I know, I know, “Angelina” sounds really wussy! Blame my parents for that, not me.
Don’t blame me either for how messed up many hackers, politicians and civil servants are. I can hold some of them to account, however.
Hi. I’m a globetrotting researcher. I’m formally based in the UK, but I’ve also lived in the Netherlands and in the US. You can call my soul and spirit American, but my habits and expectations are English while my passport is Dutch.
The past twenty years, there’s been far too much hate, sadism and deprivation in my life, both in England and in the Netherlands. I’m done with that. I’m pretty angry now and increasingly louder. I have no more patience left.
Responsible citizenship = activism.
That’s what I think.
Hackers hacking people and facilities to pieces, that’s not activism, that’s terrorism.
That’s what I also believe.
“If you think that signing petitions and sending emails is a waste of time, think again. Some people may have moped for days when Trump was re-elected, but won’t lift a finger to even click ONE button to help counter the destruction that people like Trump bring about. That’s not me. I try to take responsibility. Always have, always will. I try to act, in whatever small way that I can. It’s not about me. It’s about the cumulative effects of the seemingly insignificant actions and choices of many individuals.” That’s what I wrote.
Below are bits of text from or about emails I’ve received that informed me about various campaigns’ successes.
Or so I thought.
In the course of the 2025, I started receiving fewer petition e-mails. On my protonmail address I began to receive very small petitions for issues in villages most of which appeared to be north of – and not that far from – Portsmouth, but that fizzled out again.
After that, I started receiving almost exclusively petitions about LGBTIQ+ issues at my Gmail address. I also received this email (at a non-existing address, by the way):
I have also signed many related petitions and sent many related emails, but I’m not specifically into LGBTIQ+ issues. I’m into doing something about injustice.
Unfortunately, I’ve been plagued by targeted hacking – including lock-picking to access my equipment – for a long time.
This has included massive messing with my emails at all my email addresses.
Once hackers start messing with you, you start doubting EVERYTHING and distrusting everyone.
You have to, really, but you also have to make sure that this distrust doesn’t get out of hand.
Why some people do this ? Because these folks are incredibly messed up. Because they lack theory of mind, too. They have no idea of the havoc and terror they’re causing. See the research article that I’ve included below, too.
Recently, it looked like at least several of these hackers turned out to be working at Hadrian Security.
WTF?!! Why on earth were these people at Hadrian after me?
I initially assumed that it was really them.
Going after a total stranger, that’s also simply part of how nuts hackers are after all. Check out the links below.
Hadrian was founded in 2021, but my abuse had already been going on for years back then.
However, then it appeared that there are sick fucks going around who are impersonating Hadrian staff. Why? No idea. Perhaps they applied for a job there once and were rejected? Or were hired and then fired?
Who is Eden Stroet or her impersonator and why is this sick bitch going after me?
- Eden S – “Eden Stroet” aka “Mrs Skelli” – approached me on Olio and then met with me twice at an OBA branch. The first time, we arranged this via the Olio app. The second time, she was just there to continue to make my life hell. She sat down next to me, figured I would not recognise her and would be be too stupid to figure out what she was doing. She was asking me weird questions. The next thing that happened was that two orders were accepted and confirmed by my online trading account server but not executed. (There was often deliberate interference with my trades in Portsmouth too, notably in 2022. They were just pressing the buttons and carrying out other crap. Really really sick. Nasty. In Portsmouth, it ended up costing me £500 on two lost trades in 2022; one that they closed at a loss of £200 just to mess with me and one that I deliberately let blow up (margin) at a loss of £300 because I warned these fucking hackers that this is what I would do if they didn’t stop fucking with my trades. After that, I had lost the ability to trade. I’d taught myself to lose. Trading psychology is far more important than anything else. That’s why you for example shouldn’t trade if your spouse berates you for your trading.)
The woman in question is American, but also speaks Dutch perfectly. She lives in Amsterdam Noord. Her phone number may be spoofed and it may only exist in my phones, but here it is: +31 06 1582 3253. Her address showed in the Olio app, but I didn’t write it down; it was to the west of the ferry, not that far from the ferry. (I’ve been in touch with Hadrian as Eden Stroet has been pestered and impersonated before. I also reported it to the police, just in case.)
- Shortly after that, someone else sat down two seats away from me at the same OBA branch, grabbed access to my tablet – or someone connected to him did – and started commenting loudly on what I had written. He’s very unpleasant. He too is American. When he got up and left the library again, I regained control of my tablet.
This doesn’t mean that HE was the one controlling my tablet. It does mean that it was connected to him. A young woman walked up to him when he left and may have been present in the room before. That tablet was cloned in June 2023; a copy of it appears to be running on a Linux computer somewhere. I haven’t done anything about it; it would just encourage these fuckers.
I later thought that I recognised this guy’s photo on the Hadrian website. Much later, however, ChatGPT turned up an interview with the Hadrian guy and he has a Dutch accent. The guy who pestered me does not. He sounded American.
So then I investigated further. I realized that I likely had NOT been interacting with Eden Stroet at all, but discovered that SHE TOO has been pestered a lot in the past, by other hackers.
