Investigation uncovers FSB surveillance system – branded 'Prism on steroids' – to listen to all athletes and visitors. ● Russia to monitor 'all communications' at Winter Olympics in Sochi "Athletes and spectators attending the Winter Olympics in Sochi in February will face some of the most invasive and systematic spying and surveillance in the history of the Games, documents shared with the Guardian show." Russia's powerful FSB security service plans to ensure that no communication by competitors or spectators goes unmonitored during the event, according to a dossier compiled by a team of Russian investigative journalists looking into preparations for the 2014 Games.

The NSA spying scandal has woken Brazil out of its data protection doze. Plans are being made for an optical network to link twelve South American countries with Europe and Africa, and largely avoid the US. ● Brazilhas decided to free itself from the embrace of its big brother to the north. Ever since the NSA data spying affair became known, the government has begun looking for ways to decentralize global data communication. "It doesn't make sense for data between Brazil and Uruguay to run via Miami," says the Brazilian secretary of state of telecommunication, Maximiliano Martinhao. He told Deutsche Welle that, ever since the NSA revelations, the long-planned development of South America's own fast Internet infrastructure has become a major priority. Martinhao says that preparations are already completed for the so-called Optical Ring, which will join twelve South American countries with each other, as well as with Europe and Africa. The project encompasses some 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles) of optical cable, and work on laying the cables will start at the beginning of 2014.

Russia Today: Canadian spy agency ‘dissected’ Brazilian Energy Ministry

The Syrian government faultlessly cooperates with international inspectors on the elimination of chemical weapons and Moscow hopes that this will continue in the future, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said. ● "Throughout all these weeks since the moment Syria joined the Chemical Weapons Convention Damascus has faultlessly cooperated with international inspectors. We hope that it will remain so in the future," he said after talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry. Lavrov also said that Russia is satisfied with the unfolding process of chemical disarmament in Syria.

VoR: Warheads destroyed as Syria chemical arms removal begins - UN

President Al-Assad's interview with Italian (Rai News 24) - 29 September 2013

A new regulation will allow Turkish police to detain those who possess the “risk of conducting a protest” from 12 to 24 hours without the demand of a prosecutor or a judge, prompting acute worries from opposition deputies. The new regulations that will be conducted jointly by the justice and interior ministries will allow the police to detain a suspect who “may hold a protest” for up to 24 hours without any court decision while also increasing the penalties for resistance to police and damaging public property.

Iranian nuclear chief says 'saboteurs' were caught red-handed and are being questioned. At least four people have been arrested in Iran for trying to sabotage a nuclear site, an Iranian official has been quoted by the country's media as saying. ● The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, Ali Akbar Salehi, said officials had monitored and then arrested a "number of saboteurs" before they could carry out their plan. "Four of these individuals were caught red-handed and their interrogations are ongoing," he said, according to the Mehr news agency on Sunday. He did not identify which nuclear site they were planning to damage or when those detained were arrested.

Fars News Agency: Iran Stops Several Acts of Sabotage against N. Facilities in Recent Days

[A profoundly evil man], influential spiritual leader of Sephardic Jewish community and ultra-Orthodox Shas party dies in Jerusalem hospital. ■ Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, 93, underwent heart surgery at Jerusalem's Hadassah hospital on September 23 where he had remained since then, with doctors saying just days ago his condition had improved. But late on Sunday, the hospital said his condition had suddenly worsened, with medics confirming it as critical on Monday. "After a long struggle, the rabbi died just a few moments ago," the hospital spokesman told public radio on Monday. Yosef, whose son Yitzhak Yosef was elected chief rabbi of Israel's Sephardic Jews in June, a post he himself had previously held, had been in and out of hospital for months. He wielded enormous influence among Israeli Jews of Middle Eastern and North African ancestry, and had frequently been a kingmaker in the country's fickle coalition politics.

“Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world; only to serve the People of Israel,” he said during a public discussion of what kind of work non-Jews are allowed to perform on Shabbat. “Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat,” he said to some laughter.

Major Jewish Newspaper Praises Vicious Anti-Gentile Chief Rabbi as “Well-Respected Giant”

The BBC has admitted it breached its own guidelines on accuracy in presenting a pro-Israeli commentator as an independent analyst during Israel’s assault on Gaza in November 2012. ● Jonathan Sacerdoti appeared on BBC News 24 four times over two days at the beginning of the eight day attack to give his assessment of the events leading up to Israel’s actions. On each occasion, he was introduced as ‘Jonathan Sacerdoti of the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy’, and the name of this supposedly neutral think tank appeared on-screen during his appearances. Over two days, Sacerdoti defended Israel’s right to attack and presented a pro-Israeli perspective. No commentator was interviewed alongside him to give a Palestinian point of view. Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) wrote to the BBC to ask why it was misleading viewers by presenting Sacerdoti as being a neutral expert on Israel and Palestine, when he is, in fact, strongly Zionist.

Gilad Atzmon ■ JTA Reports: ‘Jewish game developer to market Holocaust game for smartphones’ British game developer Luc Bernard, 26, announced this week his plan to search for funding for his new Holocaust game. The Holocaust-themed game was apparently rejected by the anti-Semitic Nintendo because it was deemed ‘unfit for children.’

