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Behind the Headlines: Russell Brand, NSA Leaks, U.S. government shutdown

Sott Editors
Sott.net
Sun, 27 Oct 2013 19:00 UTC
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'All and Everything' returns this week as we discuss the attention a British celebrity has brought to the dire state of affairs for people and planet, the latest NSA Leaks, the narrowly-avoided U.S. dollar default and more!

Russell Brand on revolution: hero or villain? And what about Ed Snowden? Sincere people speaking truth to power, a case of the blind leading the blind, or is something else afoot?

NSA-gate continues courtesy of The Guardian, Glenn Greenwald and Le Monde, through which it emerged this week that Israeli signals intelligence, and not the NSA, was behind massive electronic spying on the French government and people.

America narrowly avoided a currency default, but in the meantime the rest of the world is preparing for life after the petro-dollar... what are you doing to prepare for global systemic collapse?

Meanwhile, Japan has been smacked by dozens of typhoons in quick succession, record early snowfalls have hit northern U.S. states, a(nother) record-breaking heatwave is frying everything in Australia, and fireballs continue raining down from space - NASA's All-Sky Fireball Network captured 15 of them over the U.S. on October 16 alone...

Running Time: 02:05:00

Download: MP3

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Bad Guys

US Counter-insurgency: Roadside bomb 'kills 18 civilians' in central Afghanistan


AFP
Sun, 27 Oct 2013 10:30 UTC
Wedding party bombing
© AP
Afghan men offer funeral prayers near the bodies of 7 civilians killed, by a roadside bomb in the Alingar district of Laghman province, east of Kabul, Afghanistan, June 03, 2013.
A roadside bomb blast on Sunday killed at least 18 civilians, mostly women, as they were heading to a wedding party in central Afghanistan, provincial officials said.

"A roadside bomb planted by the enemies of Afghanistan in Andar district of Ghazni province hit a civilian vehicle around 4:30pm," Mosa Khan Akbarzada, Ghazni provincial governor, told AFP.

"Unfortunately, we have 14 women, three men, and a child onboard martyred in this tragic incident," Akbarzada said.

Deputy provincial police chief Asadullah Insafi confirmed the attack and gave a similar account. He also said five women had been taken to hospital.

Roadside bombs have in the past been planted by Taliban militants to target Afghan security forces and NATO-led US troops.

Often they miss the targets, and civilians pay the price.

There was no immediate comment from the Taliban Sunday.

Ghazni is a volatile province in central Afghanistan.

Comment: The key aim of counter-insurgency is to make the enemy so hated by the local population that they will not get any support
from there. This has long been a deliberate strategy by the US in Afghanistan and Iraq.It is hoped that the government and the local people will then beg the US troops to stay and give the US troops immunity from any crimes that they commit while there.

From Suicide Bombings - A Favourite US Counter-Insurgency Tactic:
Roger Trinquier, an immensely influential French counter-insurgency expert, suggested in his book Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency (1961) (Available online here) three simple principles of Counter Insurgency:
1. separate the guerrilla from the population that supports him;

2. occupy the zones that the guerrillas previously operated from, making them dangerous for him and turning the people against the guerrilla movement;

3. coordinate actions over a wide area and for a long enough time that the guerrilla is denied access to the population centers that could support him.
Remote controlled bombings masquerading as "suicide bombings" that are carried out by the US, British and Israeli occupation forces fit these principles very neatly. By detonating bombs on a daily basis across Iraq and Afghanistan and via the propaganda organs touting them as being the work of Iraqi/Afghani "suicide bombers" belonging to the insurgency, the occupying military hopes to achieve several goals:

cut off the widespread support base that the insurgency have amongst the Iraqis

create tensions between religious lines, especially by ascribing the faked "suicide attacks" to either Shias or Sunnis.

In other words divide and conquer.


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Question

Will the House of Saud pivot to China?

