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

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

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

Image: Gideon van Meijeren. Rumble screen grab.

In the midst of this upheaval, a young man named Gideon van Meijeren was recently elected to the Dutch Parliament. It’s very likely that his candidacy reflects Dutch citizens’ increasing disgust with the government’s endless extensions of its newly acquired COVID power over the people.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Stunning: Facebook court filing admits ‘fact checks’ are just a matter of opinion

December 10, 2021

Stunning: Facebook court filing admits ‘fact checks’ are just a matter of opinion

Surprisingly little attention is being paid to a bombshell admission made by the attorneys representing the corporation formerly known as Facebook, Inc., which has now transitioned into Meta Platforms, Inc.

In a court filing responding to a lawsuit filed by John Stossel claiming that he was defamed by a “fact check” Facebook used to label a video by him as “misleading,” Meta’s attorneys assert that the “fact check” was an “opinion,” not an actual check of facts and declaration of facts. Under libel law, opinions are protected from liability for libel.

Anthony Watts of Wattsupwiththat explains:

Opinions are not subject to defamation claims, while false assertions of fact can be subject to defamation. The quote in Facebook’s complaint is,

Meta’s attorneys come from the white shoe law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dore, with over a thousand attorneys and more than a billion dollars a year in revenue. They obviously checked out the implications of the matter for Section 230 issues, the legal protection Facebook/Meta have from liability for what is posted on their site. But at a minimum, this is a public relations disaster, revealing that their “fact checks” are not factual at all and should be labeled as “our opinion” or some such language avoiding the word “fact.”

As an amateur, it seems to me that if Facebook inserts its opinions into posts or blocks them because of its opinion, then that does make it a publisher with legal responsibility for what appears on its website.

Technically speaking, Facebook farms out its “fact-checking” to outside organizations, usually left-wing groups. In the case of Stossel’s video that was defamed, the outside website is called “Climate Feedback,” which is also named a defendant in the lawsuit.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

COP-26 is a global energy embarrassment

October 30, 2021

COP-26 is a global energy embarrassment

For 26 futile years, the net-zero maniacs have wasted fuel, energy, and taxpayers’ money to bite the hands that provide their food, energy, welfare, and public-sector jobs.

Led by E.U. and AUKUS dreamers, they destroy reliable energy from coal, oil, nuclear, gas, and hydro while forcing us to subsidize net-negative dreams like solar, wind, wave-power, CCUS, hot rocks, pumped hydro, and hydrogen. All such speculative ventures should be funded by speculators, not taxpayers.

COP-Out-26 illustrates to the realists of China, Russia, India, and Brazil that the West has lost its marbles and is in terminal decline. For Scott Morrison to surrender Australia to these green wolves betrays an army of miners, farmers, truckies, and workers in primary, secondary, and tertiary industries that support him and his Canberra pack.

The fakery of COP-Out-26 is well illustrated by the provision of diesel generators to recharge the batteries of 26 electric cars provided for show in Glasgow. But that’s OK “because the diesels are run on recycled chip fat.” Horses and covered wagons would be more reliable and appropriate, and dried horse manure could cook their fake meat on their green, chip-fired barbeques.

Neither E.U. nor AUKUS green dreamers can run their world on energy plans drafted by neurotic schoolgirls, clueless princes, deluded accountants like Ross Garnaut, and serial climate alarmists like David Attenborough.

China loves Net-Zero, using its growing coal power to manufacture the wind turbines, solar panels, electric engines, and rare earth batteries for the woke world.But the subsidy tap feeding green energy development in the Western world will run dry. Fake energy will fade away, leaving a continent of jobless people with silent mills, refineries, and factories…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Green Policies Return the World to Coal

October 18, 2021

Green Policies Return the World to Coal

There’s scarcely a place in the modern world that will not be feeling the high cost and discomfort of a shortage of energy supplies and their increasingly soaring prices. Lebanon already is. Due to a shortage of oil, the two power plants that supply 40% of that country’s electricity shut down. There is no electricity in Lebanon and will not be any for some days.

