Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, a vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, said she was disinvited from the first Democratic presidential primary debate in Nevada after she appeared on television and called for more face-offs.

Ms. Gabbard confirmed on Sunday that her chief of staff received a message last Tuesday from the chief of staff to Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the national committee, about her attendance at the debate. A day earlier, Ms. Gabbard had appeared on MSNBC and said there should be an increase beyond the current six sanctioned debates.

A person close to the committee who asked for anonymity to discuss internal discussions insisted, however, that Ms. Gabbard had not been disinvited. Instead, the person said, an aide to Ms. Wasserman Schultz expressed a desire to keep the focus on the candidates as the debate approached, rather than on a "distraction" that could divide the party, and suggested that if Ms. Gabbard could not do that, she should reconsider going.

Ms. Gabbard insisted otherwise.

"When I first came to Washington, one of the things that I was disappointed about was there's a lot of immaturity and petty gamesmanship that goes on, and it kind of reminds me of how high school teenagers act," Ms. Gabbard said in a telephone interview on Sunday night. She said she would watch the debate in her district in Hawaii, which elected her to her second term last year.

The world is beginning to realize that a seachange in world affairs occurred on September 28 when President Putin of Russia stated in his UN speech that Russia can no longer tolerate Washington's vicious, stupid, and failed policies that have unleashed chaos, which is engulfing the Middle East and now Europe. Two days later, Russia took over the military situation in Syria and began the destruction of the Islamic State forces.

Perhaps among Obama's advisers there are a few who are not drowning in hubris and can understand this seachange. Sputnik news reports that some high-level security advisers to Obama have advised him to withdraw US military forces from Syria and give up his plan to overthrow Assad. They advised Obama to cooperate with Russia in order to stop the refugee flow that is overwhelming Washington's vassals in Europe. The influx of unwanted peoples is making Europeans aware of the high cost of enabling US foreign policy. Advisers have told Obama that the idiocy of the neoconservatives' policies threaten Washington's empire in Europe.

Several commentators, such as Mike Whitney and Stephen Lendman, have concluded, correctly, that there is nothing that Washington can do about Russian actions against the Islamic State. The neoconservatives' plan for a UN no-fly zone over Syria in order to push out the Russians is a pipe-dream. No such resolution will come out of the UN. Indeed, the Russians have already established a de facto no-fly zone.

Putin, without issuing any verbal threats or engaging in any name-calling, has decisively shifted the power balance, and the world knows it.

"Fear isn't so difficult to understand. After all, weren't we all frightened as children? Nothing has changed since Little Red Riding Hood faced the big bad wolf. What frightens us today is exactly the same sort of thing that frightened us yesterday. It's just a different wolf." ― Alfred Hitchcock

In an age dominated with news of school shootings, school lockdowns, police shootings of unarmed citizens (including children), SWAT team raids gone awry (leaving children devastated and damaged), reports of school resource officers tasering and shackling unruly students, and public schools undergoing lockdowns and active drills, I find myself wrestling with the question: how do you prepare a child for life in the American police state?

Every parent lives with a fear of the dangers that prey on young children: the predators who lurk at bus stops and playgrounds, the traffickers who make a living by selling young bodies, the peddlers who push drugs that ensnare and addict, the gangs that deal in violence and bullets, the drunk drivers, the school bullies, the madmen with guns, the diseases that can end a life before it's truly begun, the cynicism of a modern age that can tarnish innocence, and the greed of a corporate age that makes its living by trading on young consumers.

It's difficult enough raising a child in a world ravaged by war, disease, poverty and hate, but when you add the police state into the mix—with its battlefield mindset, weaponry, rigidity, surveillance, fascism, indoctrination, violence, etc.—it becomes near impossible to guard against the toxic stress of police shootings, SWAT team raids, students being tasered and shackled, lockdown drills, and a growing unease that some of the monsters of our age come dressed in government uniforms.

Children are taught from an early age that there are consequences for their actions. Hurt somebody, lie, steal, cheat, etc., and you will get punished. But how do you explain to a child that a police officer can shoot someone who was doing nothing wrong and get away with it? That a cop can lie, steal, cheat, or kill and still not be punished?

Kids understand accidents: sometimes drinks get spilled, dishes get broken, people slip and fall and hurt themselves, or you bump into someone without meaning to, and they get hurt. As long as it wasn't intentional and done with malice, you forgive them and you move on. Police shootings of unarmed people—of children and old people and disabled people—can't just be shrugged off as accidents, however.

Tamir Rice was no accident. Cleveland police shot and killed the 12-year-old, who was seen playing on a playground with a pellet gun. Surveillance footage shows police shooting the boy two seconds after getting out of a moving patrol car. Incredibly, the shooting was deemed "reasonable" and "justified" by two law enforcement experts who concluded that the police use of force "did not violate Tamir's constitutional rights."

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond says Bashar Assad cannot remain in power, but the UK is flexible about how and when the Syrian president stands down.

Ahead of a meeting of European foreign ministers in Luxembourg on Monday, Hammond said, "We cannot work with Assad as a long-term solution for the future of Syria," but that it was possible to "be flexible" on the manner and timing of his departure.

Against a backdrop of Russian intervention in Syria, a move the UK government opposes, the Conservative government is pushing hard for a new vote on launching airstrikes of their own.

