Interviews with two former detainees, held for over a decade by the CIA and repeatedly tortured at a secret site, told Human Rights Watch that the agency threatened them with a makeshift electric chair.

The two detainees Rudha al-Najjar, 51, and Lotfi al-Arabi El-Gherissi, 52, described a metal device that had wires with clips that would attach to the fingers, and a helmet connected to wires, according to an interview of the two men conducted by Human Rights Watch.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) are still not able to reopen the hospital in the Afghan city of Kunduz a year after it was bombed by American planes as a US investigation has failed to ensure the tragedy won't repeat itself, the head of MSF Office in Brussels told RT.

The infamous US airstrike on October 3, 2015 killed 42 people, including three children, at the Doctors Without Borders or Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital in the Afghan city of Kunduz.

MSF informed the Americans that the hospital was targeted 11 minutes into the attack, but the airstrike continued for another half an hour.

A Ukrainian journalist is being held in custody in Russia on espionage charges.

Federal Security Service (FSB) officials said on October 3 that Roman Sushchenko was detained in Moscow on September 30.

The FSB claimed Sushchenko is a colonel with Ukrainian military intelligence who has been collecting classified data about Russia's Armed Forces and National Guard.

Meanwhile, Moscow's Lefortovo district court announced it had ordered Sushchenko be held in pretrial detention for two months.

Moscow has accused Washington of sabotaging the Syria ceasefire deal, saying that the US will be responsible for any new terror attacks in Syria, as by taking no action against Al-Nusra terrorists it shows it is ready "to make a deal with the devil."

Washington "has never exerted any real pressure on Jabhat Al-Nusra, done nothing for delineation to succeed and taken no action against its militants," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement Monday, following the US decision to suspend cooperation on Syria.

Besides failing to deliver on its part of the deal, the US were hampering Moscow's efforts to stop the terrorists, the Russian Foreign Ministry said, calling Washington's decision a "reflection" of the Obama administration's inability to meet the key condition for Russia-US cooperation on the Syrian peace process.

The way the situation has been unraveling in Syria in the past few weeks has made Moscow doubt what Washington's real intentions are, according to the ministry.

"We are becoming more convinced that in a pursuit of a much desired regime change in Damascus, Washington is ready to 'make a deal with the devil'," the Foreign Ministry said. For the sake of ousting Syrian President Bashar Assad, the US appears to be ready to "forge an alliance with hardened terrorists, dreaming of turning back the course of history."

"Police are specialists in violence. They are armed, trained, and authorized to use force. With varying degrees of subtlety, this colors their every action. Like the possibility of arrest, the threat of violence is implicit in every police encounter. Violence, as well as the law, is what they represent."—Author Kristian Williams

How do you protect yourself from flying fists, choking hands, disabling electrified darts and killing bullets?

How do you defend yourself against individuals who have been indoctrinated into believing that they are superior to you, that their word is law, and that they have the power to take your life?

Most of all, how can you maintain the illusion of freedom when daily, Americans are being shot, stripped, searched, choked, beaten and tasered by police for little more than daring to frown, smile, question, challenge an order or just exist?

The short answer: you can't.

Now for the long answer, which is far more complicated but still leaves us feeling hopeless, helpless and vulnerable to the fears, moods and misguided training of every cop on the beat.

If you ask police and their enablers what Americans should do to stay alive during encounters with law enforcement, they will tell you to comply (or die).

It doesn't matter where you live—big city or small town—it's the same scenario being played out over and over again in which Americans are being brainwashed into believing that anyone who wears a government uniform—soldier, police officer, prison guard—must be obeyed without question, while government agents, hyped up on their own authority and the power of their uniform, ride roughshod over the rights of the citizenry.

For example, a local law enforcement agency in Virginia has started handing out a guide—developed in cooperation with a group of African American pastors—on how to interact with police. The purpose of this government resource, according to the police, is to make sure citizens feel "comfortable" and know what to do when interacting with police in order to "promote public safety and respectful interaction."

Curiously, nowhere in the "Guide to Interacting with Police" is there any mention of the Constitution, or the rights of the citizenry, other than the right to remain silent.

