More than 50 people were killed in and near the Iraqi capital of Baghdad on Saturday, security sources and medics said as cited by Reuters. Terrorists targeted a mass Shi'ite Muslim gathering, as well as a police check-point and home of a militia leader.

The deadliest attack targeted a tent filled with people taking part in Shi'ite rituals, marking Ashura, which commemorates the killing of Prophet Mohammad's grandson Hussein in the 7th century. At least 41 people were killed and 33 injured as a suicide bomber detonated an explosive vest inside a tent at a crowded market in Baghdad's northern al-Shaab district.

The recent finger pointing and recriminations between the US authorities and Russian president Vladimir Putin has made it only too apparent that the US is determined to create "a threat to strategic stability" through its "unfriendly actions" towards Russia. The US is only too happy to use regional countries to suit its aggressive purposes, as the ever-increasing interference in these countries, which always results in the US having more weapons on the ground, makes clear. But those countries are also using US support to further their own private ends, without the US being able to do anything about this, (especially) if it wants to keep its broader schemes going.

The ongoing "purge" in Turkey, which in addition to journalists, teachers and judges has now removed 12,000 police officers, is the direct consequence of this wanton US disregard for the people living there. Erdogan is taking advantage of the favoured status the US has given the country to conduct some "realpolitik" of his own, trying to turn this once-secular state into a haven of radical Islamists. This is contrary to stated US policy, but the US cannot prevent it without destabilising the country, and thus making it more difficult to destabilise Russia, the ultimate goal.

Will the ruling Turkish regime now have to revert to even more "extreme" measures to re-establish the law and order it frequently ignores itself? How far can Turkey go on this independent path before it ceases to be an asset and the whole scheme blows up in America's face - with equally deleterious consequences for the region?

The end result of the official silence in the USA about Russia's readiness to defend what it considers its national interest is that Americans are flying blind

In an interview with the Bild newspaper on 8 October, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who is known for his cautious rhetoric, described the present international situation in the following woeful terms:

"...unfortunately it is an illusion to believe this is the old Cold War. The new times are different; they are more dangerous. Previously, the world was divided, but Moscow and Washington knew each other's red lines and respected them. In a world with many regional conflicts and dwindling influence of the great powers, the world becomes more unpredictable."

For these reasons, said Steinmeier, "The USA and Russia must continue talking with each other."

He concluded his appeal with fairly balanced recommendations to resolve the humanitarian crisis in East Aleppo, urging both Russia and the other powers to apply their influence with their clients on the ground.

UN staff arrived in Syria's Aleppo on Saturday to carry out militants' evacuation from the eastern part of the city, a source on the ground told Sputnik.

On October 6, UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura offered to accompany Jabhat Fatah al Sham (also known as Nusra Front, or Jabhat al-Nusra) militants if they decided to leave Aleppo with arms and to head for the city of Idlib or somewhere else. Russia supported this offer.

The source said that the UN employees had arrived to Bustan Qasr district where the buses to take the militants away were already waiting.

The evacuation may begin later in the day, however, the total number of evacuees remains unknown.

Last week in Afghanistan, the Taliban, once almost lacking a presence in the northern part of the country, attacked Kunduz, a northern provincial capital and held parts of it for days (as they had in 2015). At the moment, that movement also has two southern capitals under siege,Lashkar Gah of Helmand Province and Tarinkot in Urozgan Province, and now seems to control more territory and population than at any time since the U.S. invasion of 2001-2002. Mind you, from an American perspective, we're talking about the war that time forgot. Amid the hurricane of words in Election 2016, neither presidential candidate nor their vice presidential surrogates has thought it worth the bother to pay any real attention to the Afghan War, though it is the longest in our history. It's as if, 15 years later, it isn't even happening, as if American troops hadn't once again been ordered into combat situations and the U.S. Air Force wasn't once again flying increased missions there.

Of course, it wasn't supposed to be this way, not for the planet's "sole superpower," its "hyperpower," its last remaining "sheriff" bestriding the globe with military bases in close to 80 countries, its Special Operations forces in almost 150 nations annually, and its Navy's 10 aircraft carrier battle groups patrolling the seas. On paper, it's been a hell of a new century for the United States. Only reality, it seems, has begged to differ.

As TomDispatch regular Dilip Hiro points out today, if you've noticed the growing assertiveness of China and Russia (and perhaps, one of these days, India will become more assertive, too), you'll know that we're on an increasingly multipolar planet. In reality, I suspect it's always been a significantly more multipolar place than anyone in Washington cared to imagine. In a sense, our world is not only becoming more multipolar but also more helter-skelter, a place filled with low-level insurgencies and terror outfits that simply can't be crushed, amid failing and collapsing states and vast refugee flows, on a globe that is ever more subject to the overheated, rampaging pressures of nature. It's not exactly the picture of a tidy imperial planet nor one that Washington had ever imagined possible.