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/magazine-features/trolling-sexual-harassment-and/
I initially thought that I really was dealing with Eden Stroet aka Mrs Skelli and that that this was a really sick person who had simply made up this harassment story. However, when I called her out, she did not respond the way I’d expect a hacker to respond. She said that it wasn’t her, but she also suggested that I was a dumb fuck who didn’t understand that Telegram had recognised her number from my contacts, thereby admitting that it was her. Indeed, it had still been sitting among my deleted contacts. Signal alerted me that this number was active there too. Is it real? Probably not, frankly. Is it the same number as the real Eden Stroet’s? Likely not. So who is this sick bitch and why was she targeting me? - Another person who stood out had approached me on Olio as well, but I’ve forgotten her name. She’s not a native English or Dutch speaker. She lives in Amsterdam Oost and seemed to be suggesting that she works at the Google office in Amsterdam Zuid. I cut off contact with her before things got out of hand; she was pissed off about that.
- (Other people approached me on Olio as well but they all behaved normally. I went to someone’s home; she too was American. That is simply because using apps like Freecycle and Olio is quite an American and Canadian thing, but not at all a Dutch thing. The Dutch want to make money no matter what they do, so they have Marktplaats – instead of eBay btw – and Too Good To Go. I have closed my Olio account, however.)
Before all of that, as mentioned above, a programmer and/or hacker based in Portsmouth approached me, that is, she paid for this website and made several other donations to support me. Her name is Felicity Meadows. I don’t know her.
Before that, of course, there was the Portsmouth-based hacker who called himself Lee when he texted me one day. He turned out to be living in Winchester Road in Portsmouth, but I first encountered him at the entrance to the small apartment building that I was living in in Southampton, in 2008. He is the brother of the guy with who this all started; he too has more IT knowledge than I do.
If you don’t know what to make it it, join the club.
When I thought that this was genuinely staff that works at Hadrian, I thought that what triggered this must have been the fact that I used to have a web page on which I talked about my considerable IT experience, online, without ever claiming to be a hacker or IT expert. (The word “considerable” is intended as “relative to most people’s”, not “relative to what high-end hackers know and do”.) I’m saying that because I happen to know that a Microsoft-certified IT specialist in Southsea was targeted too. He believed this was done from North Korea. I didn’t think so.
- Yes, I have worked with Macs, DOS, the predecessor to DOS, UNIX, TurboPascal, Linux and Basic.
- Yes, I once programmed a modem so that I could do email on an XT computer (and EJ in Belgium was the one who told me that I could do this and what I needed in order to be able to do this).
- Yes, I have written large websites as text in WordPad.
- Yes, I have built computers from scratch.
- Yes, I thought that it was so cool that I could dial into the P.O.R.T.S. equipment in the middle of Tampa Bay from anywhere in the world and get temperature readings and what not.
- Yes, I’ve even worked at a IT helpdesk.
- Yes, I once had a book written by Tanenbaum, in the days of the first AI wave. I think it was about distributed computing and had a bright red cover, but I also had a book about AI and maybe that was the one with the bright red cover. Must have been in 1982 or 1983.
- Yes, I have written statistics programs to analyze geochemistry data that required me to stick a note on the computer in my university office to please not shut it down. In those days, a lot of stuff including operating systems still ran from floppy disks.
- Yes, I have managed to get myself off the network of these deranged losers once (in the 2012 Christmas holiday season) after which they kindly warned me that I still had open ports after that.
- Yes, I started to do LLFs every few weeks and completely reinstall all my shit for months just to keep these hackers at bay because I didn’t know that they were picking my locks.
- Yes, I had my first website a very long time ago and yes, I had some script on it that enabled visitors to record speech and leave me a greeting at a time when most people didn’t have computer speakers yet, let alone a microphone. I just thought it was really cool.
- I’ve replaced the screen on a smart phone once, had my first mobile 25 years ago and my first smartphone over 15 years ago.
- Yes, I used to dial up my security so tight until I couldn’t update Windows any longer and then I dialled it down just one mere notch. My shit was pretty damn tight. One time I installed something that wasn’t kosher and I knew it right away because I knew exactly which behaviours were normal and which ones weren’t.
- I also had great fun for a while constantly checking a collapsing harddisk to keep it running as long as possible, while it lost more and more space.
- No, that does not make me an IT expert. It certainly does not make me a hacker. Neither does it make me an old cow who can’t handle technology and makes up hackers as an excuse to hide that she can’t handle technology. Or do you really want me to break your effing nose and make it bleed?
- I used to think that hackers were cool. I loathe them now because they are immensely destructive – and they really don’t care.
- Yes, I completely stopped bothering with IT security some years ago. There no longer was a point. They even effing managed to access an offline computer remotely. How? Via the electricity wires in the building that I was in. (I checked: Yes, it is possible, but you do need physical access for this.) How do I know? One day, I forgot something after I left to go on a walk of about three hours. I walked back into my office and… goddammit, found a spreadsheet opened. I’d previously found a computer on in the middle of the night too; I put a stop to thastriet (remote wake-up). (Make sure you have control over your BIOS and that kind of shit because if you don’t, you’re very likely in trouble.) I put an extra resistance between the socket and the equipment, but that helped only briefly. I’ve looked for things in the PC and in my home that seemed out-of-place to arrange the connection, but couldn’t find anything. They’d also kindly arranged a computer for me via Freecycle earlier, but they had not expected me to format and reinstall the thing.
- (IRL, they also fed people bs about me being learning-disabled and what not.)
- So yeah, by now I have zero patience left with the many people, including high-faluting science professors and politicians and other dimwitted fools, who believe that IT basically works the same way as old-fashioned typewriters and horse-drawn carts except that it’s more complicated.