It’s an extreme case, but even the United Kingdom, the EU, the U.S., and China are running up against diminishing ability to obtain the necessary energy supplies to keep things running smoothly. Some of the shortages are due to accidents, like the cutting of an undersea cable to the UK, but most are due to green policies and stupid political choices, ironically shutting down oil and gas-fired power plants and fossil fuel exploitation and transport at the demand of the greens, who grossly overestimate both global warming and the ability of air, sun and water to take their place. Ironically, this means coal — the dirtiest possible fuel — is back in huge demand,

Despite an import ban on Australian coal, China relented and has begun unloading Australian coal because of an extreme power crunch. Coal is now in demand in Europe as gas prices soar and the EU’s energy policies are in large responsible:

The ideological split will drive a wedge between the European Union, a long-time champion of a coal phaseout, and corporate interests as market conditions favour gas-to-coal switching. The switching ratio has slid in coal’s favour in the last weeks of June 2021 and judging by the current futures structure, it will stay in place until at least Q2-2022 [snip] Given the natural limitations to further coal utilization, in Germany the main interaction in the upcoming weeks will be between coal and wind…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Report: Hackers can now cause blackouts on US electrical grid

September 9, 2017

Report: Hackers can now cause blackouts on US electrical grid

It was inevitable that someday, hackers would have the ability to exert control over the U.S. electrical grid. According to the computer security firm Symantec, someday is today.

Hacking attacks over the last several months that targeted U.S. energy companies have been able to gain “operational control” over systems, thus threatening blackouts across the U.S., says Symantec. The hacker group known as DragonFly 2.0 was able to gain control in at least 20 places, according to the firm.

Wired:

Symantec on Wednesday revealed a new campaign of attacks by a group it is calling Dragonfly 2.0, which it says targeted dozens of energy companies in the spring and summer of this year. In more than 20 cases, Symantec says the hackers successfully gained access to the target companies’ networks. And at a handful of US power firms and at least one company in Turkey – none of which Symantec will name – their forensic analysis found that the hackers obtained what they call operational access: control of the interfaces power company engineers use to send actual commands to equipment like circuit breakers, giving them the ability to stop the flow of electricity into US homes and businesses.

“There’s a difference between being a step away from conducting sabotage and actually being in a position to conduct sabotage … being able to flip the switch on power generation,” says Eric Chien, a Symantec security analyst. “We’re now talking about on-the-ground technical evidence this could happen in the US, and there’s nothing left standing in the way except the motivation of some actor out in the world.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Peak Oil: Are We Not Better Than This? Pt 1

April 1, 2016

Peak Oil: Are We Not Better Than This? Pt 1

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I’ll confess that I hesitated before starting this series. It was too easy to again just dive into mockery and sarcasm over pieces written several weeks ago by those who refuse to give credence to the concept of peak oil and/or its implications. [It’s also the gateway to yet another round of verbal grenade lobbing which generates a lot of high-five’s with fellow ideologues, but little else.]

I’ve contributed my share of mocking on numerous occasions, to be sure. It’s just part of the ongoing Left-Right hostilities….Tiresome. Pointless. Embarrassing. Damaging … always.

That exercise would have been gratifying to me, but only me. I need to have a more enlightened response to the question posed above. Doing more of the same will produce more of the same, and few of us seem to be benefitting from that strategy these days.

At first glance the subject matter of this series [Friday-only, and for a number of weeks to follow] may seem to be yet another opportunity to take down yet another [two, actually] light-on-facts, right-wing Happy Talk offerings generated for public consumption. Like so many others of similar content and intent, they played well to the far reaches of the Right, judging by most of the comments, and they were consistent with the messages offered in opposition to all things Obama and/or progressives.

Neither those comments nor the material offered by the two writers for their respective conservative publications [American Thinker and Townhall, to be discussed later in this series] were much different than countless others supporting the same essential message: but for President Obama, America would be great, yadda, yadda, yadda; and we have more than enough energy resources available to us for almost forever, yadda, yadda, yadda.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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