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Wednesday Morning Rant

The Local Apparatchik

Like the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs, we're having an outsized impact. In the case of climate, we are not the dinosaurs. We are the meteor. We are not only in danger. We are the danger. But we are also the solution.

-- Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations; June 5, 2024

Like most "world leaders" - and all of the globalist and large NGO leaders - Guterres aspires to be a Bond villain. The arrogance and histrionics aside, Guterres and those like him are in essence very easy to understand: they are tyrants. The hubris and hysteria are an act in the service of increasing their power and control. They do not do it themselves. Their fortunes are delivered by the small-time locals who move the ball when commanded. Large or small, they believe everyone and everything must be brought to heel to build their utopia. Free expression, free action, individual prerogatives and everything else must not be permitted if they interfere with immanentizing the eschaton.

n the same speech as the one quoted above, Guterres went further and called for the outright destruction of free speech:

I urge every country to ban advertising from fossil fuel companies ... I urge news media and tech companies to stop taking fossil fuel advertising

This is all just so much noise - at least directly - as the BBC points out. The BBC also, however, points out the real purpose of such statements:

Mr Guterres' call for an outright ban on all fossil fuel advertising goes further - but it has no legal standing, and the UN has no means of enforcing the idea.
However, it will be seen as a boost for campaigners who have fought against sponsorship and advertising from coal, oil and gas companies.

Indeed. These were marching orders, and it is why, two years later, the frothing, hysterical shrieking from a faceless and interchangeable UN bigwig is suddenly relevant. Allies and conspirators in the campaign to destroy the fuel of human life never sleep. Every rabid outburst from the front men and every dry, scientifically bankrupt research paper from its academic organs all serve to provide direction to the local apparatchik. Every action helps set the stage for the local operators.

We can find an example just this week. The city of Amsterdam is, as the New York Times puts it, "permissive" - but "permissiveness" goes only so far. There are some things Amsterdam frowns upon, so it will protect you from the real menaces of the world: the menaces of meat and oil.

On May 1, Amsterdam became the world's first capital city to ban ads for fossil fuel products and meat. It's part of the city's efforts to discourage consumption of goods linked with high carbon emissions.

Ads for airlines, cruises, and faraway destinations are no longer allowed because they implicitly promote the burning of fossil fuels. Ads for beef, chicken, pork and fish are also banned because of the environmental harms caused by animal agriculture.

On May Day. Of course. A fitting new law for the day of communist self-aggrandizement. But don't worry - dairy is still protected speech, for now:

... the advertising prohibition was initially written to include all food derived from animals, including dairy. But a compromise was struck to limit the ban to meat products, and it helped secure a majority vote.

The very essence of democracy in action! It is not, of course, merely a ban on advertising nefarious products, there is also the requisite propaganda in the opposite direction:

Amsterdam is also pushing its citizens to eat less meat, and has set a goal for residents to get 60 percent of their protein from plant-based sources by 2030. "Because of climate reasons, because of health reasons," said Anke Bakker, a city councilor with Party for the Animals.

Amsterdam is not the first. The leading light in this fight was The Hague, which banned energy advertising in 2024, shortly after Guterres' speech. The inevitable lawsuit followed in 2025, and the Dutch travel trade association and various travel agents sued the city. Predictably, they lost - and the judge's reasoning should send chills down the spine of any reader:

It is not up to the municipality to refrain from taking measures to promote the health of its residents in order to strengthen the future position of travel providers.

It is not the municipality's role to refrain from censorship. It is not their place to refrain from oppression. Not when it comes to "health" or similar, however tortured to justify the action. And this rationale is particularly ironic in Amsterdam's case. The head goblin who pushed for the new ban, from a party called "GreenLeft," apparently said the following with a straight face:

Ms. Veenhoff likened high carbon lifestyles to an addiction. "If you're trying to get rid of an addiction, it's not very handy to see it everywhere," she said.

In the city known the world over for its easy access to drugs and whores, the real risks to health and the true drivers of addiction are meat and energy. The mind fairly boggles.

Beware the hysterical hyperbole and absurd demands of the global tyrants. They beat the drum and frame the argument to set the stage for the real villains: petty little communists like Veenhoff, who methodically, one district at a time, implement the schemes to destroy their people's rights - which means, of course, to destroy their people.