Political Corruption in The Netherlands and How the Dutch Farmer Protest Connects to the Burning of The Picnic Grocery Distribution Center


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 12, 2022 | Sundance

You might have heard about an online grocery distribution center called Picnic in the Netherlands burning to the ground {LINK}.  The backstory of how the Picnic operation connects to the Dutch government is fascinating, and with context it looks like Picnic was targeted as part of the Dutch farmer protest.

In the Netherlands the government official who organized the regulations to take farmland from farmers and reduce their livestock is a politician named Christianne van der Wal-Zeggelink {wiki link}.  Mrs van der Wal-Zeggelink is the current Minister for Nature and Nitrogen Policy in the Dutch cabinet of Prime Minister Mark Rutte.

Minister Christianne van der Wal-Zeggelink and Prime Minister Mark Rutte are climate activists, so it makes sense that the “Minister of Nitrogen Policy” would be the person who would attempt to reduce nitrogen by targeting the farmers.  It is Mrs. van der Wal-Zeggelink who created the regulations that the farmers are protesting.

Now, stay with me… Christianne van der Wall-Zeggelink is married to Piet van der Wal, an heir to the wealth of the family who owns a supermarket chain called Boni. {citation} So, when Dutch farmers sell product to Boni they are directly funding the wealth of the government minister who seeks to destroy their livelihoods.

Additionally, when Dutch shoppers spend their money at the Boni supermarket they are funding the family of the government minister who is seeking to destroy the farmers who provide the food to the supermarkets.  Do the Dutch farmer blockades of the supermarkets and distribution centers make more sense now?

Here is where it gets interesting….  The supermarket chain Boni is one of a small group of four big investors in the online supermarket chain Picnic. {citation}  The van der Wal family was part of a group of investors in 2015 and 2019 who generated €450 million for the Picnic grocery operation.

Additionally, as part of the financial relationship, the Picnic distribution center buys their groceries at wholesale prices from Boni: “Picnic directly buys from an existing supermarket chain (Boni), which saves them the operational costs on that side” {2015, citation}.

Buying from Boni Supermarket or ordering online from Picnic home grocery delivery is essentially the same thing.  Boni is a retail supermarket chain, and Picnic is a free home delivery service that sources their grocery distribution center inventory from Boni.

Additionally, Bill and Melinda Gates are big investors into Picnic {citation}: “As reported by the respected Dutch financial magazine Quote in September last year, [Picnic] raised €600 million (approximately $604 million) in an investment round, with the lion’s share coming from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust.” {link}

Summary so far: Nitrogen Policy Minister Christianne van der Wal-Zeggelink is married to the ultra-wealthy family who own the Supermarket chain Boni.  Together with other ‘climate change’ investors including Bill and Melinda Gates, Boni funds online supermarket Picnic.  Sales from Picnic or Boni directly increase the wealth of the Dutch Nitrogen Policy Minister.  Picnic also sells the engineered food that Bill Gates promotes.

The current owner and CEO of Picnic is a man named Michiel Muller.  Mr. Muller is a Dutch entrepreneur, climate change activist and self-described visionary, who intends to “change the entire food system, eliminate waste” and be in line with sustainable energy goals and the climate change agenda [Video citation @14:21].

Additionally, a great deal of the money from the investment rounds is going toward building a robotic warehouse and automated Picnic distribution center which aligns with the free online grocery ordering system. {another citation}

With all of these associations, business interests and financial aspects in mind, Dutch Nitrogen Minister Christianne van der Wall-Zeggelink has a direct financial conflict-of-interest in the advancement of sustainable supermarket and online grocery operations.  Specifically, those operators who are the beneficiaries of not only her nitrogen elimination regulation, but also the direct investment from her family.

It is also not surprising that Dutch farmers would seek to block the retail supermarkets and distribution centers of the companies that are directly connected to the business interests of Dutch politicians.

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The DOJ Wants Illegal Immigrants to Vote


Armstrong Economics Blog/Corruption Re-Posted Jul 11, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Who will vote for Biden after he destroyed the American economy? Perhaps illegal immigrants from Socialist countries who would have gratitude for even the lowest level of living in this nation. I explained how the election system is rigged with Dominion Voting Systems directly funneling money to liberal candidates and having close ties to George Soros. The Biden Administration wants to ensure that the game is completely in their favor, and now wants illegal immigrants to vote in American elections.

