SPY

"A U.S. official confirmed Sunday that a decision had been made to conduct such patrols but said it was unclear when that might happen or where exactly. 'It’s just a matter of time when it happens,' the official said. Another U.S. official indicated that the operation could come within days."

Long before Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden were being castigated for blowing the whistle on the government’s war crimes and the National Security Agency’s abuse of its surveillance powers, it was Lennon who was being singled out for daring to speak truth to power about the government’s warmongering, his phone calls monitored and data files collected on his activities and associations. For a little while, at least, Lennon became enemy number one in the eyes of the U.S. government.

“They want to own your phone instead of you.” Snowden's most recent revelations should worry anyone who cares about human rights, especially in an era where the threat of terrorism is used to justify all sorts of governmental crimes against civil liberties. We have willingly given up our freedoms in the name of security; as a result we have neither.

“If the US is serious about ensuring that China does not dominate these waters, then the longer it waits, the riskier its freedom-of-navigation activities will become.”

• Congress probing U.S. spy agencies' possible lapses on Russia (Reuters)
• Defense Ministers From NATO Hit Out at Russian Action in Syria (WSJ)
• U.S. Rules Out Cooperation With Russia as Moscow Launches First Naval Strikes on Syria (WSJ)
• Man Who Called China's Boom and Bust Says Use This Rally to Sell (BBG)
• For Volkswagen, New Questions Arise on U.S. Injury Reporting (BBG)
• Deutsche Bank May Swell $14 Billion Selloff in China Bank Stakes (BBG)
• Emerging market slowdown hits German exports (FT)

As the German refugee crisis has now dragged down not only Merkel, whose popularity rating just tumbled to a four year low "reflecting growing concern over the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees into Germany, a poll showed on Thursday", but has exposed "free speech" advocate Facebook as merely another government propaganda pawn, Germany has been scrambling to find some silver lining on this scandal. It did just that on Friday, when the bank with the greatest amount of notional derivatives in Europe and the world, Deutsche Bank, raised its German 2016 GDP forecast "because the heavy influx of migrants would increase consumption as much as half a percentage point."

"They’re hopping mad in Saudi Arabia, the U.S. And Qatar because of their defeat and the victory of Russia and Syria and the unraveling of the fact that the U.S. and its allies are not serious about fighting Islamic State. Those who claim to be concerned about the Syrian people are the ones slaughtering the Syrian people through the terrorists."

"He deliberately tries to do things to throw opponents off balance and he’s always trying to get some sort of element of surprise and tactical advantage over people, that’s sort of what keeps him going is this constant springing surprises and flipping events in his favor."

We are a scant 40 years away from the futuristic world that science fiction author Philip K. Dick envisioned for Minority Report in which the government is all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful, and if you dare to step out of line, dark-clad police SWAT teams will crack a few skulls to bring the populace under control. Increasingly, the world around us resembles Dick’s dystopian police state in which the police combine widespread surveillance, behavior prediction technologies, data mining and precognitive technology to capture would-be criminals before they can do any damage. In other words, the government’s goal is to prevent crimes before they happen: precrime.

"Germany's domestic intelligence chief warned on Sunday of a radicalisation of Right-wing groups amid a record influx of migrants, as xenophobic rallies and clashes shook several towns at the weekend."

Clash of the Titans? President "we don't spy/cyberhack other nations" Obama and President "we don't devalue our currency" Xi will hold a joint press conference to show the world how much US and China love each other (despite China dumping Treasuries and looming US cybersecurity sanctions on China)... grab your popcorn as Xi is supposedly taking questions from the Western press...

There is blood on the streets wherever you look in Brazil today, but probably of most interest to the hundreds of US asset managers (the ones managing your mutual funds) is what happens to Petrobras as it remains so widely held. As we noted below, bond prices are collapsing and default risk is soaring, and with the nation's currency collapsing amid the lower-for-longer oil prices, $90 billion of dollar-denominated debt could soon potentially be too burdensome for the company to repay.