The warning shots of this showdown between policymakers and farmers had already been fired on 1st October 2019, when more than 2,000 Dutch tractors caused traffic mayhem in the Netherlands in response to an announcement that livestock farms would have to be bought out and shut down to reduce nitrogen emissions. Early last year, Polish farmers blocked the border with the Ukraine demanding the re-imposition of tariffs on Ukrainean grain.

But it was not until early this year that an EU-wide protest was ignited. German and French protests and tractor blockades made international news, and the blockades were soon replicated in Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Greece, Netherlands, and Ireland. Major highways and ports were blocked and manure was poured over government buildings, as farmers across Europe expressed their frustration at rising farming costs, falling prices for their produce, and crippling environmental regulations that made their products uncompetitive in the global market.

It seems the farmers have European elites rattled, which is hardly surprising, given that EU elections are just around the corner. While the European Commission announced Tuesday it was still committed to achieving a 90% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in Europe by 2040, it conspicuously omitted any mention of how the farming sector would contribute to that ambitious target. Even more tellingly, the Commission has backed down or fudged on key climate commitments, at least temporarily.

According to politico, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced on Tuesday that “she was withdrawing an EU effort to rein in pesticide use.” The climbdown on this and other Commission proposals relating to farming was rather embarrassing for the Commission but politically inevitable, given that the protests were spreading rapidly and farmers were showing no signs of going home until their demands were met. As reported by politico,

A note on the possibility of agriculture cutting down on methane and nitrous oxides by 30 percent, which was in earlier drafts of the Commission’s 2040 proposal, was gone by the time it came out on Tuesday. Similarly excised were missives on behavioral change — possibly including eating less meat or dairy — and cutting subsidies for fossil fuels, many of which go to farmers to assist with their diesel costs. Inserted was softer language about the necessity of farming to Europe’s food security and the positive contributions it can make.

The EU Commission is playing a dangerous game. On the one hand, they are attempting to placate farmers by making expedient short-term concessions to them. On the other hand, they are holding fast to their commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions in Europe by 90% by 2040, while fudging on the fact that a 90% emission cut in 16 years would have drastic implications for farming.

It is clearly politically expedient, especially in an election year, to put out this fire of farming discontent as soon as possible, and buy some peace ahead of June’s European elections. But there is no avoiding the fact that the Commission’s long-term environmental goals, as currently conceived, almost certainly require sacrifices that farmers are simply not willling to accept.

Independently from the merits of EU climate policy, two things are clear: first, EU leaders and environmental activists appear to have vastly underestimated the backlash their policies would spark in the farming community; and second, the apparent success of this dramatic EU-wide protest sets a spectacular precedent that will not go unnoticed among farmers and transport companies, whose operating costs are heavily impacted by environmental regulations like carbon taxes.

The Commission’s embarrassing concessions are proof that high-visibility, disruptive tactics can be effective. As such, we can expect more of this after June’s EU elections if the Commission doubles down again on its climate policy goals.

About the Author

David Thunder is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Navarra’s Institute for Culture and Society in Pamplona, Spain, and a recipient of the prestigious Ramón y Cajal research grant (2017-2021, extended through 2023), awarded by the Spanish government to support outstanding research activities. Prior to his appointment to the University of Navarra, he held several research and teaching positions in the United States, including visiting assistant professor at Bucknell and Villanova, and Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Princeton University’s James Madison Program. Dr Thunder earned his BA and MA in philosophy at University College Dublin, and his Ph.D. in political science at the University of Notre Dame.

A total of 18 organizations – predominantly comprising providers of encrypted email and messaging services – have voiced concerns about the potential experimental regulation by the European Commission (EC), singling out the “detrimental” effects on children’s privacy and security and the possible dire repercussions for cyber security.

Made public on January 22, 2024, this shared open letter argues that the EC’s draft provision known as “Chat Control,” mandating the comprehensive scanning of encrypted communications, may create cyber vulnerabilities that expose citizens and businesses to increased risk. Further inflating the issue, the letter also addresses a stalemate amongst member states, the EC, and the European Parliament, who haven’t yet reconciled differing views on the proportionality and feasibility of the EC’s mass-scanning strategy in addressing child safety concerns.

