Want a tough job? Try being a pollster two weeks before Election Day. Donald Trump is ripping pollsters and the media, arguing the surveys are biased against him because many include too many Democrats in their sampling surveys. Conservative news sites have pounced on Trump's arguments, pointing to a trio of national polls that show the race between the Republican presidential nominee and Democrat Hillary Clinton is a toss-up.

Trump and his supporters argue that mainstream pollsters are under-sampling Republicans to account for a rise in independents, while failing to account for an enthusiasm gap that favors Trump or the new voters he could bring into the fold.

A half-dozen pollsters interviewed by The Hill acknowledged the difficulties of polling the 2016 race. They blamed unprecedented volatility, two historically unpopular candidates, fast-changing voter behavior patterns and shifting demographics. All of those factors make it tough to figure out exactly who will show up on Election Day.

Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt has become the latest high profile figure to accuse RT of conspiring with WikiLeaks in the hacking and release of the #Podesta emails.

Monday saw the whistleblowing website leak its 17th batch of messages from Hillary Clinton's campaign chair John Podesta and, not for the first time over the last fortnight, RT broke the story prior to WikiLeaks tweeting the announcement.


Bildt's tweet claiming RT reported on the WikiLeaks releases "before they are released" drew some exasperated responses from Twitter users who pointed out the clear inaccuracy of his statement.


The former prime minister's tweet prompted clarification from WikiLeaks itself.

German police forces conducted several raids across five federal states in response to an "imminent terror threat," according to local media. Operatives of elite police anti-terrorism units, the SEK, were scrambled across five German states, including Thuringia, Hamburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Saxony and Bavaria, according to Spiegel magazine, which cites police in Thuringia. Bild magazine cited "an imminent terror threat" as a trigger for the operation.

During the simultaneous raids, 12 apartments and a communal accommodation center were searched, but with no arrests made, according to Sueddeutsche Zeitung. The large-scale operation reportedly targeted "Islamist-linked terror suspects," local broadcaster MDR reported.

A 28-year-old suspect, said to be a "Russian national of Chechen descent" with links to Islamic State (IS, previously ISIS/ISIL) is wanted by police, Spiegel reported. According to Bild, the suspect may be plotting "a serious act of violence." The other suspects include 10 men and three women, convicted of terrorism financing, Bild reported. All the suspects have alleged Islamist backgrounds. All the suspects are reported to be asylum seekers with unknown residence status. They had been under police surveillance since summer 2015. Police forces deployed sniffer dogs to detect potential explosives.

At least one suspect is reported to have been placed under arrest in the central Thuringia city of Suhl, where "white powder" of unknown origin was found. Later, Thuringia criminal police said there is no threat of a terror attack, adding that preliminary outcomes of the operation would be released "in a matter of days."

Ankara warned that it may send ground troops to attack Kurdish forces in Iraq, if it feels threatened. Turkish forces and Kurdish militias are supposed to be allies of Iraq and the US-led coalition in an offensive against Islamic State-held Mosul.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu accused Baghdad of "tying itself to a terrorist organization," referring to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a Kurdish militant group responsible for a decades-long insurgency in the southeast of Turkey. Ankara says Iraqi Kurds are giving shelter to PKK forces and has been using aircraft to bomb the group's training camps in the neighboring country, as well as in Syria.

Speaking to the Kanal 24 TV station on Tuesday, Cavusoglu said Turkey would not hesitate to use ground troops against Kurds in Iraq.

"If there is a threat to Turkey from Iraq, we will use all our resources and rights, including a ground operation," he said. "We aren't saying this to Iraqis alone, but to the United States and all coalition nations, to the northern Iraqi government."

Cold War 2.0 has reached unprecedented hysterical levels. And yet a hot war is not about to break out - before or after the November 8 US presidential election.

From the Clinton (cash) machine - supported by a neocon/neoliberalcon think tank/media complex - to the British establishment and its corporate media mouthpieces, the Anglo-American, self-appointed "leaders of the free world" are racking up demonization of Russia and "Putinism" to pure incandescence.

And yet a hot war is not about to break out - before or after the November 8 US presidential election. So many layers of fear and loathing in fact veil no more than a bluff.

Let's start with the Russian naval task force in Syria, led by the officially designated "heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser" Admiral Kuznetsov, which will be stationed in the eastern Mediterranean at least until February 2017, supporting operations against all strands of Salafi-jihadism.

The Admiral Kuznetsov is fully equipped with anti-ship, air defense, artillery and anti-submarine warfare systems - and can defend itself against a vast array of threats, unlike NATO vessels.

Predictably, NATO is spinning with alarm that "all of the Northern Fleet", along with the Baltic Fleet, is on the way to the Mediterranean. Wrong; it's only part of the Northern Fleet, and the Baltic Fleet ships are not going anywhere.

The heart of the matter is that when the capabilities of this Russian naval task force are matched with the S-300/S-400 missile systems already deployed in Syria, Russia is now de facto rivaling the firepower of the US Sixth Fleet.

To top it off, as this comprehensive military analysis makes clear, Russia has "basically made their own no-fly zone over Syria"; and a US no-fly zone, viscerally promoted by Hillary Clinton, "is now impossible to achieve."

That should be more than enough to put into perspective the impotence transmuted into outright anger exhibited by the Pentagon and its neocon/neoliberalcon vassals.

