(Sorry, the whitespace disappeared when I pasted both texts.)
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About Dutch social security benefits…YES, if you go online, there is a lot of information that makes it look like getting basic benefits is easy. What’s lacking is the small print and local policy. People who live in the Netherlands and don’t depend on them are convinced it’s easy and wonderful. That fancy-background Karen woman with the heaps of dough and her deceased dad’s best friend thought so too. She went online, figuring I had suddenly become retarded and concluded that she had it all figured out. She thought that I might even be able to get rent support while living in the bushes. “1400 euro per month. In six months, you’ll have your van.” It’s not easy at all. It’s a frikking nightmare in most municipalities and that includes Amsterdam.I should have known! Because in 2017, after Frank either simply forgot about or reneged on his promises, when he was still living at his previous address – in Amsterdam – without the nasty, now second ex wife, we stopped by at the civic offices and back then, they said that there wasn’t anything that they could do for me. I’d forgotten, frankly. 🫢🙄😬These days, if you have any kind of ties to abroad, including your parents being foreign or having a foreign-sounding name, you’re considered likely to be scheming to defraud the system. So rejecting your application is standard policy in many municipalities. I’ve gotten hassled like crazy again. Some were standing behind me so I couldn’t see how many there were, but up to 6 cops hassled me.This is what appears to have happened. First, a plainclothes dude drove me out of a location that is next to a path so that if they hassle you there, the public witnesses it. He said he had been to prison for 9 years and that he was going to come back and set fire to the whole shebang with me in it. But he talked like a cop!Second, people showed up who said that they were enforcement. In the Netherlands, people in lots of roles don’t need to identify themselves, in order to protect them from the public. You have to take them at their word. I was now at a location where the public just sees a bunch of cops in the distance standing around someone who the public can’t really see.Third, an army of police officers showed up, initially addressed me by a decades old nickname from even before we became acquainted, Julie. Wtf? But they claimed to have been flagged down in their car by a jogger about an unknown woman going haywire (about to brush her teeth and put on her makeup).They stood shouting and lying and twisting my words and their own for nearly two hours (making me postpone an appointment and messing up my planning for the week, taking my injured foot into account). Among other things, they said to me that the previous people hadn’t been enforcement at all. But they later DID refer to them as “enforcement”.They called me an illegal at first, too.And (twice, I think): “You’ll claim benefits here and then you’ll go to Utrecht to claim benefits and then you may go to Belgium.”Later they said that I can get benefits here on the basis of my nearly-10-bucks-per-month postbox address here. That’s utter nonsense. Etc etc.There’s a guy here called frank van der linde who used to be a management consultant, and was in various other organizations/businesses, ran one of them (food-related), then slowly became an activist – as well as a writer and columnist. He wrote about police brutality, racism, arms sales, unhealthy and unsustainable foods etc. He started receiving threats. Neighbors complained that they no longer felt safe. He was told to move out. That’s how HE became homeless.Police declared him both an extremist and a mentally unwell person who should be locked up. (Police here are doing the latter to me as well, not the former as far as I’m aware, just because I dare criticize public policy and local approaches to among other things homelessness, just like that van der linde guy).But the question remains: Why did they address me by that decades-old nickname? I started using that when I was 11 or 12 because of a stupid song by a popular singer called Peter Koelewijn. That nickname started disappearing since 1981 and I dropped it formally in 1994. There’s a local very silly, petty woman who I told about that nickname. It’s possible that it was somewhere in a police computer s
UPDATE
This, below, is what I wrote to the police. They got back to me. It wasn’t them.
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Dag,Ik ben op 26 augustus 2026 rond 8, 9 uur in de ochtend een kleine twee uur lastig gevallen door vier tot zes Amsterdamse politieagenten. Ik heb daardoor een afspraak elders moeten verplaatsen naar een andere dag. Er gebeurde daarbij iets heel vreemds. Dat is de reden dat ik contact opneem. (Dat vertel ik zo.) Dit was duidelijk personally targeted harassment, bleek daaruit. Wat zit daarachter? Drie mogelijkheden: 1) targeted harassment van de politie ivm mijn social justice activisme of 2) targeted harassment van een Belgische mevrouw (An Desmet) met een vreemde obsessie naar mij toe die in maart of april van dit jaar uit de hand begon te lopen of 3) targeted harassment van een Belgische mevrouw (An Desmet) aangestuurd door een vriendin van haar (Sandra) die toevallig heeft gewerkt voor met name één bepaalde gemeentelijke instantie waar ik in het verleden kritiek op heb geleverd. Van die vriendin (Sandra) van die Belgische mevrouw heb ik in 2025 overlast ervaren, maar een en ander was behoorlijk zielig en onbenullig. Ik heb er nooit over gesproken, maar met succes alle contact acuut afgekapt. Ik was destijds wel kort bezorgd dat ik deze dame (Sandra) niet op een afstand zou kunnen houden. Ze schijnt nog twee keer haar hengeltje te hebben uitgeslagen, via haar vriendin mw Desmet. Dat heb ik toen straal genegeerd. Ik heb beide dames na het afkappen van alle contacten met elk niet meer gezien. Mevrouw Desmet heb ik in pakweg mei 2025 voor het eerst ontmoet. Een tijd daarna benaderde ze me op haar werk (OBA) toen ze me daar opeens herkende. Ze speelt geen rol in mijn leven. Haar vriendin is ook voor mij een wildvreemde. Aan u om dit op te volgen.UITLEG De agenten beweerden door een jogger in hun auto te zijn gestopt ivm mij, iemand die ze niet kenden. Ze benaderden me echter door me aan te spreken met een nickname die ik decennia geleden had (sinds zesde klas lagere school, maar vanaf 1981 langzaam verdwijnend en in 1994 formeel vervangen). Heel vreemd. Die Belgische mevrouw (An Desmet) heb ik over die nickname verteld. Toen ik die nickname nog gebruikte, heb ik ooit de politie in Amsterdam gebeld ivm met een diefstal van een auto die op dat moment leek plaats te vinden aan de Gillis van Ledenberchstraat. Eind of midden jaren 80 was dat. Die nickname zou dus ook in jullie systemen kunnen zitten. Hier klopt dus iets niet. Als dat niet duidelijk is, hoor ik het graag. Bedankt voor de moeite.
