Is this Google, 4chan-type people or vicious civil servants? All three? Or is it Dierenambulance Amsterdam staff, this time, reporting my review?

Google has flurries in which it unpublishes my reviews. Initially, this was mostly for local government and the like. At around the same time or a little later, other online activities were being reported as fraudulent and I figured that the latter might be done by someone who has covert NPD.

Slowly, a pattern started to emerge that seemed to reveal that it’s Dutch civil servants (and friends and family) who are doing this.

Google increasingly often claimed that I was lying and/or extorting people, such as at VU University Amsterdam. When I started adding evidence that I really had been to or at these places, Google would then refuse the review on the basis of the “low quality of the media” or because it “contained personal information”.

Now this has happened. Google just removed another review. Why? 🤔

Keep reading. 🤪😤😠🤬


Google unpublished this review a few days after posting because Google claims that it contains people’s medical information, credit card details or govt-issued ID. This concerns a gull and a pigeon who are unidentifiable and are also both likely or possibly dead by now. Humans don’t have wings and humans don’t have a crop, Google. (I know that you don’t know that because your AI search comes up with similar rubbish as, say, “crop wing gull pigeon legal” not being a common legal phrase.)


Niet bellen voor vogels. Leidt alleen tot een enorme, walgelijke dierenkwelling. Schokkend. Ik ga er intussen echt van over mijn nek. Dat dit überhaupt MAG!

Ik kom nu voor de tweede keer een dier tegen dat hier angstig vele uuuuuuren deels of geheel in het donker en in de kou staat.Het idee schijnt te zijn dat ze dan wel vanzelf dood gaan.

Nú maak ik eerst foto’s.

De vorige keer betrof het een zogenaamde squeaker (jonge duif, nog niet vliegend) met een compleet kapotte krop. Het was nota bene de politie die erover had gebeld. Om een uur of 5, 6. Om 11 uur kreeg ik nog steeds smoezen te horen.

Die duif zat in een doos met briefje erop dat de dierenambulance het dier kwam halen, op een bankje op een plek met veel verkeer en veel luide mensen. (De spoorbrug bij de Pontanusstraat/Eerste van Swindenstraat. Midden augustus was dat. Het dier zou door iemand steeds in de lucht zijn gegooid en kwakte dan steeds op de stoep volgens de mensen in de bar Botanique.)(Uit nest gevallen?)

Overigens kan een kapotte krop worden gehecht en zo’n vogel worden gerehabiliteerd (gecheckt met iemand aan Cornell die zowel vet tech als onderzoeker is), maar dat vergt behalve geld voor de behandeling geduld en toewijding. Dat er dan soms voor euthanasie wordt gekozen kan ik begrijpen, maar dan moet je dat prooidiertje niet eerst urenlang in herrie, donker en kou in de angst laten zitten.

Walgelijk.

Want de mensen van de dierenambulance liegen, liegen en liegen en o wee als je belt als er na 5 uur wachten dus na 11 ‘s avonds nóg niemand is geweest, want dan word je letterlijk weggedrukt, en als je dan weer belt en stampvoet, zijn ze er opeens binnen 5 minuten. En dan blijkt er van enige drukte of tijdsnood geen enkele sprake te zijn. (Ook voor socials hebben ze alle tijd, trouwens.)

Ze gaan er gewoon van uit dat het dier op deze manier wel gewoon dood zal gaan. Het is maar een stomme vogel, tenslotte.

Echt WALGELIJK.

Ik heb ervaring met animal rehab. Vogels. Ook zelf privé ervaring mee. (Overigens óók ervaring met honden, paarden, vee, katten etc. Voor iedereen die denkt dat mensen met vogels mentaal een soort breekbare vlindertjes zijn.)

Dit is geen animal rehab, dit is dierenfoltering.

PS Ik ga zo even proberen te kijken en hoop dat deze meeuw “gewoon” even een vleugel had laten hangen. Dat gebeurt wel vaker. Maar in deze wasmand heeft ie wellicht intussen wél een verwonding overgehoudenIk word hier echt ziedend door en voel me enorm machteloos. Ik kan niet even naar mijn avian vet in Andover gaan oid (John Chitty). Ik kan niet even naar Lee Fox in Wimauma gaan. Ik kan niet even in mijn auto springen. Ik kan hem nu indien nodig niet in mijn eigen bird icu thuis zetten. Ik heb niet eens een handdoek bij me.

PPS Bespaar me jullie reactie. Ik heb het echt gehád met jullie. Ik had de vorige keer ook een review geplaatst. Later weggehaald. Ik wilde niet al te gewichtig doen en niet zeuren. Ik heb het nu echt gehad met jullie.

Vogels zijn PROOIDIEREN! Triage, people! (Who am I still kidding? 😓)(Overigens was ik er óók niet van gediend dat jullie me eerder zo raar gingen stalken op Mastodon.)(Maar misschien was dat 4chan oid weer. Kan heel goed.)(Of, eigenlijk logischer, 764 of zo.)