Add to it the outright war between the Pentagon and the CIA in the Syrian war theatre, where the Pentagon backs the YPG Kurds, who are not necessarily in favor of regime change in Damascus, while the CIA backs further weaponizing of "moderate", as in al-Qaeda-linked and/or infiltrated, "rebels".

Compounding the trademark Obama administration Three Stooges school of foreign policy, American threats have flown more liberally than Negan's skull-crushing bloody baton in the new season of The Walking Dead.

Pentagon head Ash Carter, a certified neocon, has threatened "consequences", as in "potential" strikes against Syrian Arab Army (SAA) forces to "punish the regime" after the Pentagon itself broke the Kerry-Lavrov ceasefire. President Obama took some time off weighing his options. And in the end, he backed off.

So it will be up for the virtually elected - by the whole US establishment — Hillary Clinton to make the fateful decision. She won't be able to go for a no-fly zone - because Russia is already doing it. And if she decides to "punish the regime", Moscow already telegraphed, via Russia's Defense Ministry spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov, there will definitely be "consequences" for imposing a "shadow" hot war.

Russia proposes settlement of the Kurdish question within Syria modeled on arrangements for its own ethnic republics.

The US based Al-Monitor claims to have been shown a document supposedly prepared by the Russian Foreign Ministry and presented to the Syrian government and the leaders of the Kurdish militia the YPG in late September.

Supposedly this document set out the principles of a political settlement between the Syrian government and the Kurds in Syria. Al-Monitor provides what it says is the text of this document

"The Syrian Kurdish Party has suggested, and the Syrian Arab Party has agreed, to discuss the following issues:

1. Constitutional recognition of the nationalistic and political rights of the Kurdish people in Syria, and at the same time recognition of the rights of other national minorities.

2. Recognition of the democratic self-rule system in the cantons [of Jazeera, Kobani and Afrin, which are currently controlled by Kurds] and acknowledgement that members of the self-rule [system] represent the interests of all national and religious groups in these areas, and acceptance of all decisions issued by the legislative council of these cantons.

3. Recognition of the self-protection units and the Asayish [Kurdish police] forces as the legitimate national military forces.

4. The formation of delegations from both parties [the self-rule system and the Syrian government] to coordinate relations between the cantons and the central government in Damascus.

5. Change the name "the Syrian Arab Republic" to "the Syrian Democratic Republic," and form therein a government with varied democratic views on the basis of a federalism system."

US President Barack Obama has admitted security chiefs have not yet identified those behind a sophisticated cyber-attack which crippled some of the world's biggest websites last Friday.

Two major distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) on internet traffic management company Dyn brought down more than 80 popular sites, such as PayPal, Reddit, Amazon, Twitter and Spotify.

The data overload, thought to be powered by small items capable of connectivity - 'Internet of Things' devices - disabled sites for three hours and involved "10s of millions of IP addresses."

Dyn said in a statement that while they regularly experience DDoS blitzes, this large-scale attack was different and "more global in nature".

A US spy plane was spotted flying off the coasts of Syria near the Russian navy base in Tartus and an airbase in Lattakia.

Western websites monitoring planes' flight course across the globe reported that a US spy plane carried out at least four reconnaissance flights over the Russian navy base in Tartus and its air fleet in Humeimim air base in Lattakia province.

Last week a US military plane carried out spy flights several kilometers away from a Russian technical center in the country's navy base in Tartus.

Also last month, a US P-8A Poseidon spy plane was spotted flying off the coast of Lebanon and Syria, near Tartus.

The US Navy reconnaissance plane was spotted at the time flying a few kilometers away from Russia's Humeimim airbase in Syria.

The P-8A Poseidon aircraft flew close to Syria's Mediterranean coast where Russia's naval task force operates. It was the fourth time that a US spy plane was spotted near the Russian base in Humeimim.

When I was a student, the Economist was the magazine of choice for teenage college debaters. Nowadays, it appears to be a magazine written by teenage college debaters.

So, it seems The Economist has a new plan for the Middle East. In a strange bit of positioning, it doesn't want Iraqi forces to rout ISIS in the ongoing battle for Mosul. That's because the headbangers - and enthusiastic head-choppers to boot - could be useful for another purpose on the journal's agenda; taking over Syria and removing the 'evil' Bashar al-Assad from office in Damascus.

That's right, you've heard it all now. The British news weekly, beloved of folk unable to form their own opinions, has entered an unholy alliance with ISIS. And water coolers everywhere will provide a focal point for middle managers expounding on the thesis this very working day. If unfortunate enough to be in proximity, you'll hear them contend how "the wisest strategy for retaking Mosul is to leave IS (sic) an exit, eastward to Syria." Because this is what the Economist told them to believe.

Three months after leaving the White House in 2001, former President Bill Clinton arrived in India to cheering throngs to help those who had just lost a million homes in the aftermath of a massive earthquake that killed 20,000 and injured 166,000.

In classic Clinton style, he solemnly promised that his new nonprofit — called the American India Foundation (AIF) — would rebuild 100 villages. Rajat Gupta, his millionaire co-chairman, pledged $1 billion for the victims.

It never happened. Years later, AIF's annual reports were reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation and show only seven villages were partially rebuilt by Clinton's group, and a mere $2.7 million of $53 million raised over a decade went to the earthquake victims.

The rest went for completely unrelated projects, including "accelerating social change," fighting AIDS, "sustainable development," and working for "digital equalizers."

Paltry aid for the victims notwithstanding, Clinton handsomely profited from the charity as AIF's top officers poured more than $13 million into the Clinton Foundation and others generously gave to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's political campaigns.