COUNTERESPIONAGE: Bank accounts of Russian state broadcaster Russia Today are FROZEN in the UK.

Margarita Simonyan, 36, editor of the Kremlin-funded 24-hour television news network, tweeted this morning: ‘Our accounts in the UK have been closed. All accounts. “The decision is not subject to revision”. Long live freedom of speech!’

RT published a letter it claimed to have been sent by NatWest, which said: ‘We have recently undertaken a review of your banking arrangements with us.’

The letter – said to have been sent to the channel’s offices at the Millbank Tower in Westminster – added that the bank had ‘reached the conclusion that we will no longer provide these facilities’.

The bank said in the note dated last Wednesday that the Royal Bank of Scotland Group, of which NatWest is part, would not service RT – and that this was final.

The watchdog Ofcom has ruled against RT in the past over what it said were a series of biased or misleading shows on Syria and Ukraine that flouted broadcasting codes.

Almost anything — or almost anyone — appearing on RT ought to be suspect.

GOOD LORD: Man beats Chicago police officer who refused to shoot him for fear of public backlash, rips out her hair as other cops Tase him.

2016, MAN: Julian Assange’s internet link to the world ‘is shut down by America’ hours after crazy rumours sweep the web that Pamela Anderson ‘killed him with a poisoned vegan Pret sandwich’

THE 1980S CALLED AND… WELL, YOU KNOW THE REST: Russia Is Building Fallout Shelters to Prepare for a Potential Nuclear Strike.

NOBEL PEACE PRICE UPDATE: Iraq Braces for New Wave of Refugees as 1.5M Threatened by Battle for Mosul.

Flashback: President Obama Has Ended the War in Iraq.

WORST. ELECTION. EVER. New Poll Shows Trump-Clinton Tied In Alaska.

Neither major party candidate has even 40% of the vote, and even at this late date 17% of Alaskans remain undecided.

ANALYSIS: TRUE.

If the parties were reversed in the NC firebombing, we'd be gearing up for a big national conversation about dangerous rhetoric.

— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) October 16, 2016

After eight years of Obama, mostly I’m tired of the official harangues.

BREAKING: Trump son-in-law makes approach on post-election TV start-up.

Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has informally approached one of the media industry’s top dealmakers about the prospect of setting up a Trump television network after the presidential election in November.

Mr Kushner — an increasingly influential figure in the billionaire’s presidential campaign — contacted Aryeh Bourkoff, the founder and chief executive of LionTree, a boutique investment bank, within the past couple of months, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.

Their conversation was brief and has not progressed since, the people said. Mr Bourkoff and Mr Kushner both declined to comment.

However, the approach suggests Mr Kushner and the Republican candidate himself are thinking about how to capitalise on the populist movement that has sprung up around their campaign in the event of an election defeat to Democrat Hillary Clinton next month.

There doesn’t seem to be much meat to this story, or at least not yet.

WHY COULD THAT BE? While gaining female support, voters still question Clinton’s truthfulness.

But then there’s this:

In the ABC poll, Clinton beats Trump by +8 on who voters trust more to handle ethics in government. CLINTON WINS THAT. Let that sink in.

— Kristen S Anderson (@KSoltisAnderson) October 16, 2016

2016, man.

RESET: Russia’s War With The US Isn’t A Possibility, It’s Already Here.

After months of speculation regarding the hacking of recent political figures and organizations, the U.S. intelligence community announced last week that it is “confident” that Russia is responsible. Wikileaks, a primary publisher of the documents resulting from those hacks, is making it evidently clear that it is targeting U.S. politics. U.S. intelligence officials also acknowledge that Russia may have a hand in hacks of various state electoral systems.

The massive amounts of information contained in the hacks is nothing short of damning, especially for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, but the releases could also be one of the largest information warfare campaigns in history. While there are questions over whether diplomatic differences between the Kremlin and Washington could go from harsh words to actual combat, kinetic attacks may not be necessary to constitute a dangerous conflict.