Tipje voor anderen: De Toevlucht in de Bijlmer is mogelijk een betere optie voor vogels. Zelf geen ervaring mee. Geen idee of ze goed zijn. Ik weet dat ze bestaan omdat ik iemand ken die er vrijwilliger is geweest. (Dierenambulances hebben vaak ook weinig kennis van vogels. Heb ik althans elders in Nederland gezien.)


For the record, this was a juvenile gull and one of its wing joints was off. It might have been a dislocation; I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t do a damn thing and am still seething with anger re Dierenambulance Amsterdam. They’re despicable. My experience with everyone who I interacted with at Dierenambulance Amsterdam this year have been really negative. They’re simply bullshitting you.

That said, this gull was in an urban environment where people often drop food and some even feed birds. Gulls don’t only fly, they also spend time in the water (and here’s where they can be safer). Adult gulls tend to look after youngsters in trouble too, I’ve noticed. Its musculature was not off. There was no wound. It was hungry and thirsty and tough. Smart, too.

I think I had seen this gull before, btw. Juvenile gulls sometimes let a wing droop without there anything being wrong with it. Pigeons too do stuff that makes it easy to assume that they are ill. Birds – prey animals – tend to hide illnesses really well. They can be about to keel over dead while still looking fine.

The main danger in that gull’s location comes from dog owners who allow their dogs to chase birds. The owners laugh about it when anyone – not just me – says anything about it. Most birds know exactly which dogs do this and recognise them from a distance, however.

From John Chitty, I’ve learned that birds with a dislocated wing often still teach themselves to fly again (if the wing angle isn’t too bad, I assume). I had a formerly feral quaker parrot (Myiopsitta monachus) with a dislocated wing for over two decades.

I called De Toevlucht later, hoping that I could take it there, but they weren’t accepting birds because of this mostly human-induced spread of bird flu. Smart decision.

Two years ago or so, I noticed that a different Dierenambulance had very little knowledge of birds and bird flu, btw.

Many vets may recognise John Chitty’s name because he was the president or chair or whatever of the European organisation for vets or whatever.

Having the luxury of being able to focus on the blood work on one bird only and compare it with the blood work of other birds that were diagnosed with what John assumed was one of my two bird’s problems, I did not agree with him on that. However, I really respect John (and his wife who’s also a vet) and when he later did the necropsy, which he let me witness, we discovered that none of us could have known what was going on without having opened up this bird, which would have killed it.

The bird had a crisis during the x-ray and went into the ICU, on oxygen.

A few days later, they tried again, with barium. I still have the images.

That what later happened to me in Portsmouth and after ruined my entire network is a different matter. John couldn’t figure it out either, what on earth was happening in my life, and he started distancing himself, understandably.

Here is a bird that I rehabbed myself:

Very ill pigeon on the left; same pigeon, rehabbed by me, on the right

Further to my discussion with the City of Amsterdam

29 October 2025: I followed it up with a message explaining that I understand that they probably see me as a pain in the behind. Ms Engelhard didn’t reply to that either.

Let’s face it. A) The city permanently shut its doors to me in December 2024 and B) the fact that the city doesn’t even provide something as utterly basic as toilets probably says it all. They are not interested in remedying issues. They are just into cosmetics.

See also this research done at the University of Amsterdam. It’s a chapter in The Routledge Handbook of Global Perspectives on Homelessness, Law & Policy (pp. 175-187). Published in 2024. People went undercover, pretending to be homeless, as part of this research.

https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003274056-12

https://pure.uva.nl/ws/files/180146235/10.4324_9781003274056-12_chapterpdf.pdf

(copy and paste if you don’t trust links)


This is a follow-up to this previous post:
https://angelinasouren.com/2025/10/14/my-ongoing-discussion-with-the-city-of-amsterdam/
See also: https://angelinasouren.com/homelessnessness-in-the-netherlands/

Note that Ms Engelhard did not deny that the City’s behind the intimidation. (This may be why: Homeless people in Amsterdam are no longer fined, as of 13 June 2025. That is in theory. Have the regulations been updated or was this more empty waffling? https://www.dedaklozenvakbond.nl/2025/06/13/geen-boetes-meer/)

Looks like it: https://decorrespondent.nl/16264/buiten-moeten-slapen-dat-is-geen-overtreding-maar-een-onrecht/7774e412-2a4a-0572-05fd-b77458dbf41f There is still a large number of fines that can be imposed on homeless people (and my sense of what was happening around me was that it was geared toward being able to impose at least one on me; I haven’t stated what has been happening and what else I’ve been observing and that’s on purpose).

