"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."—George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Vol. 1

In Harold Ramis' classic 1993 comedy Groundhog Day, TV weatherman Phil Connors (played by Bill Murray) is forced to live the same day over and over again until he not only gains some insight into his life but changes his priorities. Similarly, as I illustrate in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we in the emerging American police state find ourselves reliving the same set of circumstances over and over again—egregious surveillance, strip searches, police shootings of unarmed citizens, government spying, the criminalization of lawful activities, warmongering, etc.—although with far fewer moments of comic hilarity.

What remains to be seen is whether 2016 will bring more of the same or whether "we the people" will wake up from our somnambulant states. Indeed, when it comes to civil liberties and freedom, 2015 was far from a banner year.

The following is just a sampling of what we can look forward to repeating if we don't find some way to push back against the menace of an overreaching, aggressive, invasive, militarized surveillance state.

The successful operations of the Russian Air Force against international terrorism in Syria have prompted other states to apply more effort in this direction, upper house speaker Valentina Matviyenko said in a recent press interview.

"Russia has convincingly demonstrated its military and political leadership in this war which is important for all humanity. And this has caused other nations to become more active on the anti-terrorist front," Matviyenko told the Parlamentskaya Gazeta newspaper.

The top senator added that the Russian authorities had decided to move to the front line of the anti-terrorist struggle for a valid reason. "We have been waging this war since the mid-1990s. We paid for our experience with hundreds of lives, and as a result we know that terrorism is a terrible threat," she noted.

She added that the current air force operation in Syria is being conducted to ensure the security of the Russian Federation and its citizens, but at the same time is protecting the lives of all people on Earth and the security of the human civilization itself.

"International terrorism can be defeated only through the joint efforts of the whole international community," Matviyenko concluded.

Russian combat aircraft have conducted 164 sorties and hit 556 terrorist targets in Syria over the past three days, the Russia's General Staff said Monday.

"In three days, starting December 25, [Russian warplanes] conducted 164 sorties, hitting 556 terrorist targets in the provinces of Aleppo, Idlib, Latakia, Hama, Homs, Damascus, Deir ez-Zor and Raqqa," chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Sergei Rudskoy told reporters.

Russian jets have intensified airstrikes to aid the anti-terrorist offensive of the Syrian army and patriotic opposition forces, he stated.

Turkey is training Islamic State terrorists in a camp disguised as a training ground for the Free Syrian Army, a 20-year-old jihadist captured by the Kurdish YPG told Sputnik. The prisoner said Ankara's help to the "moderate" Syrian opposition is not as innocent as portrayed.

Captured by the Kurdish People's Protection Unit (YPG) fighters in Northern Syria in November, Abdurrahman Abdulhadi, a Syrian national-turned Daesh (Islamic State) fighter, says he was trained in Turkey before receiving his first assignment with Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

The YPG maintains external security in the three Democratic Union Party (PYD) run areas, and is fighting Islamist groups, primarily Jabhat al-Nusra and IS. The PYD, an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Turkey, has effectively been ruling parts of Syria after government troops were forced to withdraw from the areas in 2012. With special permission from the local Kurdish authorities, Russian journalists received first-hand testimony that Turkey is "a friend" of Islamic State.

Israeli occupation planes have sprayed crop-killing chemicals on farmlands across besieged Gaza Strip, killing off crops in the coastal enclave.

It is the third time the Israeli occupation planes have targeted Gaza farms, killing massive amounts of crops,

An estimated 371 acres of farming land in central Gaza and 50 acres of land in eastern Khan Younis have been affected.

Farmers in Johr al-Deek, south of Gaza city, Al-Qarara town, north of Khan Yunis, and Wadi Al-Salqa agricultural town, south of Deir al-Balah, complained of the effects of the Israeli unknown chemicals on their crops.

"Several farmers informed us that Israeli planes had sprayed their lands with pesticides," Wael Thabet, head of the plant protection department at Gaza Agriculture Ministry, said.

European politicians don't say publicly anything sensible about the standoff with Russia, which they do in private, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

"Sometimes the things they say from a podium contradict what they tell you in one-on-one talks, when nobody can overhear them," the minister told Zvezda TV channel. "Alone most of EU members tell me things I find quite sensible, said Lavorov: that it was wrong to confront Russia over Ukraine, which, in fact, fell victim to this European Union policy that forced it to chose between the two.

