In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert host a two part interview with award-winning film and television actor, Alec Baldwin, and comedian, actor, author and host of the Trews, Russell Brand, about revolution, the media, ultra low interest rates, cobblers and their little helpers. They also discuss whether or not Sean Hannity has the talent to be a 'terrorist' and Russell Brand gives his opinion on the role of Fox News.

China is ready to export agricultural products and oil and gas equipment to Russia, China's Vice Premier Wang Yang stated Saturday.

"China is willing to export to Russia such competitive products as agricultural goods, oil and gas equipment, and is ready to import Russian engineering products," Wang Yang said during the 18th session of the Russian-Chinese Commission for the Preparation of Regular Meetings of the Heads of Governments.

Everything in Tehran revolves around three major discussions: the nuclear deal arguably to be clinched on November 24, Iran back to selling energy to the West, and the fight against ISIS/ISIL.

I've just spent a frantic week in Tehran as a guest of the New Horizon conference of Independent Thinkers. Here is some of what I've witnessed.

Three overarching themes monopolize all important discussions in Tehran at this critical historical juncture:
1) the real possibility of a nuclear deal with the P5+1 on November 24;
2) the end of sanctions and the possibility of Iran soon starting to supply the EU with loads of natural gas;
3) the fight against ISIS/ISIL, which Iranians, as much as the Arab street, refer to as Daesh.

Everything about the nuclear deal is entangled in a dense web of information war. In Tehran I had the pleasure to spend a lot of time and go to meetings with my friend Gareth Porter, the author of the definitive book on the subject: Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iranian Nuclear Scare.

The book was meticulously translated into Farsi by the Fars News Agency, in only two months, and launched in a simple ceremony at the agency's main office. It conclusively proves, for instance, how the Iranian "plot" to equip ballistic missiles with (non-existent) nuclear warheads was entirely fabricated by the terrorist outfit Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) and then handed over to the IAEA by the Mossad.

I was quite moved by the profound respect shown to Gareth's investigative work in Tehran, in contrast to the thunderous wall of silence that greeted his book in the US. Call it yet another reflection of the 35-year old "wilderness of mirrors" - or Wall of Mistrust - opposing Washington to Tehran.

Last week, my colleague Jeff Opdyke reminded us that like all power-hungry states, the U.S. requires enemies like ISIS to keep the population distracted and mobilized against the wrong threats. As he rightly put it: "War ... gives government the cover it needs to curtail liberties and freedoms here at home. It gives government reason to rally the citizenry as the long-term health of the nation deteriorates."

Of course, war does more than just that. War generates massive flows of taxpayer money to the defense industrial sector, which passes some of it on to money-hungry politicians, who vote for more war and thus more money for defense. And so on.

After decades of nonstop warfare in the Middle East, against enemies largely imagined, many Americans react to such matters with a cynical shrug and sigh. "Whaddya gonna do? That's the way things always are," they say.

No, things are not always that way. Things are that way because we have made choices ... choices we can change.

On 7 October 2014, Hezbollah attacked Israeli forces illegally stationed in the Shebaa Farms region on Lebanese territory. This is the first attack by the Lebanese resistance against the Israeli occupying forces since the 2006 war.

The incident has been widely interpreted as a message from Hezbollah to the Jewish state to dissuade it from extending to the Lebanese-Israeli border the scheme it set up along the Syrian-Israeli border. Indeed, on 15 September hundreds of UNDOF peacekeepers withdrew from the Golan Heights after 43 of their soldiers were detained for two weeks by the Al-Nusra Front (Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda). Since that date, the buffer zone established by the United Nations after the 1973 war is de facto no longer controlled by UNDOF, but by Al-Qaeda.

The Jewish state ensures regular supplies to the Al Qaeda jihadists and treats the wounded in its military hospitals. Israeli television showed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at their bedside, comforting and congratulating the wounded jihadists.

The U.S. is conducting a curious humanitarian war against ISIS in Syria.While Kobani, the largely Kurdish district that straddles the border with Turkey is being attacked by ISIS forces and facing the very real possibility of mass civilian killings if it falls, U.S. military spokespersons claimed that they are watching the situation in Kobani and have conducted occasional bombing missions but that they are concentrating their anti-ISIS efforts in other parts of Syria. Those other efforts appear to consist of bombing empty buildings, schools, small oil pumping facilities, an occasional vehicle and grain silos where food is stored to feed the Syrian people. Turkey also seems to be watching as the Kurds of Kobani fight to the death against ISIS.


The humanitarian concerns of officials in the U.S. with the plight of Kurds in Kobani could not be more different than what occurred in Iraq when ISIS forces made a push into Kurdish territory. When the Kurdish city of Erbil was under attack by ISIS, U.S. forces unleashed the full power of its air force in tactical coordination with Kurdish forces to push ISIS back.

So what is the difference in the two situations?

The difference and the reason why the Kurds of Kobani are to be sacrificed stems from the fact that they are the wrong kind of Kurds. Masoud Barzani and the bourgeois Kurds of the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) are the "good Kurds" and the predominant force among the Kurds of Iraq. Their control of almost 45% of Iraqi oil reserves and the booming business that they have been involved in with U.S. oil companies and Israel since their "liberation" with the U.S. invasion makes them a valued asset for the U.S. The same goes for Turkey where despite the historic oppression of Kurds in Turkey, the government does a robust business with the Kurds of Iraq.

