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.

Traditional U.S. journalism and the American people are facing a crisis as the preeminent American newspaper, The New York Times, has fully lost its professional bearings, transforming itself into a neoconservative propaganda sheet eager for a New Cold War with Russia and imposing a New McCarthyism on public debate.

The crisis is particularly acute because another top national newspaper, The Washington Post, is also deeply inside the neocon camp.

The Times’ abandonment of journalistic principles has become most noticeable with its recurring tirades about Russia, as the Times offers up story after story that would have embarrassed Sen. Joe McCarthy and his 1950s Red-baiters.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Nurettin Canikli today suggested that the Turkish military, which invaded northern Syria two weeks ago, is preparing to go deeper into Syrian territory in the near future, suggesting that Turkey may ultimately want a deeper slice of Syria than just the 90 km border stretch.

While this would include some ISIS territory deeper into the country, Canikli’s comments centered heavily on the Kurdish YPG, and continued Turkish annoyance that they have forces west of the Euphrates River, and have not totally withdrawn.

Turkey made a big point, during their initial invasion, of saying that a major factor was the Kurdish expansion across the river, which Turkey had long insisted was a “red line.” The main Kurdish territory on the west side of the river is in and around Manbij.

US officials have been coming up with excuses for military confrontation with Russia for some time now, and Secretary of Defense Ash Carter seems to be the latest beating that increasingly tired war-drum, declaring Russia both a threat to “collective security” and of plotting to erode “international order.”

Carter’s complaints, like so many others in recent months, centered around supposition and allegations, claiming that Russia’s support for the Syrian government means they are “prolonging” the war, and similarly making the conflict “more dangerous.”

Carter even played up the dubious allegations of Russia trying to “hack the election,” even though the comments come just a couple of days after intelligence officials were conceding that there was no real evidence to support these claims, insisting the US would not tolerate Russia’s “attempts to interfere with our democratic processes.”

As if the world couldn’t get any crazier, the committee in charge of nominating prospective recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize has recently nominated a terrorist organization for the award. The White Helmets, the notorious mop-up wing of Nusra (Jobhat al-Nusra or Jobhat Fatah al-Sham) will now be in the running for not only the cash prize that comes with winning the Nobel but also the undeserved and cult-like appreciation of winners as if, in some parallel universe, the award was actually given to people who promote peace.[1]

US Defense Secretary Ash Carter accused Russia on Wednesday of sowing seeds of global instability and questioned whether Moscow genuinely wants a viable cease-fire in Syria.
In a hard-hitting speech at Oxford University, Carter emphasized deep skepticism about Russian intentions in Syria, even as US Secretary of State John Kerry prepared to fly to Geneva for more talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Their discussions last weekend, on the sidelines of an economic summit in China, failed to produce a nationwide cease-fire in Syria or a US-Russian military cooperation agreement.

The administration of US President Barack Obama has offered Saudi Arabia $115 billion in arms sales, a report seen by Reuters has found.

The offer, including weapons, other military equipment and training, is the highest the United States has offered in its 71-year alliance with the monarchy, the agency reported Wednesday.

US spy planes have twice tried to approach the Russian border over the Black Sea with their transponders off, the Russian Defense Ministry said, adding that SU-27 fighter jets were scrambled in response.

“On September 7, the US P-8 Poseidon surveillance airplanes tried to approach the Russian border twice… with their transponders off,” Russian Defense Ministry’s spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov said in a statement.

Though it has been over 70 years since the United States last used nuclear weapons in an offensive manner during a war, US governments have continued to retain some deliberate ambiguity on their policy toward the future use of such weapons.

Though there was considerable speculation that would change, President Obama is now believed to have abandoned any plans for a no first use statement with respect to America’s massive nuclear arsenal, facing too much opposition from the rest of the administration and giving up on the idea pretty quickly.