"They all say, let things quiet down a bit and we can go back to normal relations, the strategic partnership. But when they all gather together and speak in public, they just can't say those things," he said.

Lavrov said such ambiguity puzzles him and puts it doubt the wisdom and foresight of EU officials.

Explosions have rocked the Syrian city of Homs, the Syrian SANA news agency says. AFP cited the Homs governor, who said that at six people were killed and 37 injured in the blasts.

The suicide bomber blew himself up, and almost immediately a car bomb exploded, and then another explosive device detonated at the site of the previous attack. According to preliminary data, over 30 were killed, the police source told RIA Novosti.

The bombs reportedly detonated near the main square in the Al-Zahraa neighborhood, SANA news said.

When Iceland jailed its bankers something changed. The unthinkable had happened: the real criminals had been held to account. Now Switzerland is also threatening to go off the fiat-bankster reservation. But will it happen?

Josiah Stamp once said: "If you want to continue to be slaves of the banks and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit."

Stamp knew whereof he spoke. Among his achievements, he was appointed a director of the Bank of England in 1928. All so-called modern, civilized countries are under the boot of the very mechanism Stamp described. Very few countries managed to achieve highly developed societies without it, such as Libya, Iraq and Syria.

Those countries all have something else in common. Whatever can it be?

However, other countries which have yet to become targets for unprovoked genocide at the hands of US agencies are waking up and smelling the pinstriped tyranny.

Switzerland, for example: hardly a place traditionally associated with wild-eyed fanaticism, Switzerland is set to vote on banning banks from creating money.

The English play football, drink beer and beat each other up in town centers in the evenings. The French pout and shrug and make simple things take a long time and cost a lot. The Swiss provide money a safe, boring place where nothing dramatic will happen to it, so that it may then be passed on to the next generation of rich people - preferably in an amount greater than was received - by this generation of rich people.

So money is at the heart of what Switzerland does. Switzerland is also home to the Bank of International Settlements, which - while it sounds as exciting as double-entry bookkeeping - is, in fact, the spider at the center of the entire financial web.

In an article entitled "Switzerland to vote on banning banks from creating money" the Telegraph reports:

Switzerland will hold a referendum to decide whether to ban commercial banks from creating money.

The Swiss federal government confirmed on Thursday that it would hold a plebiscite, after more than 110,000 people signed a petition calling for the central bank to be given sole power to create money in the financial system.

The campaign - led by the Swiss Sovereign Money movement and known as the Vollgeld initiative - is designed to limit financial speculation by requiring private banks to hold 100pc reserves against their deposits.

This sounds incredibly dull, doesn't it? But the idea behind it is what revolutions are made of.

Iraqi government forces have seized the government complex in the center of Ramadi - the last Islamic State stronghold in the western city, a military spokesman told Reuters.

"By controlling the complex this means that they [Islamic State, IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL] have been defeated in Ramadi," Sabah al-Numani, a spokesman for the Iraqi counter-terrorism units leading the fight, told the news agency. Al-Numani stressed the complex is under full control of the Iraqi forces with "no presence whatsoever of Daesh [ISIS] fighters" adding that some militants could still be hiding in "pockets that could exist here or there in the city."

According to al-Numan, a major clearing effort is still needed to allow Iraqi troops to move freely around the city as IS militants had filled the area with bombs and booby-traps. The necessity of a clear-up operation prevented the Iraqi government and the military from declaring a victory immediately, although some people in a number of cities were already celebrating, AFP reports.

Iraqi forces advanced to the provincial government compound in Ramadi overnight and encircled the terrorists in the complex earlier on Sunday. The Ramadi offensive has been supported by airstrikes from the US-led coalition, but Iran-backed Shiite militias were barred from the operation by the government, in order to avoid sectarian violence in the mainly Sunni Anbar province.

Is the Saudi monarchy coming apart at the seams? Scholars and journalists have long predicted the kingdom's demise, but this time the forecasts may finally prove correct.

The reason is an unprecedented avalanche of problems pouring down on Saudi Arabia since 79-year-old Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud assumed the throne last January. A hardliner in contrast to his vaguely reformist predecessor Abdullah, Salman lost no time in letting the world know that a new sheriff was in town. He upped the number of public executions, which, at 151, are now running at nearly double last year's rate.