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times Online
Sun, 27 Oct 2013 10:08 UTC
China and Saudi Arabia
© Elaine Meinel Supkis
The favorite geopolitical sport du jour is to deconstruct the reasons why the House of Saud - that marriage of hyper-absolute monarchy and Wahhabi fanatics - has gone completely bonkers, with the ineffable Bandar Bush in the frontline.

They are terrified with the possibility that the 34-year Wall of Mistrust between Washington and Tehran finally tumbles down. They are terrified that those American infidels refused to fight "our" regime change war on Syria. They were horrified by (mild) criticism about hardcore repression in Bahrain (which was invaded by Saudi in 2011, by the way). They abhor the American worshipping of that weird deity - democracy - that allowed friendly tyrants in Tunisia and Egypt to be abandoned (Libya is different; King Abdullah had wanted Gaddafi snuffed since at least 2002).

The House of Saud is so mad as hell at the Obama administration that even "all options" are supposed to be "on the table". Which begs the question; what if Riyadh is actually dreaming of pivoting to China?
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Dollar Gold

Bank of America liable for mortgage "Hustle" program

Jason M. Breslow
PBS
Thu, 24 Oct 2013 15:17 UTC
Bank of America sign
© PBS

For the first time, a major U.S. bank has been found liable for fraud in the sale of defective mortgages during the lead-up to the 2008 financial crisis.

On Wednesday, a federal jury in New York found Bank of America guilty of defrauding taxpayers in the sale of thousands of defective home loans from its Countrywide Financial unit to the government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The civil suit centered on a lending program referred to within Countrywide as "the Hustle." According to prosecutors, the program was designed to process mortgages at rapid speed without adequate checks on risk. Bankers were allegedly awarded bonuses based on how quickly they were able to originate loans. Countrywide earned $165 million on the program, but when the mortgages later soured, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were left with more than $1 billion in losses.

The jury of six women and four men also found a former Countrywide executive, Rebecca Mairone, liable for her role in leading the Hustle initiative. An attorney for Mairone, who now works for JPMorgan Chase, told The New York Times that his client "never engaged in any fraud because there was no fraud. We'll fight on."
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Sherlock

Armed agents seize records of reporter, Washington Times prepares legal action

Gut Taylor
The Washington Times
Fri, 25 Oct 2013 00:01 UTC
U.S. Department of Homeland Security seal
© Associated Press
Maryland state police and federal agents used a search warrant in an unrelated criminal investigation to seize the private reporting files of an award-winning former investigative journalist for The Washington Times who had exposed problems in the Homeland Security Department's Federal Air Marshal Service.

Reporter Audrey Hudson said the investigators, who included an agent for Homeland's Coast Guard service, took her private notes and government documents that she had obtained under the Freedom of Information Act during a predawn raid of her family home on Aug. 6.

The documents, some which chronicled her sources and her work at the Times about problems inside the Homeland Security Department, were seized under a warrant to search for unregistered firearms and a "potato gun" suspected of belonging to her husband, Paul Flanagan, a Coast Guard employee. Mr. Flanagan has not been charged with any wrongdoing since the raid.
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Eye 1

NSA and CIA have been tapping all communication in Berlin's government district for at least 10 years: Der Spiegel

Kevin Rawlinson
The Observer
Sun, 27 Oct 2013 05:46 UTC
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Obama pretending he isn't already familiar with the content of Merkel's speech.
Move comes as Der Spiegel reports that Angela Merkel's phone might have been monitored for more than 10 years

New claims emerged last night over the extent that US intelligence agencies have been monitoring the mobile phone of Angela Merkel. The allegations were made after German secret service officials were already preparing to travel to Washington to seek explanations into the alleged surveillance of its chancellor.

A report in Der Spiegel said Merkel's mobile number had been listed by the NSA's Special Collection Service (SCS) since 2002 and may have been monitored for more than 10 years. It was still on the list - marked as "GE Chancellor Merkel" - weeks before President Barack Obama visited Berlin in June.

