CIA Director John Brennan warns that Iran will face "tremendous costs" if no nuclear deal is reached and it pursues the development of nuclear weapons.

"I think they realize there's going to be tremendous costs and consequences and implications if they were to decide to go for a breakout," Brennan said in an interview on "Fox News Sunday," reiterating the administration is committed to preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, even if a deal fails. "If they decide to go down that route," he said, "they know they will do so at their peril."

The administration is in the midst of negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, despite a deeply skeptical Republican Congress.

Asked about the ability to monitor Iran's nuclear activity, Brennan stressed "it's not a question of trusting the Iranians on this," adding the U.S. is in a position to "verify" Iranian pledges. And asked about a potential secret nuclear site in Iran, he responded only by expressing his confidence in U.S. intelligence services.

Brennan was also pressed about Iran's role in combating the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in the Middle East.

Hardly a day goes by without ISIS making the headlines. If they're not staging terror attacks wielding Kalashnikovs, then you can be sure they're plotting to do something that threatens Western 'freedom and democracy.' The first to inform us are, of course, U.S. officials; somehow they're always first in the know. Apparently, ISIS could now be plotting to build a 'drone army.'

As U.S.-led coalition forces confirm they shot down an ISIS drone this week, experts warn the extremists could soon adapt the technology for battle purposes.

The self-proclaimed Islamic State—also known as ISIS or ISIL—has added drones to its arsenal, and for the first time, the U.S.-led coalition took one of their drones out, officials announced Wednesday.

While U.S. officials are quick to denounce anyone who questions or reveals their terror activities as a 'conspiracy theorist' and are every ready to ratchet up even more plans designed to demonize such people, they have no qualms about spreading some of these theories themselves. After all, if it comes from the mouths of the official talking heads, then it must be OK.

"They don't have reusable attack drones, but I think it is just a matter of time before they jury-rig surveillance drones into flying IEDs. Basically, they could turn them into little kamikaze drones."

Largely omitted from the article is the fact that another extremist group - this one not waving a black-and-white flag but wearing suits and ties and sitting in high offices somewhere in the U.S. - has already adapted the said technology for surveillance and battle purposes and is terrorizing the population of Middle East, Central Asia, Africa and elsewhere across the planet. According to one report, the recipient of the most people killed by drones Nobel Peace Prize, the poster child of the U.S. empire, Obama, has killed more people with drones than died on 9/11.

Federal drug agents may be racially profiling and unjustly seizing cash from travelers in the nation's airports, bus stations and train stations. A new report released by the Office of the Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Justice examined the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)'s controversial use of "cold consent."

In a cold consent encounter, a person is stopped if an agent thinks that person's behavior fits a drug courier profile. Or an agent can stop a person cold "based on no particular behavior," according to the Inspector General report. The agent then asks people they have stopped for consent to question them and sometimes to search their possessions as well. By gaining consent, law enforcement officers can bypass the need for a warrant.

But after reviewing the DEA's policies, the Inspector General concluded, "cold consent encounters and searches can raise civil rights concerns." In one incident, DEA agents cold-stopped an African-American woman at an airport and allegedly subjected her to "aggressive and humiliating questioning"; the woman was a Pentagon lawyer and travelling on government business.

Are financial fraud and market manipulations actually mechanisms for financing the black budget and centralized governance necessitated by high-tech secrecy?

Ukrainian Security Services "agents" have detained, blindfolded and handcuffed an OSCE monitor in the Kiev-controlled city of Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine. Having found out his identity, the three men in balaclavas released the monitor "with apologies."

The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) in its daily report confirmed that as soon as one of its members disembarked the train in Kramatorsk on Thursday, he was immediately apprehended by men in civilian clothes wearing sky-masks.

"An SMM monitor was approached by three men in civilian clothes, two of them wearing balaclavas and holstered weapons. The monitor was handcuffed and hooded before being asked to identify himself," the report says.

The organization does not provide any details as to how long the monitor was held handcuffed or how the person was treated. OSCE notes, however, that once the identity was established, "he was released with apologies."

Broadcasting from deep in the heart of the American Empire, join your hosts Harrison Koehli and Elan Martin, and fellow Sott.net editors, as they discuss everything from current events and the latest machinations and manipulations of the global elite to history, science, and religion, and how it all fits together.

This week, IMEMC's Alexandra Halaby is back to update us on the latest news from Israel and Palestine, including the recent Israeli elections. After that, we will be discussing current events, the background to the Syrian crisis, and more.

