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, legitimised 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."

Al-Haifi estimated that 25 people were dying every day at the Republic hospital for want of medical supplies. "They call it natural death," he said. "But it's not. If we had the medicines they wouldn't be dead.

"I consider them killed as if they were killed by an air strike, because if we had the medicines they would still be alive."

The U.N. recently claimed that the death toll from the war had reached 10,000, but that figure must be significantly undercounting the victims of the last seventeen months. Many civilians are perishing from lack of food and medicine and aren't yet being counted among the war's victims. The Saudi-led blockade is responsible for depriving most of the population of basic necessities. As the authors note elsewhere in the report, "much of the country is on the verge of starvation."

Afrah Nasser wrote yesterday about the near-famine conditions that threaten the lives of millions of Yemenis:

These shocking statistics warn that Yemenis soon will be put to death by starvation, as the war has no end in sight. As long the world remains indifferent and timely action to prevent it is not taken, all indicators show a famine is all but inevitable.

Many Yemenis suffered from hunger before the war, but the war has made conditions dramatically worse for the entire population. All sides have used food as a weapon, but the coalition blockade has had by far the most severe effect on millions of people. Like other modern famines, the one that is being created in Yemen is entirely man-made, and the coalition and its Western backers bear the greatest responsibility for it. It could still be prevented if there were a concerted effort to save Yemen from starvation, but there seems to be very little interest in making that effort. All of the governments with the resources to do this are either oblivious to the need or complicit in creating the catastrophe.

Fifteen years ago the U.S. government, in response to 9/11, took the unprecedented step of declaring war on a tactic. Waging a 'war on terror' gave the president and his neocon cabal vast new powers to make the world a battleground and sacrifice constitutional rights.

Key to this was the declaration of a "State of National Emergency" on September 14, 2001. This, combined with the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), gave the executive branch dictatorial powers, allowing for the invasion and occupation of Iraq - which had nothing to do with 9/11 - and bypassing the Geneva Convention to declare foreign fighters as "enemy combatants" to be tortured and held indefinitely.

These new powers also allowed for the creation of a surveillance state that Stasi Germany could only dream of - pumping billions into new spy centers, giving the FBI National Security Letters to go after U.S. citizens for any reason, and turning the power of the NSA against the homeland.

Politicians claimed these powers would only be temporary while the terrorist threat was supposedly being neutralized, but many of us knew government would never let go of power once it had been gained. The war on terror and its dismantling of human rights became just another fact of life.

Predictably, the invasion and occupation of Iraq turned the country into a breeding ground for terrorism, and drone bombings in other countries such as Pakistan - killing untold numbers of children and innocent civilians - created a million new terrorists.

In an remarkable hit piece NYT spent over 5,000 words yesterday trying to prove that all of WikiLeaks' leaks are motivated from a desire to benefit Russia.

That of course took some doing. It required ignoring the evidence of the other potential source of motivation for Julian Assange — such as that Hillary participated in an aggressive, and potentially illegal, prosecution of Assange for being a publisher and Chelsea Manning for being his source — even as it repeatedly presented evidence that that was Assange's motivation.

Putin, who clashed repeatedly with Mrs. Clinton when she was secretary of state,

[snip]

In late November 2010, United States officials announced an investigation of WikiLeaks; Mrs. Clinton, whose State Department was scrambled by what became known as "Cablegate," vowed to take "aggressive" steps to hold those responsible to account.

[snip]

Another person who collaborated with WikiLeaks in the past added: "He views everything through the prism of how he's treated. America and Hillary Clinton have caused him trouble, and Russia never has."

The long-running tragic saga of ITT Education Services, which was established nearly 50 ago and operates the ITT Technical Institutes for-profit college chain, finally came to a end this morning with both a bang and a whimper, when it announced that it is shutting down effective immediately, leaving the fate of 40,000 students currently enrolled in limbo, and some 8,000 workers without a job.

