Veteran German politician Willy Wimmer says that the US military bases in his country are long overdue for closure. Speaking to Sputnik, Wimmer emphasized that US bases installed during the Cold War no longer protect Europe; instead, they serve as a logistics hub for NATO's wars of aggression.

Yesterday’s apparently airstrikes against a UN aid convoy, destroying between 18-20 trucks and killing some 14 Red Crescent volunteers took multiple turns today, with the US claiming they believe that a pair of Russian warplanes attacked the convoy, potentially as “revenge” for the American attack on a Syrian military base the day before, which killed 83 soldiers.

The Russians are denying this, of course, but perhaps the even more unusual angle is that White House officials have subsequently come forward to insist that the US holds Russia responsible for what happened to the convoy, even if they didn’t actually do it.

Obama aide Ben Rhodes argued that because Russia had made a commitment to the ceasefire and to getting aid flowing in northern Syria, it was obviously their fault that something happened to the convoy, no matter what that actually was.

Weekend US airstrikes against a Syrian army base in Deir Ezzor, a protracted error which killed 83 Syrian soldiers and opened up the base for ISIS to overrun it, carried on longer than it should have, because when Russia made the call to warn the Americans, the guy who was supposed to answer it wasn’t there.

The Russian military called and asked to speak to this “point of contact” official at the coordinating center which is running the US-led bombing campaigns in Syria, and were told he wasn’t available. The Russians called back again and finally got somebody who understood that the US was bombing the wrong target.

The Pentagon dismissed concern about the lapse, saying the contact “wasn’t expecting a call” and therefore didn’t feel obliged to sit next to the phone. Yet as intense US airstrikes were ongoing, in the middle of a US-Russia negotiated ceasefire, it seems like it wasn’t a total shock that a call ended up made.

US Secretary of State John Kerry demanded on Wednesday that Russia force Bashar al-Assad's regime to ground its air force in order to revive hopes of a ceasefire in Syria's civil war.

Two U.S. Air force pilots ejected from a U-2 Spy plane early Tuesday morning around 9 am local time, just before the aircraft crashed in a rural area near Sacramento during a training mission, the U.S. Air Force said. According to a U.S. official, one pilot was killed while the other was injured.

When asked how the F-35 Lightning II would stack up against potential aggression from Moscow, NATO air chiefs said they're confident the fifth-generation jet would devalue Russian forces.

It used to be we used nuclear weapons only in retaliation. There was no first use, but the George W. Bush regime, the Neocons, changed our nuclear doctrine. It’s now a preemptive first strike. So, this tells both the Russians and Chinese they could get a preemptive first strike. Then, we tell the Russians we are putting missiles right on your border. You won’t have two minutes’ notice. They can’t accept that. It’s too much risk from a crazy country (U.S.) that won’t negotiate with them. . . . So, we’re headed for war. I think the only thing that would block it is if one or two of the European governments realize that they have nothing whatsoever to gain with a conflict with Russia. . . . The only thing they could do to prevent a nuclear war is to pull out of NATO.”

Kosovo has granted the rights to search for coal over one-third of its territory to a company linked to retired US General Wesley Clark, an investigation by Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project partner the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network has found.

The investigation found that Kosovo’s government granted the rights in August to Canadian firm Envidity Energy Inc., which is chaired by Clark, the commander of the 1999 NATO bombing campaign that helped lead to Kosovo’s “independence” from Serbia.

I got to Donbass with my friend Jean-Josy Bousquet, attorney representing the League of the Rights of Man, for a brief one-week mission.

In these two departments, Donetsk and Luhansk, the Russian patriots, i.e. those whose language and culture have been Russian since forever, oppose themselves to the centralized Ukrainian forces, that are manipulated and organized backstage by Washington, intending to impose NATO, completing the NATO-ized cordon sanitaire which, from Turkey all the way to the Baltics, isolates Russia from Europe.

“On the evening of September 19, in that specific region, a drone belonging to the international condition, which had taken off from the Incirlik air base in Turkey, was flying at a height of 3,600 meters and traveling at around 200 kilometers per hour,” said Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov.

“The object was in the area around the town of Urm Al-Kubra, where the convoy was a few minutes before it caught fire,” Konashenkov added. “It left after about 30 minutes.”

