Bombings by the Saudi-led coalition may have devastated Yemen, but the country faces another deadly threat in the sky – US drones. A third of those killed by them in 2018 were civilians, including children, according to a report.

"We live in fear. Drones don't leave the sky," said one farmer, describing the day that two of his relatives were killed in a US drone strike. His is one of several testimonies recorded in a new report by Associated Press documenting the rising civilian death toll caused by the US drone war against Al-Qaeda's Yemeni franchise.

With the release of a previously top secret document – made public thanks to a legal victory by the ACLU – disclosing the role of the Office of Medical Services (OMS) in the CIA’s torture program, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) reminds health professionals that torture, in all its forms, is one of the most serious human rights violations and is absolutely prohibited under U.S. and international law, and that any collusion in its implementation – from planning through monitoring – is a gross violation of professional ethics.

Official ISIS documents, which have been obtained by the Russian RT TV, reveal that the terrorist group has financially motivated its fighters conducting attacks with chemical weapons.

According to the documents, many ISIS fighters received gold, silver and even cars for carrying out terrorist attacks. One of the documents reveals that this award program was created to encourage the terrorist group’s fighters to “fight the enemies.”

Head of the military documentation department of the Iraqi military intelligence department, Lt. Col. Jaber Asaad, told RT’s correspondent that these documents are a clear evidence that ISIS used chemical weapons in Iraq.

“All this confirms that the group possessed chemical weapons that are banned throughout the world,” RT quoted the Iraqi officer as saying.

BBC Arabic reports based an exclusive Jerusalem Post story that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman told a group of Evangelical leaders who met with him in Riyadh earlier this month there was a recent plot to assassinate him, and that the plan was thwarted by Egyptian intelligence.

The Jerusalem Post first broke the story this week based on accounts of the returning Evangelical delegation who met with the crown prince on November 1. Joel Rosenberg, who led the delegation of American Evangelical Christians said MbS relayed that the head of Egyptian intelligence recently came to Riyadh to inform Saudi authorities that a terrorist cell with Saudi citizens had been caught in northern Sinai. “They were planning to assassinate me,” MbS told the American delegation.

- U.S. arms sales to foreign governments rose 13 percent to $192.3 billion in the year ending Sept. 30, the State Department said on Thursday, a result of looser restrictions on sales coupled with high-level efforts to close deals.

President Donald Trump wants to make the United States, already dominant in the global weapons trade, an even bigger arms merchant to the world, U.S. officials have said, despite concerns among human rights and arms control advocates.

The largest U.S. arms contractors, who sell ships, tanks, airplanes, missiles and other goods to foreign militaries, include Boeing Co (BA.N), Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N), Raytheon Co (RTN.N), General Dynamics Corp (GD.N) and Northrop Grumman Corp (NOC.N).

The increase came in part because the Trump administration rolled out a new “Buy American” plan in April that relaxed restrictions on sales while encouraging U.S. officials to take a bigger role in increasing business overseas for the U.S. weapons industry

Saudi Arabia had informed Turkey that it would pay financial compensation to the family and Turkish fiancee of Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi who was murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a Saudi hit-squad on October, 2, Al- Jazeera channel reported a Turkish official as saying.

The Turkish official said the Turkish authorities have evidence on the fate of Khashoggi’s body, but the Saudi authorities are putting obstacles to reach it.

According to the source, when the Saudi prosecutor, Saudi al- Mojaab was asked about the fate of Khashoggi’s body, he said he had no information about the matter.

The source added that the suspects’ statement handed by al- Mojaab to the Turkish authorities were useless and did not help achieve any progress in the investigation.

Saudi journalist and writer Turki Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Jasser has died after being tortured while in detention, the New Khaleej reported yesterday.

Reporting human rights sources, the news site said that Al-Jasser was arrested and tortured to death after Saudi authorities claimed he administered the Twitter account Kashkool, which disclosed rights violations committed by the Saudi authorities and royal family.

The sources said that the authorities identified Al-Jasser as the admin using spies in Twitter’s regional office located in Dubai. He was arrested in March.