At present, China and India are the only two nations with a well-established no first use policy. North Korea has hinted at a similar position, though somewhat nebulously, and the Soviet Union also had such a position, though Russia does not retain that policy, saying it might use nuclear weapons in defense against an overwhelming conventional attack.

Mr. Obama is dealing with other headwinds, not least that he is a lame-duck leader in the last five months of his term. Back home, his struggles are viewed through the unforgiving lens of election-year politics. Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee, tweeted that the Chinese snubbed Mr. Obama and that Mr. Duterte called him a “?‘son of a whore.’ Terrible!”

For a president eager to burnish his legacy, the trip has in fact yielded progress on several fronts, most notably climate change. But the miscues illustrate how poor planning, or even plain bad luck, can undermine a president’s performance abroad.

With this invasion, Turkey has solidified its willingness to risk outright war with Syria and perhaps even Russia in order to fulfill the goals of NATO and Anglo-American powers who have sought to destroy Syria from the beginning.

Part of this strategy is the creation of “buffer zones” and “safe zones” in the north, precisely the concepts that were re-floated and discussed by the United States and U.K. only days before the invasion. Note that the invasion and operations are centering around Jarablus, the eastern border of the famed Jarablus corridor which, bordered by Afrin and Azaz in the West, make up the last fully functioning terrorist supply routes coming in from Turkey.

After a series of mechanical breakdowns, all US Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) have been ordered to “stand down” until engineers can review the state-of-the-art vessels and retrain crew members.

Last month, the USS Coronado was forced to return to Pearl Harbor after experiencing an engineering failure while en route to the Western Pacific.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington DC honors those who died in the Vietnam War. Their relatives and friends leave letters, poems, and photographs at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and on this web site. We bring the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to your home to help remember the sacrifices of the fallen and their families.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday he had proposed, to the US and Russia, the setting up of a no-fly zone in northern Syria, after Ankara-backed fighters pushed the Islamic State (IS) group from the border area.

"We are working for this region to be declared no-fly zone," Erdogan said at the G20 meeting in China, referring to the land extending from Jarabulus to Azaz in northern Syria seized from IS militants.

"This is my proposal to Mr Putin and Mr Obama. This can be done with coalition forces," he added in televised comments.

Turkey launched an operation inside Syria on 24 August, sending tanks and special forces in to back opposition fighters.

On Sunday, IS were expelled from their last positions along the Turkish-Syrian border depriving the group of a key transit point for recruits and supplies.

RUSSIA'S Vladimir Putin is making deliberate attempts to destabilise the rest of the world, the US Defence Secretary has warned during a visit to the UK.

Scores of retired generals and admirals have come out in support for Donald Trump, saying the billionaire Republican candidate should be the next commander-in-chief.

In a letter published on Tuesday, 88 former military figures - including a Holocaust survivor - said they trusted Trump to 'rebuild our military, to secure our borders, to defeat our Islamic supremacist adversaries and restore law and order domestically.'

The letter did not mention Hillary Clinton by name but it took a sideswipe at the former secretary of state, saying that the army needs someone who has not been responsible for 'the hollowing out of our military'.

1. Empowering Terrorism to “Stop” Terrorism

Newsweek published an article titled, “How the U.S. Can Win in Syria,” written by Brookings Institution policymaker Michael O’Hanlon. In it, he claims;

…we need to be somewhat more willing to work with groups that are tainted by past association with the Nusra Front, as long as we can vouch for the fact that they are not themselves Nusra members. We should give them anti-tank missiles—though not anti-aircraft missiles—and much more help in terms of ammunition, logistics assistance and food, to help them build up their forces.

Quite literally, a US policymaker is calling for the bolstering of groups tied to Jubhat Al Nusra, a US State Department designated foreign terrorist organisation and the very source of the Islamic State’s rise to power in the first place to ”defeat ISIS, defeat the Nusra Front and replace Assad.”