That lies at the basis of the horrific Post Office Horizon mess in the UK and also of the equally horrific child care tax benefit disaster in the Netherlands although the latter was fed by povertyism, racism and xenophobia, which makes it much more shocking.
About Hadrian and hackers
- Article in Dutch magazine Quote: https://www.quotenet.nl/zakelijk/a42630058/hadrian-hackers-startup-investering/
- Article in English: https://starthub.london.edu/hadrian-a-tech-startup-co-founded-by-lbs-mba-students-raises-e2-5m-pre-seed-funding/
- Article in English: https://starthub.london.edu/founder-spotlight-series-an-interview-with-rogier-fischer-mba2022-co-founder-and-ceo-of-hadrian/
- Article in Dutch: https://www.bndestem.nl/overig/17-jarige-verdient-duizenden-euro-s-als-goede-hacker~ae7c7425/
- Article in Dutch: https://www.vice.com/nl/article/het-klinkt-gewoon-heel-tof-om-je-eigen-overheid-te-hacken/
- Article in English, about the ice-cold callousness of how hackers operate: https://www.sciencedirect.com:5037/science/article/abs/pii/S026840121930283X
So I then stopped signing petitions and decided I was I no longer going to send emails to CEOs, MPs and other decision-makers and influencers, take part in public consultations either, nor in digital-only exchanges of information, views and experiences.
I had already been restricting my irl interactions to a minimum, too. In Portsmouth, there wasn’t only interference with my digital communications across distances, there was also interference with IRL contacts (and there was fake porn with my face in it at some point, but all that led to was people looking at me in all sorts of odd ways and I couldn’t care less about that).
What else happened around this?
- An email exchange with the Netherlands’ Press Council disappeared. I first thought that this meant that it was fake, but that doesn’t have to be the case. Update 15 December 2025: It’s popped up again. Must have taken place around the time of major Google nonsense so I may have looked in the wrong mailbox? 😌
- I received some strange stuff from the office of Stephen Morgan MP, but I think that this was just his effing staff mocking me. I’ve run into the same attitude with a volunteer at the Lib Dem office once. These people can be unbelievably rude and disrespectful. They often have nothing but contempt for voters, see them as bothersome people who stand in the way of their political ambitions or whatever.
- An old email with login details for something called Family or whatever popped up. I can’t imagine having signed up for it. “Family” is a parenting app; there are other apps with “Family” in the name, but I can’t imagine why I would sign up for anything family-related.
- I got NO responses from a party that should have replied (De Brug). Doesn’t mean a thing.
- I got a clearly fake email about a scientific article that I published aeons ago.
- I’d also gotten emails from rotterdam.nl that surprised me, but maybe they were actually genuine.
Before this, my personal and professional life were sabotaged for many years (think for example: Deleting a research proposal that I was working on, including its backups, and then finding myself forced to reject that assignment as I was no longer willing to take the risk that these jokers might cost these people their grant though I still had the original file, or attaching a “dyslexia” virus to a LaTeX file of a paper that I was working on for a slightly dyslexic scientist and then having to find a workaround for that, or Word files getting really messed up for one particular scientist’s papers, forcing me to create new files and much much more and worse).
More recently, mostly in 2022 and some in 2023, I had also gotten a lot of emails to do with housing in the UK, people asking for input. In 2025, I also received a lot of stuff to do with school cuts in the UK, asking me to contribute quotes and to write to the local newspaper. I got no response when I did. Three to six months later, I got an email from someone asking me how that had gone and then asked me to do the same again. It’s quite clear that there is a bunch of deranged lunatics out there who send me a lot of fake emails just to waste my time and mock me.
In the past, I have seen that fake emails somehow can be created IN your own equipment. I’d also often seen mails arrive, in gmail but also in protonmail, that then mysteriously disappeared.
Who’s behind this?
You tell me!
Unless you have a live video feed and can watch in real time what someone is doing in your equipment or with your accounts, a hacker can be anyone and can pretend to be anyone else.
My money is on the Julie, Charley/Lee and Steve trio, however. They’ve pestered others and I know this because they’ve told me themselves and over the years, I have gotten a sense of how they tick. They can’t help it. They are well-connected.
26 November 2025: We’ve erased the biggest cause of childhood poverty in Britain!
3 November 2025, an email from change.org:
28 October 2025, an email from the Renters Reform Coalition (nothing to do with Nigel Farage):
The Renters’ Rights Bill has become the Renters’ Rights Act. It’s been in the works for so many years. It’s not known yet when it will come into force, but among other things, it will finally put a stop to Section 21 Notices, the so-called “no fault eviction” notices that some landlords hand out as if it’s candy. The concept is inconceivable in the Netherlands. For years, a Dutch friend of mine with a PhD from Delft University of Technology and her English musician and computer tech partner (plus baby, later) had to keep moving in spite of being on very good terms with their landlords, for example. Because of Section 21 Notices.
25 September 2025, The Guardian (followed by Amnesty International on 1 October):
25 September 2025, from Anti-Slavery International:
We did it! Last month, over 1,600 of us came together to demand that UK supermarkets act to restore water supplies to farm workers in Spain.
Since we launched the petition with Ethical Consumer, we’ve been in intense discussion with the supermarkets.
And now, several supermarkets – including Tesco, Sainsburys, Morrisons, M&S, Aldi, Waitrose, Asda and Co-op have formally supported a letter sent to the Mayor of Nijar by the Ethical Trading Initiative. In it, they’ve reiterated concerns over the water access issues there and called for action to resolve them.
