Free Republic

Dutch intelligence services had eyes and ears for years on the Russian outfit that hacked the Democratic National Committee, even infiltrating a surveillance camera at the Cozy Bear headquarters and recording hackers' faces, Dutch media reported. That trove of intelligence gathered by the Netherlands since 2014 has been crucial to the U.S. investigation into the Russian campaign influence operation, the reports from Nieuwsuur and Volkskrant said. Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike reportedly first noticed the DNC hack by two Russian intelligence groups on June 14, 2016; CrowdStrike CTO Dmitri Alperovitch wrote in a blog post at the time that they were called...

Two Dutch intelligence services uncovered substantial evidence detailing how a Russian-backed hacking group infiltrated the Barack Obama White House, the U.S. Department of State, and the Democratic National Committee, according to a ground breaking report from broadcaster NOS and newspaper Volkskrant. The evidence was uncovered by a Dutch cyber defense team gained access to the "Cozy Bear" hacker group's systems, including a hallway security camera that allowed the Dutch team to maintain visual surveillance of the hackers.

When President Trump announced on Wednesday that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's official capital, we all knew that not everybody would welcome the news. Since then, the entire Islamic world has condemned Jerusalem's recognition and protests have erupted all over the Middle East. Sadly, that Jew-hatred is also visible in Europe. The day after Trump's announcement, a man took it a step further. He went to a Jewish restaurant in Amsterdam and smashed in its windows. The man was carrying a Palestinian flag and shouted "Allahu Akhbar" when he committed this clearly anti-Semitic crime. At the end of...

In 1990, I moved in to the “Bos en Lommer” area of West Amsterdam (in Dutch: “Amsterdam West”) to be with my lover at the time. Bos en Lommer is part of the second major expansion of Amsterdam from the city’s original canal centre outwards. ... Originally home to a mostly middle-class population, it has undergone a dramatic transformation in the last three decades, with the most rapid change happening since 2000. In the summer of 1999, while biking towards the Bos en Lommerplein with my lover, we were met with the old familiar slur: “Hey! Faggots!” We were often...

A gene study has shown that incomers could have ousted Stone Age Britons During the building of Stonehenge, around 2500BC, gene records show Stone Age Britons were replaced by Bronze Age Beaker folk. The men and women who built Stonehenge left an indelible mark on the British landscape. However, researchers have discovered that their impact on other aspects of the nation may have been less impressive. In particular, their input into Britain’s gene pool appears to have fizzled out, having been terminated by light-skinned Bronze Age invaders who arrived just as Ancient Britons were midway through their great Stone Age...

The Dutch elections of March 15 were billed around Europe and beyond as a battle royal between the forces of populist evil, as represented by Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party (PVV), and virtually everybody else in the motley crew of Dutch electoral politics. The victory of prime minister’s Mark Rutte’s VVD party (which lost 20% of its seats) over Wilders’s PVV (which added 25%), was greeted rapturously as a monumental defeat for populism and great triumph for Europe across the political spectrum. In fact, it was nothing of the kind, and if its coverage showed anything, it was...

Polls have been spectacularly wrong in recent years; Trump, Brexit, the UK 2015 General Election, all suggested that the Status Quo would prevail. And of course, they were wrong. This is in part due to how the polls are conducted, and the way in which they are often used as propaganda tools as opposed to informative data sets, but they are still a valuable tool if you know how to read the raw information. The Dutch election results announced today, show how wrong the pollsters can be yet again. It was in fact, only the very last exit poll that...

Mr Wilders, the leader of the anti-Islamist Party for Freedom (PVV), is taking on Mr Rutte, from the Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), in the knife-edge election race. The blonde populist has already cast his vote in the election after a fiery election campaign in which he pledged to shut the country's borders, ban the Koran and close mosques. 11am GMT update: Many PVV voters are backing Mr Wilders in order to rock the political establishment and voice their anger over sky-high immigration. "I am voting for Wilders. I hope he can make a change to make the Netherlands...

The UK-based Daily Telegraph has reported that Iranian assets are being funneled back to Teheran using financial intermediaries in Dubai. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reportedly authorized the transfers as fears rise that Iranian financial institutions may come under European Union sanctions. The Iranian media has reported that the move caused tension between the president and the governor of Iran's central bank, Tahmaseb Mazaheri, and that Mazaheri may resign as a result. Mazaheri took over the leadership of the central bank in 2007, as he replaced outgoing governor Ibrahim Sheibani who resigned due to Ahmadinejad's moves to influence the central bank's...

With less than 2 weeks until Dutch election, the government has assigned special forces of the Dutch military to protect the frontrunner Geert Wilders, European newspapers report. Europe’s most prominent critic of Islam and leader of the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV), Wilder had suspended his public campaign last week after a police officer serving in his security detail was arrested for leaking details about his movements to Moroccan-Muslim criminal organisation.