2. Perpetuating the Misery of the Syrian People

Indian security forces will use shells full of a chilli compound as an alternative to shotgun pellets, to control crowds in Kashmir, the interior minister said on Monday, after widespread use of the weapons wounded thousands and inflamed public anger.

More than 3,800 people have been wounded and one killed by shotgun pellets since protests against Indian rule erupted in the disputed territory in early July, with more than 100 left partially or fully blinded, official figures show.

Doctors say most cases go unreported, and critics want the government to use less harmful ammunition.

"The committee has given its suggestions and the alternative of the non-lethal weapon has been suggested as PAVA shells," Home Minister Rajnath Singh told reporters as he led an all-party delegation to Srinagar, the summer capital of India's northernmost state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Peter Oborne and Nawal al-Maghafi have produced an extensive report on the appalling conditions in Yemen. Here they discuss some of the effects of the Saudi-led blockade:

We were also told by doctors that the blockade of Yemen, legitimized by the United Nations Security Council, and backed by Britain and the United States to prevent arms supplies reaching the warring sides, has also prevented vital drugs and medical equipment from reaching the country.

‘There are babies dying in incubators because we can’t get supplies to treat them’

At the Republic teaching hospital in Sanaa, the Yemeni capital, Dr Ahmed Yahya al-Haifi spelt out what he saw as the consequences of the Saudi blockade: “We are unable to get medical supplies. Anaesthetics. Medicines for kidneys. There are babies dying in incubators because we can’t get supplies to treat them.”

In Obama’s second term, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton authorized the shipment of American-made arms to Qatar, a country beholden to the Muslim Brotherhood, and friendly to the Libyan rebels, in an effort to topple the Libyan/Gaddafi government, and then ship those arms to Syria in order to fund Al Qaeda, and topple Assad in Syria.

Clinton took the lead role in organizing the so-called “Friends of Syria” (aka Al Qaeda/ISIS) to back the CIA-led insurgency for regime change in Syria.

Under oath Hillary Clinton denied she knew about the weapons shipments during public testimony in early 2013 after the Benghazi terrorist attack.

In an interview with Democracy Now, Wikileaks’ Julian Assange is now stating that 1,700 emails contained in the Clinton cache directly connect Hillary to Libya to Syria, and directly to Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Still more proof that the Obama administration can’t distinguish “moderates” from “extremists.” And how could it possibly do so, when it refuses even to admit the existence of the ideology of Islamic jihad?

UK journo: Syrian kidnapper who shot me twice is now a CIA-vetted “moderate”
SEPTEMBER 4, 2016 11:20 AM BY ROBERT SPENCER 18 COMMENTS

Still more proof that the Obama administration can’t distinguish “moderates” from “extremists.” And how could it possibly do so, when it refuses even to admit the existence of the ideology of Islamic jihad?

Anthony Loyd

“British Journo: Syrian Kidnapper Who Shot Me Twice Is Now a CIA-Vetted ‘Moderate,'” by Patrick Poole, PJ Media, September 3, 2016:

Consider Obama’s record on human rights: one of the first steps he took upon getting into office was to backtrack on his own fervent vows to investigate and stop CIA torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo. Over 100 detainees had died in US custody, several in truly horrific circumstances. For instance, Gul Rahman was beaten, stripped, shackled to a wall at very low temperatures where he froze to death. Manadel al-Jamadi was beaten, shackled, and with five broken ribs, couldn’t breathe and died. An investigating army general concluded there was “no doubt” war crimes had been committed — the real question was would there be an accounting?

For years, journalists and researchers have speculated about what really goes on inside Menwith Hill, while human rights groups and some politicians have campaigned for more transparency about its activities. Yet the British government has steadfastly refused to comment, citing a longstanding policy not to discuss matters related to national security.