This is people power in action. For years, we’ve been engaging with supermarkets to tackle the exploitation of workers in Nijar who pick the fruit & veg sold in UK stores.
But once supporters like you got involved, supermarkets could no longer ignore it.
19 September 2025, from 38 Degrees:
“Incredible news. The government has announced it’s introducing the Hillsborough Law. This is a huge victory for the families who have fought for justice for 36 years, and for everyone who has demanded accountability.
Thousands of us, including you, signed the petition demanding that this promise was kept. Together, we helped win a new law that will force public officials to tell the truth and create a legal “duty of candour”. It will help end the culture of cover-ups that caused so much pain, not just for the Hillsborough families but for victims of other tragedies like Grenfell and the infected blood scandal. “
15 August 2025, from AllOut:
MY COMMENT on AllOut’s wish to expand the EU’s protections against discrimination
We need something similar for povertyism. Being poor makes you three times more likely to be discriminated against than being gay or being black. Did you know that? I learned this from Olivier de Schutter.
How do we go about getting this – fighting povertyism – squeezed in at the EU as well? It is so important. I’m seeing horrifyingly Orwellian developments in the Netherlands in this area and I am also learning that poverty and homelessness, just like household debt, are a business model. They generate billions and billions of income, for all the consultants, government departments and organizations who claim to specialize in these areas, not for the people this is about. An example? The household debt counselling industry in the Netherlands generates a turnover of 17 billion euro per year whereas the total amount of household debt per year is only 3.5 billion.
Different is that deep poverty needs to be addressed, of course, whereas there is nothing wrong with for example being gay or being black. So this requires a slightly different approach.
Any ideas?
I’m also seeing positive developments in the area of poverty in the Netherlands, with the city of Arnhem setting great examples, for example with how it is starting to tackle household debt. I don’t know how it intends to fight off the household debt industry if it continues along this positive path, however. It’s not likely to give up that 17 billion euro turnover easily, after all. Ironically, the Dutch government is the biggest household debt creditor (according to the Nationale Ombudsman in his report about “vroegsignalering” which I consider an Orwellian and povertyist monstrosity). The government too makes money off household debts, according to Humanitas.
How do we resolve this? We have to offer these industries different ways to make money if we want them to stop behaving like wolves on Wall Street. Can we somehow apply their knowledge and attitude in a more positive way? Can we let them fight doorstep scammers and email and phone call criminals instead? Or would they seize that as an opportunity to go into or at least encourage that racket?
I think we will have to make household debt counselling and collection agencies illegal when it concerns ordinary citizens. Only that would create a real incentive for change. It is currently even considered normal to tack on thousands of fictitious debt in eviction proceedings for rent arrears, for example. That is one of the ways in which this industry operates.
If you are Dutch and don’t believe me, then take a look at this, for inspiration: https://nos.nl/artikel/2579153-meer-bureautjes-voor-screening-sollicitanten
Commercially operating entities in the Netherlands are allowed to issue certificates that “prove” someone’s training and experience to be able to work in (health, youth etc) care facilities. That was the start of that industry. (The goose.) The result? Hundreds and hundreds of fake certificates have already been sold at several thousands of euros a pop. (Golden eggs.) It already concerns 800 to 1200 certificates.
Other commercially operating entities in the Netherlands are now increasingly getting hired to check the validity of such credentials. (More golden eggs.)
https://nos.nl/artikel/2543324-politie-waarschuwt-criminelen-zijn-op-grote-schaal-actief-in-de-zorg
This industry is starting to balloon and profits from rising crime levels in this particular area. Would you have anticipated the development of this type of crime on such a massive scale? I sure did not. I expected the Dutch care sector to have ample safeguards in place.
Possible solution? Stop businesses from issuing these certificates and create a NUFFIC for non-academic roles (with vetted staff) or better yet, create one especially for the care sector.
It is the story of the goose that lays golden eggs.
Wikipedia tells me that the phrase “killing the goose that lays the golden eggs” “refers to the short-sighted destruction of a valuable resource, or to an unprofitable action motivated by greed.” You can also see it as referring to there being no incentive to kill a “bad” goose (severely ill and infecting other birds, so to speak) if not killing the goose means that you’ll continue to have golden eggs. In this case, the geese are issues like household debt, involuntary homelessness and poverty in general.
27 June 2025: From the Good Law Project
27 June 2025: From 38 Degrees (have to see what this will mean in real life)
5 June 2025: An announcement from the Food Foundation (UK)
We’re delighted the government has committed to extending Free School Meals to all families in England receiving Universal Credit. Today’s announcement is a major victory for the Feed the Future campaign, which we and a coalition of other charities have been working on for up to seven years!
(Personally, I would like to see this extended to all families, not just all families on benefits, to avoid stigmatization. This separates kids at school into those who get free meals and those who don’t?)
18 April 2025: an email from AllOut (of which I am not a member, and I’m not even gay, but I did sign the petition)
“As we witness some of the most heartbreaking setbacks for LGBT+ rights globally, every victory matters more than ever. I am Omar from Namibia, and today, I’d like to share a powerful update from Namibia that All Out members – like you! – helped make a reality.
In July 2023, Namibia’s Parliament passed a deeply harmful anti-LGBT+ bill. If signed into law, it would have criminalised queer activism and targeted LGBT+ human rights organisations. But just last month, outgoing President Nangolo Mbumba refused to sign the bill, citing constitutional concerns.
