This 3 December 2019 video by Jan ten Brinke is about a rare great white pelican in Drenthe province in the Netherlands. The pelican had joined a group of white storks and grey herons.
Rare pelican in the Netherlands
1
Tag Archives: Drenthe
Barn swallow woodcut to save nature reserve
This 18 September 2019 video is about Dutch visual artist Erik van Ommen making a barn swallow woodcut to save nature reserve Overcingel in Drenthe province.
Golden jackal, first time in Drenthe province
This July 2019 video from Israel is about a golden jackal, a red fox, Egyptian vultures and other birds.
Golden jackals are traditionally an Asian and east European species.
However, they are expanding to the west. They have been spotted in Germany and Denmark.
Dutch daily De Volkskrant reports today that for the first time ever, a golden jackal was seen on a camera trap in Drenthe province.
The species had been seen twice before in the Netherlands, in Gelderland province.
‘Moonie cultist imprisoned family for years’
This 16 October 2019 British TV video says about itself:
Dutch family ‘waiting for end of time‘ found in secret room – BBC News
A family who spent nine years on a farm “waiting for the end of time” have been discovered by police in the Netherlands after one of them turned up at a local pub, reports say.
A man of 58
No, two men: the 67-year-old father, and the Austrian suspect.
and six young adults aged 18 to 25 were living at a farm in the province of Drenthe.
The mother had died years ago. The father, after a brain infarction three years ago, lay on a sickbed.
The family were found after the eldest of the children ordered beer at a bar in the nearby village of Ruinerwold.
He then told staff he needed help, broadcaster RTV Drenthe reported.
“We found six people living in a small space in the house which could be locked but wasn’t a basement“, police said in a statement late on Tuesday.
The older man [Josef B. from Austria, the suspect] has been arrested. It was not clear whether they had been there voluntarily, police added. The eldest son [who had escaped] was not there at the time, police told the BBC.
Translated from Dutch NOS TV today:
The family that lived in isolation in Ruinerwold for years is said to be affiliated with the Moonie cult. The Austrian Josef B., who is accused of having imprisoned the family, was also a member of this sect. That is what sources say to RTV Drenthe regional broadcasting organisation. …
The cult leader was South Korean pastor Sun Myung Moon. …
Not just a ‘pastor’, also an arms trade millionaire (which did not stop him from starting a phoney ‘peace movement’).
This 12 November 2018 video from the USA says about itself:
Guns For God: The Church of the AR-15
In February 2018, a small church in Pennsylvania gained international attention when they held a blessing ceremony with AR-15’s just two weeks after the Parkland School shooting triggered mass gun reform debates across the US. But where did this small fringe sect of Christianity come from and why are they now taking up arms for God? In this episode of Believers, host Charlet Duboc meets Pastor Sean Moon and the believers of the World Peace and Unification Sanctuary, a church that has origins in Korea, is based in the US, and has been accused of being a cult to understand why they believe they need guns to build God’s Kingdom on Earth.
The NOS article continues:
In the 1950s, he declared himself to be the messiah. In 1965 the movement came to the Netherlands. …
A large amount of cash is also said to have been found in the farmhouse.
What is the Moonie cult?
The Moonie cult, called the Unification Church by supporters, is a church founded in the 1950s by South Korean pastor Sun Myung Moon. He regarded himself as the messiah and became particularly known in the 1970s and 80s through marriage ceremonies where he sometimes married thousands of followers at the same time. Moon claimed he had millions of followers, but there are probably no more than 100,000.
In the past, the church was accused of brainwashing supporters and taking away their money. Moon and his wife, often accused of anti-Semitism and homophobia, were not welcome in many European countries for years. Moon died in 2012. In recent years, the movement has expanded into a business empire including the Washington Times newspaper
Far-right Donald Trump supporters. Like another cult, Falun Gong.
and the New Yorker Hotel in Manhattan.
Followers of the cult have various rituals. RTV Drenthe writes that they have to move every half hour in a circle. …
The 25-year-old son, who eventually sought help [to escape] at a cafe in Ruinerwold on Sunday evening, is said be in a different location now.
Twins with Japanese woman
A brother of suspect Josef B. tells the Austrian daily newspaper Kronen Zeitung that B. came into contact with the cult during his military service in Linz. The brothers have not spoken to each other for ten years.
Brother Franz goes on to say that Josef had twins with a Japanese woman. He is said to have abandoned them and brought them to friends in the Netherlands. Two years ago the children reportedly have tried in vain to make contact with Josef. According to his brother, B. left Austria in 2009, where he led a reclusive life.
Josef B. is suspected of being involved in the deprivation of liberty of the father and six children on the farm in Ruinerwold. He is said to have held them against their will. Today, the examining magistrate will judge whether he will be detained for longer.
