Oprah Winfrey als president, is de VS compleet gek geworden?

Op de Intercept publiceerde Mehdi Hasan afgelopen maandag een artikel waarin hij zich al in de kop afvraagt of we helemaal gek zijn geworden, door nu Oprah Winfrey, u weet wel o.a. notoire belastingontduiker en presentator van een praatprogramma, als toekomstig president van te VS te zien......

Hasan vergelijkt een aantal presidenten en stelt dan dat Winfrey, die o.a. wel stabiel is i.t.t. Trump, een grote verademing zou zijn op Trump al leg je daarmee de lat wel erg laag...... Bovendien is ze geen seksist, of een fascist en wordt ze niet verdacht van het heulen met 'de vijand', zoals in het geval van Trump en Rusland...... Dat laatste had Hasan niet moeten zeggen, hij zou moeten weten dat dit gelul is van de democraten in samenwerking met een paar geheime diensten....... Het was zeker na de val van de Sovjet-Unie bijna gebruikelijk voor de komende administratie, als met Israël ook te overleggen met Rusland; dit had Hasan kunnen weten.

Voorts stelt Hasan dat we (in de VS. Ap) niet nog een president nodig hebben die een niet gekozen generaal en Goldman Sachs een deel van het werk laat doen........ Hasan moet toch weten dat Trump bepaald niet de eerste president is, die ofwel het leger min of meer liet beslissen wat te doen (waarna het werd gebracht als was het een plan van de president) en de banken de vrije hand gaf....

Maakt verder niet uit Hasan schreef een uiterst informatief stuk, waarin hij filosofeert en uiteindelijk stelt dat de VS echt geen tweede nitwit als Trump nodig heeft, een tweede steenrijke figuur, die deels het eigenbelang zal laten prevaleren........

Lees en oordeel zelf:

Oprah Winfrey for President: Have We All Gone Bonkers?

Photo: Paul Drinkwater/NBCUniversal/Getty Images

Mehdi Hasan contact: Twitter @mehdirhasan

January 8, 2018

HAVE WE ALL gone bonkers?

On Sunday evening, #Oprah2020 began trending on social media after Oprah Winfrey delivered a rousing speech against misogyny and racism at the Golden Globe Awards. While Oprah has in the past ruled out running for public office, her longtime partner Stedman Graham just told the Los Angeles Times that “she would absolutely do it,” and CNN is reporting that Oprah is “actively thinking” about running for president.

Is #Oprah2020 really a serious thing?

Do people honestly consider the talk-show-host-turned-media-mogul to be a viable or appropriate candidate to run against fellow celebrity billionaire Donald Trump in three years? “I have no idea if Oprah would be a good candidate or president,” former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau wrote on Twitter, “but dismissing her out of hand because Trump is a celebrity seems short-sighted.”

Really? I’m old enough to remember when liberals gave a damn about experience, qualifications, and judgement; when Democrats mocked the idea of Trump — a former reality TV star and property developer who struggled to tell the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah — running for the presidency.

On the campaign trail, former President Barack Obama blasted Trump as “uniquely unqualified,” lacking in “basic knowledge” and “woefully unprepared” to do the job of commander-in-chief. In stark contrast, he argued, there had “never been a man or a woman more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president of the United States of America.”

President Barack Obama awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Oprah Winfrey in the East Room at the White House on Nov. 20, 2013 in Washington. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Clinton called Trump “totally unqualified,” while an op-ed from the New York Times editorial board, headlined “Why Donald Trump Should Not Be President,” pointed out that the GOP candidate “has no experience in national security.” Three days after the election, Vox ran a piece headlined, “Donald Trump is the only U.S. president ever with no political or military experience.”

Well, dear liberals and Democrats, guess what? President Winfrey would be the second such president. Is this really what most Americans want or what the United States government needs? Another clueless celebrity in possession of the nuclear codes? Another billionaire mogul who doesn’t like paying taxes in charge of the economy? And how would it be anything other than sheer hypocrisy for Democrats to offer an unqualified, inexperienced presidential candidate to the American electorate in 2020, given all that they said about Trump in 2016?

