Turkey

As John Kerry prepares to meet Sergei Lavrov in Vienna, Putin and Assad are drawing up plans to call for elections in Syria. The idea, of course, is that Assad will prevail in a landslide, allowing Moscow to claim that the people have spoken and the regime must rightfully be restored. 

"Then tell me, future boy, who's President of Brazil in 2016? Then who's vice president?"

"We wish that Iran would change its policies and stop meddling in the affairs of other countries in the region, in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. We will make sure that we confront Iran's actions and shall use all our political, economic and military powers to defend our territory and people."

"In the West, they talk about ‘moderate opposition,’ but we so far haven’t seen any in Syria. Any person who takes up arms and fights the legal authorities, how moderate can he be?"

Submitted for your consideration: 1) "A man from northern Sweden who has praised Adolf Hitler on Facebook and participated in Nazi demonstrations has answered a call from Sweden's Migration Agency for volunteers willing to offer accommodation to refugees," 2) "I said this to Merkel too. No one should expect Turkey to turn into a concentration camp where all the refugees stay in."

"I hope Russia, whose friendship and neighborliness we value, will adopt a more careful stance and Turkish-Russian relations will not be negatively affected."

The key overnight event was the much anticipated, goalseeked and completely fabricated Chinese economic data dump, which was both good and bad depending on who was asked: bad, in that at 6.9% it was below the government's 7.0% target and the lowest since Q1 2009, and thus hinting at "more stimulus" especially since industrial production (5.7%, Exp. 6.0%) and fixed spending also both missed; it was good because it beat expectations of 6.8% by the smallest possible increment, and set the tone for much of Europe's trading session, even if Asia shares ultimately closed largely in the red over skepticism over the authenticity of the GDP results. Worse, and confirming the global economy is now one massive circular reference, China accused the Fed's rate hike plans for slowing down its economy, which is ironic because the Fed accused China's economy for forcing it to delay its rate hike.

The dollar dropped about half a milligram gold, and 50mg silver.

But who wants to read about the universal currency falling, failing? Few people are so barbarous as to think of the dollar’s value as being priced in terms a monetary metal.

"Najib has tarnished the country’s image in the world and caused investors to lose faith in the government. Malaysians do not believe in this prime minister."

Until Putin’s speech the world was intimidated by the Washington Bully. Resistance to Washington brought swift retribution. In the Middle East and Africa it brought economic sanctions and military invasions that destroyed entire countries. In France and other US vassal states it brought multi-billion dollar confiscations of bank net worth as the price of not following Washington’s policies toward other countries. Other countries felt powerless in the face of the arrogant hegemonic Unipower, which from time to time replied to noncompliance with threats. President Putin of Russia brought all that to end on September 28. He stood up before the world in the presence of the overflowing hubris of the hegemon and belled the cat.

Put yourself in the following situation for a moment. You're a Sunni extremist and your regional and Western backers have just abandoned you. You are now under siege by the Russian Air Force. If you survive the air strikes you will soon have to come face to face with the fiercest, most experienced Shiite militia on the planet in Hezbollah. Would you cut off your beard and run? 

It’s unfortunate that it took the corporate media all these years to" discover" that the United States and Russia are fighting a geopolitical proxy war in Syria. It remains to be seen how many more years and lost lives it will take for them to also "discover" that this proxy war is being fought over resources and power. It’s a sad state of affairs when the Western media provides humanitarian cover for the U.S. and NATO to fuel a brutal civil war simply to create economic advantages for NATO states and allies while undermining stability in the Middle East - creating the greatest humanitarian catastrophe since World War II. And as millions of refugees continue to pour out of Syria into Europe and abroad, the NATO-dominated public of the E.U. and U.S. remain largely ignorant to the fact their own governments helped create the refugee crisis they so abhor.