Anti-semitic defender of Hamas Dutch PM Dries Van Agt 93 and wife die in double euthanasia

Dries Van Agt, who served as prime minister of the Netherlands from 1977 to 1982, and whom Dutch watchdog groups condemned in recent years as an antisemite, chose to die last Monday with the assistance of a doctor, along with his wife. He was 93. ... In 2008, the former prime minister spoke at a rally featuring a televised address by a Hamas official. As a justice minister in the 1970s, Van Agt cited his "Aryan" roots in explaining his plan to pardon four Nazi war criminals due to health reasons.

More.

Drone launched from Iran attacks chemical tanker in Indian Ocean 200 nautical miles off the coast of India, its seventh such attack on commercial shipping since 2021

 “The motor vessel CHEM PLUTO, a Liberia-flagged, Japanese-owned, and Netherlands-operated chemical tanker was struck at approximately 10 a.m. local time (6 a.m. GMT) today in the Indian Ocean, 200 nautical miles from the coast of India, by a one-way attack drone fired from Iran,” a Pentagon spokesperson told Reuters. 

More.

The real headline is: Dutch Muslims not afraid of Geert Wilders' big win because Dutch system means he will have to compromise

 Muslims in shock over anti-Islam party's Dutch poll win :

"In part the message is that many people are xenophobic and don't want foreigners or Muslims. But another message is that people are very disappointed in 13 years of Rutte," [one Muslim] said. ...

"He will not make the laws alone (other parties) will join and they have to cooperate," Kemal Yildiz, 54, said. "It will be fine," Yildiz added.

 

Kansas' liberal 22-week abortion gestational limit makes it an outlier like The Netherlands in Europe

 KANSAS VOTERS KEEP ABORTION

 

 

The UK and The Netherlands join Germany in crying uncle over Russian energy embargo to stop Ukraine war

CNBC here:

Germany, the Netherlands and the U.K. have appeared to back away from a coordinated Western embargo on Russian energy exports, however. ...

Western sanctions imposed on Russia over the invasion have so far been carefully constructed to avoid directly hitting the country’s energy exports, although there are already signs the measures are inadvertently prompting banks and traders to shun Russian crude. ...

“You can’t simply close down use of oil and gas overnight, even from Russia. That’s obviously not something that every country around the world can do,” Johnson said. ...

Dock workers in the UK and Netherlands refuse to unload Russian oil, gas, and coal

 Story.

Shhhhh, don't tell The Vaccine Church about The Netherlands or Spain, wouldn't want to upset their faith or anything

 

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Climate Scientists Write To UN: There Is No Climate Emergency:

Professor Guus Berkhout
The Hague
guus.berkhout@clintel.org

23 September 2019

Sr. António Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations,
United Nations Headquarters,
New York, NY 10017, United States of America.

Ms. Patricia Espinosa Cantellano, Executive Secretary,
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,
UNFCCC Secretariat, UN Campus, Platz der Vereinten Nationen 1,
53113 Bonn, Germany

Your Excellencies,

There is no climate emergency.

A global network of more than 500 knowledgeable and experienced scientists and professionals in climate and related fields have the honor to address to Your Excellencies the attached European Climate Declaration, for which the signatories to this letter are the national ambassadors.

The general-circulation models of climate on which international policy is at present founded are unfit for their purpose. Therefore, it is cruel as well as imprudent to advocate the squandering of trillions on the basis of results from such immature models. Current climate policies pointlessly, grievously undermine the economic system, putting lives at risk in countries denied access to affordable, continuous electrical power.

We urge you to follow a climate policy based on sound science, realistic economics and genuine concern for those harmed by costly but unnecessary attempts at mitigation.

We ask you to place the Declaration on the agenda of your imminent New York session.

We also invite you to organize with us a constructive high-level meeting between world-class scientists on both sides of the climate debate early in 2020. The meeting will give effect to the sound and ancient principle no less of sound science than of natural justice that both sides should be fully and fairly heard. Audiatur et altera pars!

Please let us know your thoughts about such a joint meeting.