Granted, Oprah isn’t a raging narcissist or a racist bigot; she doesn’t have ties to white nationalists, isn’t accused of colluding with a foreign government, and hasn’t been caught on tape admitting to sexual assault.

Oprah would be a far superior, smarter, and more stable president than Trump in every imaginable way. But that, of course, is a low, low bar.

As CNBC’s Christina Wilkie, in a rare dissent on Twitter, put it: “I love to watch Oprah saying inspirational things on television. But also I love to watch people who have political experience being elected to national office.”

What about former Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan, some Oprah supporters might say? The Gipper, however, was also a former two-term governor from California. Obama, also accused of being a political lightweight when he ran for president, was a sitting senator, former constitutional law professor, and author of two acclaimed books on politics and policy. Even the know-nothing George W. Bush had won two gubernatorial elections in Texas before throwing his hat in the presidential ring in 2000.

Prior to Trump, the only presidents to never have served in public office prior to being elected to the White House were Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, and Dwight Eisenhower. The first won the Mexican-American War; the second, the Civil War; and the third, the Second World War.

Does Oprah have anything on her resume to compare with that? Is emoting on TV and handing out free cars — even if it is, admittedly, part of building an impressive multi-billion-dollar media empire from scratch — really an acceptable substitute for political or military experience? Is that how debased the political culture has become?

Oprah Winfrey poses at the inaugural graduation of the class of 2011 at Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls on Jan. 14, 2012 in Henley on Klip, South Africa.
 Photo: Michelly Rall/Getty Images

DO I SOUND elitist? Perhaps. But what’s wrong with wanting people with intellect, experience, and qualifications to fill the most important jobs? As Oprah’s fellow celebrity liberal Jon Stewart once said: “Not only do I want an elite president, I want someone who’s embarrassingly superior to me, somebody who speaks 16 languages and sleeps two hours a night hanging upside down in a chamber they themselves designed.”

Well, the Oprah fans might argue, she could surround herself with big brains. But isn’t that the argument that Trump supporters make, too? Do we really want another president deferring to unelected generals and Goldman Sachs? And do we think a talk-show host who promoted the careers of hucksters Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz, while also giving a platform to the anti-science lunacy of actresses Jenny McCarthy and Suzanne Somers, is capable of constructing a Lincoln-esque “Team of Rivals”? A political and economic “Justice League?” Come. Off. It.

To be clear: I am not saying that Oprah can’t, or won’t, be president. Predictions are for fools, and Trump has proved that anything is possible.

Oprah’s supporters — rightly — might point to her strong record on standing up to racism and misogyny, not to mention her inspirational oratory and backstory. Her record on Iraq is better than Clinton’s; she once even hosted a show on universal health care with Michael Moore. It might also seem like an act of divine justice if Trump, hero to white nationalists and neo-Nazis, was replaced by a strong black woman.

Oprah’s critics — also rightly — might point to her fronting for global corporations and her role as “one of the world’s best neoliberal capitalist thinkers.” They might ask: What is Oprah’s position on drone strikes in Pakistan? On supporting the Saudi war in Yemen? On cap and trade? Single-payer? Tax reform? Does she have a plan for Middle East peace? Could a person who once seemed surprised that Indian people still “eat with their hands” really defuse a nuclear crisis on the Indian subcontinent?

But we have to go beyond the pros and cons of an Oprah presidency — I can’t believe I just typed that line — and consider some broader questions: How much damage is U.S. celebrity culture doing to U.S. politics? Why don’t ideologies, or even ideas, seem to matter anymore? Shouldn’t progressives be making the case for the virtues of government and collective action and, therefore, the importance of electing people of ability, experience, and expertise to high office? Shouldn’t they be arguing that billionaire TV stars have no business running for the most powerful job on planet Earth, regardless of whether they are an orange man called Trump or a black woman called Oprah?

