While the Harper government is preaching government austerity, it is spending almost $1.2 billion on a new Ottawa headquarters for a little-known military spy agency.

It's the most expensive Canadian government building ever constructed.

Under tight security, CBC obtained an exclusive tour of the top secret complex that most Canadians will otherwise never get to see, a development even National Defence apparently thinks is so grandiose that the department dubbed the project "Camelot" in official documents.

When completed next year, the facility in suburban Ottawa will house the roughly 2,000 employees of the Communications Security Establishment Canada, a federal agency that spies mainly on foreigners by hacking into their computers, reading their email and intercepting their phone calls.

The stand-off between Russian and the Netherlands escalated Tuesday as Moscow angrily demanded a full account of how one its diplomats came to be arrested by the Dutch police over the weekend.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Russia Today channel that the state of relations between the two countries will depend on how Netherlands chooses to handle the matter.

"We need to know what disciplinary measures would be taken in regard to these police officers," Lavrov said in an English-language interview. "When we get a reaction on this demand, then we will see how we will handle the relations further."

Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded Tuesday that the Netherlands apologize for arresting a Russian diplomat, further straining relations between the countries after Moscow decided to put some Greenpeace activists on trial. The tensions come during a year meant to celebrate the countries' historic ties.

The diplomat, Dmitry Borodin, was arrested by Dutch police in The Hague late Saturday, and he has accused the police of even pulling his one-year-old daughter's hair as they took him and both his children to the station. Borodin, whose title is minister-counselor, gave his version of events on his Twitter account. He said the arrest came even though he identified himself and said he had diplomatic immunity.

It's clear to everyone by now that the government of the largest country in the world is careening towards default in just over 200 hours.

Yet curiously, even though the US government's completely ridiculous, untenable fiscal situation is a front page embarrassment for the entire world to see, markets have barely budged.

A few very short-term rates have shot up, but for the most part, stocks are very close to where they were before the shutdown.

The US 10-year yield has actually dropped over the last month, from 2.95% in mid-September to 2.64% today... pretty much where it was a week ago before the shutdown began.

(Bear in mind that the 10-year yield in Italy, Spain, etc. were all over 7% at the most recent peaks of their respective crises...)

Meanwhile, other rates like the 30-year Treasury and 30-year fixed mortgage rates are even a hair lower than they were a week ago.

Where's the calamity? Where's the panic?

There's been almost none.

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade suggested on Tuesday that the Navy SEALs from Seal Team 6 were wrong to abort a mission on an Al-Shabaab camp in Somalia over the weekend just because they thought children would die.

According to NBC News, the plan to capture an Al-Shabaab warlord named Ikrima went awry when an enemy fighter spotted Seal Team 6 members and started a firefight. The SEALs soon recognized that children who were in the compound would die if the raid went forward so they aborted the mission.

"I think a lot of people thought that was - and it is - an incredible act of just honor for life, especially the little ones," Fox News host Elisabeth Hasselbeck noted on Tuesday.

But Kilmeade saw things another way.

Isn't it amazing? The government puts on all these shows. Their media tentacles help with the shows by hyping them royally and pumping up scare tactic headlines hourly. Take this new shenanigan called the war over the debt ceiling.

Now, that was not the amazing part I was referring to. What I meant by amazing was the public's response to all this nonsense baloney. The government is telling us to 'be afraid! Our food stamp program will no longer feed you, your Medicaid will no longer get you medicine, our airports will no longer remain operational, our homeland security guys won't be able to protect you against those boogey men terrorists who are hiding behind your sheds ... you are going to starve, suffer and most likely drop dead. So be afraid! We ain't got no money, and if we don't raise this debt ceiling and print more money, you all are gonna die!'

And our people, amazingly, buy into all this. They don't even look at the most obvious facts. Now isn't that amazing?!

I just finished reading news headlines geared to calm nerves in one particular area: Thou shalt not be afraid. Our military and foreign aid will continue pouring into our usual recipient nations. Hooray. Hooray. We'll continue to send them dollars and guns... in the billions. Hooray, hooray!