Over 12,000 All Out members (including you, Angelina) brought about this crucial victory. Every signature was a loud show of global solidarity that fuelled our relentless organising. The support we received affirmed that love and dignity should never be criminalised.”
4 March 2025: an email from Amnesty International
“Just over a year ago you showed your support for the case of Rocky Myers, a Black man with an intellectual disability who has been on death row in Alabama since 1994, despite flawed legal proceedings and no evidence directly linking him to the crime for which he was convicted.
I’m pleased to let you know that last week Alabama Governor Kay Ivey reduced Rocky’s death penalty sentence to life in prison.
This is only the second time a death penalty case in Alabama has been changed since 1976, and while Rocky is still facing life in prison without parole, this is an important step in the flight for justice in his case.
You joined over 22,000 Amnesty International UK supporters, and thousands more across the world, in calling against the death penalty, and for justice for Rocky and it mattered. Your voices, and your commitment to justice sent a clear message: the death penalty is cruel, inhumane, and must end. Thank you.”
1 March 2025: An email from 38 Degrees
“A win for dentistry – but we can’t stop now!
A month after we handed in our 250,000-strong petition with the British Dental Association, calling for NHS dentistry to be saved, the Government has announced plans for 700,000 new urgent dental appointments.
After years of neglect, there is still a lot more to be done to make NHS dentistry fit for purpose. But this shows the impact we can have when we come together and demand better. Together, we’ll use this momentum to carry on pushing for more changes to help make sure all of us can see a dentist and get the treatment we need, whenever we need it.”
18 February 2025:
17 January 2025:
14 January 2025:
18 December 2024: big updates from Animal Equality and from Reprieve
“Mexico has just achieved a groundbreaking victory for animals – and it’s all thanks to compassionate people like you!“
18 November 2024: two updates from the UK’s National Autistic Society
30 October 2024: Good news from PETA
13 September 2024: “Today the High Court quashed the Conservative Government’s 2022 approval of a new coal mine. West Cumbria Mining Ltd wanted to mine 2.78 million tonnes of coking coal every year until 2049. The majority was expected to be exported, as the last UK blast furnaces are ending coal use this year. The Judge, Mr Justice Holgate ruled, “The assumption that the proposed mine would not produce a net increase in GHG emissions, or would be a net zero mine, is legally flawed.” He found in favour of 4 out of 5 grounds brought by South Lakes Action on Climate Change and Friends of the Earth.”
24 July 2024:
26 June 2024: “Iranian rapper and hip-hop artist Toomaj Salehi’s death sentence has been overturned.”
18 June 2024:
18 June 2024: “Less than two weeks ago, Mexico elected its new president – and All Out members took action across the world to make sure LGBT+ rights are a priority for the newly elected government.
Starting a family remains a big challenge for LGBT+ people in Mexico, where procedures like adoption or registering a newborn represent daunting obstacles for same-sex couples, who must endure long waiting times and start legal battles just for wanting to start a family – which is an universal human right.
To help change this, more than 16,000 people from around the world signed a petition asking the presidential candidates to commit to ending discrimination against every LGBT+ person wishing to start a family.
And to ensure this message was heard, we:
- Shared testimonials of rainbow families from all over Mexico
- Spoke out on national television
- Pressured candidates on social media
- Partnered with content creators so they could help spread the word
- And brought together LGBT+ families to celebrate Mother’s Day in Mexico City
7 June 2024: Update from Riedel and Campina. Riedel let me know that the use of plastic spouts lowers the risk of contamination. Although I don’t think that the risk is high, when I picture how these drinks packages are being filled and closed at the plant, I can see that. Riedel also informed me that Campina had attempted to eliminate the spouts from their organic product range and advised me to ask them what happened. So I did. I was very disappointed but not surprised to hear that when Campina started using packages without plastic pouring spouts on its organic products, they received so many complaints from members of the public that they saw themselves forced to reverse the decision.
Why am I not surprised? Riedel and Campina are Dutch companies. My impression is that the Dutch, in general, are into hypocritical consumerism and green-washing. What’s surprising is that the Dutch public is actually worse than the big business many people – including me – love pointing fingers at. I find it thoroughly disappointing that this may even particularly include consumers who buy organic. Why are they buying organic?
https://www.tetrapak.com/en-gb/campaigns/water-in-carton/rethink-the-water-bottle
In the UK, Tetra Pak wants to see its cartons included in deposit return schemes: https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2022/02/07/Call-for-cartons-to-be-added-to-deposit-return-scheme
In the Netherlands, Tetra Pak cartons go into the PMD recycling containers. PMD = plastic, metals, drinks cartons
I’ve also recently (May 2024) contacted CoolBest (part of Riedel) about those plastic pouring spouts that are part of many drinks’ and juice’s packaging.