Some pundits have suggested that the Democrats can’t win without a celebrity candidate like Oprah in 2020. “If you need to set a thief to catch a thief,” neoconservative John Podhoretz wrote in a New York Post op-ed in September 2017 that was retweeted by Oprah herself, “you need a star — a grand, outsized, fearless star whom Trump can neither intimidate nor outshine — to catch a star.”

This simply isn’t true. In August 2017, Public Policy Polling found Trump trailed Joe Biden (by 15 points), Bernie Sanders (14 points), Elizabeth Warren (7 points), Cory Booker (5 points), and Kamala Harris (1 point) in potential 2020 match-ups. Last month, an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found Trump would lose to a “Generic Democrat” in 2020 by a whopping 16 points.

If five different senators plus a Generic Democrat can beat this Republican president, then why the liberal excitement over a talk-show host? And why draw the line at Oprah? What about Mark Zuckerberg? Mark Cuban? Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson? Kanye? Where, oh where, does it end?

The liberal response to the rise of Trump cannot and should not be “let’s find our own bigger, better version of The Donald.” As columnist Emily Arrowood wrote in May 2016: “That Trump is acutely unqualified would be true even if he were Mr. Congeniality, a champion of the people with the aspirations of Jimmy Stewart in ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.’”

The irony is that Oprah may, in fact, be Ms. Congeniality. But she is still as “acutely unqualified” as Trump. Let’s get a grip, folks.

Top photo: In this handout photo provided by NBCUniversal, Oprah Winfrey speaks onstage during the 75th Annual Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Jan. 7, 2018 in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Oekraïne, wat de reguliere (massa-) media, 'deskundigen' en politici u niet vertellen over dit door een junta geregeerd land

Mint Press News publiceerde gisteren een lang artikel van Darius Shahtahmasebi over Oekraïne en wat de massamedia (zogenaamd onafhankelijk) u niet vertellen. Dezelfde media die keer op keer volhouden dat Rusland de VS presidentsverkiezingen, het Brexit-referendum, het onafhankelijkheidsreferendum van Catalonië enz. hebben gemanipuleerd, zonder daar ook maar één steekhoudend bewijs voor te leveren.

Voor die zogenaamde Russische bemoeienis wordt ook het beest Trump als mededader genoemd, terwijl we telkens weer zien, dat Trump allesbehalve een pro-Russische beleid voert, iets dat Shahtahmasebi in het volgende artikel uit en te na bewijst.

In het artikel o.a. De volgende feiten:

• De door de VS georganiseerde opstand in Oekraïne, die tot de succesvolle staatsgreep tegen de democratisch gekozen president Janoekovytsj moest leiden en leidde, waarna de VS een door haar gewilde junta installeerde (met bewijzen van gesprekken daarover tussen Nuland (staatssecretaris BuZa onder Obama) en Pyatt, destijds ambassadeur voor de VS in Oekraïne ..... Overigens was de VS al vanaf 2011 bezig met de voorbereidingen tot die opstand, onder eindverantwoording van Hillary Clinton (en Obama), de toenmalige minister van Buitenlandse Zaken. Deze coup en de voorbereidingen heeft de VS meer dan 4 miljard dollar gekost...... Intussen is duidelijk geworden dat Porosjenko ongelofelijk corrupt is en er intussen nog geen 15% van de bevolking achter deze juntaleider staat.........
• De VS levert zware wapens aan Oekraïne, waarmee de VS de 'burgeroorlog' in Oekraïne verder aanwakkert en Rusland voor het blok zet.... Immers de burgers in Oost-Oekraïne, die niet wensen te leven onder de neonazi-dictatuur van Porosjenko, worden al een paar jaar gebombardeerd door de neonazi-bataljons van Porosjenko. Rusland zou vechten in Oekraïne, een belachelijke weergave van de werkelijkheid >> wanneer dit een feit zou zijn, waren deze neonazi-bataljons al lang het gebied uit gewerkt. Met deze nieuwe VS wapens wordt het steeds moeilijker voor Rusland niet de burgers in Oost-Oekraïne te hulp te schieten met militaire hulp........
• Het door de VS ondersteunen van neonazi's in Oekraïne. Voordat Porosjenko door de VS werd geparachuteerd als 'president' van Oekraïne, werkte hij al voor BuZa in Washington, hij werd in de VS zelfs 'onze mol' in Oekraïne genoemd..... Dit alles terwijl de VS zogenaamd opkomt voor democratie, waar dit 'land' bij herhaling democratisch gekozen regeringen aan de kant laat zetten en het liefst laat vervangen door fascisten.... Naast Oekraïne: Chili in 1973 en Honduras in 2009, verder een reeks Midden- en Zuid-Amerikaanse landen voor en na 1973, waar de VS uiteraard dikke steun verleende aan deze fascistische mensenrechten schendende junta's....... Voorts nog de staatsgrepen tegen: Syrië (een mislukte poging), Brazilië (de staatsgreep tegen president Dilma Rousseff), Libië en Iran (waar de staatsgrepen tegen de Braziliaanse president Rousseff en president Assad van Syrië, alweer gericht waren tegen democratisch gekozen regeringen.......). Om te besluiten met Venezuela waartegen de VS al een aantal jaren een economische oorlog voert en gewelddadige groepen steunt, dit met de opzet president Maduro af te zetten.....
• De uitbreiding van de NAVO, tegen de afspraken in, die in 1991 met Gorbatsjov werden gemaakt..... Het niet uitbreiden van de NAVO was zelfs de eis van Gorbatsjov, voor het akkoord gaan met de hereniging van Oost- en West-Duitsland........