“There are certain modes of conflict going on now,” Peter Singer, a strategist and senior fellow specializing in modern security threats at New America, told The Daily Caller News Foundation. The current conflict between the U.S. and Russia may not fit a traditional definition of war, but it is a conflict nonetheless, he added.

Moscow isn’t trying merely to discredit an American presidential candidate, but to discredit our entire election process. The goal is almost certainly to weaken America abroad by weakening America at home, and in that Putin has had plenty of help from Barack Obama and other American politicians.

SMOD COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT: The apocalypse is off for now; ISIS flees village where it prophesied doomsday battle.

Instead of waging an epic battle, however, the last Islamic State fighters defending Dabiq fled Sunday without a fight in the face of an advance by a small force of Free Syrian Army rebels, backed by Turkey and by U.S. airstrikes.

The loss of Dabiq was of more symbolic than strategic importance to the wider war, a fresh humiliation for the Islamic State, which lured volunteer fighters from around the world with promises of building a mighty Islamist empire.

ISIS-held Mosul is under attack by Iraqi-American forces, too.

WELL, GOOD. US in Yemen: If you threaten us, we’ll respond.

JAYVEE: ISIS Spreads Its Roots in the Philippines.

CITY OF BROTHERLY LOVE: Slur in Video Exposes Racial Rifts in Iconic Gay Enclave.

Black gays and lesbians in the city say they are carded at clubs in the area known as the Gayborhood while they watch white patrons stroll in. At bars, they say, they wait longer for drinks and are subjected to dress codes that ban athletic gear, Timberland boots and hooded sweatshirts, rules they say are meant to exclude them.

Now, they say, the video finally provides tangible evidence of their concerns. It has sparked outrage among many in the city’s LGBT community, bolstered by the Black Lives Matter movement and support for gay safe spaces in the wake of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando.

“The minute you walk into the Gayborhood as a black or brown person, you feel it,” said Shani Akilah Robin, creator of the Black and Brown Workers Collective, which held protests after the video release. “They play our music and target us for the very blackness they’re making money off of. This is the reality of being black and queer in America.”

Why are Democrat-run cities such cesspits of racial intolerance?

WELL, GOOD: Israel suspends cooperation with UNESCO over Jerusalem resolution.

Israel suspended cooperation with UNESCO on Friday, a day after the U.N. cultural agency adopted a draft resolution that Israel says denies the deep, historic Jewish connection to holy sites in Jerusalem.

UNESCO’s draft resolution, sponsored by several Arab countries, uses only the Islamic name for a hilltop compound sacred to both Jews and Muslims, which includes the Western Wall, a remnant of the biblical temple and the holiest site where Jews can pray. The validated resolution is expected early next week, but the wording is unlikely to change.

Flashback: Obama Budget Supersizes U.S. Funding for UN, Global Military.

THE RUSSIANS DON’T TAKE A DUMP WITHOUT A PLAN:

Are You Willing To Gamble All Life On Earth Over Hillary’s Beef With #Russia? #Syria https://t.co/1T1my7XXPW pic.twitter.com/9ftY87xmey

— Trending Russia News (@Russializer) October 14, 2016

The Kremlin’s propaganda effort isn’t exactly subtle, but to what end?

STRONG HORSE: Is Turkey ditching Saudi Arabia for Iran?

Whether or not Turkey eventually “ditches” the Saudis for Iran, it’s a near-certainty that Ankara will use Tehran’s nuclear weapons program as a justification for one of their own.

Tom Lehrer, as usual, proves prescient.

LEBRON JAMES: ‘We Don’t Disrespect Women’ in Locker Room. ‘That’s Trash Talk’

WAR FOR OIL: “Take the oil” isn’t just an applause line — it’s a policy that has been discussed in Washington for decades.