In the wake of Pyongyang’s recent nuclear weapons tests, US Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter stated Monday that American forces in South Korea must adopt a stance of readiness as if they were going to “fight tonight.”

On September 9th the Washington Post featured a front page article describing how the Defense Department had used warplanes to attack targets and kill suspected militants in six countries over the Labor Day weekend. The article was celebratory, citing Pentagon officials who boasted of the ability to engage “multiple targets” anywhere in the world in what has become a “permanent war.” The article did not mention that the United States is not currently at war with any of the six target countries and made no attempt to make a case that the men and women who were killed actually threatened the U.S. or American citizens.

These testimonies by Syrian soldiers who are fighting the Islamic State rebels (ISIS-Daesh) confirm what we already know.

The United States of America is not fighting the terrorists in Syria.

The Obama administration, with the support of its allies including Turkey and Saudi Arabia, is supporting the Islamic State (ISIS Daesh)

Obama’s counterterrorism campaign in Syria and Iraq is bogus.

Read carefully:

The testimonies confirm the unspoken truth:

OBAMA IS PROTECTING THE TERRORISTS

- We [Syrian soldiers] first thought the aircraft are support to us after the first 2 shots, but we quickly found out that they are targeting our forces aggressively, while we were fighting IS terrorists. The aircraft used cluster bombs against us.

- A day before the airstrikes, the [US] drones were flying and scanning all the area

- The US air-strikes destroyed all our equipment and defense points.

The fragile ceasefire deal hammered out by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry earlier this month has been hanging in the balance, with the main threat coming from the Pentagon, Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs, told newspaper Vzglyad.

In a not-so-shocking revelation, largely unreported by the mainstream media, newly declassified Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) documents have confirmed that “a broadening U.S. military presence overseas and outreach by Islamist ideologues” was behind an 11% increase in plotted terror attacks against the United States since 2006 — and those terror attacks were orchestrated by Americans, not foreign nationals.

According to an Intelligence Assessment of 57 terrorist plots against the United States and U.S. interests between 2001 and 2010 — carried out in 2011 by the Los Angeles Division of the FBI and the Joint Regional Intelligence Center (JRIC) — “foreign nationals led anti-US targeting prior to 2006 plotting 52% of all terror attacks,” but sociologically- and religiously-diverse American nationals [read homegrown terrorists with no identifiable religious affiliation] plotted 70% of the terror attacks on their own land, beginning 2007.

The report states:

Russia could hinder US reinforcements headed to Europe in the event of a major war, warned the recently retired Supreme Allied Commander, Gen. Philip Breedlove. It’s well known Russian radars, missiles, and strike planes — “Anti-Access/Area Denial” systems — threaten ships and aircraft across wide swathes of the Black Sea, Eastern Europe, and the Baltic. But Gen. Breedlove’s worries are on a wider scale: He’s anxious about the Atlantic.

In the first three days after the vaunted littoral combat ship (LCS) USS Montgomery was commissioned the warship suffered two engine casualties threatening to delay a pinnacle component to America’s naval superiority strategy.

An electrical explosion occurred in the ship’s second main turbine generator (MTG) in June. While US military officials insist there was no fire, the incident was enough to fling debris into the turbine. One month later, a similar explosion occurred on the first MTG.

Presidents, Prime Ministers, Congressmen, Generals, Spooks, Soldiers and Police ADMIT to False Flag Terror

In the following instances, officials in the government which carried out the attack (or seriously proposed an attack) admit to it, either orally, in writing, or through photographs or videos:

Washington’s lie about seeking a genuine ceasefire in Syria is in danger of being exposed for the world to see. So, hilariously, a charade is being hurriedly orchestrated in order to hide this ignominy. As usual, the Syrian government is being scapegoated for the real cause of violence in the country. That real cause is Washington’s state-sponsored terrorist-fueled war for regime change.

After four days of continuing deadly breaches by US-backed «rebels» since the Kerry-Lavrov ceasefire deal was implemented last Monday, Washington and the dutiful Western mainstream media are preparing the inevitable excuses.

Rather than focusing on ongoing «rebel» violence in contravention of the truce, US Secretary of State John Kerry fingered the Syrian government for preventing humanitarian access to insurgent-held eastern Aleppo as the reason for why the ceasefire is in danger of collapsing.

India accused Pakistan of being behind Sunday's separatist attack on an army base near their disputed frontier that killed 17 soldiers, in one of the most deadly attacks in Kashmir in a quarter-century-old insurgency.