UPDATE: he will be detained for at least fourteen more days. He is also accused of harming the health of the imprisoned family.
The police are investigating again today at the house in Ruinerwold. In addition, all areas in the farm are recorded digitally.
Toys
Yesterday raids were made in two buildings in Zwartsluis, about fifteen minutes drive from Ruinerwold. The family is said to have had a shop there in wooden toys, which were often made by the father. The store is said to have been closed for years.
UPDATE: The 67-year-old father, who had been active first in the Dutch, then the German Unification Church, has been arrested now as well, suspected of complicity in imprisonment and money laundering. Three older children had bled the farm before. Contrary to their younger siblings, they had been allowed to go to school.
Buzzard, white stork quarrel
In this 20 September 2019 video, a buzzard tries in vain to drive away a white stork.
Nico Westerhof made this video in Drenthe province in the Netherlands.
Spoonbill flock feeding, video
Fossil fuel corporations cause earthquakes for profit
This April 2015 video from the USA says about itself:
Oklahoma links earthquakes to oil and gas industry wastewater
There has been a sharp increase in the number of earthquakes in Oklahoma in recent years. Some observers have suggested the rise of oil and gas drilling is responsible. The state’s government, however, hasn’t acknowledged that link until now. Gwen Ifill talks to Joe Wertz of StateImpact Oklahoma about the connection.
Read more here.
Translated from Dutch NOS TV today:
The Public Prosecution Service (OM) has been conducting criminal investigations for months into the extraction of gas from smaller fields in the Netherlands. The research is said to focus on the Canadian Vermilion corporation, which in the village of Diever, eg, achieved more than three times the maximum permitted production quantity, according to a joint study by regional broadcsasting organisations RTV Noord, RTV Oost, RTV Drenthe and Omrop Fryslân.
The OM confirms that a criminal investigation is ongoing, but does not say whether it concerns Vermilion. “We can only report that we are investigating something if suspects are aware of it. Otherwise, they would read in the newspaper that they have been designated as suspects and that is not decent”, says a spokesperson.
How about when the OM suspects an unemployed hungry person of stealing a loaf of bread? I have the uncomfortable feeling that then, the Public Prosecution Service would not be so ‘decent’. As that unemployed hungry person would not not be a powerful multinational corporation.
Local residents are afraid of earthquakes and subsidence. “The judge in The Hague has already said that there is no reason to think that the risks with a small gas field are smaller than with the Groningen field“, says Alie Eiting from Diever.
A little further on, on the border of Friesland, Groningen and Drenthe, residents wonder what the accelerated gas extraction in the vicinity of their houses means. “Publicly available figures on the internet have already shown that the companies are extracting more gas than is permitted in the license”, says Jeanette van der Velde of the Gas Drenthe, Overijssel, Friesland (GasDrOvF) foundation. “For the sake of clarity, those publicly accessible figures come from the gas corporations themselves.”
Wiebes boosts production
Gas corporations are obliged to draw up a production plan for all fields that they operate. If the minister agrees, then he will also formulate the conditions. Those conditions, such as a maximum production quantity, are included in the environmental permit.
Because gas extraction in the Groningen field is being slowed down, [right-wing VVD party] Minister Wiebes has issued several permits last year for smaller fields in the north of the country. He increases production there. Yesterday, members of the Lower House of Parliament Henk Nijboer (PvdA) and Sandra Beckerman (SP) said that they are going to question Minister Wiebes about this.
Leaks
The OM does not only investigate production from smaller fields. There is also an investigation into the NAM
joint venture of Shell and Exxon corporations
for pollution in Collendoorn (Hardenberg local authority) and Farmsum (Groningen). In January this year there was a spill in Collendoorn. Chemical substances have also leaked into the soil in Farmsum.
USA: Virginia Tech scientists have found that in regions where oilfield wastewater disposal is widespread — and where injected water has a higher density than deep naturally occurring fluids — earthquakes are getting deeper at the same rate as the wastewater sinks. Perhaps more critically, the research team of geoscientists found that the percentage of high-magnitude earthquakes increases with depth, and may create — although fewer in number — greater magnitude earthquakes years after injection rates decline or stop altogether: here.
A new analysis of historical seismic data led by The University of Texas at Austin has found that earthquake activity in West Texas near the city of Pecos has increased dramatically since 2009. The study, published Nov. 4 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, is important because it leverages old, unmined data to track seismic activity over nearly 20 years — much further back than other studies — to show that activity has increased during the past decade in an area of the Permian Basin that is being heavily developed for oil and gas. Although researchers have generally thought that to be true, the statewide TexNet earthquake monitoring system has been gathering data since only 2017, making it impossible to definitely determine when the cluster of seismic activity around Pecos really began: here.