The Truth Perspective is brought to you by the SOTT Radio Network and SOTT.net, your one-stop source for independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events.

Live every Saturday from 2-4pm EST / 11am-1pm PST / 7-9pm CET.

Running Time: 01:37:00

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Here's the transcript of the show:

Nothing you write, say, text, tweet or share via phone or computer is private anymore.

This is the new normal in America today.

A process which started shortly after 9/11 has grown into a full-fledged campaign of warrantless surveillance, electronic tracking and data mining, carried out by federal agents who have been given carte blanche access to the vast majority of electronic communications in America. Their methods completely undermine constitution safeguards, and yet no federal agency, president, court or legislature has stepped up to halt this assault on our rights.

In fact, Congress, the courts, and the president (starting with George W. Bush and expanding exponentially under Barack Obama) have actively helped to erect this electronic concentration camp in which we are now imprisoned.

Despite negative noises from the US, Switzerland and Luxembourg have become the latest European nations to apply to join the Beijing-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the Chinese Finance Ministry announced.

Earlier in March, the EU's leading economies - the UK, France and Germany - announced plans to participate in the new international financial institution.

China's Finance Ministry released a statement on Friday saying it welcomes the Swiss decision to apply.

Switzerland is to become the bank's founding member later this month if other nation members involved approve its candidacy.

The ministry released a separate statement on March 20, saying Luxembourg also wants to join the China-led project.

It has been already 6 years since I interviewed Gilad for the first time and when a friend recently suggested that it was time for a new conversation, I immediately agreed, as did Gilad who, in spite of his over-booked and hectic lifestyle took the time to reply to my questions. Gilad is, in my opinion, not only the most original and talented jazz musician currently composing and playing (make sure to get his latest CD "The Whistle Blower"), he is also an extremely profound philosopher who has the amazing courage not only to ask the key questions, but to also answer them. His book "The Wandering Who" is, I strongly believe, a must read for anybody wanting to see through the "fog" of modern "Jewish anti-Zionism". As somebody who has gotten his share of hate mail, I can only begin to imagine the kind of hate-filled poison which Gilad has had to put up with for his courage and even though he will not speak about it, I will say that it takes exceptional courage and moral strength to do what Gilad did and is still doing. So, with no hyperbole at all, but quite literally, I will say that Gilad Atzmon is a modern hero whose courage and phenomenal intellect will, I am sure, eventually be recognized as one of the most brilliant ones of our time. I am deeply honored that he considers me to be a friend.

The Saker

"What the darkness cannot possess, it seeks to destroy"
You've probably read all sorts of theories that seek to explain the causes of the 'new cold war' in which we find ourselves. From the embarrassingly simplistic "Putin's a Hitler" offered by the Western press to the more nuanced idea of an 'energy war' between US-Europe-Russia. The truth about why we are where we are right now, as a species, however, is actually fairly simple. But to understand it you'll have to ditch the idea of a 'new cold war' and replace it with 'the 120-year-old war that never ended'.

If you like your history condensed and relevant to current events, then read on.

Over 100 years ago, in 1904, one of the founding fathers of both geopolitics and geostrategy, Oxford University graduate and co-founder of the London School of Economics, Sir Halford Mackinder, proposed a theory that expanded geopolitical analysis from the local or regional level to a global level. Geopolitics is the study (by people in positions of power) of the effects of geography (human and physical) on international politics and international relations. In layman's terms, this means the study of how best to control as much of the world - its resources, human and natural - as possible. When you or I think about the world, we think of a big, complicated place with billions of people. When the 'elite' think of the world, they think of a globe, or a map, with nation states on it that can, and should, according to them, be shaped and changed en masse.

Mackinder separated the world into just a few regions.

• The 'world Island', an area roughly comprising the interlinked continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa.
• The offshore islands, including the British Isles and the islands of Japan.
• The outlying islands, including the continents of North America, South America, and Australia.

The most important of these, by far, was the 'world island' and in particular what he called the 'heartland', which basically means Russia. Mackinder said that whoever controls the 'heartland' (Russia) controls the 'world island' (Eurasia and Africa), and whoever controls that, controls the world. It's a fairly self-evident analysis of the situation because the great majority of the world's population and resources are on the Eurasian continent, and holding a vast northern position on that landmass - with your rearguard protected by an impassable frozen ocean - gives you the prime vantage point, or 'higher ground' if you will.