Suspected sabotage causes major Netherlands rail disruption (bbc.com)

Volkswagen is laying off 100k of workers, because they can't make cars people can afford anymore... blame russia! Germans fed up with merz and vote afd? Russia! Macron doesn't even have 20% of support in polls anymore? Russia! Stub your pinky on the corner of the bed? russia!

- Extinction Rebellion and other environmental groups always claim the action pretty quickly and openly in NL.

- If you look at the locations of sabotage, it’s all close to the ‘farmer heartland’. Most left-wing and environmental groups would do it in the randstad.

Most likely it’s farmers. They announced very heavy protests today and also burnt hay near highways to create smoke clouds. Possibly nudged by Russian operatives because the like to sow dissent.

But we’ll see.

It is really a rather common playbook of stoking fear and even instigating war not for direct outcomes that has been used innumerable times over history. Only it seems that the majority of people are incapable of seeing, accepting, or maybe just internalizing when they are being played, lied to, and manipulated for the benefit of others at their own expense.

One thing that logic would dictate though is that Russia would be extremely low on the list of suspects since they gain nothing by some minor event like this, are negatively affected in every manner possible by being in any way behind such actions, and they could simply just send barrages of missiles to hit actually meaningful targets if they ever become sick and tired of all the CIA/MI6 clowns thinking they can salami slice their way into conquering Russia and once the Germans and Poles have been whipped up to be the battering ram of minced meat again.

It's why we have so many catastrophic and calamitous events in our history because people never ask themselves who may be benefitting from the act that is immediately used to manipulate people through fear. In spite of having been told and explained a long time ago and many times since, you should always ask you who benefits, cui bono. Russia does not benefit from scaring the populace into supporting the murderous and war mongering governments and the maniacal ruling parasites that control them in order to profit from war as they send your children in to the meat grinder.

It started small, just check this or that, little favor there but soon escalated to proper spycraft. Some other folks reported having death threats against family. Its for peanuts, few hundred euros mostly. They just need to find the dumbest and most desperate folks to commit acts of treason.

If one were in a charitable mood, one could think of this as a "just in case" measure of ongoing capability assurance in the event of a broader conflict. In a less charitable mood, one might imagine it as preparation for proactive action. In either case, if you don't do this kind of sub-threshold stuff at least occasionally, you often discover that when a real conflict erupts, the capabilities you thought you had are in fact literally or figuratively rusty. (See the Russian army's logistical debacle early in the Ukraine war for a recent example.)

Most top tier nation states do some version of this; each one has its own style. The Russians are somewhat unusual in that they care less than most who knows or suspects them of this kind of activity.

Get some critical media literacy and stop listening to NAFO trolls.

If this is XR, would be very dumb and against their message.

I think it would be of a stretch to actually claim that this specific incident caused loss of life, but it’s possible to see how such wide sabotage, especially conducted over a number of days, could result in compromised emergency services and result in loss of life.

Protests also tend to be more effective if the protesters involved actually make some clear demands about what they want. Simply breaking shit isn’t much of a protest.

Ukraine is an excellent example. Look at all of the ways they're attacking Russia internationally, even using "terroristic" tactics. It's justified because they're fighting for their survival.

The West has been bent on Russia's destruction since the cold war, and it didn't end with the fall of the USSR.

I won't bother with a point by point, but take the death toll of MH17. The US has probably killed 10x that amount of innocent people as collateral damage while striking weddings and religious services. And yet it's not brought up in lists about how dangerous we are.

As for whether Russia has anything to fear from the west, well, just look at Venezuela and Iran. It's a good indication of what we'd like to do to them.

You are right in the sense that there is likely an underlying meddling causing these farmers to act this way. It does not excuse their actions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%932026_Birmingham_b...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cqxlxv0vvnxo

This is russian sabotage + russian trolls now trying to make it look like it's something else

I mean, they wouldn't have to, they just need to stop cleaning it up. Such an action likely will be given a free pass, anything other than that is strikebreaking which is either illegal or heavily discouraged depending on jurisdiction.

It makes more sense that this is a continent wide action taken by Russia, considering the similar event in France just a few days ago.

Why derail trains though, especially in regards to the latter? Given it's one of the most environmental ways for transportation. Besides, groups like that tend to want to take responsibility, the whole point is to get attention to their groups.

For context: it's "Prinsjesdag" in the Netherlands which is when the budget is announced, and there are major changes to agriculture subsidies.

I don't know enough about dutch politics but in my country if the blue collar anti-regulation people wanted to annoy the white collar pro-regulation people without annoying other blue collar people stopping the trains would accomplish that pretty handily.

>and definitely not in a way that could result in deaths.

They laid pipes and jumper cables across the tracks causing the signals to be red.

Edit: Seeing you're profiteering from the war [0], case closed I guess.

[0]https://sevenseed.eu/ "Seven Seed is a Brussels-based group dedicated to empowering the European startup ecosystem, focused on the technologies that matter most: Artificial Intelligence and Defence."