???? Authorities believe that the writer Turki bin Abdul Aziz al-Jasser (TurkialjasserJ) is the Twitterati KASHKOOL (coluche_ar), private #Saudi security sources asserted to us. The source confirmed what ALQST tweeted about using personal information in Jasser's PC to blackmail him pic.twitter.com/qkNmZe0e2w

— Prisoners of Conscie (@m3takl_en) March 18, 2018

A starving Yemeni girl, whose searing portrait from a hospital bed brought the world’s attention to the ongoing and growing humanitarian disaster in the country, has died. Meanwhile, the Saudi-led blockade of supplies continues.

The photo of an emaciated Amal Hussein was published as part of a story in the New York Times last week, highlighting the growing human tragedies caused by the ongoing fighting and the devastating impact the Saudi Arabia-led bombing campaign has had on civilians.

On Thursday, her family told the paper that Amal had died in a refugee camp, several miles from the hospital that had tried to treat her. She was seven years old.

One can only marvel at the blatant, outrageous hypocrisy of the United States. This is on clear display in many areas: proclaiming support for self-determination while financing the oppression of the Palestinians; citing international law when it suits its needs, but violating international law, such as in the U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and stating that ‘all men are created equal’, as U.S. police officers gun down unarmed people of African descent. Multiple examples abound.

The government’s officials do nothing to hide this hypocrisy; rather, they seem to seek opportunities to flaunt it.

The most recent opportunity came when the U.S. called a special meeting of the United Nations to spotlight, it said, Cuba’s political prisoners. According to the U.S., Cuba has imprisoned 130 political prisoners. The U.S. called this a “blatant affront” to basic democratic freedoms.

A senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) has strongly condemned an Israeli airstrike near the eastern border of the Gaza Strip, which left three Palestinian children dead, describing it as an “ongoing war crime.”

“The occupying Israeli army has been deliberately targeting and killing Palestinian children. This is a clear war crime in violation of international law and international humanitarian law,” Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the PLO's executive committee, said on Monday.

“Israel's continuous campaign of excessive and indiscriminate violence against the people of Gaza has persisted with impunity and has been emboldened by the US administration's strategic alliance with Israel,” she added.

Today, on 26 October 2018, Al-Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) submitted a 500-page file on alleged crimes committed by Israelis, in particular high-level Israeli officials, and individuals associated with corporations that are extracting and destroying Palestinian natural resources.

The organisations provide a reasonable basis to believe that Israelis and private actors have committed the war crimes of extensive destruction and appropriation of property, pillage, and destruction and seizure of property.

The confidential communication provides factual information and legal analysis on the exploitation and destruction of Palestinian water, agricultural land, minerals, mud, stone, and oil.

Body parts belonging to murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi have been found, according to Sky News sources, who added that he had been “cut up” and his face “disfigured.”
The sources’ claim echoes a statement by Do?u Perinçek, leader of the left-wing Vatan party on Monday night. Perinçek told Turkish television that Khashoggi’s “body parts” had been recovered from a well in the Saudi consul’s garden, and added that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would explain the findings later on Tuesday.

The news comes after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan demanded Saudi officials reveal the whereabouts of Khashoggi’s remains, after the Saudi government admitted Khashoggi had been murdered, albeit in a “fist fight” with officials inside the consulate in Istanbul.

"Jamal Khashoggi's body parts have been discovered" - Sources have told @AlexCrawfordSky "grisly details" about how Jamal Khashoggi's body parts were discovered.

Palestinian critics are regularly beaten, tortured and detained for long periods without trial by each of the rival Palestinian governments in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Tuesday.

Both the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza have leaned on sweeping laws designed to silence criticism to target each other's supporters as well as other civil society activists, the report claimed based on interviews with 147 victims and witnesses to violence and detention.

Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda released a statement, warning Israel that it might invoke the Rome Statute on violations over war crimes.

In all post-9/11 wars, US forces used banned chemical, biological, radiological, incendiary and cluster munitions. They’re still used in all US war theaters.

The highest Israeli officer tried for Israel’s 1956 Kafr Qasem massacre admitted that his trial was staged to protect Israeli leaders. An Israeli historian thinks the massacre was part of a secret plan to expel Palestinians from Israel

Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper reports that the highest Israeli officer tried for Israel’s 1956 Kafr Qasem massacre admitted before his death that his trial was staged to protect military and political elites.

Israeli historian Adam Raz believes that a secret plan to transfer Israel’s Arabs was behind the 1956 attack, in which Israeli soldiers shot dead 19 men, 6 women, and 23 children (some reports give the total killed as 51). They were allegedly killed because they had violated an Israeli imposed curfew, of which they were unaware.