Yours sincerely, ambassadors of the European Climate Declaration,

Professor Guus Berkhout                               The Netherlands
Professor Richard Lindzen                             USA
Professor Reynald Du Berger                         French Canada
Professor Ingemar Nordin                              Sweden
Terry Dunleavy                                               New Zealand
Jim O’Brien                                                     Rep. of Ireland
Viv Forbes                                                       Australia
Professor Alberto Prestininzi                          Italy
Professor Jeffrey Foss                                     English Canada
Professor Benoît Rittaud                                 France
Morten Jødal                                                   Norway
Professor Fritz Vahrenholt                              Germany
Rob Lemeire                                                    Belgium
The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley            UK

There is no climate emergency
A global network of 500 scientists and professionals has prepared this urgent message. Climate science should be less political, while climate polities should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address the uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real benefits as well as the imagined costs of adaptation to global warming, and the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of mitigation.

Natural as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming
The geological archive reveals that Earth’s climate has varied as long as the planet has existed, with natural cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age ended as recently as 1850. Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming.

Warming is far slower than predicted
The world has warmed at less than half the originally-predicted rate, and at less than half the rate to be expected on the basis of net anthropogenic forcing and radiative imbalance. It tells us that we are far from understanding climate change.

Climate policy relies on inadequate models
Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools. Moreover, they most likely exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases such as CO2. In addition, they ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.

CO2 is plant food, the basis of all life on Earth
CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth. Photosynthesis is a blessing. More CO2 is beneficial for nature, greening the Earth: additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also good for agriculture, increasing the yields of crop worldwide.

Global warming has not increased natural disasters
There is no statistical evidence that global warming is intensifying hurricanes, floods, droughts and suchlike natural disasters, or making them more frequent. However, CO2-mitigation measures are as damaging as they are costly. For instance, wind turbines kill birds and bats, and palm-oil plantations destroy the biodiversity of the rainforests.

Policy must respect scientific and economic realities
There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm. We strongly oppose the harmful and unrealistic net-zero CO2 policy proposed for 2050. If better approaches emerge, and they certainly will, we have ample time to reflect and adapt. The aim of international policy should be to provide reliable and affordable energy at all times, and throughout the world.

Read full story here…

Pure insanity: 20% of total global bond market pays negative interest

Opinion: We haven’t seen interest rates this low since before Hammurabi, so what bonds should you buy?:

 

Some $13 trillion in bonds are paying negative interest rates, which means bondholders actually pay for the privilege of holding an issuer’s bonds. That represents more than 20% of a total global bond market value of $55 trillion, according to Bloomberg. Other bonds are paying positive rates so low they carry a real (after inflation) negative yield as well. ... Some civilizations, like the early Roman Catholic Church and Islam, were opposed to charging interest, but negative rates just didn’t happen, as far as Sylla knows, until the modern era. Now 14 European countries, including France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain, have negative interest rates on their two-year bonds.

 

Wilders' Dutch Freedom Party gains 5 seats over 2012, ruling People's Party loses 8, media say Wilders defeated

Rush Limbaugh, expert in European history: "Belgium has never been a real country"

Here.

Belgium seceded from the Netherlands in 1830 and has been an independent country ever since. My father helped liberate it from the Germans in 1944. Idiot.

EuroGroup president Jeroen Dijsselbloem gets a new name: Lightweight Weaselbloom

Yanis Varoufakis, quoted here:

'In the full transcript published on his blog, Varoufakis also laid into the Eurogroup president, Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, saying he was key to the Greek deal “not just because he is so intellectually lightweight but, primarily, because he is untrustworthy. For example, he chose to lie to me in my first Eurogroup about procedure. It is one thing to disagree with the Eurogroup president. It is quite another thing to have him lie to you about gravely important procedures.”'

German Bunds make history, yields fall below 1%, poor GDP blamed on MILD winter!

Germany now joins Japan and Switzerland in the below 1% yield club. The rush into the safety of government bonds driving down yields is a sign everywhere of lousy productivity.

Meanwhile yields below 2% exist in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Sweden, The Netherlands, Ireland, France, Finland, Denmark, The Czech Republic, Belgium, and Austria. Finland is the lowest of these presently at 1.14%.