The head of counterterrorism for the Netherlands has said that children of radicalized Dutch jihadis pose a serious threat for national security. Intelligence services are monitoring more than 80 children of Dutch jihadists who are currently growing up in Islamic State territory and will likely return to the Netherlands, said counterterrorism and security director Dick Schoof on Wednesday. About half of the children were born abroad but are still Dutch citizens. Schoof’s comments preceded the release of a Dutch intelligence report Wednesday from the General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD). The report focused on the return of jihadists from the...

A Dutch euthanasia doctor has been rebuked by a Regional Review Committee after she gave a lethal injection to a demented patient who appeared to be struggling to stop the procedure. The incident emerged when the Regional Review Committee released euthanasia case reports on January 1. This was Verdict 2016-85. Here is what happened. An 80-year-old woman with dementia entered a nursing home because her husband could no longer care for her. When the woman was still lucid she expressed two wishes: (a) not to go into a "home for demented elderly" and (b) to be euthanised "when I myself...

The Hague (AFP) - The Netherlands on Tuesday called for an international fund to support health centres offering abortion services in developing countries, after US President Donald Trump ordered a halt to US government financing. Trump on Monday signed a decree barring federal funding for foreign NGOs that support abortion, on the eve of the 44th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that legalised the practice in the United States. The restrictions prohibit foreign non-governmental organisations that receive US family planning assistance from using non-US funding to provide abortion services, information, counselling or referrals. They are also barred from engaging...

Just one day after polls which gave Geert Wilders’s insurgent populist party a nine-point lead on the ruling conservatives, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has drifted again politically closer to the rival he last week ruled out a coalition with. Borrowing heavily from rhetoric commonly employed by Mr. Wilders, Prime Minister Rutte took out a full page advert and spoke in an interview with Dutch daily Algemeen Dagblad to tell migrants they should integrate or leave, and to issue a call for a return to “common decency”. He wrote: “I tell everyone. If you don’t like it here in this...

A Moroccan security official says that his country's intelligence service warned Germany twice about the risk posed by Anis Amri, the radical Muslim who slaughtered 12 people at a Christmas market in Berlin earlier this month. The official, who spoke to Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah, says that the Germans received two written warnings, one on September 19 and the other on October 1, about Amri's radical Islamic beliefs. He explains: Correspondence from the Moroccan security agencies had a clear warning about the Tunisian man's desire to carry out a terrorist act. Earlier this month, Dutch populist Geert Wilders was criticized...

This is one of the reasons why Geert Wilders will, I believe, win the elections for parliament in the Netherlands that will take place in March 2017. Of all Dutch inmates in 2015, 39 percent had a native Dutch background, while 62 percent had a migration background. That's clear from the official statistics from the government's Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS). According to the CBS, these numbers haven't changed in any significant manner in the last few years. With a share of 11 percent, inmates with a Moroccan background form the largest share of all of the inmates with a...

Terror suspect with loaded AK-47 and ISIS flag is arrested in Rotterdam. Police found Kalashnikov with two full magazines in 30-year-old's apartment. They also found an ISIS flag and four boxes of highly explosive illegal fireworks. Dutch prosecutors say the suspect was planning to carry out a terrorist atrocity A terror suspect with a loaded AK-47 and ISIS flag has been arrested in the Dutch city of Rotterdam, it has emerged. Police found the Kalashnikov with two full magazines when they swooped on the 30-year-old's apartment in the port city. Prosecutors say he was planning a terrorist attack and also...

The Hague (AFP) - Populist Dutch MP Geert Wilders remained unapologetic as his hate speech trial drew to a close on Wednesday, saying "millions of Dutch citizens will be convicted with me" if he is found guilty.

Pim Fortuyn, the hero of Rotterdam, the man who shook the country awake, once said, "Do not aim for what is possible, but what is imaginable." He wanted to make clear that for us, the Dutch, nothing is impossible. Pim Fortuyn was right. Nothing is impossible for us. We are Dutch. Look at our country. We have single-handedly created this unique and beautiful land. We are the only people in the world living in a country which for the largest part we created ourselves. A great achievement. We not only created our own land, but we also explored the world....

In the image below, are you seeing 1, European children learning the upward dog Yoga position 2. Children of families that recently got a dog and are learning to play with them 3. Treatment for a rare form of balance disorder that requires the arse to be elevated over the head for several minutes at a time throughout the day. 4. Dutch children being brought to a mosque and taught how to pray like Muslims in a manner which would be defacto illegal if it was any other religion at all, including Christianity, the founding faith of that entire culture....