The power above the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the US Attorney General, and, above that person, the US President.

That's whom the FBI actually serves — not the US public.

This is the reason why the FBI is having such internal tensions and dissensions over the investigation of Hillary Clinton: Not only is she the current President's ardently preferred and designated successor— and overwhelmingly supported also by America's aristocracy and endorsed by the aristocracy's press — but the top leadership of the FBI have terms-in-office that (unlike, for example, the term of the US Attorney General) do not end with the installation of the next President; and these people will therefore be serving, quite possibly, the very same person whom they are now 'investigating'. This is the reason why James Comey, the FBI's Director, let Clinton totally off the hook on July 5th, when he declined to present the case to a grand jury: he and the rest of the FBI's top management violated three basic principles of trying white-collar-crime cases when a prosecutor is serious about wanting to prosecute and obtain a conviction against a person — he (and they) wanted to keep their jobs, not be fighting their boss and their likely future boss.

If America were an authentic democracy, there would be a way for the FBI to serve the public even when the US President doesn't want it to. According to the only scientific study that has ever been done of the matter, the US federal government is a dictatorship not a democracy. This was reluctantly reported by the researchers, whose own careers are dependent upon the aristocracy which they were finding actually controls that government. They found that the US, at the federal level, is not a democracy but an "oligarchy", by which the researchers were referring to an "economic elite", America's billionaires and centi-millionaires who control America's international corporations and the 'charities' (such as think tanks) that are dependent upon them — including many that directly affect US politics, such as the think tanks or other way-stations for former US government employees to become hired by private firms.

The authors of the only empirical scientific research-study that has been done of whether the United States is a democracy, or instead a dictatorship, excluded the very term «aristocracy» (or "collective dictatorship" such as an "economic elite" is if that "elite" actually is in control of the given nation's government) from their article. They did this so as for the meaning not to be clear to the US public. In any country in the modern world where an aristocracy exists, aristocrats nowadays try to hide their power, not (like in former eras) display their power by crowns and other public symbols of 'the nobility'. The closest the study's authors came to using that term, "aristocracy", was their only sentence that employed the pejorative term for an aristocracy, "oligarchy'. That obscure lone sentence was: "Jeffrey Winters has posited a comparative theory of 'Oligarchy,' in which the wealthiest citizens — even in a 'civil oligarchy' like the United States — dominate policy concerning crucial issues of wealth and income protection.11"

It's Election Day and the sky isn't falling. Your money still has some value for the moment, and the zombie apocalypse has not yet begun. But looking back over the last 18 months or so, you might be tempted to think that insanity had taken over the minds of the American people. Rest assured, no matter who wins the presidency, not much is going to change. That's because those with real power and influence in the United States are still pulling the strings and calling the shots, not only in government, but in the free market, in banking, in natural resources, and in the war machine.

After today, the once two-party system (only for the election of course) will go back to being the establishment. As former congressman Ron Paul once said, "The Nancy Pelosis of the world and the John Boehners of the world were much more buddies than anybody realized. The parties mean very little." If you don't believe that, try finding as much of a whimper coming from Speaker of the House Paul Ryan as he bent over backwards, burning the midnight oil to pass the omnibus spending package championed by Barack H. Obama. Yes. Deficit spending will continue, the Congress will continue to spend more than it takes in, borrowing money from foreign governments to do so, and applying the burden of repayment to the American taxpayer; you!

Those of us, who've been in journalism for any length of time, will continue to believe Donald Trump was a Clinton plant to ensure she would win. And he played the part well. Speaking without preparing, making fun of women, disparaging minorities, mocking the handicapped, and playing up to fundamental issues (patriotism, xenophobia, capitalism), all won over the Republican base.

French company Total and China's CNPC are to sign a major deal with Iran for the development of its gas fields. This will mark the first Western and Chinese energy investment in the Islamic Republic since the loosening of international sanctions in January.

"This is an agreement in principle. The final contract will be signed early 2017," the managing director of Pars Oil and Gas Company (POGC) Mohammad Meshkinfam was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA.

Total and CNPC will develop a new phase of the giant South Pars gas field.

The gas field, shared by Iran and Qatar, has 14,000 billion cubic meters of gas, or 8 percent of the world's known reserves.

50-55% of Americans (the number that actually vote) still indulge themselves in the narrative that voting in the Presidential election gives them some influence over the direction their country takes, and provides them with the feeling of having some personal power. The other 45-50% that don't vote get the same feeling by supporting their favorite sports team or emotionally attaching themselves to the daily life choices of their preferred celebrity.

In terms of the 'bigger picture', this year's election is something of a watershed. For the first time the US population is being emotionally manipulated to not just choose between Democrat and Republican, but between two candidates that are clearly (even to the average American) reprehensible assholes. At the same time, the people are being encouraged and manipulated to find as many ways as possible to ignore the fact that the candidates are disgusting individuals, and choose one anyway.

The sane response to being offered either a shit sandwich or a shitshake is to refuse both, but apparently a decent percentage of Americans have, in essence, lost their senses.

A leading German think tank has urged the government to redirect its foreign policy toward gaining more independence from the United States, regardless of who becomes the next US president. In October, the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), a Berlin-based government-oriented think tank, published a paper titled Even without Trump much will change. It calls for a more aggressive German foreign policy, which should pursue its own economic and geopolitical goals independently from those of the United States and, if need be, even go against Washington's interests.

"The Presidential elections in the US can have serious consequences for the global order," saidJohannes Thimm, the author of the paper and head of the US research group for the think tank. "Germany therefore should re-examine both its relations with the United States and its own contribution to the world order."