The earliest discussions of a U.S. move to seize Arab oil arouse in the early 1970s, when Saudi Arabia and the other Middle Eastern oil producers nationalized fields once owned by major American oil companies and established OPEC to assert greater control over the pricing of their exports. That came to a head in late 1973 and early 1974, when Arab countries imposed an embargo on deliveries to the United States (in retaliation for American arms shipments to Israel during the Yom Kippur War) and OPEC announced a fourfold increase in oil prices — the two combining to cause a severe U.S. energy shortage and subsequent recession. In response to these perceived assaults, assorted American pundits and politicians called for military moves of one sort or another to address the problem.

These days it’s easier just to out-produce them.

ED MORRISSEY: Minnesota Could Be the First Obamacare Domino to Fall.

As the Star Tribune notes, all seven of the remaining insurers in the state had threatened to follow Preferred One out the door without the massive rate hikes. Even with Rothman surrendering to the realities of centrally controlled economies, Blue Cross Blue Shield will still exit Mnsure at the end of 2016. The massive price hikes, Rothman said in September, were “a stopgap for 2017.” Foreshadowing Dayton’s announcement on Wednesday, Rothman added, “It’s an emergency situation – we worked hard and avoided a collapse.”

Avoided? As Dayton made clear yesterday, all Minnesota has done is postpone a collapse – and probably for only another year. The biggest problem for insurers in these markets is the unstable utilization rates, which prevent them from accurately calculating risk to set a tenable premium price.

The reason for that instability is that higher prices are disincentivizing healthier consumers from buying expensive comprehensive insurance policies as they opt instead to pay out of pocket for their minimal utilization and pay the tax penalty for non-coverage instead. Thanks to skyrocketing premiums and deductible thresholds, the likelihood of many consumers to have benefits applied to anything but a basic wellness check is remote at best, which makes the risk worthwhile.

Leave it to Big Government to coerce a market into existence, where individuals are required to buy a product they can’t afford to use, and which producers can’t afford to sell — and then blame the free market for the inevitable collapse.

WIKILEAKS: The Video Defense About Her Emails Hillary Clinton Never Gave.

The remarks — part of a large and growing WikiLeaks release of emails hacked from Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta’s personal Gmail account — propose Clinton go to lengths, arguably unseen in the campaign from the candidate, to try and explain why she used the private server. She would do so in clearer, more complete and more personal terms than other statements she had made. She would have been apologetic, at times, taking responsibility.

“I can’t do it all again,” she was to say. “I can only tell you it was a mistake, regret it, explain it, and help State and others fix any challenges it caused.”

But she would have also been defensive, at points, noting unapologetically that she wanted her privacy: “I knew no matter what I decided to do with them, I was in for criticism. So I chose to keep a modicum of privacy. I hope you can understand that.”

Can you imagine a public figure running for higher office, in for criticism?

JAYVEE: Islamic State crushes rebellion plot in Mosul as army closes in.

Islamic State (IS) executed 58 people suspected of taking part in the plot after it was uncovered last week. Residents, who spoke to Reuters from some of the few locations in the city that have phone service, said the plotters were killed by drowning and their bodies were buried in a mass grave in a wasteland on the outskirts of the city.

Among them was a local aide of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who led the plotters, according to matching accounts given by five residents, by Hisham al-Hashimi, an expert on IS affairs that advises the government in Baghdad and by colonel Ahmed al-Taie, from Mosul’s Nineveh province Operation Command’s military intelligence.

Reuters is not publishing the name of the plot leader to avoid increasing the safety risk for his family, nor the identities of those inside the city who spoke about the plot.

The aim of the plotters was to undermine Islamic State’s defense of Mosul in the upcoming fight, expected to be the biggest battle in Iraq since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

Flashback: President Obama Has Ended the War in Iraq.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Billy Bush’s Lawyer: He Would’ve Been Fired If He Told Donald Trump to Shut Up During Lewd Conversation.

NO. JUST NO. Finally, a Whiskey for People Who Prefer Vodka.

Drink whiskey like you mean it, or don’t drink it at all.

WELL, GOOD: Navy strikes back at rebel-held radar sites in Yemen.