Now, however, top-secret documents obtained by The Intercept offer an unprecedented glimpse behind Menwith Hill’s razor wire fence. The files reveal for the first time how the NSA has used the British base to aid “a significant number of capture-kill operations” across the Middle East and North Africa, fueled by powerful eavesdropping technology that can harvest data from more than 300 million emails and phone calls a day.

In an interview with National Interest, Admiral John Richardson claimed that US aircraft carriers could operate unscathed within China and Russia’s anti-access area denial (A2/AD) zones boasting about the long standing naval superiority of America’s Pacific Fleet.

Former NATO Secretary General, Advisor to the President of Ukraine, Mr. Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that the West will give Ukraine lethal weapons in the event that Russia "destabilizes eastern Ukraine."

The Air Force and Marines have both declared the Joint Strike Fighter ready for combat, and Congress is now forking over billions of dollars a year to acquire what is slated to become a fleet of 2,400 jets.

Yet the world’s most expensive fighter bomber still doesn’t work properly and may never perform as advertised. That’s not “dezinformatsiya” from Russian “information warfare” specialists. That’s the official opinion of the Pentagon’s top weapons evaluator, Michael Gilmore.

The G20 meets in tech hub Hangzhou, China, at an extremely tense geopolitical juncture.

China has invested immense political/economic capital to prepare this summit. The debates will revolve around the main theme of seeking solutions “towards an innovative, invigorated, interconnected and inclusive world economy.”

G20 Trade Ministers have already agreed to lay down nine core principles for global investment. At the summit, China will keep pressing for emerging markets to have a bigger say in the Bretton Woods system.

But most of all China will seek greater G20 backing for the New Silk Roads – or One Belt, One Road (OBOR), as they are officially known – as well as the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

So at the heart of the G20 we will have the two projects which are competing head on to geopolitically shape the young 21st century.

Just a month after Japan ordered its military to a "state of alert," and as world leaders gather in China for the G-20 summit, AP reports that North Korea fired three ballistic missiles off its east coast Monday, Japanese Prime Minister Abe "strongly condemned" the actions, as the missiles fell into Japan's air defense zone, declaring the launch a clear violation of UN Security Council resolutions.

As AP reports, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that the three missiles, launched from the western North Korean town of Hwangju, flew across the country before splashing in the waters off its east coast, but officials did not describe the range of the missiles.

Before the firing, on Monday on the sidelines of the G-20 summit, South Korean President Park Geun-hye criticized the North for what she called provocations that are hurting Seoul-Beijing ties.

What was an embarrassing weekend for president Barack Obama, whose arrival at the G-20 summit in China was a case study in diplomatic humiliation, just turned even worse when on Monday, Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte warned the US president not to question him about extrajudicial killings, or "son of a bitch I will swear at you" when the two presidents meet at a summit in Laos in the coming days.

The Syrian conflict has been an object study in murkiness and orchestrated dissimilitude. Its prolongation signals, not so much clarity as readjustment for the next intervention, the next interference. The big powers continue to soil themselves; smaller powers hope for some look-in in a potential redrawing of the Syrian map.

Turkey’s operation was bound to overcook the new found value between Ankara and Moscow. The Jarablus operation could hardly have had the imprimatur of Moscow. There was more than a touch of irritation registered in such channels as Kommersant, which tends to take its draught from semi-official, if not official sources. “The operation in Syria, not coordinated with Moscow, threatens to complicate the process of normalization of bilateral cooperation” agreed between Turkey and Russia in St. Petersburg on August 9.[4]

So then the hard question must be answered. We can imagine the scene in the Situation Room. The diplomatic and strategic advisers remind the President that this is not about someone else’s islands or waters: America’s credibility and the future of its leadership in Asia is on the line. Stepping back and allowing China to defy Washington’s warnings would fatally undermine the entire U.S. position in Asia, and reinforce China’s. The stakes are therefore enormous, and argument for military action is correspondingly clear.

The humanitarian calamity in Yemen entered a terrifying new phase of horror this month as air strikes on the capital city of Sanaa started again after a five-month lull.