The Biden Administration is actually suing the state of Arizona because the state will require voters to show proof of American citizenship. Was the left not up in arms about other nations allegedly interfering in our electoral process? The Department of Justice claims that House Bill 2492 is illegal under the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the National Voter Registration Act (1993).

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said that he will not accept the DOJ’s demands. “In addition to free rooms and transportation for those illegally entering our country, the DOJ now wants to give them a chance to vote,” he said to Fox reporters. “It’s another round of Brnovich v. Biden. I will once again be in court defending Arizona against the lawlessness of the Biden administration.”

New York City recently prohibited illegal aliens from voting and the measure has bipartisan support. Even Mayor Bill de Blasio did not fight the ruling. The only politicians seeking to allow outsiders to vote in elections are on the far-left, and it appears that those at the very top of our political system have become extremists in their views.

After-Birth Abortion – Really?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Opinion Re-Posted Jul 11, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Spread the love

The woman army medic who seems to be fighting for the Constitution clearly has no idea what the Constitution is all about. Here rant which gathered 30,000 likes said:

“I just extended my contract to continue serving this country a week ago. How am I supposed to swear to support and defend the Constitution and a country that treats its women like second-class citizens?” She continued: “How am I supposed to do that? How am I supposed to do that with pride? How am I supposed to do that with love and honor?”

In HARRIS v. McRAE, 448 U.S. 297 (1980), the facade of Roe v Wade was exposed. The case was claiming that the government MUST pay for medically necessary abortions. They made it clear in that decision that the Constitution is NEGATIVE, not POSITIVE. It is a restraint upon government – not a shopping list of positive rights. This medic should resign, leave the country, and go someplace where you can freely kill a two-year-old when they annoy you.

If there was a Constitutional Right to abortion, but a restraint under the 8th Amendment against cruel and unusual punishment, then the solution would be to justify retroactive abortion without limitation so you no longer sentence someone to death, you merely abort their life whenever.

The very law that these people are so upset about was limiting abortion to the first 15 weeks. They seem to want even after-birth abortion. These real fanatics want to call a newborn still a fetus to justify abortion after birth.

“We claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be. Such circumstances include cases where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk.”

Why not just kill a child at any age when it threatens the “well-being of the family” if there is even a family that remains under this definition. There has always been justification for abortion when the life of the mother is at risk, or rape, or incest. But not any of these justify after-birth abortion. Sorry, but I don’t see how they would be good mothers and the solution should be sterilization – Gates would love it!

UN Human Rights Report Shows Ukraine Military Used Nursing Home Residents as Human Shields


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 10, 2022 | Sundance 

A quietly released study from the U.N. Human Rights Commissioner [See Here pdf] looking into allegations of war crimes conducted during the Ukraine -vs- Russia conflict, specifically looked into allegations of Russian military targeting a nursing home facility in the eastern region of Luhansk.

What the UN investigation revealed was that Ukraine military soldiers had intentionally used the nursing home as an active base to launch military strikes against Russian forces. The Associated Press was forced to reveal, “Ukraine’s armed forces bear a large, and perhaps equal, share of the blame for what happened in Stara Krasnyanka, which is about 580 kilometers (360 miles) southeast of Kyiv. A few days before the attack, Ukrainian soldiers took up positions inside the nursing home, effectively making the building a target.”

The issue of the Ukraine military, intentionally and with purposeful forethought, using civilian locations to embed their military units, highlights the inherent dangers associated with western propaganda during the conflict.  In fact, the effort to create civilian casualties seems more purposeful as a strategy to gain western media support and create stories that can be used to advance sympathy toward Ukraine, even if it means putting their own civilians in harm’s way.

(Via AP) […]  The report by the U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights doesn’t conclude the Ukrainian soldiers or the Russian troops committed a war crime. But it said the battle at the Stara Krasnyanka nursing home is emblematic of the human rights office’s concerns over the potential use of “human shields” to prevent military operations in certain areas.

The aftermath of the attack on the Stara Krasnyanka home also provides a window into how both Russia and Ukraine move quickly to set the narrative for how events are unfolding on the ground — even when those events may still be shrouded by the fog of war.

For Ukraine, maintaining the upper hand in the fight for hearts and minds helps to ensure the continued flow of billions of dollars in Western military and humanitarian aid.

