Just a few days following its massive retreat from the northeastern countryside of Aleppo, ISIS launched a large counteroffensive aimed at capturing the border town of Al-Rai and its surrounding towns.

The Islamic State's tactical withdrawal from the Jarablus region of Aleppo allowed for the terror group to allocate many fighters for the capture of Al-Rai and its surrounding region as Kurds and Turkish-backed jihadists fight viciously against each other along the Turkish-Syrian border.

The astute IS retreat forced a direct confrontation between the YPG and the Turkish-backed FSA enabling the terror group the sufficient time and manpower to fortify its defense lines around Al-Bab, its administrative capital of Aleppo and one of its last remaining strongholds in the aforementioned province.

Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves." ― Herbert Marcuse

The FBI is worried: foreign hackers have broken into two state election databases.

The Department of Homeland Security is worried: the nation's voting system needs greater protection against cyberattacks.

I, on the other hand, am not overly worried: after all, the voting booths have already been hacked by a political elite comprised of Republicans and Democrats who are determined to retain power at all costs.

The outcome is a foregone conclusion: the police state will win and "we the people" will lose.

The damage has already been done.

The DHS, which has offered to help "secure" the nation's elections, has already helped to lock down the nation.

Remember, the DHS is the agency that ushered in the domestic use of surveillance drones, expanded the reach of fusion centers, stockpiled an alarming amount of ammunition, urged Americans to become snitches through a "see something, say something" campaign, oversaw the fumbling antics of TSA agents everywhere, militarized the nation's police, spied on activists and veterans, distributed license plate readers and cell phone trackers to law enforcement agencies, contracted to build detention camps, carried out military drills and lockdowns in American cities, conducted virtual strip searches of airline passengers, established Constitution-free border zones, funded city-wide surveillance cameras, and generally turned our republic into a police state.

So, no, I'm not falling for the government's scare tactics about Russian hackers.

I'm not losing a night's sleep over the thought that this election might by any more rigged than it already is.

And I'm not holding my breath in the hopes that the winner of this year's particular popularity contest will save us from government surveillance, weaponized drones, militarized police, endless wars, SWAT team raids, red light cameras, asset forfeiture schemes, overcriminalization, profit-driven private prisons, graft and corruption, or any of the other evils that masquerade as official government business these days.

What I've come to realize is that Americans want to engage in the reassurance ritual of voting.

They want to believe that politics matter.

They want to be persuaded that there's a difference between the Republicans and Democrats (there's not).

They will swear that Barack Obama has been an improvement on George W. Bush (he has not).

They are convinced that Hillary Clinton's values are different from Donald Trump's (with both of them, money talks).

The US says clashes between Turkish forces and opposition groups in northern Syria are "unacceptable." Washington is concerned this will take the focus away from fighting Islamic State and give the terrorist group the possibility to capture more territory.

Turkey's use of force against Kurdish forces in Syria has not gone down well with the US, with Washington openly supporting the Kurdish YPG fighters, who have proved to be a vital ground force in the battle against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

"We want to make clear that we find these clashes - in areas where ISIL is not located - unacceptable and a source of deep concern," Brett McGurk, the special presidential envoy for the coalition to counter Islamic State, said on his official Twitter account, citing a Defense Department statement.

"We call on all armed actors to stand down... the US is actively engaged to facilitate such deconfliction and unity of focus on ISIL, which remains a lethal and common threat."

Things seem to be heating up towards a final denouement in the phony 5 year-long Syrian "civil war". Turkey recently "invaded" Syria, officially to remove the scourge of Daesh from the Turkish border and, more specifically, to contain the Kurds and their aspirations for a "Kurdistan". The US is, again officially, ok with these moves by Turkey but, oddly, US troops, several hundred (or likely thousand) of them are 'embedded' with the Kurds and the "Syrian Democratic Forces".

Meanwhile, Russia has remained largely silent on these recent developments, and instead has been focusing on the "peace process".

What's really going on? Join us today and find out, as we reveal the rather prosaic (if at times disturbing) realpolitik behind the flowery narratives.

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The Turkish authorities will allow German lawmakers to visit Incirlik airbase only if they openly reject the results of the parliamentary resolution that recognized the 1915 massacre of Armenians as "genocide," Turkey's Foreign Ministry has said. "It depends on the steps taken by Germany. If they take the necessary steps, we will enable this visit [to Incirlik]," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said at a news conference in Ankara, when asked about granting German lawmakers permission to access the base, Reuters reported.

Turkish Foreign Ministry officials specified that the "necessary steps" involve the German government distancing itself from the resolution calling the 1915 massacre of Armenians by Ottoman forces genocide. The resolution was adopted by an overwhelming majority in the Bundestag in early June. "But unfortunately I have to say that those that mingle and manipulate our history in an unfair manner cannot be allowed on this visit,"Cavusoglu said.

The German authorities were initially denied access to the base, located at the Syrian frontier, following the escalation of tensions between the two countries triggered by the German parliament's decision. The base is used by six German surveillance jets and a refueling tanker backing the US-led coalition's operations against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) militants in Syria.

