Author: JoeSTP

Sputnik

An internal court of Israel’s ruling Likud Party has canceled a planned primary election for party leadership. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was announced the winner by default and will remain at the post through 2023.

The court, explaining its findings, stated that it would be unreasonable to spend $1 million of its party money to hold a vote, especially taking into account that Netanyahu would have been the only candidate.   Continue reading “Israel Primary Canceled, Netanyahu to Lead Likud Through 2023”

Counter Punch – by Mike Whitney

The main architect of Washington’s plan to rule the world has abandoned the scheme and called for the forging of ties with Russia and China. While Zbigniew Brzezinski’s article in The American Interest titled “Towards a Global Realignment” has largely been ignored by the media, it shows that powerful members of the policymaking establishment no longer believe that Washington will prevail in its quest to extent US hegemony across the Middle East and Asia. Brzezinski, who was the main proponent of this idea and who drew up the blueprint for imperial expansion in his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, has done an about-face and called for a dramatic revising of the strategy. Here’s an excerpt from the article in the AI: Continue reading “The Broken Chessboard: Brzezinski Gives Up on Empire”

The American University of Rome

American University of Beirut – AUB Home – Home

The American University of Paris   Continue reading “The Whole World is Rome…or is Rome the Whole World? Empire Building 101”

Rabble – by YVES ENGLER

Sticks and stone may break my bones, but names will never hurt me — and they may come back to haunt the name-callers.

In finding anti-Semites behind every challenge to Canadian complicity with Israeli colonialism, mainstream Jewish organizations are emptying the term “anti-Semitism” of its historical weight.   Continue reading “Jewish groups’ reckless accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ sets us down a dangerous path”

The Epoch Times – by Valentin Schmid

Do you feel something is wrong with the United States and the global economy? Despite a respectable recovery and low unemployment, many people aren’t happy with their current economic situation or their outlook for the future. From rising prices for basic necessities or schooling, to harsh competition and low pay for lower income jobs to negative interest rates—the poor and the middle class all have their problems to deal with.   Continue reading “Viktor Shvets: ‘The Private Sector Will Never Recover’”

Bloomberg – by Paul Barrett

The U.S. Department of Justice made headlines on Thursday by announcing it’s phasing out contracts with private prison companies. Shares of publicly traded incarceration firms Corrections Corp. of America and GEO Group plunged. Liberal prison-reform advocates applauded.   Continue reading “The Justice Department Used Shaky Statistics to Drop Private Prisons”

Zero Hedge – by Tyler Durden

While the US media is obsessing over what could happen to the US if the diplomatic debacle that is Donald Trump becomes president (as opposed perhaps to the pathological liar and State Department-for-hire that is HIillary Clinton), the Philippines has a living, breathing example of the worst that a person who has zero regard for the status quo or the establishment, can unleash. Or perhaps the best. We are talking about the country’s new president, Rodrigo Duterte, who most recently made headlines for calling the US ambassador to his country an “annoying, homosexual, son of a bitch“, yet whose policies, unorthodox as they may be, are working when after some 400 drug dealers were killed in the Philippine government’s “war on narco-politics”, reportedly another 500,000 turned themselves in.   Continue reading ““I Don’t Give A Shit About Them” – Philippines President Threatens To Quit “Son Of A Bitch” United Nations”

“They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power.”
― Patrick Henry

Military Times – by Leo Shane III

Defense Department contractors in Afghanistan still outnumber U.S. troops by a 3-to-1 margin according to new research released this week, raising questions again about the role those workers play in the ongoing wars overseas and the oversight they receive.

The data, compiled by the Congressional Research Service and first reported by Politico, shows contractor numbers in both Iraq and Afghanistan dating back to fiscal 2007. Combined, the Defense Department spent more than $220 billion on contractors in both war zones for a variety of services and support.    Continue reading “Report: Contractors outnumber U.S. troops in Afghanistan 3-to-1”

Activist Post – by Catherine Frompovich

August 12, 2016, Barack Hussein Obama, the 43^rd or 44^th (some question the number) President of the United States, signed Presidential Executive Order No. 13737 “Providing an Order of Succession Within the Environmental Protection Agency,” which revoked his previous PEO 13614 (May 21, 2012).