The paper calls a potential Donald Trump presidency "the great unknown." "With Trump as president... there is a high degree of uncertainty about US foreign policy. "Since Trump has so far only made vague announcements on foreign policy issues, there is a great deal of uncertainty about the possible consequences of his election. In general, Trump assumes that the US leadership has done more harm than good. The Americans had been exploited by others, allies and rivals... Therefore, the US should act in the future according to a narrowly defined cost-benefit calculation," the paper states, adding that "Trump's repeated announcements that, as president, he would review the security alliances of the US, triggered considerable unrest among the European and Asian allies."

The FBI has 'aggressively' warned Russian diplomats in the US not to act as monitors in the upcoming elections, spokesperson for the Russian FM Maria Zakharova told RT. The official also said that anti-Moscow rhetoric in the US would only lead to a dead end.

Speaking to RT Zakharova said that after receiving an "official ban from State Department" for Russian diplomats to monitor US elections, American officials essentially moved to 'threats.' The latest happened just over the weekend, according to the official. "Indeed in several cases intimidation measures were applied to the Russian diplomats, in particular, to our diplomat in Houston. His car was stopped, the road blocked and then [FBI] started to talk to him in an aggressive way, asking why Russian diplomats are generally interested in [US] elections. Despite in this particular case there was no ground for such a conversation," Zakharova said.

Earlier the official published a message on her Facebook page, saying Washington applied "direct pressure" on Russian facilities on US soil involving the FBI and other security services. American "special services conducted several attempts of such threatening," warning Russian diplomats "not to even think about getting interested in the elections," Zakharova told RT. In return Moscow has already filed "a respective note to the State Department."

In late October, the Russian embassy in Washington released a statement, saying US officials had threatened its staff with criminal prosecution if they attempted to monitor presidential and congressional elections at polling stations. The embassy however insisted it has merely voiced an intent to do so and that "it has not submitted any requests" to US authorities. "What is that what the US authorities are hiding and trying to hide at the polling stations, that they do not allow foreign diplomats to even come close to the polls," Zakharova asked.

Officials in Moscow say Russia and Turkey are resuming military cooperation and plan to hold a meeting of an intergovernmental commission before the end of 2016. Aleksandr Fomin, the head of Russia's Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation, said on November 7 that the dates and venue of the meeting are under negotiation.

He said the issue of sending Russian-built antiaircraft systems to NATO-member Turkey also could be discussed by the commission.

Fomin's remarks follow a visit to Moscow on November 1 by the head of the Turkish armed forces' General Staff, General Hulusi Akar. Turkey says Akar and his Russian counterpart, General Valery Gerasimov, discussed potential military cooperation in Syria against Islamic State militants, as well as in other areas.

Relations between Ankara and Moscow deteriorated after a Turkish warplane in October 2015 shot down a Russian fighter plane near Turkey's border with Syria. But ties have improved since an attempted coup in July by Turkey's military against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Meanwhile, Ankara's relations with its NATO allies have been tested by criticism from NATO states about Erdogan's crackdown against his political opponents since the failed coup.

From the word "go," Russian state media have been largely sympathetic toward Donald Trump. Even prior to the Republican primaries, they reported every minor bump and hiccup in his ratings.

In September, Trump's against-the-odds campaign garnered more attention than Russia's own parliamentary elections. A week before Russians went to the polls to vote for the new Duma, Vesti Nedeli (News of the Week), a weekly news review show on state TV channel Rossiya, spent 8 minutes covering the upcoming Russian elections and another 9 discussing whether Donald Trump might be assassinated. Most national outlets devoted extensive coverage to even the most minuscule revelations from the leaked Democratic National Commission and Clinton staff emails.

But it is an oversimplification to say state media went all out for Trump. They were less for Trump, more staunchly against Clinton. And here they followed President Vladimir Putin's own lead: in 2011, he accused the then-secretary of state of fomenting protests in Russia. Unsurprisingly, his media have not wasted an opportunity to portray Clinton as a Russophobic warmonger.

RIA Novosti, once Russia's largest and most respected news agency, has been the vanguard of the agitprop efforts. To its credit, the agency's DC bureau has provided mostly objective and balanced coverage of the election. But the most popular of RIA's election dispatches, which garnered almost 200,000 page views, went so far as to claim "Clinton has problems with her head."

WikiLeaks has released its 35th batch of emails from the hacked account of Hillary Clinton's campaign chair, John Podesta, as Americans go to the polls in the presidential election.
The whistleblowing site has now released a total number of 58,375 emails in its Podesta series.

The leaks have revealed some of the inner workings of the Democratic candidate's campaign, notably her team's widespread manipulation of the MSM and cozy relationships with influential political journalists.

Accusations of Chelsea Clinton's misuse of Clinton Foundation funds for her wedding, admissions of secret middle-eastern donations and concerns over Hillary's email scandal are just some of the topics discussed by staffers that are now open to public scrutiny.

Dislike of Obama

In a December 2014 mail to Clinton aide Cheryl Mills, Podesta hints that Mills showed some disdain for President Barack Obama.

Only a quarter of Japanese people support their government's line when it comes to the Kuril Islands dispute, where Tokyo seeks to secure full sovereignty over four Russian Far East islets, a new survey has revealed.

According to the latest phone survey conducted by the Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun, only 25 percent of the respondents claimed they would seek the return of the Iturup/ Etorofu, Kunashir/ Kunashiri, Shikotan and Habomai Islands.

The Japanese claim over the Kuril Islands has lingered since the end of World War II. Moscow cites the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951, which abolished Japan's sovereignty over the 56 islands that form the Kuril chain. However, Tokyo insists that four of them are not part of the archipelago and should be returned to its control.