Planes from the Saudi-led coalition bombarded the city following the collapse of peace talks in Kuwait. The assaults are destroying civilian infrastructure, and threaten to prevent food and desperately needed aid from reaching the capital.

A young girl undergoes hospital treatment in Sadaa (Mohammed Al-Mikhlafi/MEE)
Many of the attacks seem to have been indiscriminate. At least 16 people, all of them said to have been women and children, died when a potato crisp factory was struck.

The nearest military post was more than one kilometre away and a friend of the owner told us that there was no military activity on the site.

Despite repeated claims in recent weeks that a deal was all but imminent, the US and Russia have once again failed to reach a deal in their attempts to negotiate the start of a new ceasefire within Syria, with President Obama claiming “grave differences” yet remain.

Exactly what the differences are isn’t totally clear, but previous US interests in launching a joint military operation against the Nusra Front appear to have evaporated with Nusra’s official rebranding, which ended their official status as an al-Qaeda affiliate.

Having looked at the Russian military’s cyber warfare modernization, the United States rushed to develop similar capabilities that could be used in the event of a “large force-on-force conflict in a place like Europe.”

On August 11, the US Army announced the creation of the Army Rapid Capabilities Office to prevent “capability gaps” that have formed within the American military in recent years.

“Our adversaries are modernizing at a rapid rate, and in some cases, our capabilities are inadequate to keep up, to maintain our edge,” Maj. Gen. Walter E. Piatt, who is in charge of the operations in the new office said in a statement. "We need to … make sure that they are offset from us, not the other way around.”

The United States certainly has the largest military spending of any country on earth; I don’t know if that translates automatically to “the greatest military,” especially considering that there hasn’t been a major war in which the US came out on the winning side since 1945. So, I would label this a lie.

In the morning it was reported that Israeli bombers began shelling the border with Syria from the Golan Heights, territory occupied by Israel. In addition, the Israeli government issued a statement in which it blames Syria for the shelling.

Despite the fact that there are no victims among the civilian population, these bombings hamper the liberation of Syrian territory of terrorists from ISIS, and similar groups.

“The problem we have at the Pentagon is that people get away with anything. This is a very small amount of money, but they didn’t correct it and the big problem at the DoD is that they can’t keep tabs on what has been going on for decades. We are talking about trillions of dollars unaccounted for. The accounting problem at the Pentagon is really huge, and it doesn’t get much publicity,” Ivan Eland noted.

He said that there have been some articles in the foreign press, but the American press does not really cover this.

Experience tells us that by widening the war, the United States and its client states are not going to rescue the Syrian people from the bloodletting when they are doing precisely the opposite. Widening US intervention would only make things worse:

- Whoever chooses to bomb Syria in a wider war is confusing cause and effect. The war started because the United States and its client states highjacked grassroots peaceful protests, then engineered, recruited, trained and deployed terrorists into Syria. They are the first aggressors and gave ISIL and Al-Qaeda legitimacy. Chemical attacks by ISIL and Al-Qaeda affiliates are only designed to encourage outside powers to intervene and save these proxies from a complete failure. In turn, this provides the regime changers with legitimacy to intervene on a “humanitarian” basis. So bombing Syria amounts to doing these terrorist groups a favour and will not eradicate extremism, much less save civilians.

What a mess! In the crazy Syrian war, US-backed and armed groups are fighting other US-backed rebel groups. How can this be?

It is so because the Obama White House had stirred up the war in Syria but then lost control of the process. When the US has a strong president, he can usually keep the military and intelligence agencies on a tight leash.

But the Obama administration has had a weak secretary of defense and a bunch of lady strategists who are the worst military commanders since Louis XV, who put his mistress, Madame de Pompadour, in charge of French military forces during the Seven Year’s War. The French were routed by the Prussians. France’s foe, Frederick the Great of Prussia, named one of his dogs, “la Pompadour.”