The only promise that is new about the promised peace plan is the way it will be forced on the Palestinians: no one has promised that the plan itself will be new. With Saudi Arabia and Egypt—the outside—brought onside with the promise of continued military aid despite their crimes against humanity and violations of international law and the Palestinians weakened by being silenced, economically crushed and stripped of any friends to help them, the United States and Israel are now free to attempt to impose a peace plan on the Palestinians.

Adding to a growing list of UN reports released recently all showing a surge in Afghan civilian casualties in different manners, a Wednesday report was released showing that civilian deaths are surging from US and Afghan government airstrikes.

This has been ongoing through the year, with a decrease in US airstrikes in Iraq and Syria leading to more warplanes committed to bombings in Afghanistan. More US strikes means more civilians getting hit, meaning the casualty figures are at multi-year highs.

The UN figures show 649 civilian casualties in the US and Afghan airstrikes in 2018’s first nine months. This is 39% more than the same period in 2017, as well as more than the whole of last year. 60% of the casualties are women and children.

All these reports on all these different sorts of civilian casualties caused by the war show a general increase in violence against civilians on all fronts, with no signs of the violence slowing down any time soon.

Rarely is US hypocrisy so cynical and overt as a recent US State Department investigation into ongoing violence in Myanmar, all while the US continues its full spectrum support of Saudi Arabia's genocidal war on Yemen.

In addition to Washington's role in Yemen, the US also occupies Afghanistan and Syria while carrying out drone strikes and covert military interventions in territory stretching from North Africa to Central Asia.

In Myanmar specifically, the US has openly and for decades funded and supported groups and individuals involved directly on both sides of ongoing ethnic violence. Now, it is leveraging that violence to single out obstacles to US influence in Southeast Asia and in Myanmar specifically.

Reuters in their article titled, "U.S. accuses Myanmar military of 'planned and coordinated' Rohingya atrocities," would claim:

As comebacks go, being blamed for 500,000 deaths is definitive. That’s the barb British spymaster Richard Dearlove was faced with when his attack on Jeremy Corbyn was put to his greatest ally, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell.

The spat played out on Sky News’ ‘Ridge on Sunday’ program. First former MI6 boss Sir Richard Dearlove said he was “troubled” over Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s “past associations.”

The vast regime of torture created by the Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks continues to haunt America. The political class and most of the media have never dealt honestly with the profound constitutional corruption that such practices inflicted. Instead, torture enablers are permitted to pirouette as heroic figures on the flimsiest evidence.

Comey continues to use memos from his earlier government gigs to whitewash all of the abuses he sanctified. “Here I stand; I can do no other,” Comey told George W. Bush in 2004 when Bush pressured Comey, who was then Deputy Attorney General, to approve an unlawful anti-terrorist policy. Comey was quoting a line supposedly uttered by Martin Luther in 1521, when he told Emperor Charles V and an assembly of Church officials that he would not recant his sweeping criticisms of the Catholic Church.

In a 21-8 vote, the UN Human Rights Council has agreed to extend the inquiry into human rights violations committed during the Saudi-led war in Yemen. Saudi Arabia and its allies in the United Arab Emirates both condemned the news.

Such votes happen every year around the UN General Assembly meeting, with the Saudis trying to limit such votes and insisting that any investigations are only going to “deepen divisions” in Yemen.

The council spent several days debating the matter, with those in favor of more investigations, led by the Netherlands and Canada, winning out handily, while many other nations chose to abstain.

Preliminary results of the autopsy on Muhammad al-Rimawi show that he died as a result of severe beatings by Israeli soldiers, Palestinian authorities are saying.

The Israeli army is disputing this.

The autopsy was conducted at Israel’s Abu Kabir Forensic Institute in the presence of Dr. Rayan al-Ali, the Palestinian Authority’s chief medical examiner.

Al-Rimawi, 24, died shortly after he was beaten by Israeli soldiers in his home in the occupied West Bank village of Beit Rima on 18 September.

“The martyr was subjected to a policy officially approved by Israeli political and military circles, which allows soldiers to act freely and at their own discretion with detainees,” the Palestinian Authority’s Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs stated, according to Quds News Network.

“This led Israeli soldiers to use beatings and assault in their worst forms.”