Among the signatories are Proton, an encrypted email service from Switzerland; Tuta Mail and NextCloud, specializing in email and cloud storage respectively; as well as Element, a provider of encrypted communications and collaboration services. Together, they implore EU leaders to consider a more balanced version of the mandate, as suggested by the European Parliament, which experts argue to be more potent and efficient than mass scanning of encrypted services.

The proposed version of the regulation by the EC pushes tech companies to inject “backdoors” or leverage “client-side scanning”, to scrutinize the content of all encrypted communications for evidence of child sexual abuse. However, these companies are forceful in their conviction that despite its purpose to combat cybercrime, the mechanism could be swiftly utilized by offenders, “compromising security for everyone.”

The application of client-side scanning – juxtaposing “hash values” of encrypted messages with a “hash value” database of unlawful content residing on personal devices – has met stiff critique from the security community.

In defiance of the EU’s strong standpoint towards data protection, which paved the way for ethical, privacy-centric tech companies to flourish in the European market, these tech firms believe the EC’s proposal could contradict other EU regulations like the Cyber Resilience Act (CSA) and the Cybersecurity Act, which encourage the application of end-to-end encryption to counter cyber risks.

The tech firms propose alternatives to mandatory scanning they believe are more effective and prioritize data protection and security. They argue an approach aligned with the European Parliament’s proposals provides a robust framework for child protection. Moreover, they discuss the danger of such scanning technology being potentially misused by oppressive regimes to squash political dissidents.

They conclude that while they are not solely resistant to solutions, they stress the importance of devising strategies closely aligned to the European Parliament’s proposals. In a statment to Reclaim The Net Matthias Pfau, founder of Tuta, adds that such legislation “to scan every chat message and every email would create a backdoor – one that could and will be abused by criminals.”

If you’re tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net.

The EU laws consist of content moderation regulation, antitrust enforcement and artificial intelligence (AI) model rules, all carrying massive financial penalties for violation. The laws apply to platforms that have large user bases in the EU, which are mainly American companies, with the EU recently launching a formal investigation into billionaire Elon Musk’s X and bipartisan lawmakers pushing President Joe Biden to ensure the regulation does not harm U.S. firms unfairly, according to Reuters.

“The EU views industry regulations as aspirational, which means there’s an element of selective enforcement and only require industry to put good-faith efforts when complying,” Joel Thayer, president of the Digital Progress Institute, told the DCNF. “It’s why they are far more strident. … Therein lies the problem, the EU can turn the dial up or down on how fervently they will regulate. Given how broad all of these laws are—particularly the AI Act, this means that every company that either creates software, distributes software, or has it in their devices are implicated. The EU’s laws now encompass everything from social media to children’s toys.”

The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) went into effect in August, and it punishes “very large online platforms” for hosting content like “illegal hate speech” and “disinformation” with fines of up to 6% of their annual global revenue.

The EU defines “hate speech” as “public incitement to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined on the basis of race, colour, descent, religion or belief, or national or ethnic origin,” according to its law. Hate speech is not illegal in the United States under the First Amendment.

The DSA could lead to censorship of Americans because companies are incentivized to enforce the same rules worldwide.

“The European Union isn’t hiding the ball here,” James Czerniawski, senior policy analyst at Americans for Prosperity, told the DCNF. “Given the global nature of the internet, coupled with their blatant targeting of American tech firms under the DSA and DMA [Digital Markets Act], these proposals are going to impact the online experience of millions of Americans.”

Czerniawski noted the investigation the EU launched into X  for not censoring content adequately as an example of how this law impacts Americans. The EU is examining X’s lack of suppression of “illegal content” and “disinformation,” as well as its advertising practices, according to a European Commission (EC) announcement.

Germany enacted the Network Enforcement Act in 2017 to censor hate speech and false news, imposing large financial penalties, according to the Library of Congress. This law was the precursor to these newer laws leading to American censorship, Mike Benz, executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, told the DCNF.

“This is not a new or hypothetical event,” Benz asserted. “Mass censorship in the US began with European censorship laws in 2017, notably Germany’s NetzDG censorship law that functionally required AI censorship technology to comply with. This forced YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to begin adopting AI censorship techniques across the board for continuity with global markets, boomeranging back on Americans.”

Stanford Cyber Policy Center Platform Regulation Director Daphne Keller praised the DSA because of the effects it will have globally, not just in the EU, in a November 2022 article. Stanford Internet Observatory is part of the Cyber Policy Center and participated in the Election Integrity Partnership that worked to censor Americans during the 2020 elections.

“These EU censorship laws are … also designed to force platforms to hire more censors, who in turn will focus on US affairs,” Benz added. “This is why the Stanford Internet Observatory is salivating over the EU censorship laws: they know it will rig the game here in the US.”

However, the EC has denied that the DSA is about censorship in previous comments to the DCNF, stating that it maintains freedom of expression.

The DMA is antitrust regulation specifically targeting platforms with dominant market positions in the EU that are “gatekeepers,” meaning they “provide an important gateway between businesses and consumers in relation to core platform services,” according to the EC. These “gatekeepers” include American companies like Alphabet, Meta, Apple and Amazon; the DMA could limit their influence in the EU by prohibiting them from operating in a way that gives their products and services special advantages, such as app stores, search engines and web browsers.

For instance, it makes it illegal to force companies to use a platform’s payment system to be on their app store, accordingto the EC.

Democratic lawmakers recently advocated for Biden to allow the EU to enforce the DMA on American companies because it aligns with his administration’s agenda, according to a December letter.

“The criteria for the designation of gatekeepers are clearly set out in the DMA: they target companies that have a significant impact on the EU internal market, that operate as an important gateway for business users to reach end users and that have – or will have in the near future – an entrenched and durable position for their core platform services,” EC spokesman Johannes Bahrke told the DCNF. “All companies active in the EU are subject to EU rules, including the DSA and the DMA, irrespective of their place of establishment.”

The DMA includes penalties of up to 10% of a company’s annual global revenue, according to the EC.

“The EC can use the law to be retaliatory. Keep in mind that Article 4 allows the EC to reconsider each company’s ‘gatekeeper’ designation,” Thayer told the DCNF. “The EU can negotiate with Google to keep it off the EC’s gatekeeper list provided that it combats ‘misinformation.’ Or arbitrarily designate X as a ‘gatekeeper’ (not currently listed) simply because they don’t like Elon Musk’s decision to allow more offensive content on its platform. Frankly, there’s a strong case that the DMA can lead to more government jawboning in the EU.”

The AI Act is the newest tech regulatory development, as EU lawmakers reached a landmark agreement on it in December, according to The New York Times. It is sweeping regulation on AI, which is yet another U.S.-dominated industry.

The law contains ethical and safety standards that AI models must adhere to, including being “non-discriminatory.” It also states that “AI used to exploit the vulnerabilities of people (due to their age, disability, social or economic situation)” is considered a “banned application,” according to the agreement; the law contains penalties of up to 7% of annual global revenue.

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When people see current systems failing, they are more likely to be open to bigger changes.  As Daisy noted, when FedNow was announced in March, it came on the heels of multiple large bank failures.

Likewise, many people now recognize that the worldwide response to Covid was a total fiasco.  The WHO is trying to use this as an excuse to centralize control. The causes behind both the bank failures and the events surrounding Covid are still highly debatable.  People worldwide have been discussing these issues for years.

Europeans may lose their ability to even complain about current events.

Europe’s Digital Services Act (DSA) is coming online this August.  The DSA aims to curtail illegal online activity and restrict targeted advertising. The largest companies, those with over 45 million European users, will face fines of up to 6% of their annual turnover if they fail to comply with the new rules.  They will have to be transparent about how they moderate content, advertise, and use algorithmic processes. Hosting services and domain registrars are now responsible for reporting criminal offenses to authorities and cooperating with national law enforcement.

Like many other laws, much of the Digital Services Act seems reasonable on the face.  I don’t like targeted ads.  I think it would be nice for people that have been de-platformed from social media to understand why.

However, the DSA also contains provisions for combating disinformation, which means that it can be used to police online speech.

Is this the first we’ve heard of something like this?

No, this isn’t much of a stretch. France has already threatened to kick out Twitter. A voluntary agreement had been put into place between Big Tech and the European Commission to help the largest tech companies comply with the Digital Services Act’s new obligations. Twitter had been on board at first, then backed out due to Elon Musk’s concerns regarding free speech.

Upon Twitter’s withdrawal, France’s Digital Minister Jean-Noël Barrot publicly stated, “Twitter, if it repeatedly doesn’t follow our rules, will be banned from the EU.”  He also posted on Twitter, “Fighting disinformation will be legal obligation under #DSA.”

In general, the DSA grants companies like Twitter a fair amount of leeway in what constitutes disinformation.  However, it does contain a crisis mechanism that will grant the European Commission much more power to restrict speech in times of crisis.  In the law, “crisis” has been given the broad definition of extraordinary circumstances that can lead to a “serious threat to public security or public health.” This is a pretty broad definition, and its lack of specificity has already drawn the ire of civil rights groups.

And it doesn’t help that the EU has already shut down large media outlets without so much as a court order.  After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the European Commission passed a series of measures aimed at curtailing the spread of Russia Times and Sputnik, both media outlets paid to propagandize for the Russian government.  Cable, satellite, IP-TV, internet service providers, and internet video-sharing platforms such as YouTube and TikTok all removed content within a short time period.

I don’t think Russia is totally innocent here, but that’s beside the point.  My point is simply that the EU has already shown itself willing to shut down huge media outlets.  In the same way that FedNow is putting in a framework for CBDCs, in the same way that the WHO is setting up a framework for worldwide health programs, the Digital Services Act is putting in a framework for widespread internet control within Europe.

And once it’s up and running there, who says this framework can’t spread?

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed at the size and breadth of freedom-restricting frameworks being put into place.  Megalomaniacs have always dreamt of world domination; the only difference now is that our technology and global interconnectedness have made one-world government a real possibility.

The desire to centralize power has been around longer than the World Economic Forum.  Read Carroll Quigley’s The Anglo-American Establishment, which you can download for free here, and you’ll see, in letters written between British aristocrats a century ago, that this is not a new impulse.

And it is not just a desire for raw power but a belief in their own righteousness that makes globalists so dangerous.  Watch some of the videos of the WEF; read some of the letters re-printed in The Anglo-American Establishment.  There has been a group of very wealthy, very powerful people absolutely convinced that they have a moral duty to manage the rest of us for a long time now.

Personally, I think this kind of arrogance is insane.

But thinking that isn’t enough.  The only way to counter the frameworks of control currently being put in place is to come up with our own frameworks for resistance.

In a recent interview with Redacted, former British Parliamentary candidate Jim Ferguson had some interesting thoughts on how to think of ourselves in facing down this power-mad behemoth of wannabe world governors.  He said that resistance could take place at three levels: strategic, tactical, and operational.

The strategic level would be international, consisting of people getting together in agreement to work toward national sovereignty for individual countries around the globe.  This is what Ferguson does himself. This would be the role of politicians that truly had their countries’ best interests at heart.

The tactical level would be regional, addressing specific issues.  This would consist of groups like the various Freedom Convoys or the Dutch Farmers’ Defense Force.

And finally, at the operational level, we have the people that just keep things running.  This would be those of us engaged in the day-to-day work of growing food, keeping the lights on, and raising the next generation of children.  It’s easy to see many of these tasks as insignificant in the face of powerful global movements, but they aren’t.

Join the parallel economy.

If you are stuck in a job that you feel is meaningless, think about what kind of productive hobby you could pursue, something that would give you a spot in a parallel economy.  This could be something you and your family do together.  If you need direction, look at what the World Economic Forum wants us to do, and then run the opposite way.

Henry Kissinger said a long time ago, “Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”

If you want to take back some control in your life, perhaps you should start with your food supply.

We talk about food production a lot on this website and for good reason.  Most people can produce at least something, and producing one thing often leads to the development of many other skills.  For many people, some productive tomato plants in their suburban backyards lead to learning how to can, which leads them to buy in bulk from farmers’ markets, which leads them to meet like-minded people, and it just keeps going on.