Who were they attempting to comfort and calm? I have no idea. Probably some nervous recipient(s) in some miserable country (s) out there. But most importantly, where the heck is the response to this here in our nation? Nowhere to be heard or seen. And what's up with that?! Come on, they are saying we are right now at this default line, with our current debt level in the trillions of dollars, with our unaccountable loony expenditures totally out of control, with our miserable unemployment reflecting the more miserable overall economy crashing down, yet we are going to send billions and billions of dollars to some nations out there. Yet not a peep from our zombie-turned majority.

Russia shrugged off Dutch legal action over its detention and prosecution of Greenpeace activists for piracy on Saturday as protesters took to the streets internationally to call for the 30 detainees to be freed.

The Netherlands launched legal proceedings against Russia on Friday, saying it had unlawfully detained activists and others on the Dutch-registered ship last month as it protested against drilling in the Arctic.

Two Dutch citizens were among 30 people on board the Arctic Sunrise, which was seized by Russian authorities near the Prirazlomnaya offshore oil platform.

Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Meshkov told state-run news agency RIA Novosti that Russia had repeatedly asked the Netherlands to halt what Russia said was "illegal activity" by the ship.

"Unfortunately, this was not done. Therefore, we have far more questions for the Dutch side than they can have for us," RIA quoted Meshkov as saying.

Each week Fairewinds receives many questions about the ongoing tragedy unfolding in Japan as a result of the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Join us as Fairewinds' Chief Engineer Arnie Gundersen highlights the many problems facing Japan as he takes you on a tour of the Fukushima Daiichi site by combining satellite video, animated graphics and photos to create a comprehensive and easy to follow video tour.


Video Transcript

President Vladimir Putin called on the Netherlands to apologize for the alleged assault and detention of a Russian diplomat in The Hague. He slammed the incident as a "blatant violation" of the Vienna Convention and demanded those responsible be punished.

Speaking at the APEC summit in Indonesia, Putin said Russia was waiting for an "official apology" after a formal complaint was lodged with the government of the Netherlands.

"We are awaiting an explanation, an apology and also punishment of those responsible," Putin said at a news conference after an Asia-Pacific summit in Indonesia. He added that Russia would react depending on the course of action the Dutch side takes.

"The Dutch government is obliged to send a full explanation by 6pm today (14:00 GMT) Moscow time," said the Russian Foreign Ministry in an official statement.

Minister-counselor Dmitry Borodin said he was badly beaten by unidentified men in camouflage uniform who forced their way into his flat in The Hague on Saturday evening. He was then taken to a police station and held for a number of hours without any explanation.

Borodin went on to say that the men did not produce any official documents showing they were policemen. Moreover, the men ignored Borodin when he said he was a diplomat.

The timing of the latest shot in a covert war invites questions about the role of proxies

What to make of the latest alleged assassination in Iran of a senior officer in the Revolutionary Guards just as Iran and the US move towards negotiations? Is it a last-minute attempt by Israel or the Iranian dissident group the Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) to sabotage talks - or at least to show that they are still players in the decades-long struggle between the government in Tehran and its many antagonists?

The first account on an Iranian website stated that Mojtaba Ahmadi, the head of Iranian cyber warfare, had been found shot in the head outside Tehran. The Revolutionary Guards issued a statement denying that he had been assassinated, but admitted there had been a "horrific incident" which it was investigating. The killing appeared to be the latest in a string of killings, since 2007, in which five Iranians associated with the country's nuclear programme have been murdered in professional attacks. Men on motorcycles operating on the basis of good intelligence have stuck magnetically attachable bombs to their victims' cars.

The timing of Ahmadi's assassination looks suspicious, coming a few days after the Iranian President, Hassan Rouhani, addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations and later spoke to President Barack Obama by telephone. Not everybody on either side is happy: the head of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohammed Ali Jafari, even stated openly that, while he agreed with Rouhani's UN speech, "he should have turned down a telephone conversation until after the American government had shown its sincerity towards Iran".