Bas Kousemaker (he/him)

We can no longer pretend that Viktor Orbán is simply a 'difficult' EU partner. He has fundamentally broken his contract with the European community. Transcripts reveal a shocking level of subordination to the Kremlin that is utterly disqualifying for any EU member state. Recordings capture Szijjártó reporting to Lavrov during breaks in EU Council meetings. In these exchanges, Szijjártó is heard providing "direct reports" on confidential EU discussions and even asking for "patience" while he completes specific tasks. These recordings don't just suggest a preference for Russian interests. They prove a master-servant relationship that compromises the security of the entire European Union. There is a word for a government that takes orders from a foreign aggressor while reaping the benefits of European solidarity: betrayal. Polish PLDonald Tusk: "What we heard today, and what we had already suspected, is merely a confirmation of a very disturbing political dependency—the dependency of Viktor Orbán’s government and his Foreign Minister, Mr. Szijjártó, directly on the Moscow authorities. It has been a long time, if ever in my life, since I heard something so sad. What these recordings revealed is not just the fact of a political dependency between the government in Budapest and Moscow, but it also showed how unacceptable and how peculiar this relationship is. Just listen: the Foreign Minister of a European country, a member of the European Union, reports to the Russian Foreign Minister on the completion of a task and asks for patience because he knows he still has a few more tasks to perform. I mean, one could not have expected anything more disgusting. This is absolutely disqualifying. And I have the impression that while the Hungarians—you know, Poland loves Hungary, Poles love Hungarians. This is a friendship that has survived decades and centuries. And that is why it is so important to me that everyone in Hungary also hears that nothing has changed here, and that we are happy to be members of the European community together with the Hungarians. What is sad is that Viktor Orbán’s government—certainly Viktor Orbán and Minister Szijjártó—left that European Union a long time ago."

John Lennon: “Working class people around the world have no innate desire to go to war with each other. They have to be conned into it by the sociopaths who will profit from it.” #JohnLennon #War #Peace

@robinosinga Goed uitgelegd; mijn vraag, in de context van wie is eigenaar van de media, is; brengt Videoland, en hun aandeelhouders, bewust dit narratief naar de bevolking? Mijn vermoeden; ja.

Ik weet niet of Thomas Erdbrink naïef is of bewust meewerkt aan een narratief, maar uiteindelijk maakt dat weinig uit, want het effect is hetzelfde. Rusland is al jaren bezig zijn propagandastrategie te verfijnen en heeft inmiddels goed door wat in het Westen werkt en vooral wat niet meer werkt. Het beeld van Rusland als een soort paradijs slaat hier niet aan, daar prikken we direct doorheen. Wat wél werkt, is iets subtielers, namelijk gecontroleerde nuance. Door journalisten toegang te geven, binnen zorgvuldig geregisseerde grenzen, ontstaat er een verhaal dat geloofwaardig voelt. We zien geen schreeuwerige propaganda, maar menselijke verhalen, armoede, worsteling en gewone levens. Impliciet ontstaat daarbij een krachtige boodschap, namelijk dat de Russische bevolking óók slachtoffer is. Dat frame is effectief, omdat het de focus verschuift van dader naar mens en van verantwoordelijkheid naar medelijden. Rusland hoeft ons niet te overtuigen van zijn gelijk, het hoeft alleen maar twijfel te zaaien, twijfel over sancties, over steun aan Oekraïne en over de vraag wie hier werkelijk verantwoordelijk is. En twijfel is genoeg. Wij geloven graag dat we kwaad herkennen als we het zien, maar dat is een gevaarlijke illusie. Kwaad presenteert zich zelden als kwaad, zeker niet in een moderne mediacontext. We kijken naar nazi Duitsland en naar Adolf Hitler als hét voorbeeld van absoluut kwaad, herkenbaar, historisch en afgesloten. Maar wat vaak vergeten wordt, en pijnlijk duidelijk werd tijdens de Neurenbergprocessen, is dat de verantwoordelijken geen monsters waren in de letterlijke zin. Het waren mensen, met gezinnen, vrienden en carrières, mensen die binnen een systeem opereerden dat hun daden mogelijk maakte en vaak normaliseerde. Dat maakt het niet minder erg, maar juist verontrustender, want het betekent dat kwaad niet iets uitzonderlijks is, maar iets menselijks en dus potentieel overal aanwezig. Dat brengt ons naar vandaag. Onder Vladimir Poetin voert Rusland al decennia een patroon van agressie, van Tsjetsjenië tot de Krim en de grootschalige invasie van Oekraïne. Dit zijn geen incidenten, maar een consistente lijn. Ja, Russen hebben een menselijk gezicht, ze hebben levens, zorgen en families, maar menselijkheid betekent niet dat verantwoordelijkheid verdwijnt. Het echte gevaar ontstaat wanneer we empathie verwarren met morele neutraliteit, wanneer we de mens zien maar de daden relativeren. Want kwaad komt niet altijd luid en herkenbaar binnen, soms komt het als nuance, als redelijkheid, als een verhaal dat nét geloofwaardig genoeg is om twijfel te zaaien. En soms is twijfel precies het doel.

