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News 2019

26 September 2019

Three questions about the negative interest rates

Foto: SP

Interest rates are at an historic low and even threaten to become negative. This is creating problems for almost all pension funds in the Netherlands, forcing them to reduce eight million pensions. Saving could begin to cost money, rather than producing gains in the form of interest payments. We put three questions on the issue of the low interest rates and the European Central Bank to SP Member of Parliament Renske Leijten.

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20 September 2019

SP Senator brings Russians back to Council of Europe

Foto: SP

After five years in the wilderness the Russian Parliament, has at last sent representatives to PACE, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.  SP Senator Tiny Kox served as an important architect of the Russian return to Europe's oldest treaty-based organisation. “The growing tension threatens everyone in Europe,” he says.

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20 August 2019

Another threatening letter from a gambling boss in Curaçao

Foto: SP

Recently a car from 'Top Couriers' came to the SP (Socialist Party in the Netherlands), with an 'urgent letter' for Ronald van Raak. The letter came from mBet Solutions, an online gambling company that operates internationally from Curaçao. The gambling company threatens me with a legal process, following a broadcast from BBC Radio about the online gambling industry. Another threatening letter from a gambling boss, that was a while ago. In 2016, Mafia boss Francesco Corallo sent his lawyer Gerard Spong to me, but he broke his teeth on this case. The same Corallo is now on trial in Italy for large-scale fraud and bribing politicians. I also received a strange report from a "detective" who by order of the former Curacao Prime Minister Gerrit Schotte came to investigate me. This Schotte has been imprisoned for three years now because he has been bribed by Mafia boss Corallo.

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2 August 2019

The new Cold War: Is there a way back? Report of a visit to Moscow

Foto: SP

Introduction

From Wednesday 29th May to Saturday 1st June, we visited Moscow, Russia’s capital. We spoke with, amongst others, politicians from governing as well as opposition parties, with researchers, journalists and human rights defenders. The most important reason why we were there is that we are extremely worried about rising tension between East and West, about the new Cold War which has begun in the last few years. Following the annexation of the Crimea and the broader military intervention in eastern Ukraine, relations between the West and Russia have cooled. The shooting down over Ukraine of flight MH17 in July 2014, by means of a Buk surface-to-air missile in the possession of the Russian army, put these relations under further pressure, specifically those between Russia and the Netherlands, from where the flight departed, with many Dutch nationals on board.

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2 July 2019

Chair Kox on results June session PACE

“After five years of absence, Russia finally fulfills its obligation to send a delegation from the Russian parliament to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. This puts an end to the “cafeteria interpretation” on the Russian side that a country itself decides which of the statutory bodies of Europe’s largest and oldest treaty organization it participates in and which does not.” states the chairman of the UEL Group, Mr. Kox.

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3 June 2019

The Island of Statia, the rise of the USA and the decline of the Netherlands

“The wealth of St. Eustatius is beyond your imagination,” the English admiral George Rodney wrote in 1781, just before he would plunder the Dutch colony and rob the merchants of their money and goods. This small island in the Caribbean was called the Golden Rock back then. It was a free port where everyone could buy everything, from slaves and goods to ships and weapons. The island flourished during the American Independence War (1775-1783), when the colonies in North America freed themselves from the English motherland and the armaments of the rebels largely took place via Statia. Until the English seized the opportunity and plundered the island. This history is described by Willem de Bruin, in his recently published historic novel De Gouden Rots (The Golden Rock). De Bruin, a former journalist, shows in an accessible way how Statia played an historical role in the rise of the United States, but at the same time in the decline of the Dutch Republic.

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