You'd be forgiven for knowing very little about the unrest in Ukraine - the violence, the rioting on the streets, the armed protesters storming government buildings amidst plumes of thick black smoke rising from makeshift barricades. Most of the public have once again been Beibered by the mainstream media - the arrest of this precocious, spoilt physical embodiment of crass corporate culture proving newsworthy enough for an MSNBC host to interrupt an interview with a member of Congress discussing the true scale of NSA spying.

In this climate of superficial distractions and media inanity, you'd be equally forgiven for not really knowing why there is political unrest in Ukraine. Most of the explanations for the violence offered by the mainstream media present the information in simplistic soundbytes - talking points without the relevant wider political and historical context which renders current events coherent.

It would appear the fears of a global bank run are spreading. From HSBC's limiting large cash withdrawals (for your own good) to Lloyds ATMs going down, Bloomberg reports that 'My Bank' - one of Russia's top 200 lenders by assets - has introduced a complete ban on cash withdrawals until next week. While the Ruble has been losing ground rapidly recently, we suspect few have been expecting bank runs in Russia. Russia sovereign CDS had recently weakned to 4-month wides at 192bps.

You can imagine my surprise when I received this boarding pass yesterday...

That's right - the guy who sues, publicly humiliates, and fights before Congress the TSA now has TSA PreCheck, meaning that I'll personally almost never encounter a body scanner or pat-down again.

I never asked for it, never opted-in, and had no notice that I was included. I intentionally avoided it because I don't think it's fair that one should have to do anything to avoid being abused by their government. Their inclusion of me in this program is further ironic since in 2010, when I filed a motion for a preliminary injunction that would require the TSA not to scan or molest me, the TSA argued that such an "ad hoc" exclusion would devistate the TSA's inpenetrable fortress. But here we are in 2014, and the TSA has done just that.

The British spy chief whose agency was accused in documents leaked by former U.S. intelligence operative Edward Snowden of playing a principal role in mass Anglo-U.S. surveillance will step down at year end, Foreign Office said on Tuesday.

The leaks detailed the close cooperation of Britain's GCHQ eavesdropping agency with the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), and embarrassed and angered the British government and its spy chiefs.

Iain Lobban, 53, has served as GCHQ's director for six years.

"Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which." ― George Orwell, Animal Farm

What was striking about this year's State of the Union address was not the sheer arrogance of the president's remarks, the staged nature of the proceedings and interactions, or the predictable posturing of the rebuttals, but the extent to which the members of the various branches of government - President Obama, Congress, the Supreme Court, and the assorted government agencies - are just one big, brawling, noisy, semi-incestuous clan.

Watching these bureaucrats, both elected and appointed, interact in the unguarded moments before the event, with their hugging and kissing and nudging and joking and hobnobbing and general high spirits, I was reminded anew that these people - Republicans and Democrats alike - are united in a common goal, and it is not to protect and defend the Constitution.

No, as Orwell recognized in Animal Farm, their common goal is to maintain the status quo, a goal that is helped along by an unquestioning, easily mollified, corporate media. In this way, the carefully crafted spectacle that is the State of the Union address is just that: an exaggerated farce of political theater intended to dazzle, distract and divide us, all the while the police state marches steadily forward.

No matter what the president and his cohorts say or how convincingly they say it, the reality Americans must contend with is that the world is no better the day after President Obama's State of the Union address than it was the day before. Indeed, if the following rundown on the actual state of our freedoms is anything to go by, the world is a far more dangerous place.

We're beginning to get an idea of what the outcome of the latest series of US-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian talks might look like.

The talks began in July 2013 and are due to conclude with a final status agreement in April this year.

In a nutshell, the outcome is likely to be a double whammy of ethnic cleansing of some of Israel's Arab citizens and the annexation of large chunks of the illegally occupied Palestinian West Bank.

According to the Times of Israel, this diabolical plan - the brainchild of Israel's Moldovan foreign minister and former nightclub bouncer, Avigdor Lieberman, calls for towns in "The Triangle" region southeast of Haifa - including heavily populated Arab cities - to become part of a Palestinian state in any peace agreement, in exchange for the Jewish colonies of the West Bank. It would mean the ethnic cleansing of about 300,000 Israeli Arabs.

Rioters have seized the administration building in Lvov and forced the governor to resign. It is not known who is currently in power in this region, but a puppet government formed by 'opposition forces' may soon be set up. Demands for 'autonomy', or quite possibly, explicit separatist flirtations, may give Klitschko and his thugs added bargaining power to use against the democratically elected government during 'negotiations'. It is likely that even more extremist activity will occur, led by Klischko, as he proclaimed on 22 January that, "If I have to go (on to the streets) under bullets, I shall go there under bullets." Batkivshchyna Party leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk seconded this provocative threat to delve Ukraine into de-facto civil warfare, as he similarly stated on 22 January that "Tomorrow [23 January] we will go forward together. And if it's a bullet in the forehead, then it's a bullet in the forehead, but in an honest, fair and brave way."

It is evident now that both men kept their threats in encouraging their respective militias to unleash carnage within the country. As with the Arab Spring events, these provocateurs are fiending for 'some of their own' to be killed by government forces seeking to re-establish control over anarchic areas. A full-fledged military or Berkut response by Yanukovich is exactly what Klitschko and Yatsenyuk want. For them, the more dead 'protesters', the better. It should be kept in mind that 1980s Poland was placed under martial law for much less violent disturbances than what we are witnessing in Ukraine at the moment.

For decades successive United States administrations have tolerated the fact that Congress is riddled with traitors who routinely put Israel's interests above those of their own country. However, ominous clouds are hovering over the heads of Israel's settlers on Capitol Hill.

According to an unnamed American official quoted by Israel Radio on 23 January, the White House, in particular President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, are losing patience with "Jewish activity" on behalf of Israel in Congress.

Obama and Kerry, the official said, have had enough of the Israel stooges' constant criticism of the US government and their attempts at enabling Israel to set US policy.

The education sector, long frustrated by transient fads that have failed to uplift decades of sub-par student achievement, thinks it has finally found its knight in shining armor: an omnipresent data archive that will track students from pre-school to graduation, noting every teacher and test score. Then it will tack that trail of data onto a person well after they leave school.

Enthusiasts say they hope the constant tracking will help policy-makers identify the precise factors that make a successful student, and foster the creation of well-informed education policy, while opponents worry that growing intrusiveness will normalize the mass surveillance and obsessive record-keeping of humans foretold in dystopian literature.

A member of Ukraine's elite Berkut riot police force assaulted and humiliated a naked protester after he was detained in freezing cold temperatures in Kiev, according to a video posted Thursday.

The Ukrainian interior ministry swiftly apologised for the horrific incident, which recalled notorious prisoner abuse scandals like that at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The man had apparently been arrested during the clashes between police and protesters that have rocked Kiev over the last days.

The video, which was posted on YouTube and was rapidly broadcast by Ukrainian opposition channels, shows the arrested protester completely naked except for his socks and being roughly pushed into a police bus.

But he is then called back and is forced to stand still on the snow in the freezing temperatures while a police officer in a balaclava films him with his mobile phone.

He is then forced to pose for pictures clutching a spade, alongside another balaclava-clad officer who mockingly puts his arm around the prisoner. This officer then hits him roughly on the back of the head.