After three months building pressure the Ukraine is exploding this week, as anti-government protests turn more and more violent. Now the United States and Russia find themselves in a pissing match over who is more just to influence the revolution. The propaganda is flying, and we’ll break it down and discuss the real reasons the people are taking to the streets.

New Snowden leaks reveal the NSA tracked WikiLeaks supporters, legal bud gets a money boost from the feds, Syria is heating back up, and much much more.

On this week’s episode of, Unfilter.

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— Show Notes —

NSA is Crazy

• Snowden Documents Reveal Covert Surveillance and Pressure Tactics Aimed at WikiLeaks and Its Supporters – The Intercept

The efforts – detailed in documents provided previously by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden – included a broad campaign of international pressure aimed not only at WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, but at****what the U.S. government calls “the human network that supports WikiLeaks.” The documents also contain internal discussions about targeting the file-sharing site Pirate Bay and hacktivist collectives such as Anonymous.

• Utah Mulls Measures to Help, Limit NSA Data Center – ABC News

“The end game here is to limit the encroachment on our 4th Amendment rights,” Roberts told the Daily Herald of Provo. “We’d love to see Congress fix that on their own, but I don’t have a lot of faith in that happening. So this is a state effort to take a step in that direction.”

He does have supporters, though, including the Libertas Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank in Utah.

• Libertas Institute of Utah | Individual Liberty, Private Property, Free Enterprise

Advancing the cause of liberty in Utah

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Ukraine mayhem

• Kiev drone footage: Aerial view of burning Maidan amid Ukranian riots – YouTube

• Ukraine parliament to work on constitution bill

Opposition leaders, backed by protesters in the streets, want a return to a constitution enacted in 2004 that would move substantial powers over the government from the president to parliament – a proposal rejected by President Viktor Yanukovich and his supporters, who have had a majority in the legislature.

• Ukraine: Deadly clashes around parliament in Kiev

The proposals would curb the powers of President Viktor Yanukovych, but the opposition say they were blocked from submitting their draft, meaning no debate could take place.

• Ukraine Facing Civil War: Lviv Declares Independence from Yanukovich Rule

The development came after clashes between police and protesters left at least 25 people dead in capital Kiev.

Ukrainian police yesterday moved in to clear a protest camp in Kiev’s Independence Square, known as the Maidan, the heart of anti-government demonstrations sparked by President Yanukovich’s rejection of a trade and investment deal with the European Union last November.

• Rioters seize over 1,500 guns in Ukraine mayhem – security services

Ukraine’s security service has announced it is launching a counter-terror operation. Radicals have seized over 1,500 firing arms and 100,000 bullets in the last 24 hours, the service said.

Reacting to the “conscious, purposeful use of force by means of arson, killings, kidnapping and terrorizing people,” which Yakimenko treats as “terrorist acts,” the Security Service and Anti-terrorist center of Ukraine have decided to launch a counter-terrorist operation.

• Venezuelan opposition leader Lopez due in court after surrendering

The man the government blames for the deaths is opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, who turned himself in to authorities on Tuesday.

• This one map helps explain Ukraine’s protests

What’s happening in Ukraine is complicated and driven by many factors: the country’s history as an unhappy component of the Soviet Union, its deep economic woes, a sense of cultural fondness for the West, wide discontent with government corruption, two decades of divided politics and a sense that Yanukovych caved to Putin.

No single datapoint could capture or explain all of that. But the map below comes perhaps as close as anything could. It shows Ukraine, color-coded by the country’s major ethnic and linguistic divisions. Below, I explain why this map is so important and why it helps to tell Ukraine’s story. The short version: Ukraine’s politics have long been divided into two major factions by the country’s demographics. What’s happening right now is in many ways a product of that division, which has never really been reconciled.

Roughly speaking, about four out of every six people in Ukraine are ethnic Ukrainian and speak the Ukrainian language. Another one in six is ethnic Russian and speaks Russian. The last one-in-six is ethnic Ukrainian but speaks Russian. This map shows where each of those three major groups tend to live. (I’m rounding a bit on the numbers; about five percent of Ukrainians are minorities who don’t fit in any of those three categories.)

Here’s why this matters for what’s happening in Ukraine now: Since it declared independence in 1991, the country has been politically divided along these ethnic-linguistic lines. In national elections, people from districts dominated by that majority group (Ukrainian-speakers who are ethnically Ukrainian) tend to vote for one candidate. And people from districts with lots of ethnic Russians or Russian-speakers tend to vote for the other candidate.

Bonus Round

• Obama administration clears banks to accept funds from legal marijuana dealers

The Obama administration on Friday gave the banking industry the green light to finance and do business with legal marijuana sellers, a move that could further legitimize the burgeoning industry.

For the first time, legal distributors will be able to secure loans and set up checking and savings accounts with major banks that have largely steered clear of those businesses. The decision eliminates a key hurdle facing marijuana sellers, who can now legally conduct business in 20 states and the District.

• As Syria threat expands, Obama mulls options

They are also are looking at newer, more far-reaching options, including drone strikes on extremists and more forceful action against Assad, whom President Barack Obama told to leave power 30 months ago.

Obama’s top aides plan to meet at the White House before week’s end to examine options, according to administration officials.

• Homeland Security is seeking a national license plate tracking system – The Washington Post

The national license-plate recognition database, which would draw data from readers that scan the tags of every vehicle crossing their paths, would help catch fugitive illegal immigrants, according to a DHS solicitation. But the database could easily contain more than 1 billion records and could be shared with other law enforcement agencies,

A spokeswoman for DHS’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) stressed that the database “could only be accessed in conjunction with ongoing criminal investigations or to locate wanted individuals.”

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