Mensen lezenm dit met feiten onderbouwde artikel van Shahtahmasebi en geeft het door!

What Trump Is Doing in Ukraine Proves the Mainstream Media Doesn’t Know Sh*t

January 9, 2018 at 9:38 am

Written by Darius Shahtahmasebi

The Russia-obsessed corporate media continues to peddle the narrative that Donald Trump has turned the United States into a client-state of Russia, even while he directly provokes the former Soviet Union by providing Russia’s foe — Urkaine — with the largest lethal assistance to a country on its border.

(MPN) — Despite the mainstream media’s insistence that U.S. President Donald Trump is some sort of compromised Russian lackey, the fact is that at the end of last year, his administration approved the largest U.S. commercial sale of lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine since 2014. This is a move that clearly infuriates and angers Russia, souring relations between the two countries even more so than they already had been under the Obama administration (and in various stages throughout Trump’s first year in office).

According to The Washington Post, administration officials confirmed that in December the State Department had approved a commercial license authorizing the export of Model M107A1 Sniper Systems, ammunition, and other associated parts and accessories to Ukraine — a package valued at $41.5 million.

At first, it was reported there had not yet been approval to export the heavier weaponry the Ukrainian government had been asking for, such as anti-tank missiles. However, by the end of

December, reports began surfacing that the Trump administration was in fact going to provide 35 FGM-148 Javelin launchers and 210 anti-tank missiles. The Javelin is allegedly one of the most advanced anti-tank systems on the market. The total package is now valued at $47 million, and it wouldn’t be surprising if this figure continues to rise in the weeks to come.

Even under the 2014 Ukraine Freedom Support Act, the Obama administration never authorized large commercial or government arms sales, thereby making the recent announcement the first time that the U.S. will provide “lethal” weapons to the Ukraine military.

One senior congressional official said that he predicted this would be just the beginning, stating that the U.S. had “crossed the Rubicon; this is lethal weapons and I predict more will be coming,” according to the Post. Foreign Policy’s Michael Carpenter suggested that NATO countries should follow suit and also provide Ukraine with the arms it needs to counter the so-called threat of Russia. Considering that in September 2017 Russia proposed that UN peacekeepers be deployed to Ukraine, it should be clear that the U.S. is more bent on escalating this conflict than on resolving it.

Russia has already responded in kind, with Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov stating that the U.S. has become an accomplice in the war and that these developments make it impossible for Russia to remain “indifferent,” thereby forcing Russia to consider retaliation measures in response.