If this video doesn't make you realise that the 'peace dividend' is officially dead and buried, nothing will. German General Breuer, Inspector General since March 2023, widely respected for his pragmatic, "no-nonsense" approach to crisis management: “We're facing a threat from Russia. I've never experienced situation as dangerous and urgent as today. Russia is building up its military to nearly double the size it had before the war against Ukraine, with new structures all directing West. It's a clear threat.” Breuer has been in the game for 40 years and says he’s never seen it this dangerous—that should tell you everything. This isn't 'warmongering’, it's survival. Russia isn't just 'rebuilding' for fun. They are gearing up for a direct hit on the West.

A palm oil tycoon is now even destroying Indonesia’s forests that are home to critically endangered orangutans in a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve on the island of Borneo! news.mongabay.com/2026/03/palm-o…

I literally can’t even comprehend to you all how depressing this is. Tens of thousands of species to just be all gone soon in Indonesia. When will the world wake up and help them value and protect their forests, they belong to all of us! 🦧🦋❌

Listen, if you’re tired of the diplomatic fluff and want someone to actually call out the chaos, you need to hear this. Claude Malhuret just went absolutely scorched-earth in the French Senate, and frankly, it’s a masterclass in truth-telling. He doesn't hold back on the "madmen" wrecking the global order—slamming putin for his relentless, bloody ego-trip in Ukraine and dragging Trump’s new "circus" of a cabinet for treating foreign policy like a private piggy bank. Malhuret is basically the only adult left in the room, cutting through the MAGA noise and the Kremlin’s lies with the kind of sharp, witty clarity we desperately need right now. It’s brutal, it’s honest, and it’s a total must-watch. Speech by Claude Malhuret regarding the situation in the Near and Middle East: "Mr. President, Mr. Prime Minister, ladies and gentlemen of the Cabinet, in February 2022, a dangerous madman drunk on grandeur lit a fuse in Ukraine that blew up a powder keg and disrupted the world order. The war was supposed to last a week. It is now entering its fifth year. In February 2026, another dangerous madman lit another fuse in the Near East that once again threatens international balance. Was that war also supposed to last a week? One month later, the whole world is asking: 'What is going to happen?' The simple, short, and precise answer is this: God only knows. A year ago in this very place, I compared the Trump presidency to the court of Nero. I was wrong; it is a 'Court of Miracles.' An anti-vax former heroin addict as Secretary of Health; a climate skeptic as Secretary of Econology; an alcoholic TV host as Secretary of Defense; a former agent of Qatar as Attorney General; a putin groupie as National Security Advisor. A Turkish proverb says: 'When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn't become a king; the palace becomes a circus.' This 'fine team' decided to create a competitor to the UN. Since his Peace Council has existed, Trump has launched more military strikes than Biden did during his entire term. Every time an internal scandal resurfaces, bombs explode somewhere in the world as a diversion. Bomb more to gain more. There isn't a country where Trump hasn't taken advantage of the situation to enrich himself, never forgetting his family: a private Boeing gifted by Qatar, investments in all Gulf projects or elsewhere, manipulation of stock market prices benefiting a few insiders. A single one of these conflicts of interest would have triggered an immediate impeachment procedure here, but we are not here—we are in MAGA America: the conduct of public affairs at the service of private interests. After the customs duties, Greenland, the abandonment of Ukraine, the humiliation of allies, the ineffective back-and-forth in Venezuela and so many others, a new senseless adventure begins. Let me be clearly understood: I am the last to complain about the decapitation of the Mullahs' regime and the first to demand freedom for the Iranian people. But what is the strategy to achieve it? And have the collateral damages, including for the Iranians, been measured? The answer is: there is no strategy, and collateral damages are written off as losses. Just as in January, when Trump called on Iranians to take to the streets, only to leave them to be massacred by the Basij. After the pretext of an 'imminent' Iranian atomic bomb—contradicted by the Director of American Intelligence herself—and then the argument for regime change, it is Marco Rubio who finally let the cat out of the bag: we went in because we followed Netanyahu. In other words, we have no objective of our own. Trump ignored the warnings of the few who had the courage to tell him what would obviously happen: the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz, the extension of the war to the entire Near East, and finally the global repercussions. 1/3