After I did that, I discovered that Riedel says that it has been working actively on reducing the environmental footprint of its packaging and replacing traditional plastics by plant-based plastics (which break down) is part of Riedel’s strategy. I also noticed that Mars has started using recyclable, paper-based wrappers in Australia and New Zealand and is piloting a recyclable paper wrappers in the UK (BBC article: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65712151) as well as that Bermuda-based Bacardi began removing plastic pourers from its bottles a few years ago. But what does “recyclable” mean in practice? Among other things, it means that in New Zealand, these paper-based wrappers by Mars must be placed in the rubbish bin and cannot be recycled. British supermarket chain Asda introduced plant-based packaging for its own-brand tea bags. They are now made from polylactic acid, derived from corn starch. However, the use of plant-based plastics may impact the food supply of people who rely on staples such as corn if crops are grown for the sole purpose of creating packaging. (Crop-based biofuels have many drawbacks too, whereas biofuels made from used cooking oils are obviously a different story.) In 2006, the Smithsonian had an interesting article on this type of PLA-based packaging: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/corn-plastic-to-the-rescue-126404720/ In 2020, Treehugger had an article that seems to indicate that the use of PLA still suffers from many of those issues: https://www.treehugger.com/pros-cons-corn-based-plastic-pla-1203953 In 2017, Columbia University published the following item about bioplastics: https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2017/12/13/the-truth-about-bioplastics/
So, read all that and then ask yourself what you can make of this: https://northamerica.novamont.com/public/Documentation/Bioplastics_crops.pdf
Next, go read this abstract of a 2023 scientific article about how these biodegradable plastics impact basil plants growing in soils that contain them: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0048969722062623
In addition, I’ve written to Aldi in the Netherlands about their single-use pepper mills (and I later discovered empirically that the pepper mill by La Drogheria, by contrast, can be reused even though it may look like it’s sealed shut too). Aldi wasn’t interested (and seemed surprised or didn’t understand).
14 May 2024:
“I am utterly overjoyed to be writing this email to share with you the news that after more than 50 years of unwavering dedication and relentless campaigning from supporters like you, the Animal Welfare (Livestock Exports) Bill has just passed its final stage in Parliament and will soon be enshrined into law.” (UK)
19 April 2024:
7 March 2024:
“After years of campaigning and pressure from War on Want supporters like you, the UK announced last month that it will be exiting the climate-wrecking Energy Charter Treaty (ECT).”
“The ECT allows fossil fuel companies to sue governments for billions of pounds in secretive corporate courts, in response to climate policies that affect their projected profits – even if those policies are essential to tackle climate breakdown.”
14 February 2024:
23 January 2024:
19 January 2024:
12 January 2024:
9 January 2024:
Guatemala, Amnesty International: Anti-corruption lawyer Virginia Laparra released! On 3 January.
20 September 2023:
Oh, and those springs in New Zealand are now officially protected. See below.
13 September 2023:
31 July 2023: The recommended Water Conservation Order (WCO) for Te Waikoropupū Springs in New Zealand has just been sent to the Government by the Environment Court. This is a big step forward in the campaign to protect the Springs.
This report explains how the Court came up with its draft. You will find the Water Conservation Order itself in Annexure 1, on page 74.
31 July 2023: Zaniar – a young protestor who was blinded by the security forces in Iran – and his family have been granted asylum in Germany.
1 July 2023: Animal Aid announced that Wales has banned the use of snares and hopes that the UK government will follow.
1 July 2023: The Fawcett Society (UK) announced the following.
“Today, the Independent Press Standards Authority has announced it is upholding our complaint against The Sun for its publication of Jeremy Clarkson’s vile and offensive column about the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle.
That’s the first time a complaint about sexism has been upheld. Ever.
This landmark decision is a real opportunity for our media to catch up with what women have known for years — that misogyny and hate are not acceptable, and they can no longer be dressed up as satire or banter. Misogyny that normalises violence, and coverage that blames women who experience violence, has no place in our biggest national newspapers, or anywhere in our society.”
9 February 2023: The Biden Administration recently dealt a blow to the massive and controversial gold and copper mining project in Bristol Bay, Alaska called the Pebble Mine. EPA has acted to not only block the Pebble Mine, but also restrict future mining of the Pebble deposit.
8 February 2023: Last night during the Public Order Bill debate, the UK government was defeated by the Lords with regard to its wish to burden innocent campaigners with GPS-tracking ankle tags. However, the police may still be able to stop and search innocent protesters under certain circumstances and restrict campaigners’ internet access.
29 October 2022: Saifullah Paracha – the oldest detainee in Guantánamo Bay at 75 years old – has just been released! Last night, he was finally reunited with his family in Pakistan.
21 October 2022: Just got an e-mail in my inbox saying “We did it! The airline Privilege Style just told us they WON’T fly refugees to Rwanda.” Among other things, we’d been contacting a sports team that uses this airline. The Guardian has the story too: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/oct/21/airline-hired-uk-rwanda-deportations-pulls-out-privilege-style
1 July 2022: For years, I have been using a photo of a monkey in a cage, being transported by Air France. Yesterday, the company announced that it will cease transporting monkeys to laboratories as soon as its current contracts end. (Today, I wrote to Egyptair.)
25 June 2022: “Reprieve client Asadullah Haroon Gul has just been released from Guantánamo Bay. Asad is the fourth person released from Guantánamo in the last three years. And he won’t be the last. Together, we are fighting for four other men to be freed. None have been charged with a crime, yet they’re still locked up.”
23 June 2022: The U.S. bans imports of products from Uyghur Region. (Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act)
22 June 2022: Bahram, the former police officer from Iran who had refused to discharge firearms into a crowd of protestors and then had to flee but was now being deported to Rwanda from which he would likely be sent back to Iran, has been released. “Yesterday, Bahram was released from Brook House Immigration Removal Centre. We are happy to say that he was not released with an ankle tag and has now spent his first night as a free man.”
20 May 2022: “The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s Office of Inspector General have just removed at least 145 dogs found in “acute distress” from Envigo’s beagle-breeding facility in Cumberland County, Virginia, pursuant to a federal search warrant.”