As a result, the two arms of offensive US strategic power, the Pentagon, and CIA, went separate ways in Syria. Growing competition between the US military and militarized CIA broke into the open in Syria.

Describe your approach to foreign policy.

Andrew Bacevich: If I had to assign myself a label I would call myself a ‘Christian realist.’ Christian realism is a foreign policy perspective that originated with Reinhold Niebuhr, the famous moral theologian and public intellectual who was really a titanic figure on the American scene from the 1930s into the 1960s. The essence of Christian realism—which is very much at odds with anything that smacks of utopianism—is to appreciate that there is evil in the world to which we must respond but also to appreciate that our own motives are likely to be less pure than we may fancy them to be. It’s not simply that the motives of the other guys are suspect but we ourselves should always be mindful of the extent to which our own motives [may] be subject to question. That’s the outlook that I tend to adhere to when I look at the world and the way it works.

Andrew Bacevich: ‘Christian realism’ for foreign affairs

Checking out the news these days, it might seem pretty clear why the U.S. is at war in Syria: destroy ISIS. That is almost certainly the way the two main presidential candidates will see it during their upcoming first debate, in a rare point of agreement.

The funny thing is that ISIS did not become the reason for what now is a major regional war until late in the game.

If we rewind about three years, the original justification was to “rid the world of the dictator,” Syrian president Bashar Assad. The US involvement was started under the pretext that Assad was using chemical weapons against the other side in what was once confined to a civil war. American declared Assad thus had to go to avoid a genocide and humanitarian disaster.

FYI: If you read no further, remember anytime a politician uses the word “genocide” these days we’re about to be dragged into another conflict that will morph into a quagmire.

At the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok on September 1st, Russian President Vladimir Putin once again slammed attempts at revising the history and results of World War II. In an interview with Bloomberg, Putin said that reviving territorial disputes could lead to unpredictable consequences and are tantamount to “opening Pandora’s box.”

“If someone wants to start revising the outcomes of the Second World War, then let’s try discussing the topic. But then we’d have to talk not so much about Kaliningrad as the eastern lands of Germany and all the way up to Lvov, which was part of Poland, and so on and so on. There’s also Hungary and Romania there too,” Putin said.

He continued: “If someone wants to open this Pandora’s box and start working with it, then, please, flag in hand, go ahead.”

A population of some 30 million people spanning a large territory, that the Kurds haven’t had a meaningful period of autonomy in many centuries reflects historical imperial realities, but that they’ve not been able to secure such autonomy recently is seen by many Kurds as the result of systematic mistreatment not just by regional powers, but by the international community as well.

The expectation among many is that they are little more than an alliance of convenience for anyone in the region, and after a couple of years of substantial US support allowing them to grow a large, nominally autonomous territory in northeast Syria, last week’s invasion of northern Syria by Turkey is looking an awful lot like business as usual.

As Sun Tzu has stated on these issues of short or long wars “There has ever been a state that benefited from an extended war. Hence, if one is not fully cognizant of the evils of waging war, he cannot be fully cognizant either of how to turn it to best account… Hence, in war prize the quick victory, not the protracted engagement” No amount of high-tech media and generations of propaganda warfare, including guerrilla warfare that is tied to “the popular elements of war” will win an ultimate victory against an adversary.

Duterte, who had been mayor of Davao for most of the past two decades, declares a national “state of lawlessness” to give military extra powers to conduct law enforcement operations.

Philippine authorities on Saturday blamed a notorious group of Islamic militants for the bombing of a night market in President Rodrigo Duterte’s home town that killed at least 14 people.

An improvised explosive device tore through the bustling market in the heart of Davao city and close to one of its top hotels just before 11 pm on Friday.
Authorities said the Abu Sayyaf, a small band of militants that has declared allegiance to the Islamic State group, most likely carried out the attack in response to a military offensive launched against it last week.

The office of the president texted and confirmed that was an Abu Sayyaf retaliation.