Hou het in de gaten @MinPres en @ministerBZ Experts: “Omdat Israëlische militaire processen tegen burgers doorgaans niet voldoen aan de normen voor een eerlijk proces volgens het internationale mensenrechtenrecht en het humanitair recht, zou elke daaruit voortvloeiende doodstraf het recht op leven verder schenden. Het ontzeggen van een eerlijk proces is ook een oorlogsmisdaad.” ohchr.org/en/press-relea…

Goh, die BBBoeren.. illegale mestdump, sloten dumpen, dierenleed, bomen omzagen....je verwacht het niet...oh wacht... trouw.nl/duurzaamheid-e…

Dear World, Please DO NOT visit the United States for the World Cup, or for anything. As you can see, ICE is violently arresting U.S. citizens at SF airport, so clearly nobody can guarantee your own safety here. Repeat after me: FUCK ICE!!!

Dear President @realdonaldtrump this is what our failing right leader @GeertWilders is doing, desperately seeking attention ratting out our prime minister and perfectly willing to hurt our national interests. Please don’t trust him, he is the biggest loser of the last elections, a fake nationalist like yourself, with no friends left. Sad and pathetic! Thank for your attention to this matter.

The fact that we have to fight old Men to not have sex with children is wild.

Robert Mueller died last night. He was 81 years old. He had a wife who loved him for sixty years. He had two daughters, one of whom he met for the first time in Hawaii, in 1969, on a few hours of military leave, before he got back on the plane and returned to Vietnam. He had grandchildren. He had a faith he practiced quietly, without performance. He had, in the way of men who have seen real things and survived them, a quality that is increasingly rare and increasingly mocked in the country he spent his life serving. He had integrity. And tonight the President of the United States said good! I have been sitting with that word for hours now. Good. One syllable. The thing you say when the coffee is hot or the traffic is moving. The thing a man who has never had to bury anyone, never had to sit in the specific silence of a room where someone is newly absent, reaches for when he wants the world to know he is satisfied. Good. The daughters are crying and the wife is alone in the house and good. I want to speak directly to the Americans reading this. Not the political Americans. Just the human ones. The ones who have lost a father. The ones who know what it is to be in that first hour, when you keep forgetting and then remembering again, when ordinary objects become unbearable, when the world outside the window seems obscene in its indifference. I want to ask you, simply, to hold that feeling for a moment, and then to understand that the man you elected looked at it and typed a single word. Good. This is not a country having a bad day. I need you to understand that. Countries have bad days. Elections go wrong. Leaders disappoint. Institutions bend. But there is a different thing, a rarer and more terrible thing, that happens when the moral center of a place simply gives way. Not dramatically. Not with a single catastrophic event. But quietly, in increments, until one evening a president celebrates the death of an old man whose family is still warm with grief, and enough people find it acceptable that it becomes the weather. Just the weather. That is what is happening. That is what has happened. The world knows. From Tokyo to Oslo, from London to Buenos Aires, people are not angry at America tonight. Anger would mean there was still something to fight for, some remaining faith to be betrayed. What I see, in the reactions from everywhere that is not here, is something older and sadder than anger. It is the look people get when they have waited a long time for someone they love to find their way back, and have finally understood that they are not coming. America is being grieved. Past tense, almost. The idea of it. The thing it represented to people who had nothing else to believe in, who came here with everything they owned in a single bag because they had heard, somehow, across an ocean, that this was the place where decency was written into the walls. That idea is not resting. It is not suspended. It is being buried, in real time, with 7,450 likes before dinner. And the church said nothing. Seventy million people have decided that this man, this specific man who has cheated everyone he has ever made a promise to, who has mocked the disabled and the dead and the grieving, who celebrated tonight while a family wept, is an instrument of God. The pastors who made that bargain did not just trade away their credibility. They traded away the thing that made them worth listening to in the first place. The cross they carry now is a costume. The faith they preach is a loyalty oath with scripture attached. When the history of American Christianity is written, this will be the chapter they skip at seminary. Now I want to talk about the men who stand next to him. Because this is the part that actually breaks my heart. JD Vance is not a bad man. I have to say that, because it is true, and because the truth matters even now, especially now. Marco Rubio is not a bad man. Lindsey Graham is not a bad man. They are idiots, but not bad, as in BAD! These are men with mothers who raised them and children who love them and friends who remember who they were before all of this. They are not monsters. Monsters are simple. Monsters do not cost you anything emotionally because there is nothing in them to mourn. These men are something more painful than monsters. They are men who knew better, and know better still, and will get up tomorrow and do it again. Every small compromise they made had a reason. Every moment they looked the other way had a justification that sounded, at the time, almost reasonable. And now they have arrived here, at a place where a president celebrates the death of an old man and they will find a way, on television, to say nothing that means anything, and they will go home to houses where children who carry their name are waiting, and they will say goodnight, and they will say nothing. Their oldest friends are watching. The ones who knew Rubio when he still believed in something. Who knew Graham when he said, out loud, on the record, that this exact man would destroy the Republican Party and deserve it. Who sat next to Vance and thought here is someone worth knowing. Those friends are not angry tonight. They moved through anger a long time ago. What they feel now is the quiet, irrecoverable sadness of watching someone disappear while still being present. Of watching a person they loved choose, again and again, to become less. That is what cowardice costs. Not the coward. The people who loved him. And in the comments tonight, the followers celebrate. People who ten years ago brought casseroles to grieving neighbours. Who stood in the rain at gravesides and meant the words they said. Who told their children that we do not speak ill of the dead because the dead were someone's beloved. Those people are tonight typing gleeful things about a man whose daughters are not yet done crying. And they feel clean doing it. Righteous. Because somewhere along the way the thing they were given in exchange for their decency was the feeling of belonging to something, and that feeling is very hard to give up even when you can no longer remember what you gave for it. When Trump is gone, they will still be here. Standing in the silence where the noise used to be. Without the permission the crowd gave them. Without the pastor who told them their cruelty was holy. They will be alone with what they said and what they cheered and what they chose to become, and there will be no one left to tell them it was righteous. That morning is coming. Robert Mueller flew across the Pacific on military leave to hold his newborn daughter for a few hours before returning to the war. He came home. He buried his dead with honour. He served presidents of both parties because he understood that the institution was larger than any one man. He told his grandchildren that a lie is the worst thing a person can do, that a reputation once lost cannot be recovered, and he lived that, every day, in the quiet and unglamorous way of people who actually believe what they say. He was the kind of American the world used to point to when it needed to believe the story was true. He died last night. His wife is alone in their house in Georgetown. His daughters are learning what the world is without him in it. And somewhere in the particular hush that falls over a family in the first hours of loss, the most powerful man and the biggest loser on earth sent a message to say he was glad. The world that loved what America was supposed to be is grieving tonight. Not for Robert Mueller only. For the country that produced him and then became this. For the distance between what was promised and what was delivered. For the suspicion, growing quieter and more certain with each passing month, that the America people believed in was always partly a story, and the story is over now, and there is nothing yet to replace it. That is all it needed to be. A man died. His family is broken open with grief. That is all it needed to be. Instead the President said good. And the country that once stood for something looked away 🇺🇸 Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