The company said the closure is due to an investigation and sanctions by the U.S. Department of Education.

"It is with profound regret that we must report that ITT Educational Services, Inc. will discontinue academic operations at all of its ITT Technical Institutes permanently after approximately 50 years of continuous service," the company stated Tuesday. "Effective today, the company has eliminated the positions of the overwhelming majority of our more than 8,000 employees."

As previously reported, ITT Tech stopped enrolling new students on August 29, just a few days after it was cut off from a significant amount of federal funding by the government. ITT's collapse was catalyzed when the Department of Education effectively killed the company two weeks ago, when it told the company on August 25 that it couldn't enroll new students who use federal financial aid. The school accused federal officials of forcing the closure and denying it due process. The company has been the subject of state and federal probes for various reasons, including its recruitment tactics, lending practices and job placement figures.

Among the measures imposed, ITT was been ordered to pay $152 million to the department within 30 days to cover student refunds and other liabilities in case the company closes. The chain, based in Indiana, is still paying another $44 million demanded by the department in June for the same reason.

The Syrian Kurdish leadership vows to defend their de facto state in north east Syria to the end, but is fearful of a growing understanding between the Syrian and Turkish governments in opposition to Kurdish separatism at a time when US support for the Kurds is faltering. In an exclusive interview with The Independent, a senior Syrian Kurdish official says that the Kurds will fight to the death to stop Turkey "invading the region" and speaks of possible reconciliation between Damascus and Ankara on the Kurdish question.

The Syrian Kurds, who have been the most effective US ally in the war against Isis in Syria, now see themselves as possible victims of international betrayal. The US support for the Turkish military intervention in Syria on 24 August and demand that the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), who had just captured the strategic town of Manbij from Isis after a hard-fought siege, should pull back east of the Euphrates river, were bitter blows to the Kurds. Without whole-hearted US support, they are vulnerable to attacks by the numerous enemies who encircle them, notably Turkey and possibly, in future, the Syrian government.

The media would do us all a service if they didn't cover terrorism so much, because then people "wouldn't know what's going on." That little bit of wisdom comes courtesy of US Secretary of State John Kerry. Kerry's offhand remark was made during a visit to Bangladesh last week, prompting immediate criticism and even subsequent clarification from State Department spokesperson John Kirby.

The secretary of state's suggestion that simply ignoring terrorism might help it go away and that an ignorant public is somehow desirable is ludicrous - but maybe it just came out wrong. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt on that. Let's assume what Kerry meant to say is that if the media didn't make 'insta-celebrities' out of terrorists and play wall-to-wall coverage of major terrorist events, it would inspire fewer copycats and lone wolf attackers of the kind we've seen in recent months. If that's what Kerry meant to say, he'd have a fairly reasonable point.

Vladimir Putin can feel avenged. At the G20 summit in China, he attained everything that he was denied two years ago following the events in Crimea, and was paid special attention and respect by other leaders. The special attitude towards the Russian president was evident even during the concert program in which the only foreign melody played in addition to national ones was Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky. Meanwhile, the Chinese made Barack Obama feel like he is henceforth a "lame duck."

Vladimir Putin arrived in China the night before and, according to tradition, was late. Argentine President Mauricio Macri, with whom a series of bilateral meetings have been scheduled on the sidelines of the summit, did not wait around for him this time. [...] On Saturday night, he managed to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who showed more patience than his Argentine colleague.

In the morning, he visited the residence of Xi Jinping, and not with empty hands. A Chinese businessman who complained of the shortage of Russian ice cream in the Celestial Empire suggested the idea of an original gift for Xi. "I've brought you a whole box of ice cream," Putin declared from the doorstep. Apparently, the gift was worth it. According to the leader of the People's Republic of China, every time he comes to Russia he asks his aides to buy him such a delicious treat. He then relishes it at home with his whole family. [...]

