, which had come in first in the last election.