In response, a number of German lawmakers threatened to withdraw forces from airstrike operations. There were no immediate comments from the German Foreign Ministry following the statement made by Cavusoglu.

The next BRICS summit, in Goa, is less than two months away. Compared to only two years ago, the geopolitical tectonic plates have moved with astonishing speed. Most BRICS nations are mired in deep crisis; Brazil's endles political/economic/institutional debacle may yield the Kafkaesque impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff.

BRICS is in a coma. What's surviving is RC: the Russia/China strategic partnership. Yet even the partnership seems to be in trouble — with Russia still attacked by myriad metastases of Hybrid War. The — Exceptionalist — Hegemon remains powerful, and the opposition is dazed and confused.

Or is it?

Slowly but surely — see for instance the possibility of an ATM (Ankara-Tehran-Moscow) coalition in the making — global power continues to insist on shifting East. That goes beyond Russia's pivoting to Asia; Germany's industrialists are just waiting for the right political conjunction, before the end of the decade, to also pivot to Asia, conforming a BMB (Berlin-Moscow-Beijing) coalition.

The day previous saw senators accuse each other of corruption and even drug use.

The third day of the impeachment trial against the suspended Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff started early Saturday, a day after the session was suspended following a Senate session that the chamber's president said made the institution look like a "psychiatric hospital."

Testimony from Rousseff's defense begin again today, including one from former Planning Minister Nelson Barbosa and Ricardo Ribeiro Lodi, a Law professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ).

The special impeachment commission inside the Senate argues that Rousseff should be ousted because she signed three decrees without approval from Congress, and allegedly manipulated public accounts in 2014 before her reelection.

However, a June Senate report proved the allegations were false, after she was already forced to step down as president in May in a move that has been widely condemned as a coup.

According to former Finance Minister Nelson Barbosa, Rousseff "strictly followed the law" and the impeachment against her a purely "political decision."

"In my view, there is no basis for criminal responsibility of the President of the Republic, or the issue of decrees, or the issue of payment of liabilities with public banks," he said.

Hillary Clinton's recent "alt right" speech marks a new and dangerous low in what has become race to the bottom - and, should she be elected, it has ominous foreign policy implications as well.

Alarmed that Trump is reaching out to the African-American community, Mrs. Clinton tried to make the case that the GOP candidate is a apologist for such groups as the Ku Klux Klan (do they still exist?) and an obscure amalgam she dubbed the "alt right." As she named this latter group, there was a significant silence, a pause in the cheering: perhaps her audience thought she was having a senior moment of the intestinal variety.

In any case, none of this is anything new: it's a variation on the "Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy" theme that she has been dragging out ever since the 1990s. There is, however, a new dimension to this tired boilerplate, now that she's running for President: the Vast Right-wing Conspiracy is being portrayed an international cabal with its headquarters in the Kremlin.

As her peroration on the "racist" sins of Trump reached a climax, she hauled out Nigel Farage, the former leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), who was instrumental in leading the Brexit campaign to victory. Farage - who is, in her view, a "racist," a "sexist," and god knows what other unsavory "ists" - "has appeared regularly on Russian propaganda programs," she yelled "Now he's standing on the same stage as the Republican nominee."

What is she talking about?

Reports are emerging of widespread armed conflict between Kurdish militants and Syrian forces. Concentrated in and around eastern Syria and the city of Hasaka, reports indicate that Syrian forces may be on the verge of completely withdrawing.

The Kurdish offensive is being backed by US forces, including airpower overhead and special operations personnel on the ground. Syrian attempts to use its own air force to counter the spreading conflict appeared to be checked by what was essentially a defacto no-fly zone established by the US over eastern Syria.

Reuters in their report, "Syria Kurds win battle with government, Turkey mobilizes against them," would state:

Syrian Kurdish forces took near complete control of Hasaka city on Tuesday as a ceasefire ended a week of fighting with the government, consolidating the Kurds' grip on Syria's northeast as Turkey increased its efforts to check their influence.

The Kurdish YPG militia, a critical part of the U.S.-backed campaign against Islamic State, already controls swathes of northern Syria where Kurdish groups have established de facto autonomy since the start of the Syria war in 2011.

Analysts and those sympathetic to the Kurdish cause, including their perceived role in fighting terrorist organizations in Syria including the self-proclaimed "Islamic State" (ISIS), see this as a positive development toward a greater and independent "Kurdistan."

However, the facts on the ground appear to suggest a much more likely and unfortunate future.

A US drone attack has killed 22 Afghan soldiers held by Taliban militants in the southern Helmand province, while Taliban have overrun a strategic district elsewhere.

Provincial officials announced the fatalities on Saturday. Taliban also confirmed the death toll, saying the airstrike had killed three of the group's members in the Nad-e-Ali district on Thursday.

Helmand is a strategically important province for both the Afghan government and Taliban militants, who control or contest 10 of the 14 districts in the opium-rich province.

On Saturday, Taliban militants seized a strategic district in the eastern province of Paktia, from which they can surge towards several other provinces.