Events in the world of "high politics" over the last week have been very revealing, and entertaining. The US-Israel 'special relationship' has, apparently, been souring for a while.

At the beginning of this year Israeli defence minister Moshe Yaalon accused John Kerry of being "obsessive and messianic" in his pursuit of a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians. A few months later Kerry warned Israel that it was in danger of becoming "an apartheid state". Israel is, of course, already a full-blown apartheid state with even the warmongering daughter of Israeli terrorists and now, Israeli Justice Minister, Tzipi Livni, complaining about segregated buses for Palestinians.

Two weeks ago the Obama administration warned that Israel risked alienating its "closest allies", and last week Yaalon was pointedly snubbed by senior administration officials during a visit to Washington. Then, several days ago, American-Israeli journalist and former Israeli prison guard, Jeffrey Goldberg, published an article in The Atlantic that cited an unnamed Obama official describing Netanyahu as a "chickenshit" in terms of the moribund Israel-Palestine 'peace process' and the alleged 'nuclear threat' from Iran.

British holidaymakers travelling anywhere in the world have been told to be vigilant as they are at risk of being attacked by Islamist terrorists.

The Foreign Office on Friday night issued a worldwide travel warning, saying tourists were at a risk of attack as a result of Britain's intervention in Iraq and Syria.

The warning applies to every country in the world, and the FCO updated travel guidance on its website. It reflects a "generalised threat" to Britons, rather than intelligence of a specific and credible attack.

The warning states: "There is considered to be a heightened threat of terrorist attack globally against UK interests and British nationals from groups or individuals motivated by the conflict in Iraq and Syria. You should be vigilant at this time."

There are many signs that fighting in Ukraine could resume soon. Ukraine continues to mass troops on borders.

After the elections of the past days, the Ukrainian parliament has assumed a new delicate equilibrium, with the parties in favor of a resumption of the offensive of the East in the clear majority.

Despite the approach of winter, which should be a motivation for dialogue with Moscow, Ukraine authorities do not seem willing to take that path.

In addition, Poroshenko needs a way to stave off economic default, and resuming the war would help him in this regard. There is a real risk of popular unrest due to the economic crisis, anger against the oligarchs, and inadequate heat in homes, and a renewed war would help Poroshenko repress the unrest.

Finally, the influence of the US is still very high in the government, and there are strong forces in Washington that would like to see a resumption of fighting.

Unbeknownst to most Americans the United States is presently under thirty presidential declared states of emergency. They confer vast powers on the Executive Branch including the ability to financially incapacitate any person or organization in the United States, seize control of the nation's communications infrastructure, mobilize military forces, expand the permissible size of the military without congressional authorization, and extend tours of duty without consent from service personnel.

Declared states of emergency may also activate Presidential Emergency Action Documents and other continuity-of-government procedures which confer powers on the President, such as the unilateral suspension of habeas corpus - that appear fundamentally opposed to the American constitutional order. Although the National Emergencies Act, by its plain language, requires the Congress to vote every six months on whether a declared national emergency should continue, Congress has done only once in the nearly forty year history of the Act.

Patrick Thronson, Michigan Journal of Law (2013, Vol 46).

A bit of irony, perhaps, that on November 4, 2014 - as Americans go to the polls to cast their ballots for a slate of politicians at the local, state and federal levels - the august citizens of the United States will also celebrate the birth of the National Security Agency (NSA).

On November 4, 1952 the NSA was created by a Presidential Executive Order signed by then president Harry Truman. Earlier that year, in January 1952, Truman's state of the union address focused on the Korean War, the global Soviet-Communist threat, the "Iran oil situation", and the need to increase the production of US military equipment for use by American forces, and for transfer to Western European Allies. Truman called on Americans to seek guidance in the God of Peace even as a brutal shadow war was being waged by the United States to eliminate popularly elected "leftist" governments.

In 1953 Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected to the American presidency and with him came John Foster and Allan Dulles, two political appointees who would, it turns out, seek the counsel and expertise of "former" Nazi executioners, scientists and intelligence operatives. J Edgar Hoover, then director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), was already on the case using whatever resources were at his disposal - including Nazis - to hunt down unionists, communists, dissenters and radicals wherever they might be. According to the UK's Guardian newspaper, Truman had this to say about Hoover and his FBI, "We want no Gestapo or secret police. FBI is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex-life scandals and plain blackmail... Edgar Hoover would give his right eye to take over, and all congressmen and senators are afraid of him."

From 1953-1961, Eisenhower, as Commander in Chief, constructed a nascent military-intelligence-law enforcement-industrial complex influenced directly by Nazi ideology and technological know-how. No wonder he warned the world about his creation, the military-industrial complex. At one time in the early 21st Century it was uncomfortable to call out America's ties to the Nazis. But that has changed particularly with the release of Eric Lichtblau's The Nazis Next Door (2014) and "The Collaboration" by Ben Urwand. It has also been confirmed by the overthrow of a nationally elected leader in Ukraine - Victor Yanukovych - and the open support of neo-Nazi groups largely responsible for that event. Is it a coincidence that the head of the CIA, John Brennan, visited with the neo-Nazi usurpers not long after the coup given the CIA's history?

The countries of the former Warsaw Pact are not knuckling under to pressure from Russia. They're trying to avoid a new cold war

Vladimir Putin, the wily strategist of Russian revanchism, is well on his way to reconstructing the Warsaw Pact. That, at least, is what the pundits of The Washington Post are making it out to seem. Last week, Jackson Diehl penned a column on how Putin has driven a wedge between NATO and its easternmost members. Anne Applebaum, meanwhile, pins the failure to maintain quiet on the eastern front on NATO itself and its decision not to establish bases in the region 10 years ago. The resulting crisis of confidence in what were once Soviet satellites, she laments, has undermined alliance cohesion.