No, I am – clearly – no longer in negotiating mode or trying to keep anyone at the City of Amsterdam particularly happy. I am being cantankerous, from their point of view. I get that. Personally, I have very little to no faith left in these municipal circuses and the money-making industry that surrounds it. That’s now irrepairable.

I do understand why the municipality sees me as a pain in the behind but I’ve also contacted a different Dutch municipality about its homelessness challenges and took part in a discussion on the topic for London as well.

If I can help push through some improvements, with or without my cousin* pushing from the other side, then I might be quite happy.

(This cousin runs a large real estate undertaking in the mid-market housing segment – and in investing – so he might need to set up an extra company, which in itself is no big deal but entering a very different market segment would be. However, he could still push without doing that and he could also implement changes to existing practices because his existing tenants can easily be impacted too. I’d like to see him use empty office buildings that are too expensive to turn into “proper” apartments, such as the one in Amsterdam Zuid-Oost that I read about – possibly the former ING building? – for capsule housing. You could have two forms: Pods for currently homeless people – because you don’t sleep much at all in a hall with lots of mattresses on the floor and similar places – and larger capsules for young people who can’t afford a bloody fortune in rent but would like to be able to save. The real estate sector has a crappy reputation. My cousin could do break-even projects as a show of corporate responsibility. I know he would have to convince others too. He’s not Donald Trump. I know that. But where there is a will, there is a way. Maybe he can start a consortium with other real estate firms that would like to change the sector.)

The Netherlands is gridlocked in a crazy mess of regulations. That, too, needs to change urgently.
De volkomen bezopen waanzin van de Nederlandse hokjesgeest en verstikkende regelziekte… Lees dit: De regels versimpelen voor AOW’ers die willen samenwonen, scheelt de overheid potentieel honderden miljoenen. En er komen jaarlijks honderden tot duizenden extra woningen vrij.

No, I had not asked Ms Engelhard for help in March, but I was hungry and had called one of those centers where people in my situation are supposed to be able to get a meal, shower and do laundry (at a small fee). Their opening hours are limited and the need is FAR BIGGER than what these centers are still able to offer in terms of capacity. So far, Mayor Femke Halsema has been adamant that she won’t offer more support.

When I called this center, I was told that it was only available for people who were already registered there.

At the end of the call, I asked Ms Engelhard where I might be able to get a meal and I told her about this. Somehow, Ms Engelhard knew which center (inloophuis) I was talking about. I don’t know how she knew.

She informed me that I would be able to get a meal at a location that turned out to be west of Sloterplas, at about 7 kilometers (from where I was at the time, I think, which was east of Central Station). She mentioned a specific time.

I told her that I would not be able to make it.

I googled it later and it was a center for men, it said online, but I’ve found that the online information as to where and when you can find resources is often non-existent or contradictory.

Anyway, this wasn’t doable for me. I was dragging two suitcases and a heavy underseat cabin bag along with me. I already was exhausted.

One thing that the city definitely has to do if it continues on its course of sending people to the fringes of town all the time is give them (storage facilities, anyway, and) a public transport pass. If the City gives you a registered address, for example, then you’re obliged to go to the far Nieuw West once a week at a specific time, off the top of my head. Otherwise you will lose the address.

There are conditions tied to the benefits too that I can no longer meet. Ms Engelhard said that it would not take me that long to find new living quarters, but I reckon it would take 15 to 20 years.

Below are the two texts I had sent to the mayor. I think that these are the exact same versions, but there might be minor differences.

I was still in the middle of learning how to do homelessness. Sleep deprivation is such a huge factor initially that you quickly realize that it is vital to get enough sleep. (That is not an issue at all for me any longer.) After that, you discover that rain is actually the biggest problem. The worries about people freezing to death mostly concern the image of city councils etc. You can learn how to deal with cold, but rain makes you miserable, wet and muddy and powerless. There is very little you can do about it. Toilets are an issue too. There are almost no public toilets in Amsterdam. Most are for men only and even the ones for men are only for, eh, number 1?

I just also emailed the town of Beverwijk about its homelessness problem, btw. I sent them this link: https://www.lekkertehuur.nl/

Sleep deprivation, hunger and utter physical exhaustion – along with anger about getting treated like trash or like terrorists – are behind the symptoms that get homeless people vilified.


Anyway, with regard to what happened in December 2024: I tend to think of what happened as the result of me having emigrated to England in 2004, but I was in fact informed that the issue was that I hadn’t been staying in a tent or car but on someone’s couch.

Unfortunately, there’s nobody who can sign off as to whether or not you’ve been on the street (and there’s probably no form for it either). It was my understanding that I had to be on someone’s couch, perhaps so that someone could sign off. They said that there was an arrangement with the Amsterdam suburb that I was in at the time. Amsterdam runs over into it; there is no unbuilt environment in between.

I have a feeling that if I’d stayed in a tent, I’d have been told yet some other reason as to why I didn’t qualify.

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