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Comment by teekert | Hacker News Reader

I think national news indeed is somewhat carefully suggesting farmers (ie [0]), actually it looks like it is escalating and they burning hay now. This article speaks of "Radical Farmer Leaders".

[0] https://nos.nl/liveblog/2631038-hooibalen-in-brand-langs-sne...

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The NOS is not the most unbiased news source in the Netherlands which is unfortunate. If it is indeed 'radical farm leaders' who are behind these sabotage actions they have turned up the temperature quite a bit and stand to lose a lot of support from the public. It would be a strange thing to do since there is not much overlap between farming and railways in the Netherlands, a small country with a strong agricultural sector which' products mostly travel by road, water and air.

These same farmers? [0]

[0] https://www.dutchnews.nl/2026/08/two-killed-on-a59-as-tracto...

Yes, just like these [1] German border guards. Next time they should bring a sign like the one shown in the article.

For those who don't read Dutch and can't be bothered to translate the article: Germany has restarted border checks which at the time of writing of this article had caused 171 accidents, some of which lethal.

[1] https://www.gelderlander.nl/zevenaar/na-171-ongelukken-bij-d...

Whatabout is quite tiring, we are talking about the farmers you are defending as "rational", and absolving them from being the source of issues...

Can we keep on topic?

I tried to but I keep on getting voted down. The topic here was 'farmers mostly just protest by blocking traffic' upon which someone said 'yes and they are responsible for the deaths of two people by doing so' to which I reacted by showing that traffic accidents are part and parcel of anything which obstructs traffic, in my example's case it is German border guards causing traffic jams by stopping cars. There are far more examples in the Netherlands where traffic jams are common as are accidents caused by people driving into them.

I don't get this thing where "X killed people. Oh, just like Y killed people" when X and Y are entirely unrelated.

If you say "Ukraine kills people in the war? Well Russia also kills people in the war" at least they are quite related and an argument can be made from that starting point. But what's with "Some people died in a space shuttle explosion. Well, sharks also kill people"

Ah, the magic of being a rightwing populist, which gives you a free pass to do illegal things (drive a tractor on the motorway) even if that results in fatalities.

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