18 May 2022: “Fashion brand Burberry has confirmed that it will no longer use exotic skins in future collections.”
4 April 2022: “Two years ago, twenty thousand campaigners like you came together to write to MPs and Ministers. Together, they called on the Government to keep providing free school meals to children from migrant families. At first, these meals were only offered as short-term support during lockdown. Last week, the Department for Education finally committed to permanently providing these meals. This is a real step forward. It will provide a lifeline for thousands of children.”
1 April 2022: “Thanks to public pressure the Government has now confirmed that, amongst others, frontline NHS staff will get free lateral flow tests. “
16 March 2022: Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe AND Anoosheh Ashoori released from Iran. They were among the people I have signed petitions for etc. Far too many people are still stuck, some even technically free but still at Guantanamo, if I am not mistaken, often detained for over a decade just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
22 February 2022: “Early next week, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill is returning to the House of Commons for its final hearing, with an amendment to scrap the Vagrancy Act – the archaic law that criminalises homelessness. In response to the Lords amendment that we supported, the Government has now tabled their own amendment to repeal the Vagrancy Act!” (The Vagrancy Act also criminalises for example Roma people.)
7 January 2022: “Go Overseas, a company helping thousands of volunteers around the world travel abroad, has just implemented a new system on their site to flag the harms of volunteering in orphanages and the risks of orphanage trafficking. ” “Your campaign absolutely moved us to do something about orphanage trafficking.” – Go Overseas
28 October 2021: Ali al Nimr has been released! “Ali was 17 years old when he was arrested. He was locked up for almost ten years – most of that time he spent on Saudi Arabia’s death row – for so-called ‘crimes’ linked to attending pro-democracy protests, including teaching others to administer first aid.”
30 July 2021: “Acting pursuant to a court order, PETA has rescued all six of the remaining chimpanzees held at former breeding compound, Missouri Primate Foundation (MPF), where they’d been primarily warehoused in cramped cells for decades. It was documented that the chimpanzees were living amid trash and their own waste—with the stench of urine in one room so overwhelming that a volunteer couldn’t enter.”
24 June 2021: “Victory! Canada Goose Ditches Fur!”
22 June 2021: “Victory! Genesco Inc. has made the compassionate decision to stop using alpaca across all of its brands, including Johnston & Murphy, Journeys, Little Burgundy, and Schuh.”
18 June 2021: “Victory! Osime Can Stay With His Family!”
18 June 2021: “Fashion retailer Vince Holding Corp. has made the compassionate decision to stop using alpaca fleece across all of its brands, including Rebecca Taylor and Vince.”
5 June 2021: “VICTORY! Court orders the EPA to ban chlorpyrifos.”
19 May 2021: “Cruel Morrisons Pig Farm Forced to Close”
21 April 2021: “We did it! Today, Parliament voted for a government amendment to exclude torture, genocide and crimes against humanity from the scope of the presumption against prosecution in the Overseas Operations Bill.”
19 June 2017: “Sainsbury’s commits to humane wildlife deterrence following public pressure”
Along with millions of people in the world, I sign many petitions and write many e-mails in support of the well-being of humans and non-human animals. It initially often felt futile, but in the course of 2019, I noticed that I received many e-mails that taught to me that it isn’t futile at all.
I received messages about people having been freed or found, laws changed, animals rescued and taken to a sanctuary where they finally received medical care and also from people who let us know that the birthday messages they received from us while illegally imprisoned meant a lot to them.
Signing petitions is the least you can do as a responsible grown-up in a democracy. If you can’t do that and can’t participate in demonstrations, you’re living in a dictatorship.
Throughout 2020, and as you could see above, also in 2021, I have continued to receive messages of success, from the company Sephora banning mink fur from its false eye lashes to the Banks Group being stopped from starting a new opencast coal mine in County Durham, UK. Yes, I’ve sent a few e-mails about some of that planned mining activity in the north of England.
I took part in a Safe Passage demonstration in Parliament Square in London on 18 June 2019, in which Lord Dubs also participated. Plenty of city councils in the UK had (and have) places waiting for child refugees, but the UK government was refusing to let them in, reneging on its earlier promises.
It was the fourth demonstration I have been part of.
A long time ago, I demonstrated against apartheid, in Amsterdam, at an event during which Allan Boesak spoke in Museum Square. (I had a subscription to the Dutch magazine Amandla.)
When I was working in tourism & hospitality in Amsterdam in the early 1980s, a man checked in one day who was living in the US, but he completed part of his registration form in French and had been born in Oran in Algeria. Realising that Algeria was a country that I knew nothing about about, I then went to the public library and started reading. I soon ended up in the southern part of the country, among the fascinating Touareg with their poetry and amazing culture, then crossed into the Sahel and so on and so forth. I also bought some old books about Africa, some with amazing photos.
When you read such books, you can’t help but notice white arrogance and the damage we white people from the west have done in other countries, including telling people how their own natural environments work – as if they’re stupid – and drawing artificial lines in the sand that we call borders, stopping people from migrating along with nature, among other things. We are so judgmental. Why do we see our own way of living as superior? (That way is the reason why the entire planet is now in a crisis.) Why do we think that only white people can make observations and draw conclusions from them?
This was how I somehow ended up subscribing to Amandla (issued by what used to be called the Dutch Angola Comité, which later changed its name to Komitee Zuidelijk Afrika or KZA).
