Politics Archives - Martin Stellinga

Economic depression

We’re in a global economic depression right now, due to Covid-19. Logical, right: lockdowns around the world, businesses completely shut down, people not working. But did you know economic depressions have a lot less to do with cold hard numbers than you might think?

SyRI

If you thought western democracies like the Netherlands could never become surveillance states, guess again. Enter the Dutch SyRI system. A system that would make George Orwell cry.

Crutches won’t save the Climate

This past summer set new heat records all around Europe. A cascade of hurricanes in the Caribbean followed. It’s becoming harder and harder to deny climate change. Couple with that the ongoing protests around the globe, and you’d expect change. However, all this hasn’t actually translated to action yet.

Judging climate change like we do slavery

Dutch Slavers — Landing of Negroes at Jamestown from a Dutch Man-of-war, 1619. Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images

Recently, I saw this (Dutch) comic about climate change. It depicts two politicians with remarks made about climate change, but they replaced ‘climate change’ with ‘slavery’. The results are… disturbing.

Tyranny of the Majority

Imagine high school. Imagine the majority of students in a certain class deciding that one of them is a dweeb, and picking on them. That’s not cool, is it?

Imagine now, a country, where the majority of the people decide that LGBT people should be shunned from certain parts of society. Not so cool eith- oh wait, that’s what’s happening in a number of democratic countries, including the US.