Four commando-style gunmen, armed with AK-47 assault rifles and grenades, burst into the brigade headquarters in Uri at 5:30 a.m. (midnight GMT) and were killed after a three-hour gunfight, a senior Indian army officer said.

The incident sharply increased tensions between the bitter, nuclear-armed rivals and will raise fears of a potential military escalation. Indian and Pakistani troops are in close proximity in many places along one of the world's most heavily militarised frontiers, and exchanges of fire are not uncommon.

Reports out of the area around Qayara say that hundreds of additional US ground troops have arrived at the Qayara Air Base, to join several hundred troops already there. The troops are expected to provide “logistic support” for the Mosul invasion.

Iraqi troops “captured” the Qayara Air Base to much fanfare last month, and intend to use this as a base of operation in the attack on Mosul. The base had long since been abandoned by ISIS, stripped clean by ISIS forces that have controlled the area for the past two years.

A lot of effort is being pumped into repair the air base, which was rendered largely useless by heavy US airstrikes in recent years, and a new bridge to allow forces to cross the river and advance against the area south of Mosul.

Though the Pentagon has long warned that it is unlikely the Iraqi military is really ready to take the enormous city of Mosul, US officials have suggested that the invasion could begin as soon as October

The People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN)'s East China Sea Fleet has drawn attention in recent years over its growing number of modern destroyers. The destroyer flotilla, as part of the frontline group guarding the East China Sea, conducts regular patrol missions and provides strategic support in political and diplomatic disputes in the area.

Can they adapt to new developments brought by the strategic shifts facing the Chinese navy? The Global Times reporter visited the flotilla recently to hear its stories.

"As a combat troop, the fundamental mission is our ability to win. There is no doubt about our fighting strength," Xu Haihua, the captain of the flotilla, told the Global Times.

Chairman of NATO Military Committee General Petr Pavel has claimed at the alliance’s conference in Croatia that the Balkans are “far from stable,” saying that the region is both threatened by Islamic terrorism and Russian influence.

Pavel, who became the first committee chief from the former Eastern bloc, said that the military alliance should be able to deter opponents and defend the members of NATO, Croatian HINA news agency reported.

"NATO must have the ability, strength and resources to distract opponents and defend its members against any threat," he said at a press briefing in Split on Saturday following a conference of the Military Committee of NATO.

The U.S.

refuses to publish the details of the agreement with Russia about the ceasefire in Syria
has done nothing over the last days to separate, as promised, the "moderate rebels" it supports in Syria from al-Qaeda
today bombed a Syrian army position in support of an Islamic State attack in Deir Ezzor.

The US’ sudden attempt to “help” the Syrian army fighting ISIS in the eastern city of Deir ez-Zor, which resulted in a strike that killed and injured dozens of soldiers, does not look like an honest mistake, Russia’s UN envoy told journalists at the UNSC meeting.
“It is highly suspicious that the United States chose to conduct this particular air strike at this time,” Russia’s ambassador Vitaly Churkin said.

Churkin questioned why the US suddenly chose to “help” the Syrian army defend Deir ez-Zor after all these years, recalling how American forces just observed terrorists’ movements and did “nothing when ISIS advanced on Palmyra.”

“It was quite significant and not accidental that it happened just two days before the Russian-American arrangements were supposed to come into full force,” Churkin added.

The 2001 AUMF has been the legal justification for not just the American-led war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, but also for drone strikes in Pakistan against Al Qaeda, missile launches in Yemen, and the September 2014 attack in Somalia targeting the leader of terrorist group al-Shabaab.

But the AUMF specifically left unchanged the requirement of the War Powers Act, a clause which mostly means the 60-day time limit.

Leap ahead to Libya: Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton testified to Congress that Congressional authorization was not needed for the military intervention in Libya, and later, when the War Powers Resolution’s 60-day limit was exceeded, President Obama himself notified Congress that it did not apply because the leadership of the operations in Libya were in the hands of NATO. (Not us, just our sock puppet.) Another bit of pro-war wiggle room is that the War Powers Act never defined "hostilities."

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power tonight blasted Russia for calling an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council in response to a U.S.-led coalition airstrike that mistakenly killed over 60 Syrian regime troops, and wounded 100 more, according to numbers provided by the Russian Defense Ministry.