As part of joint military drills in the United States, Israeli jets have operated along their Pakistani and United Arab Emirates counterparts for the first time.

US Navy lawyers have advised against hearing a Marine’s appeal on the premise that it would grant attention to an Afghan sex slave scandal. The officer sent a classified memo via his own email to warn fellow Marines of danger, shortly before three were killed.
In the summer of 2012, Captain Brian Donlon reached out to a fellow Marine Corps officer – Major Jason Brezler, then in the USMC Reserves – to ask about Sarwar Jan, a police chief in Afghanistan’s Helmand province with a reputation for corruption and keeping boys as sex slaves. Brezler answered by sending a dossier on Jan, using his Yahoo email account. Donlon warned him the document was classified, and refused to open it; Brezler reported the violation to the military authorities himself.

The U.S. military has won only a single major war since the end of World War II (the Gulf War of 1990-91). But U.S. military contractors continue to win major budget wars in Congress nearly every year, proving that no force on earth can resist their lobbying prowess and political clout.

Consider the steady march to victory of the biggest single weapons program in history — the planned purchase of advanced Lockheed-Martin F-35 jets by the Air Force, Navy, and Marines at a total projected cost of more than $1 trillion.

The Air Force and Marines have both declared the Joint Strike Fighter ready for combat, and Congress is now forking over billions of dollars a year to acquire what is slated to become a fleet of 2,400 jets.

A top Daesh leader with a 3-million-dollar bounty from the US State Department on his head received counter-terrorism training in the United States for 11 years, CNN reported. In an interview with Sputnik, Dr. Alon Ben-Meir, political analyst told Radio Sputnik that the case with Khalimov is not isolated.

According to Ben-Meir, US trained militants that formed the core of what is now known as Daesh.

Western media and thinktankdom have gone wildly off the rails regarding the Russian leader, blaming anything and everything on Vladimir Putin. The public has largely bought the raw propaganda wholesale and this is a tragedy for US-Russian relations.

According to Parkes, Western monied interests believe the solution to precarious world economic conditions adversely affecting business is global war for its profit potential.

He envisions a scheme to provoke belligerence against Russia, launching WW III. Whether he’s right or wrong remains to be seen.

Clearly, US hostility toward Russia risks the unthinkable. Possible East/West confrontation is too great a risk to ignore - especially if Hillary succeeds Obama, a war goddess, a neocon Russophobe.

"Based on initial assessments from the inspection, Freedom’s #2 [main propulsion diesel engine] will need to be removed and rebuilt or replaced," Pentagon officials said, according to Military.com.

"With the benefit of hindsight, it was clearly premature to include so many unproven technologies [on the vessel]," Frank Kendall, the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer, wrote in a memo, according to the Japan Times.

The new, unproven technologies include propulsion and electrical system components, launch and recover systems for aircraft, and radar "integration issues." "What we have to determine now is whether it is best to ‘stay the course’ or adjust our plans," the memo reads.

France’s National Front (FN) party leader Marine Le Pen has compared herself to US presidential candidate Donald Trump, warning that the Republican’s rival, Hillary Clinton, would bring world instability.

Angela Merkel, and Europe in general, had hoped they had managed to move beyond the unprecedented wave of refugees unleashed on the content in 2015 courtesy of the German Chancellor's open door policy, with the fragile March 2016 refugee deal signed with Turkey. Sadly - for both Europeans who have suffered a surge in terrorist attacks as a result and for Merkel, whose approval rating has subsequently plunged - Europe is once buckling under the weight of a new wave of migrants.

According to Reuters, some 3000 migrants were saved in the Strait of Sicily in 30 separate rescue missions just on Tuesday, the Italian coastguard said, bringing the total to almost 10,000 in two days and marking a sharp acceleration in refugee arrivals in Italy. The migrants were packed on board dozens of boats, many of them rubber dinghies that become dangerously unstable in high seas. No details were immediately available on their nationalities.