A new report by Palestinian prisoners’ rights group Addameer claims that Israeli officials “routinely” carry out the “practice of torture” at a key interrogation facility in occupied East Jerusalem.

The report, “I’ve Been There: A Study of Torture and Inhumane Treatment in Al-Moscobiyeh Interrogation Centre”, is based on the testimonies of 138 individuals held in the Russian Compound of Jerusalem gathered during the period 2015-2017.

“For generations of Palestinians, the Russian Compound has represented the most severe interrogation facility in all of the occupied territory,” Addameer states.

“It has been the place of intentionally inflicted suffering for hundreds of prisoners. Its location in the heart of Jerusalem, next to the Old City, is something of a metaphor for the whole apparatus of the occupation. The domination is hidden in plain sight.”

A wave of UK protests were held outside branches of HSBC bank over shares in an Israeli arms company accused of manufacturing internationally banned weapons.

Protestors directed their anger against the bank’s $4.7 million worth of shares in a number of Israeli arms manufactures, including Elbit system, calling on the bank to sever ties with the firms accused of abetting Israel’s crimes against Palestinians.

Elbit Systems manufactures and supplies the Israeli military with drones, which are used regularly in attacks on Palestinian civilians, especially in Gaza Strip. It was recently revealed that an Elbit Hermes 450 drone was used during a 2014 attack in which four Palestinian children were killed on a Gaza beach while playing football.

In press releases published yesterday, September 16, 2018, Dr. Saeeb Erekat said that the Sabra and Shatila Massacre is a reminder of Israel’s barbaric crimes.

Erekat added, according to the PNN, that the massacre of Sabra and Shatila is not only a reminder of the barbaric crimes committed against the Palestinian people. but, overall, it highlights the effects of the impunity granted to Israel and its officials by the international community.

The main responsibility of the massacre fell on Ariel Sharon, who was also responsible for many other war crimes committed against the people of Palestine. Sharon died without being held accountable, Erekat said.

The 30th anniversary of the Sabra and Chatila massacre in Lebanon has passed with hardly any notice. Several hundred Palestinians were butchered by Israeli proxies in Lebanon on Sept. 16, 1982. Throughout July and August of that year, the Israeli air force, under the command of Ariel Sharon, carpet-bombed clearly marked civilian centers in the city of Beirut, including nursing homes, hospitals and apartment blocks. In August of 1982 the attacks escalated to terror bombing of downtown Beirut in a true holocaust (death by fire).

The Israelis commit war crimes and atrocities with impunity. They know that after the initial editorial outrage, their mass murder will never form part of a permanent collective ritual of commemoration similar to the eternal remembrance and teaching of the Nazi persecution of Judaic people under the rubric “the Holocaust.”

This article was first posted on Global Research in September 2017.

For ten years during the Vietnam War, the United States used a toxic concoction of two herbicides, labeled ‘Agent Orange,’ to wipe out large areas of Vietnam which were covered by thick jungle. The aim was to enable easier and more effective bombing of enemy bases. The issue was, Agent Orange wasn’t just an herbicide — it was also a deadly weapon, as it contains large amounts of dioxin.

Agent Orange was discovered in the year 1943 by American botanist Arthur Galston. Between the years of 1962 and 1971, the US army “showered” the deadly chemical over Southern Vietnam as part of the military operation “Ranch Hand”, or “Trail Dust.” In total, more than 20 million gallons of Agent Orange was used. Sadly, Agent Orange did more than contribute to the deforestation of vast areas of land. It also contaminated air, water, and food sources.

Countries with nothing to fear do not fear the ICC.

Countries with nothing to fear do not fear the ICC. The United States and Israel are very afraid of the ICC. The murder of unarmed civilians is a war crime. So is torture. Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of densely-populated civilian areas, its half-century occupation of Palestinian territory and its construction and expansion of Jews-only settler colonies on Palestinian land are all also illegal under international law. Neither Israel nor the United States has joined the ICC. Other leading human rights violators, including North Korea, China, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar and Ethiopia, have either never joined or have withdrawn from the court.

When Bolton expresses his desire to “strangle the ICC in its cradle,” what he really means is he wants US troops to be able to murder babies in their cradles with impunity.

This is a scoop to bring the US biological warfare effort back into the spotlight. On Sept. 11, Russian media reported that the Richard Lugar Center for Public Health Research laboratory, a research facility for high-level biohazard agents located near Tbilisi, Georgia, has used human beings for conducting biological experiments.

