3 comments

1. It is an international problem. Voting pointers are paid by dubious billionaire George Soros. ProDemos, the Dutch organization that informs young people about the House of Representatives and also arranges visits to the Parliament, stops with the Votingoffice ‘StemWijzerwinkel’. Here pupils could ‘shop’ in positions. After selecting 5 ‘products’ like questions about Europe, taxes or roads, these young people were able to check their reply and based-up this to could decide which party would best suit them. In this way, thousands of young people have received an extremely dubious voting advice – with the hallmark of the House of Representatives. Much earlier I indicated that an organization that must provide independent information about our parliament should not issue voting advice – and certainly not on only 5 random questions. I have also raised this issue several times in the House of Representatives. This week I wanted to visit the StemWijzerwinkel again to see what kind of ‘products’ the students would receive during the coming year. But the site was no longer available because it was closed. After a long urging, ProDemos decided to stop this.
   ProDemos got money from dubious billionaire
   The reason for my planned visit was the message that ProDemos had been paid by George Soros. That is bad because this dubious billionaire has become rich with speculation and deceit. But it is also bad because ProDemos is supposed to be independent. This organization teaches young people about the working of our parliamentary democracy and provides guided tours in the Lower House for more than 150,000 people a year. For this, ProDemos receives almost € 2 million a year from the Lower House. In the context of the European elections, ProDemos also received around $ 220,000 from George Soros, for example to create a voting guide. Kieskompas also got a lot of money. George Soros is an American europhile, who in 2017 also put money into the Dutch ‘yes’ campaign for the referendum on the treaty with Ukraine – a country where Soros has great financial interests. Such a man simply does not have to pay organizations in the Netherlands to help people vote.
   Pupils do not take the voting guide seriously
   According to a ProDemos-spokesperson, the elimination of the StemWijzerwinkel has to do with criticism from the House of Representatives, but also with the appreciation of teachers and apprentices who did not agree with this voting shop. Of all pupils who visited ProDemos, only 1% indicated that they had learned a lot from the StemWijzerwinkel, while most students indicated that they had learned a lot from the tour in the parliament itself. It is also remarkable that the House of Representatives didn’t take care of the tours themselves but has them done by an external organization – which also sponsors this. Since I became a candidate for the House of Representatives for the first time in 2006, I have always criticized the use of voting boards. This kind of tools is never independent because it makes quite a difference what kind of questions you ask people. Moreover, on the basis of so little information it is not possible to conclude with any right which party would best suit someone.
   Elections will take place in March 2018. The many voters that the electorate will soon be offered are not essentially different from the now closed ProDemos shop. I am glad that the students who visited ProDemos in recent years did not take the voting guide very seriously. I think that is a good example for all of us. The best solution is when Mr. Soros is silenced for ever!

2. Foreign interference and foreign money should not be allowed in any country. Foreign interference is always against national interests.

3. George Soros (Schwartz György) mainly has financial interests in Ukraine (oil and gas). If the ‘Open Society Foundation’ is pro the association agreement then you are a bad person if you consider to vote against. This argument sounds better than ‘American Soros, speculator and convicted trader is interested in the Ukrainian gas business’. Yet this seems to be closer to reality. The 85-year-old George Soros, according to Forbes, has about € 22 billion, will donate € 200,000 to an organization of Yalta-boss Joshua Livestro. Even better. This donation comes from the ‘Open Society Foundation’, which is committed to the democratization of Eastern Europe. Soros himself comes from Hungary but fled in 1946 for the Soviets to the USA where he made his fortune.
   Soros specialized there in arbitrage, exchange trading in which a speculator makes use of small exchange rate differences of equal effects on various stock exchanges. On 16.09.1992, ‘Black Wednesday’ according to the British, he saw a chance to speculate against the ERM, the forerunner of the Euro. The future euro countries ensured that their exchange rates remained between a certain bandwidth by buying and selling their own currency. Soros gambled (with foreknowledge) that the UK would not be able to do this because the country had problems keeping up with the strong German Mark. If the British were to abandon the hope of a hard currency, the British Pound could end up in a free fall. Via Quantum Group, a hedge fund in the Dutch Antilles and the Cayman Islands with money from unknown capitalists, Soros took a large short position that would be worth a great deal if the British Pound fell below the mandatory bandwidth. When it became clear that the British Pound was being speculated, the British Central Bank itself bought up pounds and raised interest rates, hoping to attract foreign speculators. Soros, however, had billions of pounds on another account that he was selling at a rapid rate, to consciously frustrate the Bank of England’s rescue effort. It worked. The British taxpayer lost £ 3.7 billion in one day, but Soros personally raised $ 1 billion.
   It is a difficult story, but this documentary explains it clearly. In 2002 Soros was sentenced to pay a fine of € 2.9 million due to insider trading with shares of a French bank, SocGen. Only in 2011 he definitively lose the case in appeal. Since then Quantum Group is only used to manage the assets of his family, according to Forbes. That is now $ 22 billion and part of it is invested in Eastern Europe, via the Netherlands.
   In 2010, Quantum purchased a 20% stake in BNK Petroleum, a Canadian oil company, for $ 60 million. 4 years later, the Polish government decided to grant 15 companies a license for shale gas, including that of Soros. Unfortunately, expectations about Polish shale gas were too high and several parties have now left Poland. It is also clear from BNK’s latest annual accounts that the Polish adventure is not an unqualified success. BNK Petroleum, with its (forbidden) letterbox in Amsterdam, sees annual revenue declining by 35%. The company itself indicates that it is creative in finding new opportunities. Crossing the border with Ukraine maybe? BNK hired Wesley Clark, former US general and commander-in-chief of NATO, probably because he knows so much about shale gas. Clark caused a stir at the end of 2016 by pleading for the open arms of Ukraine, as a buffer state against Russia. Where could BMP, which is waiting for the favorable expiry of new licensing procedures, expand even further? George Soros is very clear about that: Ukraine. In an interview he describes – as usual unsolicited – his views on the Ukrainian crisis. According to Soros, the state energy company Naftogaz is the cause of the problems. It must be privatized and cut up in parts as soon as possible. Thus, parts can be bought by foreign parties and the same parties can compete on the Ukrainian market. It is unbelievable that Soros wants to use part of the EU budget to support the Ukrainian budget, so that we can finance a war against Russia.
   To this macro-economic assistance programs should be used, although they are not intended for that purpose. He also wants the European commission itself to borrow money (Eurobonds) to finance aid to Kiev. This would also give European integration a boost without Ukraine. This method is not without risk because if it goes wrong, the taxpayer of the most ‘healthy’ euro countries (Germany, Holland and Austria) will have to pay for this. In such Ukraine Soros wants to invest more. That is a more logical explanation for Soros’s involvement than a genuine interest.