The situation is completely different in the Kurdish self-governing zones in Syria. In Kobani, it is the Kurdish People's Protection Units, or Y.P.G., that is linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (P.K.K), a Turkey-based Kurdish independence organization that both the U.S. and Turkey have labeled a "terrorist" organization, that provides the main forces resisting the ISIS attack. Also, the ISIS attack in Kurdish territory neatly converges with the strategic interests of Turkey. Both the U.S. and Turkey saw the control of territory by militant Kurds as a threat. Turkey in particular wanted to undermine the self-governing process among Kurds, Christians and Sunni Arabs in those self-governing zones and turn the territory into a battlefield in order to steal Syrian territory and isolate and attack the "bad" Kurds of the PKK.

Iran and Russia plan to establish a joint bank as an effort to multiply bilateral trade and bypass sanctions on the Islamic Republic's banking sector.

Head of the Iran-Russia Joint Chamber of Commerce Asadollah Asgaroladi said that Tehran and Moscow are studying the possibilities of opening a new chapter in trade relations that could break the domination of Western currencies over bilateral exchanges.

"Since Russian banks fear the implications of working with Iran due to sanctions, we want to establish the joint Iran-Russia bank with the help of our central banks and private sectors," Asgaroladi said.

"Such a bank would be able to exchange money between the two sides using rials and rubles and put aside dollars, euros and pounds," he added.

Several relatives of people killed in the MH17 plane crash are considering suing the Dutch state for negligence over its handling of the tragedy, the Telegraaf says on Friday.

Remarks about one of the victims wearing an oxygen mask made by foreign affairs minister Frans Timmermans on television earlier this week were 'the final straw' for some relatives, the paper says.

Relatives who had taken comfort in the fact their relatives had not suffered were shocked by the revelations. 'We did not know. This should never have happened,' one relative told the paper.

When exactly a month ago the supposedly objective, impartial Netherlands released its official, 34-page preliminary report of the MH-17 crash over Ukraine, presumably based on black box data, air traffic control records, and other "authentic, verified" information, there were precisely zero mentions of "oxygen", "mask" or "oxygen mask."

Which is odd, because in what should become the biggest Freudian slip scandal in false-flag history, certainly since the Gulf of Tonkin, yesterday Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans accidentally revealed for the very first time ever, that one of the Australian passengers aboard the doomed airplane "appears to have donned an oxygen mask before the fatal crash, suggesting some on board might have been aware of their impending deaths, a Dutch official disclosed." Clearly a crucial aspect of the crash, as it points at the severity of the alleged explosion, yet one which was not noted until yesterday and which completely skipped the purvey of the official crash report for reasons unknown.

Needless to say, this makes a complete mockery of the story that the plane had exploded upon impact with the "Russian" missile, and is why there was supposedly no trace of any impact on the flight's black box recorder. Whether or not it also means that the alternative theory that a Ukraine jet had purposefully downed the Malaysian aircraft to serve as a pretext to implicate Russia, is unclear. But it also means that yet another conspiracy theory becomes fact: namely that whoever were the western powers who doctored and manipulated the "official" crash report of MH-17 to implicate Putin, not only lied but fabricated evidence.

Under the influence of an intense disinformation campaign much of the world has tried its best to ignore the existence of the sovereign state of Novorossiya (Federativnoye Gosudarstvo Novorossiya). The Western media when it does mention Novorossiya applies denigrating terms like "self-declared state", "unrecognized state" and even "puppet republic" to describe the status of Novorossiya. In fact, under international law, Novorossiya has the same status as any other member of the community nations - it is a sovereign independent nation.

The "gold standard" of statehood is the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States enacted in 1933. The Montevideo Convention requires an aspiring state to have it own territory, population, a functioning government and the ability to enter into relationships with other states. Novorossiya, while not currently in control of all its territory, has maintained an undisputed presence in Lugansk and Donetsk, backed up by a seasoned army and security forces. There is a sizeable population in Novorossiya, despite ethnic cleansing attempts by the Ukraine government. There is a functioning government and diplomatic efforts are ongoing, as evidenced by the Minsk process. In a just and fair world then, Novorossiya would be welcomed into the fold of sovereign nations as its newest member. But the world is neither just nor fair and Novorossiya is attacked by enemies in the West and blocked on other fronts by economic sanctions and diplomatic boycotts.

Nonetheless, Novorossiya has friends. The Russian people of course overwhelmingly support this new nation and South Ossetia has welcomed Novorossiya by diplomatically recognizing it. Diplomatic recognition is an important first step towards international legitimacy since South Ossetia itself is recognized by four UN member states - Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, and Nauru. More recognition for Novorossiya of course would be desirable but is not necessary to establish legitimacy. Somaliland, for example, which has been sovereign since 1991 and is recognized by no other country, yet has maintained its complete independence and conducts business worldwide, issues passports and currency, and defends itself without any disapproval from the major powers. Novorossiya, unlike Somaliland, is an industrialized nation in Europe and not on the periphery of Africa; its relevance as an independent nation is assured.