While other members of the delegation could not be reached, Ulyukaev briefly commented on the main results of the meetings of the Russian president, who managed to complete more than half of the scheduled program ahead of time. According to Ulyukaev, he discussed canceling the embargo and establishing a free trade zone with Turkey. With the Chinese president, he discussed in detail all 10 joint projects, including gas pipelines and long-haul aircraft.

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has pledged to personally deal with a group of Islamist militants by publicly eating them alive. Duterte described in detail how he would carry out his revenge for last week's bombing on a night market in the country.

"They will pay. When the time comes, I will eat you in front of people,"Duterte said on Monday night, addressing an audience including children while on a visit to Laos for a regional summit, AFP reported.

The statement comes in response to a bombing that took place last week at a crowded market in Duterte's hometown, Davao City, which killed 14 people and injured 68 others. The government blamed Islamic State-linked militant group Abu Sayyaf for the blast.

The group, which is based on remote southern islands in the Philippines, pledged allegiance to Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) in a 2014 video. The group has been put on the list of terrorist organizations by the US, and has kidnapped foreigners for ransom and beheaded two Canadians in 2016.

The president didn't mince his words when speaking of what he is planning to do with the militants, who are also accused of killing 15 local soldiers in August. "I will really carve your torso open. Give me vinegar and salt and I will eat you. I'm not kidding," Duterte said, as cited by AFP. "These guys are beyond redemption," he added.

"No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices." ― Edward R. Murrow

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.

The citizenry's unquestioning acquiescence to anything the government wants to do in exchange for the phantom promise of safety and security has resulted in a society where the nation is being locked down into a militarized, mechanized, hypersensitive, legalistic, self-righteous, goose-stepping antithesis of every principle upon which this nation was founded.

This is not freedom. This is a jail cell.

Set against a backdrop of government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, overcriminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches, roving VIPR raids and the like—all of which have been sanctioned by Congress, the White House and the courts—our constitutional freedoms have been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded.

Our losses are mounting with every passing day.

Free speech, the right to protest, the right to challenge government wrongdoing, due process, a presumption of innocence, the right to self-defense, accountability and transparency in government, privacy, press, sovereignty, assembly, bodily integrity, representative government: all of these and more have become casualties in the government's war on the American people, a war that has grown more pronounced since 9/11.

Since the towers fell on 9/11, the American people have been treated like enemy combatants, to be spied on, tracked, scanned, frisked, searched, subjected to all manner of intrusions, intimidated, invaded, raided, manhandled, censored, silenced, shot at, locked up, and denied due process.

In allowing ourselves to be distracted by terror drills, foreign wars, color-coded warnings, underwear bombers and other carefully constructed exercises in propaganda, sleight of hand, and obfuscation, we failed to recognize that the true enemy to freedom was lurking among us all the while.

The U.S. government now poses a greater threat to our freedoms than any terrorist, extremist or foreign entity ever could.

While nearly 3,000 people died in the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government and its agents have easily killed at least ten times that number of civilians in the U.S. and abroad since 9/11 through its police shootings, SWAT team raids, drone strikes and profit-driven efforts to police the globe, sell weapons to foreign nations, and foment civil unrest in order to keep the military industrial complex gainfully employed. (Syria's bloody civil war in which CIA-armed militias have been fighting FBI-armed militias is a prime example of the government's Machiavellian schemes gone awry.)

No, the U.S. government is not the citizenry's friend, nor is it our protector, and life in the United States of America post-9/11 is no picnic.

Two headlines today support the claim that "western" media reporting often defies the observable reality.

• Washington Post: For the first time since 2013, ISIS has no border with NATO
• Independent: Isis 'cut off from rest of world' as rebels expel Islamists from Turkish border

From the last one:

Isis has lost control of its last territories on the border with Turkey, monitoring groups say, in a major blow to the group's ability to receive foreign fighters from the rest of the world.

Neither is ISIS cut off from the world, nor from NATO. Fighters as well as goods can still cross to and from Turkey like they did throughout the last years.

Just take a look at the map: