This article is based on this Dutch article of Martijn Benders
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Iran and Russia have now signed a defense pact and are even connecting their electricity grids. Thanks to the otherworldly, diplomacy-hating neocon-leftist lunch tigers, we now find ourselves facing an amalgam of Russia, North Korea, and Iran, and the only response they can muster is this sort of poorly conceived propaganda, in which North Korea’s elite troops supposedly collapse from hunger before they even fire a shot:
Sure.
I hope, for the sake of those being guided by others, that the Russians won’t manage to mass-produce those Mach 10 missiles too quickly. Because if they do, we’ll have an enormous problem.
But hey, there had to be an expansion toward Russia at all costs, now under the inspired leadership of top statesman Mark Rutte!
Some individual who fancies himself a defense minister, but in reality is just an economics student, spews a constant stream of war propaganda on X.
The officials.
At least we’ve learned they no longer have to call in sick these days.
Meanwhile, the massive defense factory in Russia, which was attacked with those Mach 10 missiles, has apparently been pulverized—absolutely nothing remains. And the state comedian Zelensky continues cheerfully launching long-range missiles into Russia.
And while all this unfolds, I am reading this book by Rob Bakker:
This is because I read the following on Robin de Boer’s Substack:
“Terhorst referred to the ‘super important’ book Bookkeepers of the Holocaust by Rob Bakker, in which he describes how, before the Second World War, Dutch civil servants collaborated with German officials to prepare the entire Holocaust.”
Before the war? That seems a bit far-fetched to me, so I’m reading this book to verify the claim. I’ve only read the first twenty pages, and I don’t regret the purchase. From what I’ve seen so far, it appears that, even in the earliest days of the occupation, Dutch officials collaborated with the Germans to such an extent that they manually altered forms filled out by Jewish individuals to decrease their chances of passing through the screenings. That’s quite something. At the very beginning of the occupation!
I will meticulously work my way through the entire book, taking notes as I go. Rob Bakker has written a dense volume, and it seems like an exemplary piece of work. Whether the claim from Robin de Boer’s Substack holds up remains to be seen, but what’s clear is that, even in the early stages of the German occupation, forms were being maliciously manipulated by the Dutch government, leading to those individuals being sent to camps later on.
Meanwhile, I’ve been translating a few works of Manoel de Barros for the new collection—which you can look forward to in the bundle—and I wrote this poem about my father’s magical word:
Kind regards,
Martijn Benders, 24-11-2024