The U.S. is the world’s largest arms dealer. The U.S. arms so many countries so much of the time that most of us barely blink. And yet, even taking at face value America’s stated goals of spreading democracy and promoting human rights, the facts on the ground appear to run contrary to those ideals and the U.S. is well aware of these contradictions.

In reality, the United States intervened covertly in Ukraine in 2014 because Russia and Europe were growing far too close to each other for America’s comfort, with Russia supplying at least 30 percent of Europe’s gas supply. This was an issue particularly in relation to Germany’s growing fondness for Russian gas, as Germany is set to become the EU’s major player.

This is a deal-breaker for Washington, which would rather support known neo-Nazis and anti-Semites in order to install a right-wing government capable of opposing Russia as close to the Russian border as one can get.

U.S. Installed a Puppet Government in Ukraine

John McCain, center, speaks as Connecticut senator Chris Murphy, second left, and Opposition leader Oleh Tyahnybok, right, stand around him during a rally in Kiev, Ukraine, Dec. 15, 2013. (AP/Dmitry Lovetsky)

On February 7, 2014, the BBC published a transcript of a bugged phone conversation between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt. In this phone call, the U.S. officials were openly discussing who should form Ukraine’s government even before the president, Viktor Yanukovych, had been successfully ousted from power. In other words, the U.S. was actively doing to Russia’s neighbour what the corporate media and various elements of the intelligence communities have accused Russia of doing to the U.S. during the 2016 elections. As The Nation explained:

“In the intercepted phone call between U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, the two were, as Russian expert Stephen Cohen put it to Democracy Now, ‘plotting a coup d’état against the elected president of Ukraine.’” [emphasis added]

“Good. I don’t think Klitsch [opposition leader Vitaly Klitschko] should go into the government. I don’t think it’s necessary, I don’t think it’s a good idea,”  Nuland said in the call, as transcribed by the BBC.

Pyatt responded:

“Yeah. I guess… in terms of him not going into the government, just let him stay out and do his political homework and stuff. I’m just thinking in terms of sort of the process moving ahead we want to keep the moderate democrats together. The problem is going to be Tyahnybok [Oleh Tyahnybok, an opposition leader] and his guys and I’m sure that’s part of what [President Viktor] Yanukovych is calculating on all this.”

Nuland added:

“I think Yats [opposition leader Arseniy Yatseniuk] is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. He’s the… what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week, you know. I just think Klitsch going in… he’s going to be at that level working for Yatseniuk, it’s just not going to work.”

Oleh Tyahnybok, who had met with Senator John McCain one year prior, is the leader of the right-wing nationalist party Svoboda. When Svoboda was founded in 1995, the party had a swastika-like logo. As Business Insider explains, Tyahnybok is also a known anti-Semite:

“Tyahnybok himself was expelled from the Our Ukraine parliamentary faction in 2004 after giving a speech demanding that Ukrainians fight against a ‘Muscovite-Jewish mafia’ (he later clarified this by saying that he actually had Jewish friends and was only against to ‘a group of Jewish oligarchs who control Ukraine and against Jewish-Bolsheviks [in the past]’). In 2005 he wrote open letters demanding Ukraine do more to halt ‘criminal activities’ of ‘organized Jewry,’ and, even now, Svoboda openly calls for Ukrainian citizens to have their ethnicity printed onto their passports.”

When the protests broke out in Ukraine in 2014, the entire movement was hijacked by these racist elements.

“You’d never know from most of the reporting that far-right nationalists and fascists have been at the heart of the protests and attacks on government buildings,” reported Seumas Milne of The Guardian. Just days ago, thousands marched in Kiev to celebrate the anniversary of far-right nationalist Stepan Bandera’s birthday.

It is revealing that, when the U.S. decided to make a choice between a president they viewed as a Russian ally and the various ultra-right nationalist elements of Ukraine, Washington decided to help oust the former for the benefit of the latter.