In an SCS document cited by the magazine, the agency said it had a "not legally registered spying branch" in the US embassy in Berlin, the exposure of which would lead to "grave damage for the relations of the United States to another government".
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Cell Phone

NSA whistleblower Russell Tice says anyone and everyone's communications were being monitored, even Obama's in 2004

VulgarTrader
YouTube
Tue, 25 Jun 2013 05:34 UTC
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Courtesy of the Boiling Frog podcast, we have this clip of NSA whistleblower Russell Tice discussing the extent of the NSA recording all forms of electronic communications. Tice was the source for the New York Times's 2005 story on the Bush administration's illegal wiretaps.

Here, he describes who is begin targeted, and the results are frightening. Judges, Congresspersons (especially those involved in national security), journalists, and even prospective candidates like 2004 US senatorial candidate from Illinois, Barack Obama.


See the full interview and more here
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Stormtrooper

Brutal cop who drenched University of California Occupy protesters with pepper-spray awarded $40k compensation 'for anxiety and stress'


RT
Fri, 25 Oct 2013 16:27 UTC
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Assaulting peaceful protesters with pepper spray can be awfully stressful, and John Pike certainly knows it better than most. Now a judge has awarded $38,000 to the former University of California cop filmed discharging his weapon on Occupy demonstrators.

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Dollar

The other energy scandal - power giants use loophole to cut their own tax bills

Richard Whittell & Emily Dugan
The Independent, UK
Sat, 26 Oct 2013 15:44 UTC
Energy Companies
© The Independent, UK

As Britons buckle under the pressure of soaring energy bills, The Independent on Sunday can reveal the energy companies that are saving millions by exploiting a legal tax loophole.

Scotia Gas, 50 per cent of which is owned by SSE, the energy giant which is about to put its prices up by more than 8 per cent, has avoided an estimated £72.5m in tax. UK Power Networks and Electricity North West, responsible for running large sections of Britain's electricity network, have both saved more than £30m.

More than 30 UK companies have cut taxable profits by racking up interest on debt from their owners. In doing so, this minimises - in some cases wipes out - their UK corporation tax bill. As most of the owners are based abroad, 20 per cent of the interest payments would usually have to be sent straight to HMRC, minimising the overall saving. But as the money is lent via offshore stock exchanges that qualify for a regulatory loophole called the "quoted Eurobond exemption", no tax is withheld.

The revealing extent of the avoidance prompted Labour leader Ed Miliband to say yesterday: "Since David Cameron has been Prime Minister, energy bills have gone up by an average of £300 because he has refused to stand up to big energy companies. On top of failing to address the broken energy market, David Cameron is failing to stamp out tax avoidance. We have a prime minister unwilling to take the side of hard-working people. Unwilling to act against the energy companies, unwilling to clamp down on tax avoidance and close down tax loopholes."

The revelations are part of a joint investigation with Corporate Watch, a not-for-profit research group.
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USA

Michelle Obama's Princeton classmate is executive at company that built Obamacare website

Patrick Howley
The Daily Caller
Fri, 25 Oct 2013 16:57 UTC
ObamaCare
© The Daily Caller
First Lady Michelle Obama's Princeton classmate is a top executive at the company that earned the contract to build the failed Obamacare website.

Toni Townes-Whitley, Princeton class of '85, is senior vice president at CGI Federal, which earned the no-bid contract to build the $678 million Obamacare enrollment website at Healthcare.gov. CGI Federal is the U.S. arm of a Canadian company.

Townes-Whitley and her Princeton classmate Michelle Obama are both members of the Association of Black Princeton Alumni.

Toni Townes '85 is a onetime policy analyst with the General Accounting Office and previously served in the Peace Corps in Gabon, West Africa. Her decision to return to work, as an African-American woman, after six years of raising kids was applauded by a Princeton alumni publication in 1998
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