A rare on-the-scene BBC report from Raqqa reveals a grim picture of the ISIS "capital" under months of relentless US bombardment and siege by US-backed ground forces.  Reporter Quentin Sommerville depicts a "city fit for no-one," neighborhoods desolate and "ruined." Once you are inside the city, "[a]head lies nothing but destruction and grey dust and rubble. This is a place drained of colour, of life, and of people. In six days inside Raqqa, I didn't see a single civilian... It seems that not a single building has escaped the onslaught. Many have been crushed, flattened, or knocked to one side by the Western coalition's air strikes and artillery. It is a barrage that never ceases. More than two dozen air strikes a day, and hundreds of shells fall on the city." All this to defeat an ISIS force that by now is thought to number only some 400 fighters.

Hundreds of thousands filled the streets of Barcelona as a general strike was called Oct. 3 to protest "grave violation of rights and freedoms" by Spanish security forces during the vote on independence for Catalonia two days earlier—when close to a thousand people were injured as Civil Guard troops dispatched by Madrid used rubber bullets and tear-gas in an attempt to prevent the poll from taking place. The strike was widely honored; the city's port was shut down, and Barcelona's metro lines cut to a 25% service during rush hour and no trains at all at other times. Street traffic was snarled by barricades erected by protesters on major arteries, with hand-painted banners reading "Occupation forces get out!"

Crimean Tatar leader Ilmi Umerov was convicted by Russian-appointed judges in Simferopol Sept. 27 on spurious "separatism" charges, and sentenced to two years. An outspoken critic of Russia's occupation of peninsula, Umerov was arrested late last year, forcibly interned in a psychiatric facility, and then charged on counts of separatism, and forbidden to leave the country. The European Union condemned his sentencing as "a violation of human rights," while Human Rights Watch called it "ruthless retaliation" for his opposition to Moscow's annexrtion of Crimea. Umerov was deputy chairman of the Crimean Tatars' self-governing body, the Majlis, which has now been officially suspended by Moscow. (UNPO)

Valerie Plame, an ex-spook beloved by the left, got in hot water when she tweeted an article by fellow ex-spook beloved by the (far) right Philip Giraldi with the lovely title "America's Jews Are Driving America's Wars." In the subsequent outrage, The American Conservative finally gave Giraldi the sack. But Giraldi's Judeophobia seems not to bother others. He continues to have Unz Review for a platform, and they love him over at the (conspiranoid-right) Veterans Today. And the Council for the National Interest predictably continues to embrace Giraldi as their executive director. This outfit, fronted by our nemesis Alison Weir, is just what its name sounds like—a beltway body of paleocon right-nationalists paranoid about Jewish subversion.

Peru's Transport and Communications Ministry on Sept. 7 signed a contract with Chinese state-owned engineering giant SinoHydro to build the Hidrovía Amazónica, a mega-project aimed at turning the Amazon's major rivers into arteries for delivering the resources of the rainforest basin to foreign markets. Peruvian firm Construcción y Administración SA (CASA) is also to be a partner in the deal, announced earlier this year by the government's foreign investment arm, ProInversión. With a projected cost of $95 million, the Hidrovía calls for dredging 2,687 kilometers of Amazon waterways to make them navigable year-round. It encompasses stretches of the rivers Marañón and Amazonas (from Saramiriza to Santa Rosa), Huallaga (from Yurimaguas to the Marañón) and Ucayali (from Pucallpa to the Marañón). These rivers usually are too low for commercial navigation during the July-October dry season). Proinversión claims to have carried out a "prior consultation" with impacted communities along the rivers, having won 40 agreements to proceed with work. (Gestion, Sept. 7; El Peruano, July 17; BBC Mundo, July 7)

Guerilla commander Nicolás Rodríguez AKA "Gabino" has issued orders to his National Liberation Army (ELN) fighters to honor the bilateral ceasefire that is to take effect on Oct. 1. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said he hoped the ceasefire would lead to the ELN laying down arms, as happened with the FARC. But these statements came just days after yet another rupture on the Caño Limón-Coveñas oil pipeline, which government negotiator Juan Camilo Restrepo blamed on the ELN. "The ELN's actions in recent days are truly insensitive and unexplainable and, of course, reprehensible because we are facing an ecological crime of enormous magnitudes," Restrepo told Caracol Radio. The rupture, at Teorama, Norte de Santander, spilled oil into La Cristalina and La Tiradera canyons, which drain into the Río Catatumbo. (Reuters, Sept. 29, EFE, RTTNews, Sept. 28; Semana, Sept. 27)

Hurricane Maria's destruction on Puerto Rico could spawn one of the largest mass migration events in the United States' recent history, as tens of thousands of storm victims flee the island territory to rebuild their lives on the mainland. Some 97% of the island's 3.4 million residents are still without power. About half of the island's residents do not have running water. And no one knows when things will be fixed. Scientific American warns that the displaced islanders, thousands now awaiting flights from San Juan's Luis Muñoz Marín airport, might be among the United States' newest "climate refugees," a demographic that includes former residents of the Louisiana coast and of shrinking islands in Alaska's Bering Strait.

Human rights groups in Libya have accused the United Arab Emirates of committing war crimes in the country, including killing hundreds of civilians. The rights groups said on Sept. 26 that the UAE committed these crimes through direct air-strikes on Libya, and by backing the renegade general Khalifa Haftar. The findings were presented at a press conference on the sidelines of the UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. Libyan witnesses and survivors spoke of extrajudicial killings, forced hunger, and displacement that they or their kin experienced at the hands of Haftar in Derna and Ganfouda, provinces in Libya's east. Survivors affiliated with  the organization Human Rights Solidarity also described alleged UAE air raids in the Libyan capital Tripoli in August 2014. (Al Jazeera)