The last few days have seen Ukraine's far right groups in action again: violently dispersing an anti-government protest on Maidan Square hours after they violently dispersed an attempt to hold a gay pride parade in Kiev.

The two incidents taken together illustrate the role of far right groups in today's Ukraine.

Western governments and media try to minimise the importance of these groups by pointing to their very limited election success.

"Washington is not looking for peace or war. They're looking for domination. If they can achieve domination peacefully - that's fine. If they can't, they'll use war. It's that simple."

— William Blum, Interview with Russia Today

"The U.S. is frantically surrounding China with military weapons, advanced aircraft, naval fleets and a multitude of military bases from Japan, South Korea and the Philippines through several nearby smaller Pacific islands to its new and enlarged base in Australia.... The U.S. naval fleet, aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines patrol China's nearby waters. Warplanes, surveillance planes, drones and spying satellites cover the skies, creating a symbolic darkness at noon."

— Jack A. Smith, "Hegemony Games: USA vs. PRC", CounterPunch

The vast build up of military assets in the Asia-Pacific signals a fundamental change in U.S. policy towards China. Washington no longer believes that China can be integrated into the existing US-led system. Recent actions taken by China - particularly the announcement that it planned to launch an Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) that would compete head-to-head with the World Bank and IMF— have set off alarms in the Capital where behind-the-scenes powerbrokers and think tank pundits agree that a more "robust" policy is needed to slow China's ascendency. The current confrontation in the South China Sea - where the US has demanded that China immediately cease all land reclamation activities - indicates that the new policy has already been activated increasing the prospects of a conflagration between the two nuclear-armed adversaries.

There's no need to go over the details of China's land reclamation activities in the Spratly Islands since reasonable people can agree that Washington has no real interest in a few piles of sand heaped up on reefs 10,000 miles from the United States. The man-made islands pose no threat to US national security or to freedom of navigation. The Obama administration is merely using the Spratlys as a pretext to provoke, intimidate and harass Beijing. The Spratly's provide a justification for escalation, for building an anti-China coalition among US allies in the region, for demonizing China in the media, for taking steps to disrupt China's ambitious Silk Roads economic strategy, and for encircling China to the West with US warships that threaten China's access to critical shipping lanes and vital energy supplies. This is the ultimate objective; to bring China to its knees and to force it to comply with Washington's diktats. This is what Washington really wants.

Citing a series of geopolitical, economic and social setbacks faced by the United States since the turn of the century, geopolitical analyst and Sao Paulo Business School Professor Antonio Gelis-Filho argues that global policy planners must prepare to deal with the "improbable, but by all means possible, Soviet-style collapse of the United States."

The man responsible for overseeing Fifa's reform process in the current crisis has confirmed that Russia and Qatar may be stripped of their World Cup hosting rights if conclusive new proof of corruption emerges.

"If evidence should emerge that the awards to Qatar and Russia only came about thanks to bought votes then the awards could be invalidated," said Domenico Scala, the independent chairman of Fifa's audit and compliance committee, in an interview with the Swiss newspaper SonntagsZeitung. "This evidence has not yet been brought forth."

Scala has made similar comments before but in light of the ongoing Swiss investigation and confirmation that the FBI has now widened its probe to include 2018 and 2022, his intervention takes on a new significance.

New evidence has emerged, meanwhile, alleging that the former Fifa vice president Jack Warner used a $10m payment from Fifa, made on behalf of South African World Cup organisers, for money laundering, personal loans and credit card payments.

The new evidence, obtained by the BBC, appears to show how the 2008 payments from Fifa - ostensibly for a Diaspora Legacy Programme promised by South African World Cup organisers - ended up in accounts controlled by Warner.

JTA Supermarkets, the largest chain in Warner's native Trinidad & Tobago, received $4.8m, according to accounts seen by the BBC.

The US indictment that charged 14 Fifa officials of 47 counts of racketeering and fraud had earlier alleged that Warner "laundered the funds through accounts held in the name of a large supermarket chain and affiliated investment company in Trinidad".

The Canadian media has highlighted Prime Minister Harper's one on one meeting with Ukraine's president Poroshenko in Kiev (June 5, 2015). The official story which has been fed to Canadians is that Ottawa is providing "non-lethal aid" as well support to the country's civilian police force:

"We supply a range of non-lethal military equipment," Harper said... While disappointed about this, Poroshenko praised Canada for supporting Ukraine since "the first hours" of his presidency and said the military aid it had provided to his country, such as medical kits and mobile hospitals, "addressed an acute problem. (National Post, June 6, 2015, emphasis added)

Harper also announced that Canada would be sending 10 police officers to Ukraine to help reform the country's security sector in a partnership with the United States.