These misreadings of what's taking place on the eastern stretches of Europe contribute to an almost 1946-like sense of foreboding and inevitability. The small countries of Eastern Europe are bending to Moscow's will, and the West is doing little more than appease the bear. Diehl and Applebaum stop short of declaring a new Iron Curtain and insisting that the region choose sides (over and above membership in NATO). But their all-or-nothing logic tends in that direction.

Contrary to these assertions, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and the rest of the region are not replaying 1946. Although these governments are pursuing very different strategies, they all know that a new Cold War would exact a terrible price on their countries. In most cases, they are quite sensibly trying to forestall this scenario. NATO's imperative to push ever eastward, which pundits like Applebaum are urging it to do now under the cover of demonstrating resolve, will only make matters worse.

Another anti-police brutality protest turned violent in the French city of Rennes, with masked youths and police engaging in running street battles. The unrest follows the death of a young environmental activist earlier this week.

Overnight Thursday, protesters in the northwestern city lobbed flairs at police and flipped over cars, some of which they set ablaze. Police responded by firing tear gas. The number of arrests or injures, if any, remains unclear.

A similar protest in Paris on Wednesday also descended into violence. Around 250 people gathered outside City Hall in Paris, with some throwing rocks at police and writing "Remi is dead, the state kills" on walls, The Local's French edition reports. At least 33 people were taken into police custody following the unrest.

The Texas Department of Public Safety might as well be called the Texas Department of Public Invasiveness.

They've launched a plan to fingerprint every single person of driving age in the state, after which they will add the person's prints to the criminal database.

Is it just me or is that a rather Dystopian plan?

It's that time of year when people don sinister masks, spray themselves with fake blood, and generally go all out for a good fright. But here at EFF, we think there are plenty of real-world ghouls to last all year-round. Fortunately, we won't let them hide under your bed. Sometimes our work sounds like science fiction, but the surveillance techniques and technology we fight are all too real. Here are some of the beasts hiding in your backyard that we've been fighting to expose:

Automated License Plate Readers

Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) are cameras that can either be mounted on squad cars or stationary. They read license plates and record the time, date, and location a particular car was encountered. And they're paving the way for wholesale tracking of every driver's movements. ALPRs can scan up to 1,800 license plates per minute, and can collect data on vast numbers of vehicles. In Los Angeles, for example, the Los Angeles Police Department and Sheriff's Department collect data on 3 million cars per week.

The gas deal between Ukraine and Russia became possible because Europe realized that it wouldn't get the gas if it didn't get behind Ukraine, Wall Street analyst Michael Hudson told RT.

RT: How important is this gas deal for Ukraine and for Europe?

Michael Hudson: It's apparently most important for Europe because it was Europe that gave in on the deal. The problem was never about the price of the Russian gas. The problem was whether Ukraine was doing to keep up trying just to run up a larger and larger gas bill every month and every year and finally default. In the US Treasury, strategists have already discussed in public how Ukraine can simply avoid paying Russia the money that it owed by going to court and stalling it. So Russia understandably said, "We need credit in advance." Mr. Oettinger of the European Commission said "Wait a minute, Russia, why don't you just lend them the money. They will repay you." And Mr. Putin at the Valdai Club speech in Sochi last week made it very clear. Look, [Russia] has already lent them 11 billion dollars, much more than anyone else has lent to Ukraine. Ukraine is bankrupt, it's torn itself apart. Why didn't perhaps a European Bank underwrite the loan? Finally, Mr. Oettinger gave in. Europe said "OK, the IMF is going to lend Ukraine the money to pay Russia for the gas for the balance of the year." So that Ukraine would end up owing the IMF money and the European Commission money, not Russia. So Russia will not be exposed to having to lend any more money to a dead-beat economy.

Victim groups have come to the "unanimous" decision that Fiona Woolf should be replaced as the head of an inquiry into historical child sex abuse.

Pressure has mounted on Woolf, the Lord Mayor of London, over her connections with Lord Brittan - the former home secretary who faces scrutiny over his role in an alleged establishment cover-up of abuse within Government - with campaigners arguing she is "unsuitable" to lead the investigation.

But Downing Street said today that Prime Minister David Cameron "is absolutely clear that he thinks she can do this job with integrity and impartiality".

Alison Millar who represents survivors of child abuse as the head of the abuse team at law firm Leigh Day, said: "Representatives of survivors were unanimous that Fiona Woolf is unsuitable to lead this inquiry.

Representatives also called for a full statutory inquiry with powers to seize documents and compel witnesses to give evidence.

"The unanimous view from the representatives of all the groups present today is that there needs to be a statutory inquiry with full compulsory powers to seize documents and compel witnesses to give evidence; concern was raised that if the inquiry was not headed by a high court judge then it would not be practically possible to take criminal proceedings for contempt if truthful evidence was withheld," said Millar.

"The constitution of the current panel, it was felt, needs to be substantially revisited and enhanced so that it is more representative of the situations in which abuse occurred and engages the diverse range of people who have been abused."

The statement comes after documents published last night showed that a letter from Woolf regarding her links with Lord Brittan and his wife was redrafted seven times, with guidance from Home Office officials, before being sent to Home Secretary Theresa May.