Ansarullah Bangla Team (ABT) is threatening international writers in distant nations

American Avijit Roy was among those murdered in 2015.

Radical groups seek a religious monoculture based on the annihilation of other religions and crushing Muslim diversity.

"The Ansarullah Bangla Team, which is suspected of acting on threats and slaying at least four secular bloggers this year, has released a "hit list" of new targets..."

The independent nation state of Bangladesh in 1971 emerged victorious in the War of Independence against the dictatorial nation of Pakistan that refused to acknowledge ethnic, linguistic, cultural and obvious geopolitical realities. However, the price was extremely high because of the mass brutality committed by the armed forces of Pakistan. On top of this, seditious Islamist traitors slaughtered vast numbers in this period of history. Therefore, true to the nature of these two evil forces then intellectuals of all faiths were targeted and mass bloodletting took place against various groups, including butchering Hindus based on untold cruelty.

Turning the clock forward to 2015, then internationally, the brutal reality of Sunni Takfiri Islamist fascism knows no boundaries. After all, ISIS is slaughtering Shia Muslims in Iraq, Syria and Yemen - and beheading Christians in Libya. Similarly, ISIS is intent on committing religious genocide against Alawite Muslims, Christians, Shabaks, Yazidis and other religious minorities. Also, just like Islamist forces that killed their own nationals in Bangladesh during the War of Independence, ISIS also butchers fellow Sunni Muslims if they are deemed to be too openminded.

Fed up of the West's indecisiveness on dealing with the ongoing situation in Syria, Russia is now providing direct military air support to Syria, and it is using electronic warfare to jam Islamic State's (IS) communications, as well as to prevent Nato from detecting what it is up to, according to an electronic warfare expert.

Electronic warfare is the ability to manipulate the electromagnetic spectrum in order to sense where enemy targets are so that you can attack the enemy first, or to prevent the enemy from attacking you. Examples of things you can do with electronic warfare include communications jamming, radar jamming, reconnaissance and countermeasures using infrared, radio and electro-optical frequencies.

On 5 October, Russian military Krasukha-4, its mobile, ground-based electronic warfare systems, were spotted in Syria. The Krasukha-4 is a broadband multifunctional jamming station that is based on a BAZ-6910-022 four-axle-chassis and is able to neutralise low-Earth orbit (LEO) spy satellites such as the US Lacrosse/Onyx series, airborne surveillance radars and radar-guided ordinance at ranges between 150km-300km.

We will not name the author of this material, as he is an active officer of the armed forces of Russia, but he perfectly described the situation - What would happen if the Ukrainian military faced the Russian army?

The titles of some complexes we have SPECIFICALLY designated with the letters of the Latin alphabet not to write their name, as mentioning some of them is undesirable for the author. However, I think that military people will understand what are the systems in question:

"According to our Ukrainian partners, commenting on the latest ATO news, and referring to the "intercepted data from reports of the Russian army", today another division of the Russian army was destroyed near Lugansk...

On Friday, we reported the latest provocation in what has truly become a very dangerous, if largely pointless, staring contest between Beijing and Washington over China's reclamation of land in The South China Sea.

Responding to suggestions that the US was set to sail warships around the islands Beijing has constructed atop reefs in the Spratlys, China served noticed that it would "never allow any country to violate China's territorial waters and airspace in the Spratly Islands, in the name of protecting freedom of navigation and overflight." This was simply a formalized version of the more concise phrasing the PLA navy used when they instructed the pilots flying a US spy plane to "Go now!" when it ventured too close to Fiery Cross earlier this year.

Making clear that Islamic extremists are the real enemy in Syria constitutes one of Russia's key accomplishments of the last two weeks, strategic analyst Paolo Raffone told Sputnik.

This makes Moscow's airstrike campaign efficient, he maintains.

"The enemy, according to the Russian strategy, is not the government of Assad but Islamic State. So the military intervention is simplifying the equation," Raffone said. Russia's major "achievement is to clarify that the alternative is either the current government or ISIL, there is nothing in between."

The airstrike campaign has already helped to change reality on the ground by helping the Damascus-led forces to push terrorists from their positions. For instance, on Monday, the Syrian military announced that large parts of the Aleppo Governorate were liberated.

Despite recent successes, it is still too early to say that the tide has turned. "For the time being we cannot say that ISIL forces are ruined. They have been put under pressure for sure but significant gains in military terms have not yet been made," the expert cautioned.

Japan could be on a collision course with the US as Tokyo reportedly wants to cut the money it spends on American bases in the country. Washington may be reluctant to accept the cutbacks, as it would have to fork over millions of dollars per year.

Tokyo wants to reduce its spending on the upkeep of US bases so this money can be used to help expand the country's Self-Defense Forces, informed sources told The Japan Times. Japan reportedly wants to increase its defense of a group of remote islands in the southwest of the country.

The government had allocated 191.2 billion yen ($1.5 billion) for its 2015 budget to cover such spending. However, it wants to reduce this figure for 2016.

A joint pact between Japan and the US sees Tokyo review the amount it spends on the upkeep of the bases every five years. The current agreement is due to come up for renewal in March 2016.

However, the US is unlikely to welcome the proposed move, as it would have to spend millions of dollars per year to cover the shortfall.