Harper announced the $5 million project during a visit in which he watched training exercises by police cadets. ... (CP News 24, June 6, 2015, emphasis added)

"Until they become conscious, they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled, they cannot become conscious."—George Orwell

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

It's a shell game intended to keep us focused on and distracted by all of the politically expedient things that are being said—about militarized police, surveillance, and government corruption—while the government continues to frogmarch us down the road toward outright tyranny.

Unarmed citizens are still getting shot by militarized police trained to view them as the enemy and treated as if we have no rights. Despite President Obama's warning that the nation needs to do some "soul searching" about issues such as race, poverty and the strained relationship between law enforcement and the minority communities they serve, police killings and racial tensions are at an all-time high. Just recently, in Texas, a white police officer was suspended after video footage showed him "manhandling, arresting and drawing his gun on a group of black children outside a pool party."

Americans' private communications and data are still being sucked up by government spy agencies. The USA Freedom Act was just a placebo pill intended to make us feel better without bringing about any real change. As Bill Blunden, a cybersecurity researcher and surveillance critic, points out, "The theater we've just witnessed allows decision makers to boast to their constituents about reforming mass surveillance while spies understand that what's actually transpired is hardly major change."

Taxpayer dollars are still being squandered on roads to nowhere, endless wars that do not make us safer, and bloated government agencies that should have been shut down long ago. A good example is the Transportation Security Administration, which, despite its $7 billion annual budget, has shown itself to be bumbling and ineffective.

And military drills are still being carried out on American soil under the pretext of training soldiers for urban warfare overseas. Southeastern Michigan, the site of one of the many military training drills taking place across the country this summer, has had Black Hawk helicopters buzzing its skies and soldiers dressed for combat doing night combat drills in abandoned buildings around the state.

In other words, freedom, or what's left of it, is being threatened from every direction. The threats are of many kinds: political, cultural, educational, media, and psychological. However, as history shows us, freedom is not, on the whole, wrested from a citizenry. It is all too often given over voluntarily and for such a cheap price: safety, security, bread, and circuses.

The Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) group of hackers who support the Syrian government broke into and defaced the US Army's official website on Tuesday redirecting it to an image promoting the Syrian Army.

The Israeli government, which has never declared what is widely considered to be an extensive nuclear weapons program, built and detonated "dirty bombs" containing nuclear material over years of testing.

The project consisted of 20 detonations with explosives laced with a radioactive substance, according to a report by Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Mini-drones measured radiation levels and sensors logged the force of the explosions.

In interviews with the paper, researchers were quoted as saying that the tests were only defensive and conducted to see how such an attack by a hostile force would impact the country. Most of the detonations were carried out in the desert and one was performed at a closed facility.

Brennan, who has served as CIA chief since March 2013, offered the following admission during an appearance on Face the Nation:

"I think the president has tried to make sure that we're able to push the envelope when we can to protect this country. But we have to recognize that sometimes our engagement and direct involvement will stimulate and spur additional threats to our national security interests."

The GDP of the BRICS countries may surpass that of the G7 within two or three years, as it has already hit $32.5 trillion and rising, claims State Duma Foreign Relations chief Aleksey Pushkov.

"In 2014, the total gross domestic product of BRICS countries reached 30 percent [of the world's GDP - Ed.]. This is less than that of the G7, but the difference is seven or eight percent. The combined GDP of the BRICS countries, according to the International Monetary Fund is $32.5 trillion [by purchasing power parity - Ed.]; the G7's is $34.7 trillion. Given that the BRICS members mostly show much higher growth rates than the G7, we can assume that in the next two or three years the aggregate GDP of the BRICS countries will exceed the G7's," said the head of the State Duma Foreign Relations Committee, Aleksey Pushkov, speaking to reporters at the first BRICS Parliamentary Forum in Moscow.

He went on to say that BRICS should make this Forum regular, preferably annual, and when that happens, it would help to make the world more equitable and multipolar, based not on the superiority of one country over the other, but on the balance of interests.

The economic center of the world is changing, the developed West will have to share its influence and authority in the global arena with players like BRICS, said Pushkov.