Speaking at the U.N headquarters in New York, Power said "even by Russia's standards, tonight's stunt, a stunt replete with moralism and grand-standing is uniquely cynical and hypocritical."

Tensions between Russian and U.S. diplomats have spilled over at the United Nations Security Council after Russian officials demanded to know whether the United States intentionally supported Islamic State (IS) militants with air strikes that hit Syrian government troops.

You might’ve thought that the United States‘ policy in Syria couldn’t get any more confused or damaged: but the admission that a US air strike has killed somewhere between 60 to 83 soldiers of the Syrian Army is just about the worst thing, and at the worst time, that could’ve happened in terms of US credibility.

Less than two months after declaring the controversial F-35 Joint Strike Fighter ready for combat, the Air Force on Friday announced that it was temporarily grounding 15 of the jets after it discovered that insulation was “peeling and crumbling” inside the fuel tanks.

Tensions are simmering in Washington regarding the deal struck by US Secretary of State Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov over Syria. There appears to be a rift within the Obama administration with the "party of war" opposing the idea of US-Russian cooperation.

James George Jatras also explained the rationale behind the harsh comments about Trump from the Democratic camp and the overall attitude towards the Republican nominee.

Hillary is the candidate of the "deep state", of the oligarchy, he said. In effect. the way the script was supposed to run was that the corresponding co-candidate should have been Jeb Bush so that "we have "Tweedledee – Tweedledum" choices like we usually get."

He also pointed out one reason why people are really concerned about Hillary's political and physical viability and might not want to see her go is that they realize there will be "blood bath in the Democratic party while deciding who succeeds her."

A hastily scheduled Security Council meeting was canceled because the U.S. does not want to make public details of the Syrian cease-fire deal, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations said Friday.

Vitaly Churkin said there was no point in briefing the council if the U.S. did not want to say exactly what was in the documents outlining the deal hammered out last week by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

"This briefing is not going to happen and mostly likely we're not going to have a resolution of the Security Council because the United States does not want to share those documents with the members of the Security Council and we believe that we cannot ask them to support a document which they haven't seen," Churkin said.

On 13 September 2016, at 1 a.m., although the cease-fire had just come into force, the Israëli aviation attempted to destroy a combat position in the South of Syria and certain military installations near Damascus.

The Syrian Arab Army fired at and hit the planes with new generation missiles. One of the planes crashed in jihadist-held territory, the other managed to land in Israël.

Tsahal at first denied the two incidents, then recognised having violated Syrian air space and admitted that Syria had fired on their planes.

The available information does not enable us to know exactly what the Israêli planes were (F-15, F-16, or F-35), nor if the missiles were fired by Hezbollah or by the Syrian Arab Army, nor what type of missiles they were or who built them.

German documentary film with english subtitles produced by Mr. Frieder Wagner (original name is "Todesstaub"). The film is about war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, particularly in Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo and Iraq. The use of depleted uranium is made genocide of those countries that is not remembered in the history of mankind, even the Nazi crimes remained low compared to the genocide, which is still ongoing and will last almost forever, unfortunately. In contaminated areas people are still at risk of a lot of people do not know and this is the worst because it is invisible genocide.

Armed conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa are not only devastating the economies gripped by fighting, but are sapping growth in neighboring countries and those hosting millions of refugees, the International Monetary Fund said Friday.

In a new study analyzing 179 conflict countries since 1970 to quantify economic costs, the IMF found that the drops in economic output in war-torn Syria, Libya and Yemen in recent years have far exceeded the worldwide average.

Kyrgyzstan's refusal to allow the United States deploy its Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) aircraft in the country's Bishkek Manas International Airport was one of the reasons behind the subsequent 2005 Tulip Revolution, former Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev said.

A columnist for a state-run newspaper in Egypt has suggested the US invented Isis and set up the 9/11 attacks to justify its military interventions in the Middle East.

“Is it possible to believe the official version, from the US government, of the events of 11 September 2001?” wrote journalist Noha Al-Sharnoubi in Al-Ahram, a major national Egyptian newspaper owned by the government.

Ms Al-Sharnoubi said the World Trade Centre and Pentagon attacks could have been premeditated to "justify the war on terror” in her column, published on 23 August.