The State Department Promoting Neo-Nazism in Ukraine

A photo of the Azov Battalion – a regiment of the National Guard of Ukraine. (Photo: Twitter)

Eventually, it was reported that a man named Petro Poroshenko would be taking up the reins after Yanukovych’s abdication. According to a cable obtained by WikiLeaks, Poroshenko previously worked as a mole for the U.S. State Department. The State Department even referred to Poroshenko as “our Ukrainian insider.”

For those who truly believe the U.S. protects and promotes democracy while challenging tyranny and dictatorships across the globe, the truth about Washington’s support for puppet regimes that fail to garner the support of their own people is even worse than any anti-imperialist commentator could ever have imagined. In March last year, Foreign Affairs reported that Poroshenko had an approval rating as low as 17 percent. In September last year, the Japan Times reported that his approval rating had dropped to a single digit. Some reportssay it was as low as 2 percent. October last year saw his approval rating grow to its highest in recent times, reaching a stratospheric 14 percent.

In other words, the Trump administration is actively propping up a failed administration in Europe, which does not have the support of 15 percent of its people. Even the far-right militias in Ukraine seem to have more support than the current government. Meanwhile, the U.S. has done nothing but its utmost to tear apart the respective democratically elected governments in Syria and Iran, both of which have far greater approval ratings than do Poroshenko and his administration.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Washington’s recent decision to arm Ukraine will only make the conflict more deadly and suggested that Russia could be forced to respond. “[The U.S. is] not a mediator. It’s an accomplice in fueling the war,” Ryabkov said in a statement. Clearly, Russia has a vested interest in not seeing another NATO ally on its borders, capable of pointing American missiles in its face on a daily basis.

As The National Interest learned at the end of last year from recently declassified material, the U.S. did indeed break a promise at the end of the Cold War that NATO would expand “not one inch eastward.” George Washington University National Security Archives researchers Svetlana Savranskaya and Tom Blanton wrote in the National Security Archives:

“The [recently declassified] documents show that multiple national leaders were considering and rejecting Central and Eastern European membership in NATO as of early 1990 and through 1991. That discussions of NATO in the context of German unification negotiations in 1990 were not at all narrowly limited to the status of East German territory, and that subsequent Soviet and Russian complaints about being misled about NATO expansion, were founded in written contemporaneous memcons and telcons at the highest levels.”

The documents appear to confirm Russia’s assertion that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev accepted the proposal for German reunification (which Gorbachev could have vetoed) only in reliance upon these assurances from its American counterparts that NATO would not expand into Eastern Europe. This history is reminiscent of how Russia was further duped out of using its veto power on a U.N. Security Council Resolution in Libya in 2011, after having received assurances that the coalition would not pursue regime change.

“I believe that your thoughts about the role of NATO in the current situation are the result of misunderstanding,” then-British Prime Minister John Major told Gorbachev, according to British Ambassador Rodric Braithwaite’s diary entry of March 5, 1991:

“We are not talking about strengthening of NATO. We are talking about the coordination of efforts that is already happening in Europe between NATO and the West European Union, which, as it is envisioned, would allow all members of the European Community to contribute to enhance [our] security.”

The documents also show that Russia had received these assurances from a number of other high-level officials. These officials included then-Secretary of State James Baker; President George H.W. Bush; West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher; West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl; former CIA Director Robert Gates; French leader Francois Mitterrand; Margaret Thatcher; British Foreign Minister Douglas Hurd; and NATO Secretary-General Manfred Woerner.

U.S. Army soldiers representing units participating in the the Anaconda-16 military exercise, attend the opening ceremony, in Warsaw, Poland, Monday, June 6, 2016. Poland and some NATO members launched their biggest ever exercise, involving some 31,000 troops in a show of force to neighboring Russia.

Since that time, NATO has clearly expanded into Europe to the detriment of Russia. Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has grown to include the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, Albania and Croatia, and Montenegro.

These developments are crucial because, when one is honest about America’s infamous history since World War II, it is clear that NATO exists as an entity only to counter and contain Russian influence. Its sole purpose is to oppose Russia at every corner and this is no secret even in the corporate media.