In fact, the primary point stressed throughout the bilingual guide aimed at "building trust and cooperation," is that citizens should comply, cooperate, obey, not resist, not argue, not make threatening gestures or statements, avoid sudden movements, and submit to a search of their person and belongings.

The problem, of course, is what to do when compliance is not enough.

Russia has now managed twice to shame the U.S. into action against Jihadis by publicly demonstrating that the U.S. is not really committed to its promises.

During 2014 and 2015 the U.S. did very little to attack the Islamic State. U.S. strikes hit irrelevant targets like an "ISIS excavator" or some lone truck. Meanwhile ISIS was making millions per day from pumping oil out of the Syrian desert and selling it to Turkish contacts. Hundreds of Turkish tanker trucks assembled near the oil wells in south-east Syria waiting to load. No airstrike would hit them.

I took time out from reading the news on the war on Syria to read the latest piece of fiction in the New York Times, this one woven together by Max Fisher, who provocatively titled it "Russia's Brutal Bombing of Aleppo May Be Calculated, and It May Be Working".

Max was just getting warmed up with the title, launching into a full-frontal assault on Russia, accusing it of deliberately murdering civilians in Aleppo in order to discredit the so-called opposition, scuttle the last remaining hopes of diplomacy, and, if not win the war, then at least prolong it endlessly.

Fisher then takes us on his magic carpet ride of delusion, telling us that so-called "moderate" rebels have had to turn to extremists or starve and that the US has genuinely tried to convince these moderates to separate from the extremists:

The northern Syrian city is one of the few remaining strongholds for non-jihadist rebel groups. But months of siege forced them into a terrible choice: turn to extremists for help, or starve. It was no choice at all, and groups such as the jihadist-linked Ahrar al-Sham helped briefly break the siege in August...

The United States has tried to counteract this by persuading rebels to reject jihadists, in part by promising support for the opposition and by targeting jihadist militants.

Fisher is well advised not to elaborate on who the rebel groups are who control east Aleppo, as it will reveal it is the Jihadist hardliners who run the show there.

The Houthi forces have reportedly destroyed a US-made military vessel in a missile attack off the shores of the Red Sea port city of Mokha, Yemen. The incident was reported on October 1.

The HSV-2 Swift hybrid catamaran formerly belonged to the United States Navy but then was leased to the United Arab Emirates Navy. The vessel used to take part in the ongoing naval blockade of the Houthi-controlled coastal area of Yemen.

The HSV-2 Swift was a high-speed logistical ship capable of locating mines, controlling military operations and transporting troops and equipment

The Footage:

An online petition calling on the US to declare Pakistan "a state sponsor of terrorism," has gained over 600,000 signatures, making it one of the most-supported since the White House petition service was launched in 2011.

The online action supports a bill sponsored by Texas Congressman Ted Poe along with Californian representative Dana Rohrabacher, which was introduced two weeks ago. It accuses Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of helping to harbor terrorist groups, including the Taliban, the Haqqani Network and Al-Qaeda. It also claims the agency helps the groups to purchase weapons.

The bill demands that the White House either designate the government of Pakistan as a state sponsor of terrorism or justify to the Congress why it refuses to do so.

The much-supported petition supporting the legislation was published on the We the People website on September 21. After a week it broke the 100,000 threshold, which requires the US government to reply to it formally. By Monday it had scored more than 600,000 signatures and is currently the most popular petition on the site.

The Western narrative blaming President Assad for the war in Syria is disintegrating in the face of the reality of Jihadist terrorism and ISIS.

From its inception, it was clear to many that George W. Bush's 'war on terror' was a total sham. It was rhetorical cover for a premeditated plan to systematically remove sovereign governments, mostly in the secular Arab world, under the totally false pretext that they were sponsors of Islamic terrorism.

The fact that such states were enemies of Islamic terrorism didn't matter, the narrative was set. Those of course were the Bush years where to quote the man whose eloquence at times rivalled that of Vitaly Klitschko, "You're either with us or you're with the terrorists".

But these are the Obama years and this pretext of fighting terror has more or less been abandoned.

How ironic then that the threats of international terrorism, widely exaggerated during the Bush years are now dangerously realistic threats.