American Power at the Crossroads
A Snapshot of a Multipolar World in Action
By Dilip Hiro

In the strangest election year in recent American history -- one in which the Libertarian Party's Gary Johnson couldn't even conjure up the name of a foreign leader he "admired" while Donald Trump remained intent on building his "fat, beautiful wall" and "taking" Iraq oil -- the world may be out of focus for many Americans right now. So a little introduction to the planet we actually inhabit is in order. Welcome to a multipolar world. One fact stands out: Earth is no longer the property of the globe's "sole superpower."

Life will "get difficult" for Britain's most vulnerable as rising inflation due to a slump in sterling pushes up the price of fuel, food, and clothing, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney has warned. Speaking in Nottingham at a public roundtable event, Carney said inflation was likely to go over the Bank's official two percent target next year.

But he said the bank was "willing to tolerate a bit of an overshoot" to avoid unnecessary employment. He added it was not the Bank's responsibility to make decisions based on uneven social impacts of higher prices. "We care a lot about distribution but we are not a political entity," he said, according to the Independent. He added that the Bank was justified in cutting rates to a historic low of 0.25 percent in August. He said between 400,000 and 500,000 jobs could have been at risk if it had not done so.

The pound has fallen by about 18 percent since the UK's vote to leave the EU in June, as foreign investors wait for signs of Britain's new trading agreements with the rest of the world. It slumped to its lowest level in 168 years.

1. Its key core principle is fragmentation. This may sound strange, but fragmentation is the ultimate foundation for Western brainwashing.

It's no secret that the education system in "advanced democracies" is designed to artificially create a very narrow view of the world. On the contrary, the Soviet school system tries to create a holistic view of the world even among the laziest of underachievers, filling their reluctant heads with higher mathematics, physics, chemistry and astronomy, however unlikely that they would use all this knowledge. Understanding the way our world is connected, cause and effect, and the ability to put together and analyze various facts is called "analytical thinking". It is the first step in creativity. All those things are suppressed in the Western system of education.

Britain is fighting at least seven covert wars in the Middle East and North Africa, outside of any democratic oversight or control. Whitehall has in effect gone underground, with neither parliament nor the public being allowed to debate, scrutinise or even know about these wars. To cover themselves, Ministers are now often resorting to lying about what they are authorising. While Britain has identified Islamic State (among others) as the enemy abroad, it is clear that it sees the British public and parliament as the enemy at home.

Syria

Britain began training Syrian rebel forces from bases in Jordan in 2012. This was also when the SAS was reported to be 'slipping into Syria on missions' against Islamic State. Now, British special forces are 'mounting hit and run raids against IS deep inside eastern Syria dressed as insurgent fighters' and 'frequently cross into Syria to assist the New Syrian Army' from their base in Jordan. British special forces also provide training, weapons and other equipment to the New Syrian Army.


British aircraft began covert strikes against IS targets in Syria in 2015, months before Parliament voted in favour of overt action in December 2015. These strikes were conducted by British pilots embedded with US and Canadian forces.

Britain has also been operating a secret drone warfare programme in Syria. Last year Reaper drones killed British IS fighters in Syria, again before parliament approved military action. As I have previously argued, British covert action and support of the Syrian rebels is, along with horrific Syrian government/Russian violence, helping to prolong a terrible conflict.

International talks on Syria in Switzerland's Lausanne have ended after four hours of discussion behind closed doors. No breakthrough has apparently been reached. Participants have agreed to further work on solving the crisis, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, adding that there are "some interesting ideas" that have been discussed.

"There are some ideas that we discussed today in a circle of pretty powerful countries, that might affect the situation," Lavrov said following the Saturday meeting in the Swiss city, as cited by RIA Novosti. The talks' participants have agreed to continue working on the issue in the following days, "hoping for certain agreements" to help move the peace process forward, he added.

The negotiators also urged for a political process to start in Syria "as soon as possible," Russia's top diplomat said, adding that Moscow wholly supports this initiative.

The leaders of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) member-states have decided to set up a joint crisis response center to exchange information on common threats, including terrorism, and make decisions in real time.

Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian, who is hosting a meeting of the CSTO summit on October 14 in Yerevan, made the announcement concerning the new response center. Further details were not immediately available.

Sarkisian also said the issue of a new secretary-general of the CSTO will be discussed at a summit of the grouping in Russia's St. Petersburg at the end of the year.

And he said the members of the CSTO "reaffirmed their commitment to an exclusively peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh problem."

During the meeting, the CSTO also adopted documents including agreements on drafting a unified list of terrorist organizations, a collective security strategy for the period till 2025, and a document on measures to counter international terrorism and extremism.