[…] David Crane, a former Defense Department official and a veteran of numerous international war crime investigations, said the Ukrainian forces may have violated the laws of armed conflict by not evacuating the nursing home’s residents and staff.

“The bottom-line rule is that civilians cannot intentionally be targeted. Period. For whatever reason,” Crane said. “The Ukrainians placed those people in a situation which was a killing zone. And you can’t do that.” (read more)

Keep in mind, the United States is funding Ukraine to fight this war.  Without U.S. funding, including the shipments of weapons, the training of military units and the embedding of U.S. special forces to assist the Ukraine military, Ukraine and Russian governments would have likely entered into peace negotiations.

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Used Car Repossession Rates Double for Both Sub-Prime and Prime Borrowers, Indicates Trouble on Main Street


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 10, 2022 | Sundance

Barrons has an interesting article on an increase in bank auto repossession rates connected to defaults [see here].  Essentially, used car prices have surged significantly and the timeline seems to indicate the temporary covid-19 stimulus spending had a lot to do with the increase in demand.

According to data assembled by CoPilot, used cars are currently priced approximately 10,000 higher than they would be without any pandemic related influence, supply side or demand side.  Banks and financial institutions loaned money into the climbing market price.  However, the artificially inflated car prices now create a bubble where the liability on the books is significantly higher than the repossessed asset is worth.

A higher rate of auto loans are now defaulting for both sub-prime and prime borrowers (double for both), indicating the former buyers are under financial pressure and can no longer make their car payments.  The loan to value ratio was as high as 140% when the banks made the loans, a more traditional or normal ratio is 80%.

The banks have a vested financial interest in limiting the number of repossessed vehicles they allow into the used car auction market in order to keep the book value of the cars as high as possible.  Those banks and financial institutions have recently rented more storage space for the vehicles being repossessed.

Barrons – […] Lucky Lopez is a car dealer who has been in the business for about 20 years. In recent meetings with bankers, where he bids on repossessed vehicles before they go to auction, he has noticed some common characteristics of the defaulted loans. Most of the loans on recently repossessed cars originated during 2020 and 2021, whereas origination dates are normally scattered because people fall on hard times at different times; loan-to-value ratios, or the amount financed relative to the value of the vehicle, are around 140%, versus a more normal 80%; and many of the loans were extended to buyers who had temporary pops in income during the pandemic. Those monthly incomes fell—sometimes by half—as pandemic stimulus programs stopped, and now they look even worse on an inflation-adjusted basis and as the prices of basics in particular are climbing. (read more)

Somehow, I would hazzard a guess, if we are to follow recent precedent, that taxpayers are going to end up backstopping the financial institutions when the bubble in this asset class pops.  However, that said… the scale of these loan defaults could also foretell a significant slipping in the housing market.

…”There will not be a recession”…

Sunday Talks, Stunningly Disconnected Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo: “We Have Inflation Now Because of a Lack of Supply”


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 10, 2022 | Sundance 

Unfortunately, (a) she’s not talking about energy or oil production/supply; and (b) she believes it.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, a comprehensively incompetent and unqualified person selected to run the commerce department, blames, without hesitation, a “fundamental lack of supply” for the cause of U.S. inflation [04:38].  She’s not pretending, Raimondo genuinely believes this.

I have struggled with the question of whether it’s incompetence or intentional ideology that drives some of these cabinet members to say stupid stuff.  In the case of Commerce Secretary Raimondo, it is clearly incompetence.  In order to believe that a lack of supply is driving inflation; which is not coincidentally the same demand-cause opinion held by the federal reserve; a person has to ignore the dozens of key economic indicators that show consumer demand has contracted, inventories are climbing, and orders to manufacturers have dropped.

Even Samsung, one of the largest producers of electronics sold in the United States, has told all their suppliers to stop sending the component goods used to manufacture their products because orders for finished goods have plummeted.  Hell, consider this…. THE COMMERCE DEPARTMENT, yes, that’s right, the Department that Raimondo is in charge of, has collected the data showing RETAIL SALES have DROPPED.  Yet here she is blaming a lack of supply for inflation.  WATCH:

It is not a lack of supply driving supply side and producer inflation. It is the massive increase in material, processing and transportation costs associated with Biden’s energy policy that are impacting supply-side inflation.   Demand has contracted, inventories are climbing, manager orders have plummeted, and consumers are squeezed.  Yet this knucklehead thinks recession is unlikely.

Gina Raimondo was also on Meet The Press, with another knucklehead, Chuck Todd.

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If They Lose, You Will Eat Bugs – Dutch Farmer Spokesperson Explains How EU Climate Change Goals Will Reduce Farm Production


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 10, 2022 | Sundance

Despite the U.S. media not giving any time, attention or discussion to the rise of farmer protests in Europe, everyone should pay attention because the same climate change goals being enforced in the European Union are coming to North America.

The global food manipulators within the World Economic Forum have established the farming policy that aligns with their climate change goals. As noted in this Sky News discussion this is the Great Reset. It’s not just Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte pushing the agenda, in 2020 Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave an identical outline, with an identical timeline, for the exact same process [SEE HERE]. The collective WEF political leaders are all singing from the same hymnal.

In this discussion and interview segment, the spokesperson for Netherlands, Agricultural and Horticultural Organization Wytse Sonnema, outlines why there is such a broad sense of “frustration, anger, even despair” amongst farmers amid proposals for nitrogen reduction target plans.  This will be coming to North America soon. WATCH:

In very simple terms, the politicians cannot reduce the farming process for industrial food production without reducing the farming yield.  It is just commonsense.

You do not need to be a farmer to understand that nitrogen/phosphorus-based industrial fertilizer has been the reason why farm yields have generated massive amounts of food on a global basis.  The United States, U.K. and places like the Netherlands have massively increased their ability to generate food for export, in large part due to the success of improved fertilizer and crop saving modern pesticides.

Larger discussion continues below….

It is a simple matter of math that if North American and European farmers are forced by climate policy to reduce their food production, there will be a shortage of food.

There will be a significant gap between the food needed and the new climate driven limits on commercial food production.

This intentional curtailing of food production, that creates the purposeful shortage of food, is where Bill Gates, the WEF and the synthetic meat and bugs for food advocates enter the picture.  It appears the plan is to replace the missing global calories by changing the food supply.  Changing what and how people eat.

Lab grown (synthetic) meat, nut/soy milk to replace dairy and bugs being used as replacements for protein sources are three approaches advocated by the climate change advocates that you are likely familiar with.  However, as we saw in the pandemic response to food consumption, there is going to be a massive problem as the WEF attempts to shift food delivery within their Great Reset.

Think of the United States like a massive global farm and in this context the parallels between the U.S. and the Netherlands are quite remarkable.

Specifically, because of advancements in farming over the past two decades the United States food production has increased massively.  The same is true for North America as a whole with Mexico and Canada included.  Industrial farming advancements have made it possible to export billions of tons of food every year from our farms in North America to the rest of the world.

The Dutch farmers are like the U.S. farmers in their high productivity.  In fact, the Netherlands is the second biggest agriculture and food exporter in the world.  Even with a small population of 17 million people, the Netherlands has consistently been among the top contenders in the food export market {LINK}.  The reason is simple, they are good at it.

Dutch farmers, like American farmers, are excellent at producing food.  The Netherlands is one of the largest countries in the world when it comes to the export of agricultural goods such as meat, dairy, eggs, vegetables, and fruit.  Unfortunately, this is why the climate change activists in the World Economic Forum have targeted them.

The Dutch farmers do not have as good a political shield as the U.S. farmer have via lobbyists.  The reason the Dutch farmers have more vulnerability on a political front is because there are far more independent farmers who operate without the influence of large multinational agricultural corporations.

In the United States farming is Big Corporate Agriculture.  Those massive ‘for profit’ multinational corporations have massive lobbying power in congress.  If Biden wants to drop U.S. food production, for now he is going to run up against the interests of Big Ag, who make money from exports and control of U.S. farm harvests.  In the Netherlands, the farmers are more independent, that makes them more vulnerable to the political influences.

It’s a weird dynamic, but U.S. farmers are both exploited by, and somewhat protected by, the Big Ag mafia.  The Dutch farmers have remained stubbornly independent in their operations with less multinational influence.  Unfortunately, right now that makes them less represented in the politics of the European Union.

The Dutch farmers are fighting back against the climate change politicians in the only way they can, a grassroots uprising.  This is the battle right now in the EU, and the Dutch are being joined by their brothers and sisters in Germany, Poland and Italy. {Source}

This is not just a battle within the Netherlands and the EU to save farmers, this is a battle over the future of food in the world.

The western politicians, those who assemble under the banner of the World Economic Forum, want a world where ‘climate change’ policy drives the dictates of all human activity.  Essentially, a government policy position that allows politicians to control the behavior of humans under the guise of climate mitigation.  Ultimately it is the control part of this dynamic that is more important than the climate aspect.

The stakes in this Dutch farming protest are much bigger than just Dutch farmers.

If the farmers lose this war, we are all one step closer to eating bugs and fake meat.

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Can you see how all of these ideological policies converge?

Never Forget


Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics Re-Posted Jul 10, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

The World in Chaos


Armstrong Economics Blog/Opinion Re-Posted Jul 10, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong, it has become so apparent that sites like _____ always promote gold so they refuse ever to quote you for they are doing the very same thing of creating a cancel culture. It is their commentary or nothing else. I have stopped reading them. Then you said that your computer showed this was a year of worldwide political chaos. The events in Sri Lanka and the collapse of the British government seem to be only a tease for the midterm elections.

On top of all of this, Socrates targeted Ukraine as the hot spot and that was in 2013. I attended your 2017 Euro conference in Frankfurt. Here is a photo if you don’t have one. I admit I was skeptical of your forecast back then. You were correct when nobody else saw this collapse coming.  It seems as plain as the nose on our faces that there are some fools desperate to try to prevent people from listening to the forecasts of Socrates. That means only one thing. They are trying to manipulate the world in their own direction. If they refuse to ever quote you on gold and others are constantly trying to bash you for whatever they can twist, this means that Socrates has been right and they have been wrong.

Our politicians here in Europe are only preaching war. I concur that this appears to be a cover-up for the financial crisis they have created. Looking at Sri Lanka and how the people rose up in the face of hyperinflation because of their default on the debt, is a warning I think. Is this the same dark future for Europe since they destroyed the bond market here?  Can you shed any light on our future?

Respectfully, from Frankfurt

HM

ANSWER: The negative interest rates since 2014 has destroyed the European sovereign debt market. The REPO Crisis of 2019 was US banks refusing to lend to European. I can confirm that the top banks in NYC will no longer accept any EU sovereign debt as collateral. So Europe is there now as Sri Lanka but the ECB still has some confidence at this moment. But that does not look to be sustainable. We are probably looking at the final collapse by 2027.

A lot of people from Germany are buying land in Uruguay and Paraguay. It appears while people are flocking across the border here in the US with free money as long as they vote Democrat, but the US will probably reinstitute the draft and these newly created Democrats may find themselves dying on the battlefields of Europe. Then there is a silent exodus unfolding behind the headlines for the places that seem to be out of the way of this political chaos/war is South America and Africa.

Yes, our computer had targeted 2022 and a Panic Cycle in global politics. We are cursed with politicians who are only concerned with their own power and not the people or their countries. They are pushing for war as a distraction from the financial crisis they have created borrowing year after year with no intention of ever paying anything back. We have seen the impact of this policy in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Lebanon. It will get far worse for this economic system is collapsing.

This is a game of distraction. All they are doing is trying to create issue after issue to distract us from their economic decline. They have listened to Schwab and his WEF because he is preaching authoritarianism which will keep them in power, end democracy, and control society with an iron fist because this system is collapsing.

What they are counting on is that war with Russia will be contained conventionally and that they BELIEVE they can in fact wipe Russia from the fact of the earth as the head of the UK Army has been instructing British troops. A friend here in Florida had their son enlist and now he has been told to prepare for war in Europe. These people want war. They see this as their escape plan to prevent the financial collapse where we storm their palaces and start swimming in their pools.

They are trapped. This is their plan to retain power. Schwab has even told you that upfront – end of democracy. They are on a course to totalitarianism. They have destroyed the world economy already with their sanctions. Yet their fatal mistake will be that they will be defeated in war and it will NOT remain conventional.

They are playing Russian Roulette, but there is more than one bullet in the chamber.

Elon Musk Has Twitter Over A Barrel


Ben Shapiro  originally Published on Rumble on July 8, 2022 

Elon Musk‘s $44 billion bid for Twitter is in serious jeopardy and the billionaire is reportedly reviewing his options after his team accused the social media platform of not disclosing enough information about spam accounts. Shapiro weighs in.