It made me wonder, since when do Goyim decide how to raise or educate their children? Unlike unimaginative Nintendo, Bernard knows about education. First, he is young and childish, second, his mother is “Jewish and her mother looked after orphaned Jewish children after World War II.” The game features the character of a young boy named Hammed who lives in Gaza 2013. Hammed seeks to escape the reality of Israeli blockade and introduces us to his fantasy world. Don’t worry, I am just pulling your leg here...

● In a stealthy seaside assault in Somalia and in a raid in Libya's capital, U.S. special forces on Saturday struck out against Islamic extremists who have carried out terrorist attacks in East Africa, snatching a Libyan al-Qaida leader allegedly involved in the bombings of U.S. embassies 15 years ago but aborting a mission to capture a terrorist suspect linked to last month's Nairobi shopping mall attack after a fierce firefight.
● A U.S. Navy SEAL team swam ashore near a town in southern Somalia before militants of the al-Qaida-linked terrorist group al-Shabab rose for dawn prayers, U.S. and Somali officials told The Associated Press. The raid on a house in the town of Barawe targeted a specific al-Qaida suspect related to the mall attack, but the operation did not get its target, one current and one former U.S. military official told AP.

The Idiot Savant Speaks: Kerry insists latest US raid in Libya is ‘legal’, and will ‘do it again’
Bin Laden’s trusted lieutenant captured by U.S. forces in Libya was given political asylum by Britain
VoR: US kidnap Al Qaeda suspect, interrogate him without laywer on Navy Ship
PressTV: Kerry defends US capture of Libya man as ‘appropriate and legal' - Video
Ron Paul: Covert US Action Brings Overt Failures in Africa
Jason Ditz: Kerry Brags About Raids: They Can Run But They Can’t Hide
Andrew Gavin Marshall: Political Language and the 'Mafia Principles' of International Relations

An “additional 15 to 25 million people across Europe could face the prospect of living in poverty by 2025,” according to the development charity Oxfam. In a report, “A Cautionary Tale—The true cost of austerity and inequality in Europe,” it states bluntly that “Europe is facing a lost decade.” Austerity measures across Europe resulted from the financial crisis of 2008 as the ruling elite sought to make workers pay for the cost of bailing out the banks. The report notes that “the richest in many European countries affected by austerity have seen their share of income rise, the very poorest have seen their incomes fall.”

Buoyed by the third-largest oil reserves in the former Soviet Union and $40 billion of investment from BP Plc (BP/) and its partners, Aliyev is betting he can overcome protests and avoid the fate of other Muslim autocrats such as Assad, who’s embroiled in a 2 1/2-year civil war and under threat of U.S. air strikes. A constant reminder of the source of Aliyev’s power, a lone oil rig toils away on the horizon from Baku’s lavish seaside villas. Beyond view, more like it are drilling 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) into the world’s largest lake to feed the BP-led pipeline that terminates on Turkey’s Mediterranean shore. Then-U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman joined Aliyev in 2005 to inaugurate the 1,100-mile link, which is partly owned by U.S.- based Chevron Corp. (CVX) and ConocoPhillips. (COP)

One in three American servicemen permanently disabled, 'the worst genetic damage in any population ever studied', 'confirmed' US govt behind world record Afghan opium crop, and October's protest calendar. Seek truth from facts with Iraqi-Kurdish activist Houzan Mahmoud, Afghan war specialist Prof. Anatol Lieven, former intelligence officer Scott Rickard, Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Conn Hallinan, and the author of Questioning the War on Terror Dr. Kevin Barrett. READ FULL SCRIPT

At least five civilians, including three children, were killed overnight in a NATO airstrike in eastern Afghanistan after they went hunting for birds with air guns, local officials said Saturday. ● "Last night around 11:00 pm, five civilians aged between 12 and 20 carrying air guns wanted to go hunting birds some eight kilometers (five miles) from the center of the city of Jalalabad. They were targeted and killed by a foreign forces airstrike," said Hazrat Hussain Mashreqiwal, a provincial police spokesman. A NATO spokesman said Afghan and Coalition forces had responded to an attack with a "precision strike" and that "initial reports indicate there were no civilian casualties." Civilian deaths have been a source of friction between the Afghan government and U.S.-led NATO troops, who are winding down operations as they prepare to withdraw by the end of 2014.

Senior al-Qaida commander accused of orchestrating 1998 US embassy bombings is captured in Tripoli. ● US special forces have carried out raids in Libya and Somalia targeting Islamist militants. The US captured a senior al-Qaida member in Tripoli and launched a dawn raid on the southern Somali hideout of one of the heads of al-Shabaab, the group behind the Kenyan mall attack, but its forces were forced to withdraw, the Pentagon said. US officials confirmed that forces operating in Libya had managed to capture Abu Anas al-Liby, accused of orchestrating the 1998 bombings of the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. His apprehension ended a 15-year manhunt.

The Guardian: Libya demands explanation for 'kidnapping' of citizen by US forces