The advisory also warns military activities linked to the bloody conflict in Syria have been ramped across Iran's airspace.

Tensions between Tehran and Washington are running high following Donald Trump’s controversial decision to pull out of the landmark Iran nuclear deal re-introduce economic sanctions last month.

Flight Service Bureau, which provides safety information on airspace to airlines, said "without seeming alarmist", the deteriorating relationship between the US and Iran must be taken into account when planning flights in Iran's airspace.

Donald Trump’s top national security adviser has launched a bellicose attack on the International Criminal Court, describing it as “fundamentally illegitimate” and “outright dangerous” in a speech that has alarmed human rights groups.

John Bolton threatened to prosecute judges from the International Criminal Court (ICC) or ban them from entering the United States if the organisation pursues an investigation into the conduct of American soldiers in Afghanistan.

“The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court,” Bolton said in a speech to the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group, in Washington D.C on Monday US time.

With the U.S. today threatening to sanction ICC judges to stop investigations into alleged U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan, we look back at the Bush-Blair subversion of the court to evade accountability for the destruction of Iraq

The United States threatened Monday to arrest and sanction judges and other officials of the International Criminal Court if it moves to charge any American who served in Afghanistan with war crimes.

White House National Security Advisor John Bolton called the Hague-based rights body "unaccountable" and "outright dangerous" to the United States, Israel and other allies, and said any probe of US service members would be "an utterly unfounded, unjustifiable investigation."

"If the court comes after us, Israel or other US allies, we will not sit quietly," Bolton said.

He said the US was prepared to slap financial sanctions and criminal charges on officials of the court if they proceed against any Americans.

The airstrikes carried out by the US F-15s have caused major fires in Deir ez-Zor province, the Russian Center for Syrian Reconciliation said in a statement, noting that information about "people killed and injured due to the strikes is being clarified."

Two US F-15 jets on September 8 carried out strikes using banned phosphorus bombs in Deir ez-Zor province, the Russian Center for Syrian Reconciliation said in a statement.

"In Deir ez-Zor province on September 8, 2018, two F-15 aircraft of the US Air Force carried out strikes on the settlement of Hadjin with the use of phosphorus incendiary munitions. As a result of the strikes, major fires were observed. Information on victims and injured is being clarified," Major-General Vladimir Savchenko stated, stressing that the use of weapons with white phosphorus is prohibited by an additional protocol to the 1949 Geneva Convention.

The US will fight back using any means necessary if the International Criminal Court ever dares to probe an American or Israeli, and will punish those who cooperates with war-crime investigations, John Bolton is set to announce.

“The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court,” Donald Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, is expected to say, according to a draft speech seen by Reuters. “We will not cooperate with the ICC. We will provide no assistance to the ICC. We will not join the ICC. We will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us.”

With the U.S. today threatening to sanction ICC judges to stop investigations into alleged U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan, we look back at the Bush-Blair subversion of the court to evade accountability for the destruction of Iraq

Monsanto Corporation, the agribusiness giant best known for its pesticides and genetically-modified crops, also manufactured white phosphorous for the U.S. government over at least the past 20 years. Used in incendiary military weapons, the United States sold white phosphorous-based weapons to Israel, which used those weapons to commit brutal war crimes against Palestinians living in Gaza in 2009.

White phosphorous is created from phosphorous through industrial processes — it is not a naturally occurring substance. Exposure can cause severe and often fatal burns, or other complications such as organ failure, with even survivors suffering from long-term health effects.

I have, over the course of many months and many columns, contended that the POW torture scandals at Abu Ghraib, as well as the ones in Guantanamo, were symptomatic of extensive across-the-board changes in American military policy. And those changes could only have been planned, engineered and initiated from the highest levels within our government.

He did two years in prison for exposing America’s torture program. It’s time to right Barack Obama’s worst injustice.

Hersh gave a speech last week to the ACLU making the charge that children were sodomized in front of women in the prison, and the Pentagon has tape of it. The speech was first reported in a New York Sun story last week, which was in turn posted on Jim Romenesko's media blog, and now EdCone.com and other blogs are linking to the video. We transcribed the critical section here (it starts at about 1:31:00 into the ACLU video.) At the start of the transcript here, you can see how Hersh was struggling over what he should say: