On Tuesday night, police reportedly fired live shots at farmer protesters in the Dutch city of Heerenveen in the northern part of the country. Provincial Friesland Police categorized the gunfire as “targeted” warning shots intended to interrupt what they termed a “threatening situation” as the protesters allegedly attempted to breach a line of police and police vehicles.
At least two shots were fired by police as a farm vehicle crossed the centerline of a highway and drove past officers. According to police one tractor was hit with shots. Three arrests were made.
“A tractor was hit. A tractor drove away from the incident and was stopped shortly afterwards on Jousterweg. Three suspects have been arrested. No one was injured. The road is currently closed for the investigation,” [Google translation] Friesland Police reported.
Tensions in the Netherlands continue to rise as the nation looks to enforce draconian European Union-based climate rules, which will put many farmers out of business. The Dutch government is pushing emissions reductions of nitrogen oxide and methane, which climate alarmists believe are contributing to a mild global temperature increase.
As economist Steve Hanke observed: “The Greenies appear to have gone nuts.”
Some videos reportedly show police drawing weapons and pointing them at protestors.
Farmers believe that they’re being unfairly targeted with the emissions cuts while other greenhouse gas emitting industries such as construction, aviation, and transportation face far less onerous emission cuts.
The left-wing Dutch government is attempting to impose the EU’s Natura 2000 agenda, which states that the bloc’s 27 member states “must ensure that the sites are managed in a sustainable manner, both ecologically and economically.”
Ensuring that the Netherlands meets EU demands will allegedly include a 30 percent across the board cut in nitrogen oxide emissions produced by livestock. In “protected habitat” areas the cuts are even more arduous with emissions expected to be reduced by 70 to 95 percent in some cases.
The measures will require that Dutch farmers dispose of 30 percent of their livestock.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte referred to the farm killing emissions cuts as an “unavoidable transition.”
Rutte has openly admitted that the Netherlands’ agricultural system is basically a target in the climate change war: “This sector will change, but unfortunately there’s no choice, we have to bring down nitrogen emissions,” Rutte said – the equivalent of a metaphorical shrug.
Dutch farmers have been protesting these climate-based measures since 2019 and, only now, as farmers grow more desperate to hang on to their livelihoods, is the global news media paying any attention to them.
The Dutch farmers may have been the progenitors of Canada’s trucker protests, which gained global attention when trucks parked for weeks on the streets of Ottawa. That non-violent protest against COVID-19 vaccination mandates, was eventually stopped through authoritarian measures taken by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Desperate Dutch farmers have blocked access to deliveries to supermarkets, blocked roads and highways with their equipment and have even resorted to spreading manure on government buildings — all in an attempt to make their point that their existence is more important than the EU’s arbitrary greenhouse-gas emissions goals.
Dutch politicians, on the other hand, throw up their hands and simply claim that the “science” has spoken on climate change and the draconian methods they are ordering will help to solve it. The politicians pretend that there’s nothing they can do about the farmers’ situation.
Dutch farmers are locked in a death struggle for their livelihoods against an unyielding government concerned only with making themselves look good in the eyes of the globalist elite. Their tractors are their tanks. Manure — ironically, considering what the government is peddling — is among their artillery.
Meanwhile, the politicians in The Hague and in Brussels would rather appear to be “doing something” about a “problem” ginned up by climate propagandists than ensure that their nations have enough food to eat.
Climate-based authoritarianism is here and the Netherlands appears to be the first actual battlefield in the war against it.