Of everyone in the UK that Peter Thiel could choose to run Palantir UK, he chose Louis Mosley, grandson of violent British fascist Oswald Mosley—who had his wedding at Goebbels house so Hitler could attend. Louis is rarely seen without a black shirt. Palantir is Nazi cancer.

This is MMA fighter Sean McInnes. When Anne Marie Boyle asked him to leave her alone, he punched her in the face so hard that he broke her cheekbone and her eye socket, knocked her unconscious, and left her with a life-altering brain injury. He was given less than two years behind bars. It would be a real shame if this post was widely circulated and impacted his career in a negative way.

Every navigation app on earth finds its route using an algorithm invented by a Dutch computer scientist in 1956 Edsger Dijkstra solved the shortest-path problem in twenty minutes at a café in Amsterdam, without paper; he did it in his head Google Maps, Uber, and every GPS system alive run on a Dutch mathematician's coffee break

I came to Amsterdam with a goal: to tell Europe about Russian operations in Africa; how they are aimed at creating a migration crisis in Europe and undermine democracy in the EU. I came to ask for partnership with Africa to combat this. I am here for seriousness not complacency.

Jay Nordlinger saw it coming. His article laid out the architecture. Now comes the confirmation: JD Vance is flying to Budapest to campaign for Orbán. Washington and Moscow, same direction, same result. This is no longer subtext. It is policy. Which is exactly why European leaders and NATO allies need to stop whispering and start speaking on the record. Publicly. By name. The American vice president is actively working to keep a Kremlin-aligned government in power inside a NATO member state. That sentence should be causing emergency sessions, not diplomatic silence. Nordlinger wrote the diagnosis. Europe needs to find its voice before the patient is gone. Gandalv / @Microinteracti1

In the FT, @MistralAI CEO Arthur Mensch suggests a European tax on AI companies to compensate their use of publicly available content. That would be 1% of their revenues, used to support new content creation. In exchange, it would shield AI companies from US-like huge fines related to content training.

🇪🇺🇳🇱 New Dutch PM to national leaders in Europe: stop the endless complaining about Americans and speed up European integration. Deliver for our citizens