Once you start doing something truly productive, other pursuits will eventually follow.  Can you always plan this all out?  Of course not.  The important thing is to start and to be willing to see where your journey toward increasing independence takes you.

The best way to resist these frameworks for control currently being put into place is to develop our own set of frameworks for resistance.  I think Ferguson’s way of thinking about strategic, tactical, and operational levels is a good place to start.

It may be hard to think of yourself as part of something meaningful when you spend your day engaged in menial tasks.  However, if you can begin to see yourself as part of a parallel economy – part of an active resistance – you will gain enough strength and confidence to oppose these forces that want to see us all in their rigid little frameworks.

Owning nothing and happy about it.

What’s your take?

Do you think the Digital Services Act is going to be used to gain global control? Do you think this is going to be implemented in the United States? Do you have any suggestions on some things we can do to gain independence from a situation like this?

Let’s discuss it in the comments section.

About Marie Hawthorne

A lover of novels and cultivator of superb apple pie recipes, Marie spends her free time writing about the world around her. Article cross-posted from The Organic Prepper.

Rutte’s desire to limit migrants and refugees was his last conservative thought. Otherwise, he has been a diligent pawn of the Globalist Elite Cabal since assuming office 13 years ago. It’s ironic that his downfall finally came when he was finally trying to do something positive for his nation.

Dutch activist Eva Vlaardingerbroek is thrilled.

BREAKING: the Dutch government has COLLAPSED. FINALLY.

After 10+ years of Mark Rutte’s globalist destruction policies, we now have a real chance of getting our country back.

From what I can tell about the situation now, I think the actual fall of the cabinet itself is all…

— Eva Vlaardingerbroek (@EvaVlaar) July 7, 2023

Here is the news article generated from reports from the Netherlands.

The Dutch government has collapsed after failing to reach an agreement on immigration restrictions, leading to new elections scheduled for the fall.

The crisis arose from Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s conservative VVD party’s push to limit the influx of asylum seekers to the Netherlands, a proposition that two of the four-party government coalition refused to support.

During a televised news conference, Rutte stated, “It’s no secret that the coalition partners have differing opinions about immigration policy. Today we unfortunately have to conclude that those differences have become insurmountable. Therefore, I will tender the resignation of the entire cabinet to the king.”

Tensions escalated this week when Rutte sought backing for a proposal to restrict the entry of children from war refugee backgrounds who are already in the Netherlands and to implement a waiting period of at least two years before families can be reunited.

The small Christian Union and liberal D66 parties opposed the proposal, leading to a deadlock.

Rutte’s coalition will remain as a caretaker government until a new administration is formed after the upcoming elections. In the fragmented Dutch political landscape, the process of forming a new government typically takes several months.

According to the national elections committee, elections are projected to take place no earlier than mid-November, as reported by the ANP news agency.

As a caretaker government, Rutte’s administration cannot make decisions on new policies. However, Rutte assured that it would not impact the country’s support for Ukraine.

The Netherlands already has one of Europe’s strictest immigration policies. Nevertheless, under pressure from right-wing parties, Rutte had been attempting to find ways to further reduce the inflow of asylum seekers for months.

Last year, asylum applications in the Netherlands increased by a third, surpassing 46,000. The government anticipates that the number could exceed 70,000 this year, surpassing the previous peak in 2015.

This surge in asylum applications will strain the country’s reception facilities, where hundreds of refugees were forced to sleep outdoors without adequate access to water, sanitation, or healthcare for months last year.

Rutte expressed his “shame” about the situation last year when Médecins Sans Frontières sent a team to the Netherlands for the first time to assist with the medical needs of migrants at the asylum processing center.

He pledged to improve conditions at the facilities, primarily by reducing the number of refugees arriving in the Netherlands. However, he failed to secure the support of coalition partners who believed his policies went too far.

Rutte, who is 56 years old, holds the record for the longest-serving government leader in Dutch history. He is also the most senior leader in the EU after Hungary’s Viktor Orban. It is expected that Rutte will lead his VVD party once again in the upcoming elections.

The current coalition, which came into power in January 2022, is Rutte’s fourth consecutive administration since he assumed the position of prime minister in October 2010.