The death toll in Yemen is now so high that the International Committee of the Red Cross is donating “entire morgue units” (1) to hospitals still standing, having so far escaped the illegal Saudi assault, backed, advised and armed by the US and UK.

“The hospitals were not able to cope,” said Rima Kamal, a Yemen-based spokesperson for the Red Cross. “You could have more than 20 dead people brought into one hospital on one single day. The morgue capacity at a regular hospital is not equipped to handle this influx of dead bodies.”

“It is not that common for the ICRC to donate morgues,” she observed. “The fact that we now do is telling of the size of the human tragedy in Yemen.” The ICRC has donated body bags and refrigerated storage facilities to three hospitals with: “More in the pipeline.”

The last remaining United States manufacturer of cluster bombs is ending production of the controversial weapon, citing regulatory scrutiny and reduced orders for the internationally banned munition.

The decision by Rhode Island-based Textron Systems follows a White House order last May to block the transfer of a Textron shipment of CBU-105 cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia, a move first reported by Foreign Policy.

The White House had come under intense pressure by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International after those groups documented instances in which Saudi-led forces used CBU-105 munitions in multiple locations around Yemen, including Al-Amar, Sanhan, Amran and the Al-Hayma port.

On August 1, the Obama Administration ordered attacks on ISIS in the Libyan city of Sirte, starting another American war. Officially, Congress was informed that this would be a 30-day operation, but even when it started officials were conceding that there really was no “end point” for the war in any plans.

Unsurprisingly we’re now 30 days in, and there’s still no end point, so President Obama felt obliged to confirm a 30-day extension of the war, with officials saying it was done at the recommendation of senior military leaders. As before, this stated length is little more than a bureaucratic placeholder, and there is no reason to believe the war won’t just continue o indefinitely.

To determine what aspects of the F-35B still need fixing, the US Marines have decided the best way to perform diagnostics is to throw the fifth-generation fighter into the field.

The main question which those following the Ukrainian crisis can ask themselves boils down to one word: “Why?” Why have they done this? Answering this question is easy if we take for granted that the decision to send saboteurs to Crimea was taken not in Kiev, and didn’t even factor in the interests of Ukraine or the Kiev regime. One can easily see the greasy fingerprints of Hillary Clinton and her supporters in this provocation who are largely found among the American intelligence services and diplomatic corps. They have very recognizable handwriting.

The goal of the Crimea operation was clear: achieving what didn’t happen in 2014, i.e., a full-fledged war.

Speaking before a group of veterans on Wednesday, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gave perhaps her most hawkish speech to date, with sharp words villainizing Russia and promises to respond to cyberattacks with military force.

CREW Russian fighter Su-34 and MiG-29SMT - which took off from air bases of the Russian Western Military District in Voronješkoj and Kursk areas - were intercepted by means of air attack "enemy" in the stratosphere.

These combat mission pilots are solved within the framework of a sudden check combat readiness ending 31 August.

The press service of the Western Military District emphasized that the task of discovering the goal, intercepting and destroying his crew had worked off at a height of more than 11 kilometers.

It is the complexity of the flight at an altitude of more than 10 kilometers due to thinner air, which reduces engine power and aircraft management.

After successful execution of tasks, the crew were landed at the airport itself unknown in the Southern Military District.

Speaking at a press briefing today, Centcom commander Gen. Joseph Votel claimed an “uptick in confrontations by Iranian vessels in the Arabian Gulf,” insisting that US Naval forces operating off the coast of Iran are prepared to “defend themselves” and “improve stability and security in the region.”

Death tolls in the Saudi invasion of Yemen have been tough to come by, in no small part because much of the country has become a no-go area in the course of the reckless Saudi air campaign. Food shortages, medical shortages, destroyed hospitals, and hasty burials have conspired with mass internal displacement to make tracking casualties all but impossible.