"Hillary Clinton wants to start an air war over Syria with a nuclear-armed power [Russia] with 2,000 nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert. Given Hillary Clinton's record not only in Iraq, but in Libya, I think this is as dangerous as it gets."

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts in New York on Sunday to discuss responses to North Korea's latest nuclear test, South Korea's foreign ministry said on Wednesday.

The three countries are pushing for tough new U.N. Security Council sanctions on North Korea after the isolated country on Friday conducted its fifth and largest nuclear test.

The blast was in defiance of U.N. sanctions that were tightened in March.

China, the North's chief ally, backed the March resolution but is more resistant to harsh new sanctions this time after the United States and South Korea decided to deploy a sophisticated anti-missile system in the South, which China adamantly opposes.

South Korea said Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se and his counterparts Kerry and Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida will meet during the annual U.N. General Assembly to discuss putting further pressure on North Korea.

Saudi Arabia is the world’s newest drone power. And that could be a problem, since the Saudis are in the midst of a rather nasty war.
Riyadh has signed a contract with Chinese firm Chengdu for an unspecified number of Pterodactyl drones, Saudi media reported in late August and early September.

The 30-foot-long, propeller-driven Pterodactyl, which Chengdu apparently modeled on America’s iconic Predator and Reaper drones, can fly for hours at a time carrying cameras and missiles. Operators on the ground control the unmanned aerial vehicle via satellite.

As far as killer drones go, the Pterodactyl probably isn’t terribly sophisticated—its sensors are certainly less capable than U.S.-made models—and that can mean the difference between life and death for innocent people caught in the crossfire as flying robots hunt militants on the ground.

As libertarian (former) Congressman Ron Paul pointed out recently (here), the “deep state” elects whom it wants and it seems to have wanted Hillary Clinton.

And even after Hillary’s most recent collapse, articles are appearing in the mainstream media (see above excerpt) pointing out that Hillary is better than the alternative.

This is no coincidence. The mainstream media is owned by a relatively few people and they are surely supported by others, hidden influencers for the so-called deep state. And it is this deep state that requires, if possible, the services of Hillary Clinton.

The question is why?

“I want to be absolutely clear with our people and the world. The United States does not torture,” said George W Bush on 6 September 2006.

Bush was, for the first time, acknowledging the existence of the program that Senate intelligence committee staff investigator Daniel Jones would later expose as taking power drills to the heads of captured men; making them stand with their arms stretched above their heads for days at a time; leaving at least one of them naked until he froze to death; waterboarding them to the point of catatonia as bubbles rose from their open mouths; and inserting pureed food into their rectums while claiming it was necessary for delivering nutrients.

Details of those procedures were outlined in the 525 pages which CIA director John Brennan, Barack Obama and White House chief of staff Denis McDonough allowed to become public.

David Cameron's 'ill-conceived' military intervention in Libya fuelled the migrant crisis and spurred the growth of ISIS, MPs warn today.
In a devastating verdict, the Commons foreign affairs committee savages the former prime minister's judgment in rushing to war in 2011, saying the intervention was based on 'erroneous assumptions'.
The cross-party committee accuses Mr Cameron of ignoring military chiefs and a lack of reliable intelligence to pursue an 'opportunistic policy of regime change' in Libya.

the House and Senate have unanimously passed an act that could make it possible for US 9/11 victims to sue Saudis for their complicity in perpetrating the 9/11 attack.

Bush and Obama censored for more than a decade the evidence of Saudi involvement while they invaded Iraq, killing at least hundreds of thousands of people.

Obama is now reasserting his intention to veto the act, but, as Jason Ditz reports, will still allow “9/11 victims to sue Iran, even though Iran had nothing to do with the attack”.

Ditz continues that this is in keeping with the standard US practice of “protecting its allies [and itself] from lawsuits while setting up suits against international rivals”. (The US has been attempting to reconquer Iran since 1979 when the US’s Iranian proxy-dictator, whom Amnesty International called one of the world’s worst human rights violators, was overthrown.)

Beijing has blamed Washington for exacerbating the “vicious circle” of tensions on the Korean Peninsula after the US pinned the responsibility for Pyongyang’s nuclear test last week on China’s alleged lack of effort to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis.

On Friday North Korea made headlines after conducting its fifth nuclear test. The 10 kiloton explosion set off an artificial earthquake and an avalanche of international responses condemning the test.

While Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called for a more “creative” response to the situation rather than issuing endless rounds of sanctions, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter over the weekend blamed China for its failure to curb the North Korean threat.

Strikes in northern Yemen on Saturday reportedly killed two children and first responders as US-backed coalition continues ‘disturbing’ strikes.

A United Nations official has condemned airstrikes, including a “double tap” attack, on a water well in Yemen that killed dozens of people including children. The statement comes as the Obama administration’s proposed $1.15 billion arms to Saudi Arabia, who’s leading the U.S.-backed coalition’s bombing campaign against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, faces opposition both on and off Capitol Hill.

In a statement released Monday, U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Yemen Jamie McGoldrick said that 30 people were killed and 17 were wounded, with the casualties including first responders and two children, as a result of the airstrikes in the village of Beit Saadan in northern Yemen.

The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, one of the most influential parties in the Czech Republic, is gathering signatures for a petition that would lead to the organization of a referendum on the country's withdrawal from NATO.

According to a recently published report by the US Congress’ research services, at least 8 different anti-tank missiles are in use on the battlefield in Syria. The most dangerous of them are those of Russian origin. This observation by analysts’ is especially relevant for American military advisers and instructors in Syria. In effect, it means that the US Army is in need of a modernized tank defense system. As the newspaper notes, the Abrams tank, for example, lacks a dynamic protection system.

What’s more, it’s difficult enough to equip US infantry and Marines with active defense weapons, Business Insider adds. Even if the Americans decided to purchase and adopt battle-tested Israeli Trophy systems, this would not solve the problem.

Starting on Friday, Manning said, she would not willingly consume any food or drink, except water and prescribed medications.

Manning also refused to “voluntarily cut or shorten her hair in any way.” Army officials repeatedly force Manning to cut her hair to “military standards” – an appearance that she says does not reflect her gender identity.

Human rights advocates have repeatedly raised concerns about Manning’s treatment in prison. After her arrest in 2010, she was subjected to solitary confinement for extended periods and repeatedly stripped naked in her cell. Her treatment was so bad that a State Department spokesperson spoke out against the Pentagon and described it as “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.”

Since her conviction, Manning has been repeatedly threatened with indefinite solitary confinement, for charges as frivolous as keeping an expired tube of toothpaste in her cell.

We’ve walked a strange and harrowing road since September 11, 2001, littered with the debris of our once-vaunted liberties.

We have gone from a nation that took great pride in being a model of a representative democracy to being a model of how to persuade the citizenry to march in lockstep with a police state. In doing so, we have proven Osama Bin Laden right. He warned that “freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in – and the West in general – into an unbearable hell and a choking life.”

These past 15 years have indeed been an unbearable, choking hell.

What began with the passage of the USA Patriot Act in October 2001 has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse.

A series of Saudi airstrikes against targets in northern Yemen have killed at least 21 civilians and wounded scores of others, with the larger of the two strikes occurring at a water-drilling site in the Arhab District, due north of the capital city of Sanaa.

The first airstrike killed four workers at the site, and attracted local villagers who aimed to carry out a rescue effort. Five more strikes targeted the rescuers, killing at least 11 more civilians and wounding at least another 20, though locals reported that the toll was likely far higher. claiming around 100 casualties.

The Russian leader has pledged to work with its allies to "solve" the worrying North Korea problem.

Pyongyang has rattled the world by holding a nuclear warhead test, which triggered a massive 5.3 magnitude earthquake on Thursday morning.

The North Korean state media confirmed it had carried out the test and revealed the country has a strategic ballistic missile it is ready to use.

But Putin has hit back at Kim Jong-Un's ambitious dictatorship, with a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry stating: "Such demonstrative disregard for international law and opinion of the international community deserves the strongest condemnation.

"North Korea’s actions, aimed at undermining the global non-proliferation regime, pose a serious threat to peace and security on the Korean Peninsula and in the Asia-Pacific Region. This will have negative consequences primarily for North Korea itself.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is the most expensive procurement program in Pentagon history. It’s been plagued by schedule delays, gross cost overruns, and a slew of underwhelming performance reviews. Last month the Air Force declared its variant “ready for combat,” and most press reports lauded this as a signal that the program had turned a corner. But a memo issued from the Pentagon’s top testing official, based largely upon the Air Force’s own test data, showed that the Air Force’s declaration was wildly premature.

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is the most expensive procurement program in Pentagon history. It’s been plagued by schedule delays, gross cost overruns and a slew of underwhelming performance reviews.

Last month the Air Force declared its variant “ready for combat,” and most press reports lauded this as a signal that the program had turned a corner. But a memo issued from the Pentagon’s top testing official, based largely upon the Air Force’s own test data, showed that the declaration was wildly premature.

Michael Gilmore’s latest memorandum is damning. The F-35 program has derailed to the point where it “is actually not on a path toward success, but instead on a path toward failing to deliver the full Block 3F capabilities for which the Department is paying almost $400 billion.”

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg met with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu today, and issued a statement “welcoming” Turkey’s recent invasion of Syria, saying that Turkey is a “strong and highly valued” member of NATO and it was important that they are increasing anti-ISIS efforts.

Stoltenberg conceded that Syria was “a very complex and very difficult situation,” but insisted that the alliance did not have the option of remaining out of the Syrian Civil War, saying that the alliance must fight against ISIS inside Syria.

Turkey’s invasion has seen them fight ISIS, at least some of the time, but the invasion has also set its sights on the US-backed Kurdish YPG. Several NATO nations, particularly France have previously expressed disquiet about Turkey’s invasion, despite Stoltenberg’s apparently unreserved endorsement.

Just a day after Prime Minister Theresa May defended UK arms sales to Saudi Arabia, cell phone footage has emerged apparently showing a college in Yemen being bombed by Saudi jets.

The footage, filmed in January 2016 and first published in the UK by independent media outlet The Ferret, appears to show a college hit by an airstrike. Attacks on schools are explicitly outlawed under the Geneva Convention, and thus constitute a war crime.

Filmed by a security guard on a cell phone, the footage was first passed to the Yemeni NGO Mwatana and then submitted to the UK government’s Committees on Arms Export Controls (CAEC).

A leaked draft of the report claims: “The weight of evidence of violations of international humanitarian law by the Saudi-led coalition is now so great that it is very difficult to continue to support Saudi Arabia.”

The revelation comes just a day after British PM Theresa May was confronted with the issue in the House of Commons.

We know Riyadh has invaded Bahrain to suppress lawful and legal protests that were going on there, and they have also attacked the indigenous of Yemen, the Houthis, Raza Kazim, Islamic Human Rights Commission, told RT.

A cross-party group of British MPs have to decide whether to call for the suspension of UK weapons sales to Saudi Arabia or not. The British Prime Minister Theresa May insists sales should continue, and claims the close ties to the country are necessary to keep British people safe.

Pause in fighting to begin on Monday night, allowing humanitarian aid to flow – with Russian and US forces set to launch joint airstrikes against extremists

NATO is taking every effort to justify its raison d'etre. However, the Alliance's saber-rattling on Russia's doorstep is triggering deep concern and anxiety among its members. Although "the marriage of interests" still holds, cracks are appearing among the bloc's members.

When the UN released its summary of their ‘chemical weapons’ report on August 30th, the usual suspects – led by the US, UK and France, immediately rushed to their media pulpits to claim that this was “proof” that Syria, under the leadership under President Bashar al Assad, was somehow guilty (again) of the charge of “using chlorine bombs against its own people.” This latest UN report was the result of a year-long joint inquiry with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Before the full report was even release, western official and their media surrogates began hysterically claiming that it was imperative for the UN Security Council to move for more sanctions against Syria, as well as a ‘Safe Zone’ (No-Fly Zone) be imposed, and possibly more license to increase the US-led military intervention in Syria.

Dear Mark Zuckerberg.

I follow you on Facebook, but you don’t know me. I am editor-in-chief of the Norwegian daily newspaper Aftenposten. I am writing this letter to inform you that I shall not comply with your requirement to remove a documentary photography from the Vietnam war made by Nick Ut.

Not today, and not in the future.

The demand that we remove the picture came in an e-mail from Facebook’s office in Hamburg this Wednesday morning. Less than 24 hours after the e-mail was sent, and before I had time to give my response, you intervened yourselves and deleted the article as well as the image from Aftenposten’s Facebook page.

To be honest, I have no illusions that you will read this letter. The reason why I will still make this attempt, is that I am upset, disappointed – well, in fact even afraid - of what you are about to do to a mainstay of our democratic society.

Israeli occupation authorities in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, on Wednesday, for the first time demolished a home, claiming it was built without permission. The demolition and claims the house was built without permission violates Israel’s obligations under international law, according to which an occupying power must assure that administration in occupied territories adhere, to the greatest possible degree, to the law of the occupied country’s territory.

Israel has, however, enforced new Hebrew as official administrative language, denies building permits and engages in other violations of international law that aim at oppressing the Arab population and culture and Syrian administration in the occupied Golan.

On Tuesday 6th of September, twenty-four hour monitoring by Yemen’s Legal Centre for Rights and Development (LCRD) recorded the bombings by the Saudi led “coalition”, armed by the US and UK and advised by their military specialists, thus collusion and co-operation of both countries render them equally culpable for the carnage.

Yemen has a population of just 24.41 million (2013 figure) and according to the Rural Poverty Portal:

“ … is one of the driest, poorest and least developed countries in the world. It ranks 140 out of 182 countries on the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Index (2009). An estimated 42 percent of the people are poor, and one Yemeni in five is malnourished. Poverty is endemic, particularly in more remote and less accessible areas.”

In the one day and night period covered here, attacked were the capital Sana’a and Sa’dah, Marib, AlJawf, Hajjah, Hodeidah.

The United States over the weekend denied travel to a former British ambassador, Craig Murray, who was also a British diplomat for some 30 years, and is the author of several books.

Murray has stood twice for election to the House of Commons. He was “honored” by being thrown out of Uzbekistan by its repressive government after risking his life to expose appalling human rights abuses there. He is not a terrorist and is not a social media jihadi. He has no criminal record, no connection to drug smuggling, and does have a return ticket, a hotel reservation and ample funds to cover his expenses.

He is however seen as a threat to the United States.

Ambassador Murray was headed to the U.S. this week to be Master of Ceremonies at an award ceremony honoring John Kiriakou, the CIA torture whistleblower. Kiriakou was the only US government official to go to jail in connection with the torture program, and all he did was help expose it to the media.

The United States and Ukraine on Thursday agreed to cooperate on defense technology and improve Ukraine's forces in a move aimed at boosting Ukrainian defense and enhancing U.S. assistance, the Pentagon said.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter also named naming a senior U.S. adviser to oversee the effort.

Carter and Ukrainian Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak signed the partnership agreement at a meeting in London in which they also discussed the conflict in eastern Ukraine, where Ukrainian government forces confront Russian-backed separatists.

The partnership aims "to enhance the defense capacity of Ukraine's forces, advance critical Ukrainian defense reforms, improve resource management processes and boost defense technology cooperation," the Pentagon said in a statement following the meeting.

Turkish forces and the Syrian Kurdish YPG have exchanged fire across the border between Turkey and Syria today, according to military officials. There were as yet no details about the casualties, but the fighting does point to Turkey’s operations inside Syria, since their invasion two weeks ago, moving into a new anti-Kurdish phase.

Both sides accuse the other of firing first, and look officials in Afrin, the Kurdish-held town, denied that they returned any fire at all, insisting it was simply another round of “Turkish aggression” that threatened to ignite a war against them.

Turkey made much of invading Syria not just to fight ISIS, but to expel the Kurds from west of the Euphrates River. US Defense Secretary Ash Carter today reiterated that the Kurdish YPG had totally withdrawn from Manbij. Turkish officials have repeatedly said that the Kurds have not withdrawn from the area.

About 450 more U.S. troops have arrived in Iraq in the past week to support the imminent offensive to drive ISIS from Mosul, the chief U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said Thursday.

Air Force Col. John Dorrian, spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, declined to give a time frame for the start of the offensive but added, "We're going to have to get started soon" if Mosul is to be wrested from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria by the end of this year.

Army Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, task force commander, appeared to suggest in a Wall Street Journal interview that the Mosul offensive could begin as early as next month to fulfill Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's prediction that the strategic northwestern city would fall before the end of the year.

However, in a Pentagon briefing from Baghdad, Dorrian denied that Townsend said that the Mosul push would begin in early October.

From their description the design sounds reminiscent of a basic interferometer system that uses a probe beam and a reference beam. The converter creates the microwave probe beam that would illuminate the object to be detected, while the visible arm acts as the reference beam — or ‘idler beam’ as they call it. The two beams then interfere with each other in the detector.