According to the Telegraph, NATO was formed in “Washington on 4th April, 1949 after the end of the Second World War, largely to block Soviet expansion into Europe.” This can be seen clearly in the complete rejection of the Soviets’ attempt to join NATO itself after Joseph Stalin’s death.

In a 2016 interview with The New Yorker,  Douglas Lute, a former three-star general and then-U.S. Ambassador to NATO also patently admitted that:

“…NATO was founded on the premise of preventing an attack by the Soviet Union in Central Europe, where the U.S. would have to come to the aid of Europe … For the first forty years, NATO focussed on its greatest risk—the threat that the Soviet Union posed to Western European security.”

At the time the unrest broke out in 2014, then-NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s comment that the proposed IMF-EU package presented to Ukraine would have been “a major boost for Euro-Atlantic security” suggested that NATO had set its sights on bringing Ukraine into the military alliance. In July of this year, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met with Poroshenko in Kiev to further discuss this prospect, already pledging support to Ukraine on some level.

Now Ukraine’s bid to join NATO seems almost irrelevant, as the U.S. is formally involving itself deeper in the Ukrainian conflict and providing arms to a regime that has flirted with an approval rating lower than 10 percent, all the while provoking Russia to take further measures in response.

What could possibly go wrong?

Meanwhile, the Russia-obsessed corporate media continues to peddle the narrative that Donald Trump has turned the United States into a client-state of Russia, even while he directly provokes the former Soviet Union by providing lethal assistance to a country on its border. Not only is Trump maintaining an Obama-era policy, he is aggravating and converting Obama’s Ukraine policy into a much more dangerous one — ultimately aimed at provoking an aggressive response from Russia in the weeks or months to come.

By Darius Shahtahmasebi / Creative Commons / MintPress News / Report a typo

Overspannen huizenmarkt? De Hypotheker: 'er is geen sprake van een huizenbubbel......' ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!

Vanmorgen na het nieuws van 8.00 u. op BNR, Wytzejan de Jong, de CEO van De Hypotheker over de huizenprijs die in een aantal steden gigantisch is gestegen. De Hypotheker verstrekt hypotheken, zoals de naam 'al doet vermoeden'. Wat denk je dat zo'n CEO zou zeggen als hem/haar wordt gevraagd of er sprake is van een huizenbubbel in Nederland? Juist, die bestaat natuurlijk niet, immers als iedereen ervan overtuigd is dat de huizenbubbel een feit is, zal de wil om een huis te kopen drastisch dalen.....

In de grote westerse steden van ons land is de huizenprijs met meer dan 10 procent gestegen, in Amsterdam is deze prijs zelfs de 20 procent gepasseerd (mede door aankoop van huizen voor Airbnb)....... Maar nee, volgens de Jong is er geen sprake van een huizenbubbel...... Terwijl de huizenbubbel van voor de bankencrisis in 2008 nooit is weggeweest, middels enorme grondprijzen, ook door grondspeculanten als Marnix 'normalisatie' Norder* (destijds PvdA wethouder Den Haag) en andere kunstmatige maatregelen als sloop van goede sociale huurwoningen, of de verkoop van hele huizenblokken van deze woningen (niet zelden aan buitenlandse investeerders) heeft men de huizenbubbel redelijk op grootte kunnen houden...........

Voor 2008 was het gemiddelde huis meer dan 60% te hoog geprijsd (beter gezegd: de werkelijke prijs bedroeg nog niet de helft van wat de gek, of de wanhopige huizenzoeker ervoor betaalde...).... Met andere woorden die huizen waren en zijn in werkelijkheid helemaal het bedrag niet waard dat ervoor gevraagd, dan wel betaald werd/wordt........

Vandaag werd bekend gemaakt dat door de stijgende huizenprijs het voor starters en doorstromers steeds moeilijker wordt een nieuw/ander huis te kopen...... Bijkomend effect: men berekent de huizenbubbel door in de huurprijzen, waardoor de grote slachtoffers van deze bubbel in feite de huurders zijn, zij betalen zich helemaal scheel voor een huis, dat nog niet een derde waard is van wat men moet betalen, niet alleen in de stad, maar ook daarbuiten. Onlangs zag ik nog prijzen voor huizen buiten Den Haag, waar je steil van achterover slaat, zo durft men rustig meer dan € 600,-- te vragen voor een huis van 50 vierkante meter, met energielabel D........