CNBC reports here:

"Following disappointing growth data for the euro zone, 10-year yields finally broke through the 1 percent handle on Thursday—a first—dipping to an intraday low of 0.998 percent.  Yields then fell below 1 percent again on Friday, on reports that Ukrainian troops had attacked armed Russian military, which had crossed into the country near the border of Izvaryne. U.S. yields also declined, hitting a low of 2.333 percent, while the euro and European stocks turned negative."

German GDP fell in the second quarter from the first, at -0.6% annualized, which was, believe it or not, blamed on a mild winter there after poor GDP Stateside was blamed on an unusually harsh one.

The Wall Street Journal reported with a straight face here:

"Germany's economy, long Europe's growth engine, shrank for the first time in more than a year, a development economists largely attributed to a mild winter that boosted activity in the first quarter at the expense of the second. The bigger concerns, they say, are France and Italy, where respectable rates of growth aren't even in sight."

Oh well, at least they wrote "shrank".

33% Increase In Dutch Euthanasia Misreported As 13%

The figure for 2011 was 3,136, meaning the 2012 increase to 4,188 is 33%, not 13% as reported here by The UK Telegraph.

Russia Was Just The Excuse For The Eurogroup To Steal From Cyprus

So says Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, here, for the UK Telegraph:

"First they purloin the savings and bank deposits in Laiki and the Bank of Cyprus, including the working funds of the University of Cyprus, and thousands of small firms hanging on by their fingertips. Then they seize three quarters of the country’s gold reserves, making it ever harder for Cyprus to extricate itself from EMU at a later date. ...

"Cypriots are learning what it means to be a member of monetary union when things go badly wrong. The crisis costs have suddenly jumped from €17bn to €23bn, and the burden of finding an extra €6bn will fall on Cyprus alone. ...

"The workhouse treatment of Cyprus is nevertheless remarkable. The creditor powers walked away from their fresh pledges for an EMU banking union by whipping up largely bogus allegations of Russian money-laundering in Nicosia. A Council of Europe by a British prosecutor has failed to validate the claims. The EU authorities have gone to great lengths to insist that Cyprus is a 'special case', but I fail to see what is special about it. There is far more Russian money – laundered or otherwise – in the Netherlands. The banking centres of Ireland and Malta are just as large as a share of GDP. Luxembourg’s banking centre is at least four times more leveraged to the economy. ...

"The original plan in Cyprus – approved by the Eurogroup, but rejected by the Cypriot parliament – was to steal the money from any bank regardless of its health, and from small depositors regardless of the €100,000 guarantee. They have shown their character. The Eurogroup don’t give a damn about moral hazard. They are thieves."

EU Fascism: Methinks Mr. Barroso Doth Protest Too Much Of Democracy

So does Ambrose Evans-Pritchard here, who for prudential reasons does not call Mr. Barroso's EU fascist, but he might as well have:

I would accept that six or seven of the EU states are genuine long-established democracies. Others are – frankly, to borrow Mr Barroso’s diction – on probation, in historical terms. Some do not qualify at all. (I refrain from naming them for fear of extradition by one of their politico-magistrates under the European Arrest Warrant scheme, sold to voters as an anti-terrorism device and now used to muzzle free speech).

As for the EU itself, the organisation toppled the elected governments of Italy and Greece last year, replacing them with EU technocrats.

It ignored the NO votes to the European Constitution in France and The Netherlands, ramming through the slightly-altered text as the Lisbon Treaty without referendums – except in Ireland. When the Irish voted NO to that as well, they too were ignored.

That was the moment when the EU crossed the line altogether and lost fundamental legitimacy (at least for me). Lisbon is a rogue Treaty. Mr Barroso – charming though he may be – is a rogue president of a rogue Commission.

The whole construct has become authoritarian and will become autocratic if this crisis is exploited to force through fiscal union.

So we face democratic danger if they take the necessary steps to rescue the euro, and we face financial danger if they don’t.

Thanks a lot.

It's not like the analogy hasn't occurred to him very recently, either, as here:

It was for this outcome that the Greece’s elected government was toppled last year in an EU Putsch. We now learn from ex-premier George Papandreou that this was "all Sarkozy’s fault".