Here’s the link to PEO 13737 published in the Federal Register, August 17, 2016.   Continue reading “What’s Up With The Newest Presidential Executive Order?”

The Unz Review

The past two weeks have been rich in military developments directly affecting Russia:

Syria:

1) Russia has announced that she will transform the Khmeimim airfield into a full-fledged military base with a permanently deployed task force.

2) Russia will deploy her heavy aircraft-carrying missile cruiser (often referred to in the West as an “aircraft carrier”) Admiral Kuznetsov to the eastern Mediterranean to to check the combat capabilities of the ship and its strike group and to engage, for the very first time, the state-of-the-art Ka-52K Katran helicopters.   Continue reading “Russian military options in Syria and the Ukraine”

9 News

Authorities believe a 19-year-old US college student who was found biting the flesh off a victim’s face could have been on the synthetic drug flakka, often called the zombie drug.

Austin Harrouff was arrested on Monday night after allegedly fatally stabbing Michelle and John Stevens inside their Florida home.   Continue reading “Authorities believe frat boy found eating victim’s face may have been on zombie drug”

ViewZone

There have been many stories from around the globe of people who have protested the slaughter of innocent children and civilians in Gaza because of the “collective punishment” inflicted upon the Palestinians by the Israelis. Perhaps, hopefully, you are a moral person also and object to this.

While you may think that it is enough to voice your disapproval of these horrific acts in news threads or on blogs, you probably do not know that you have be forced to pay for the bullets, phosphorous bombs and mortar rounds that have be targeted on UN refuges, hospitals and schools in Gaza. NO? Actually, YES!   Continue reading “YOU are supporting the killing in Gaza, like it or not!”

CounterPunch – by Bill Blunden

An army of networked kiosks is invading New York City. Hundreds of them. They’re large vertical slabs, practically ten feet tall and chock full of sensors. Reminiscent of the mysterious black monoliths from Stanley Kubrick’s movie 2001. These kiosks are replacing the city’s aging public telephone booths and after this initial wave of monoliths hits Gotham there will be thousands more installed throughout the city. John Young, the architect who runs the web site Cryptome, has called this forest of kiosks “the largest urban spying system in the United States.”   Continue reading “Facing Down the Panopticon”

Zero Hedge – by Tyler Durden

It started off well enough.

On the first day of the Bank of England’s resumption of Gilt QE after the central bank had put its monetization of bonds on hiatus in 2012, bondholders were perfectly happy to offload to Mark Carney bonds that matured in 3 to 7 years. In fact, in the first “POMO” in four years, there were 3.63 offers for every bid of the £1.17 billion in bonds the BOE wanted to buy.   Continue reading “Bank Of England Suffers Stunning Failure On Second Day Of QE: “Goodness Knows What Happens Next Week””

Sipsey Street Irregulars

It has been said repeatedly that the best thing that the US military has invented, (other than advances in medicine, space travel, the internet, and robotics), is the Woobie, aka Poncho Liner.  Let’s start there.   Continue reading “The venerable Woobie and GI Poncho”

Anti-War – by Uri Avnery

On June 28, 1914, the Austrian heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, visited Sarajevo, the main town of Bosnia, then an Austrian province.

Three young Serbian inhabitants of Bosnia had decided to assassinate him, in order to achieve the attachment of Bosnia to Serbia. They threw bombs at the car of the archduke. All three failed to harm him.   Continue reading “The Shot Heard All Over the Country”

PoliZette – by Robert Romano

“The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice has provided oversight and recommendations for improvement of police services in a number of cities with consent decrees. This is one of the most effective ways to reduce discrimination in law enforcement and it needs to be beefed up and increased to cover as many of the 18,000-plus local law enforcement jurisdictions.”   Continue reading “UN Backs Secret Obama Takeover of Police”