Het woord 'scheefwonen' moet zijn verzonnen door een enorme ploert, immers men sloopte grote aantallen prima sociale huurwoningen, mede om de huizenbubbel aan te jagen en gaf vervolgens mensen die in de loop van de jaren meer zijn gaan verdienen, de schuld van het tekort aan huurhuizen.... Wie beschuldigt er kopers van scheefwonen, daar zij lang voor de huizenbubbel een goedkoop huis kochten en daar zijn blijven wonen, ook al kunnen zij intussen een huis kopen dat tot zelfs 10 keer zo duur is??!!!

Scheefwonen, alsof het een misdaad is als je in een huis wilt blijven wonen, waar je al meer dan 10 jaar of langer woont........ Als huurder betaal je je scheel, maar kan je nergens recht op doen gelden, al woon je meer dan 50 jaar in je huurhuis en heb je daar intussen aan huur al drie keer de bouwkosten voor terugbetaald........

Na 9.00 u. was ook Peter Boelhouwer te horen op BNR, hij is hoogleraar 'bouwkunde' aan de TU Delft. Volgens deze plork kan je wel maatregelen nemen in het huursegment, maar is dat niet mogelijk in het koopsegment...... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! Nee, de bescherming van de consument is allerbelabberdst , men mag de klant gewoon oplichten zonder dat er actie volgt, immers ook de kopers die noodgedwongen maar een veel te duur huis kopen, zijn in feite opgelicht!!

Boelhouwer ziet de oplossing in het meer bouwen voor de middeninkomens....... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! Ja, zo betalen ze niet via de hypotheek veel te veel voor een dak boven het hoofd, maar doen ze dat via de huur en tja als ze die huur te eniger tijd niet meer kunnen betalen, flikker je ze gewoon het huis uit!!

Vergeet niet dat zelfs de laagstbetaalden in ons land een derde van hun inkomen moeten verwonen (dat vindt zelfs de SP..); ga maar na wat je overhoudt als je € 1.000,-- netto in de maand te besteden hebt en daar moet nog een derde voor de huur vanaf....... Dan blijven nog de andere belastingen over plus de water en energierekening, waar de laatste meestal torenhoog is vanwege de slechte isolatie......

Meer dan 4 miljoen mensen in Nederland leven tegen, op, of onder de armoedegrens, dat is 3 keer in armoede leven...... Het gaat hier om een groot aantal gezinnen die voor het overgrote deel in de financiële problemen zitten...... Deze mensen kunnen letterlijk geen cent meer missen en toch moeten ze na de huurverhoging, die jaarlijks in juli wordt doorgevoerd, euro's meer betalen, ook na aftrek van de 'verhoogde' huurtoeslag.......

Hoe lang zal het nog duren voor de ogen bij het gros van de mensen opengaan en ze eindelijk hun kont tegen de krib gooien, om het recht in eigen hand te nemen (ofwel een revolutie ontketenen)??!!!

* Schoft Norder, de plaag van woonwagenbewoners, durfde voor een stuk grond naast een industrie terrein in Den Haag (waar eerder een woonwagencentrum stond en waar hij de bewoners heeft verjaagd middels 'normalisatie'), minstens € 48.000,-- te vragen...... Ofwel meer dan een ton in oude guldens voor amper meer dan 50 vierkante meter...... Dit stuk geteisem, lobbyist van de bouwmaffia, is tegenwoordig voorzitter van Aedes, de overkoepelende organisatie van woningcorporaties. In feite moet hij daar voor de belangen van de huurders opkomen, huurders die hij met zijn afbraak van sociale huurwoningen en grondspeculatie enorm op kosten heeft gejaagd....... En dan heeft men het gore lef om over 'scheefwonen' te spreken.......