France’s leader refused to let Papandreou call a referendum on the bail-out terms (which would almost certainly have passed), and Chancellor Angela Merkel went along with this shoddy act of EU colonialism. The EU threatened, in effect, to cut off Troika payments. The PASOK government was replaced by an EU-appointed technocrat. ...

Year after year of "internal devaluation" will drive [Greek] unemployment to catastrophic levels before it breaks the back of the labour movement sufficiently to clear the way for drastic pay cuts. It is basically a Fascist policy. Mussolini pulled it of in 1928 under the Lira Forte policy, but he had coercive advantages.

Goodbye Euro. Get Ready For The New Thaler, The Dollar's Forebear.

From Germany, of course.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard summarizes the recent developments about a North-South split in Europe, here:

Unease over escalating euro rescues is building by the day in Germany. Forty economists and professors have written a joint letter to Mrs Merkel proposing a break-away "Northern Euro", exhorting her to step back from the brink before making the "even greater error" of ratifying the ESM.

The group said Berlin must clarify exactly how much Germany could stand to lose from the ECB's internal payments system, known as Target2. The Bundesbank claims on fellow central banks have exploded to €699bn, or 27pc of German GDP. The arcane issue of Target2 has fueled a hot-tempered debate in Germany over who foots the bill if monetary union falls apart.

The professors called for study laying out the pros and cons of a return to the D-Mark, or the creation of a new currency or "North Euro" led by Germany, the Netherlands, and like-minded states.

The idea of a North Euro -- or "Thaler", the coin of the late Holy Roman Empire -- was first [m]ooted by the former chief of the German Industry Federation, Hans-Olaf Henkel.

It would let southern EMU states to keep the euro and uphold euro debt contracts. The region could reflate and regain trade competitivenes with a weaker exchange rate.

While the letter is unlikely to sway thinking in Berlin, such radical proposals are gaining a wider hearing. Georg Schuh, chief investor of Deutsche Bank's DB Advisers, said the crisis is terminal. "A break-up of the eurozone is very likely. Capital markets have already priced it i[n]. I think we are in the end-phase," he said.

Retail Collapses in The Netherlands, Unsold Housing Inventory Nearing Spanish Levels

So says Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, here:

Dutch retail sales collapsed by 11pc in April, even worse than the 9.7pc drop in Spain. (Royal holidays cannot explain this). ...

This is not contagion from Greece or any such nonsense. It is the result of the eurozone's destructive policy mix. ...

The consequence of Holland’s accelerating downward slide may well be an anti-euro coalition in The Hague this Autumn.

I reported from Amsterdam in April that the Dutch property market is tipping into deeper slump, with the inventory of unsold homes nearing Spanish levels . . .: Rabobank said home prices have fallen 11pc from their peak in August 2008, or 15pc in real terms, leaving up to 500,000 people in negative equity. The stock of unsold properties has doubled to 221,000 since 2008, almost double the declared level in the US on a per-capita basis.

"It Is The Government, Not The Citizen, Who Spent Too Much"

So says Geert Wilders of The Netherlands, quoted here:

The Dutch prime minister said his country faced a crisis and asked parliament to push through budget cuts after his government lost the support of its main political ally and tendered its resignation.

"Standing still is not good for the Netherlands. The problems are serious, the economy is stalling, employment is under pressure and government debt is growing faster than the Netherlands can afford," Prime Minister Mark Rutte told parliament on Tuesday, according to Reuters.

"Those are the facts and nobody can run away from them. I'm standing here without pretences, it is up to parliament and the voters."

Geert Wilders' Freedom Party had backed the government for the past 18 months but said he was no longer willing to be dictated to by Europe.

"It is the government, not the citizen, not Henk and Ingrid, who spent too much. Either we choose to act in the interests of Henk and Ingrid or we act in the interests of Brussels," Wilders said.

Euro Zone GDP Flat For Q1 2012 After -0.3 Q4 2011

CNBC.com here has the full story.

For Q1 2012 Germany carried the weight for the whole zone, with growth up 0.5 percent.

But France was flat at zero growth.

Italy was down at -0.8 percent, and down -1.3 year-over-year.

The Netherlands came in at -0.2, and -1.1 year-over-year.

Spain was down at -0.3 percent.

Markets across the pond at this hour are down 1 percent.