I also collected signatures for Amnesty International against the atrocities committed during the Yugoslav Wars (ethnic conflicts) in the 1990s.
In Portsmouth, I have walked around town in solidarity against violence directed at women and in solidarity with Charlie Hebdo during “Je suis Charlie”.
I’ve attended “Beyond Windrush”, a meeting on the hostile environment, organised by Liberty and other organizations in London and I’ve been to a the State of London debate with the current mayor of London (Sadiq Khan) at the O2 arena.
I’ve sat in the audience during a meeting of the London Assembly (a visit that was sponsored by Portsmouth City Council, I should add, as part of a course I was enrolled in) at a time when “some funny American who cycles a lot” was London’s mayor.
In Portsmouth, I’ve also attended various meetings and debates, mostly in 2009 and 2010, when I still knew almost nothing about Britain’s massive inequality and what that looks like in daily life.
Among others, I’ve heard Vince Cable speak at the University of Portsmouth when he was Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and I’ve heard LSE law professor Conor Gearty talk about human rights in the UK, at Le Café Parisien. I’ve heard MP Penny Mordaunt speak and I’ve heard MP Mike Hancock speak, at the Guildhall.
Since the start of the pandemic, I’ve attended many online events in the US as well as in the UK.
On one occasion, I was greatly puzzled by the automatic endorsement of anything Keir Starmer said when he was interviewed, the complete lack of any journalistic acuity. It turned out that this platform for young people in the UK apparently was actually a Labour platform. It was started and run by a Labour councillor. It had not been presented as such at all when I began attending those particular events. In fact, I initially thought it was a forum related to EU citizens in the UK because I was invited to join within that context. Hmm. I didn’t like that lack of transparency.
I also took issue with it when the news broke that the UK counter-terrorism police was listing movements and organizations like PETA, Greenpeace, “Stop the badger cull”, pro-cycling groups and many others as potential breeding grounds for extremist terrorism, along with genuine extremists who are actually against certain groups of humans. This may reflect the counterterrorism services’ own low level of professionalism (low efficiency and low effectiveness), but more likely, it reflects something else. This is about protecting the interests of wealthy industrialists, but only some of them. It’s about greed.
We are society. All our individual actions determine what society looks like. If you stay silent when you see things that aren’t right, you are effectively signalling that you’re okay with it.
That people can get emotional about topics that are close to their heart only makes sense.
In a fair and just society with a great deal of equality, you won’t have many disgruntled people with lots of worries, hence there will be much less tension in society. No children should have to grow up in deep poverty or in war situations, for example.
And let’s face it, culling badgers to stop bovine TBC is largely scientific nonsense likely only carried out to make some farmers feel that DEFRA is doing something for them. The petition for turning that around has resulted in the decision to switch from culling to vaccination over the next few years.
Acknowledging all of that and even sounding enraged about innocent animals being killed, well, doesn’t that indicate that you’re actually a very positive human being, one that is against senseless killings and for life? The same goes for any other kind of environmental activism. Environmental activism means that you want the human species to survive.
That said, growing corn as a source of biofuel or woods so that we can burn wood chips is not the solution to our problems either. Oil, gas and coal are condensed plant matter, remember?
Hunting for lithium and aluminum and mining them so that we can run the electrical cars that enable us to stop digging up coal and extracting oil and gas is also merely more of the same.
One of the problems we have is that recycling materials is still often more expensive than extracting them from the earth; this is why governments need to subsidise recycling and fund related research.
- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/14/electric-cost-lithium-mining-decarbonasation-salt-flats-chile
- See also https://www.geoethics.org/
I don’t have all the answers either. Like everyone else, I too still pollute a lot and create a lot of waste.
That the kind of activities I talk about on this page tend to get you noticed by the UK’s counter-terrorism police as such activities are seen as potentially related to domestic terrorism – ya can’t make it up – is sadly so undemocratic that it can only be seen as reasonable from within extreme capitalism and shameless cronyism.
I also submit responses to public consultations from time to time, both in the UK and in the US.
Here is an example of how other people’s alertness and activism are benefiting the environment in the UK: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/20/government-retracts-unlawful-pollution-guidance-for-englands-farms
Note, however, that I do not automatically see “change” as a reason to step in an carry out “conservation”. Nature is dynamic; change is part of it.
You can see real nonsense at work sometimes when the same birds that used to be seen as a pest in one country have gained endangered species status or species of concern status while they become targeted in other countries in which their numbers are increasing.
Many of the “pests” actually only became a “pest” because of our own constant interference with other species without ever considering if other species perhaps also have rights, for starters because they’ve often been around on the planet far longer than the human species.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_evolutionary_history_of_life
55 million years ago, modern birds such as parrots, woodpeckers and swifts appeared on the planet. 38 million years ago, the first bears started populating the planet, 25 million years ago, the first deer, 20 million years ago, the first giraffes. Elephants have been around for 5 million years.
Modern humans? 250 thousand years.
Also, I will always try to remain very vocal about the destructiveness of hackers, though there aren’t any petitions etc related to that yet. I consider hackers the biggest threat to the planet and to humanity. And, no, there is no such thing as an “ethical” hacker. Some hacking activities are non-destructive, mutually agreed upon, and usually paid for. That is all. The problem with hackers is that they’re omnipotent and that they think that it makes them omniscient, but their focus and experience are extremely narrow. They see one spot of light and think that that is all there is but the rest is in the shadows for them. What is in the dot at the center is all they can see, but they don’t know it.
