Sino-Japanese tensions are rapidly rising amid the largest anti-Japanese demonstrations in China since the two countries normalised relations in 1972. For the past four days, the Beijing regime has allowed protesters to rampage against Japanese-owned businesses, Japanese diplomatic offices and Japanese nationals.

The anti-Japanese rallies were triggered by Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's provocative move last week to formally purchase the disputed Diaoyu/Senkaku islands in the East China Sea from their private Japanese owner. Protests erupted in 52 Chinese cities last Saturday, and spread to 82 cities the next day.

According to Hong Kong's Singtao Daily, hundreds of thousands of people joined the demonstrations, including 20,000 in Beijing, where protesters sought to storm the Japanese embassy and burnt Japanese flags. Police blocked the crowd outside the embassy, but allowed people to throw eggs, bottled water and tomatoes into the building. Participants shouted slogans such as "Japanese are dogs, let's hit them."

A steady escalation of so-called insider attacks has forced the Pentagon to indefinitely suspend all joint patrols and combat training with Afghan security forces, effectively upending Washington's strategy for maintaining US control over Afghanistan.

ISAF, the NATO umbrella for the decade-old US-led occupation, announced on Tuesday that it was suspending joint operations below battalion level. The order was issued by Lt. Gen. James Terry, the second highest ranking US officer in Afghanistan. It reportedly came without any warning to British commanders and other NATO forces.

The move follows a series of attacks on US-NATO troops over the weekend and comes amid mounting popular outrage against the United States triggered by a provocative anti-Muslim film posted on the Internet. Violent demonstrations that have swept the Middle East, North Africa and Asia have erupted in Afghanistan as well.

The highly-trained female agents from Mossad, Israel's spy agency, leave their male compatriots in the dust. Five agents spoke about their "movie-style" lives for the first time, revealing a world dominated by deadly efficient femmes fatales.

­Israeli publication Lady Globes published an interview with the women, delving into a shadowy world where female wiles can be a significant advantage.
"A man who wants to gain access to a forbidden area has less chance of being allowed in. A smiling woman has a bigger chance of success," Yael, a Mossad agent, tells Lady Globes.

Efrat, another agent, said that operatives often use their femininity to get ahead because "any means is valid," while emphasizing that there are lengths that Mossad's female agents will not go to.

"But even if we think that the way to advance the mission is to sleep with [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad's chief of staff, no one in the Mossad would allow us to do it. Women agents are not used for sexual purposes. We flirt, but the line is drawn at sex," Efrat told Lady Globes.

The "chameleon women" speak in detail of their "movie-style" lives, where they are forced to keep their emotions under complete control at all times.

Live-fire exercise meant to test readiness, fitness of a number of units specializing in offensive firepower; army says drill does not suggest change in alert level.

Amid Israeli threats to attack Iran's nuclear installations and fears of a retaliatory strike by the Ayatollah regime in Tehran, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz ordered a number of units to conduct an unplanned exercise early Wednesday to test the army's readiness and alert level.

Forces from the Central and Northern Commands, Air Force and other units are taking part in the drill. A large number of regular army and reserve soldiers received surprising telephone calls from their units overnight Wednesday, ordering them to attend the exercise.

The IDF Spokesperson's Unit said Gantz wants to test the readiness and fitness of a number of units specializing in offensive firepower, particularly the Artillery Corps. During the exercise, which is simulating a surprise war in the Golan Heights, Central Command forces will be flown by choppers to the Golan Heights to take part in a live-fire drill in the afternoon.

If the creation of the state of Israel was akin to the ethnic cleansing of the resident Palestinians, does the establishment of colonial Australia amount to the same thing for the indigenous population?

This is the hypothesis put to Professor Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian who is no stranger to controversy and unpopular arguments, on his latest tour of Australia.

"I think it's a very very fair comparison," he says. "Both societies are settler colonial societies, dispossessing the indigenous people."

Professor Pappe has earned disfavour in Israel, where his credibility is questioned for his view that the Palestinians were forced from their land and did not give it up willingly in 1948 when the state of Israel was created as a homeland for Jews.

He and other "new historians" cite evidence from Israeli and British documents declassified in the '80s as showing detailed planning to expel or repel 700,000 Palestinians, who have remained refugees from their homeland. The premise of Terra Nullius, in which European settlers viewed Australia as an unoccupied space, is similar to the idea that the Palestinians willingly gave up their land.

A lone appeals judge bowed down to the Obama administration late Monday and reauthorized the White House's ability to indefinitely detain American citizens without charge or due process.

Last week, a federal judge ruled that an temporary injunction on section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 must be made permanent, essentially barring the White House from ever enforcing a clause in the NDAA that can let them put any US citizen behind bars indefinitely over mere allegations of terrorist associations. On Monday, the US Justice Department asked for an emergency stay on that order, and hours later US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Judge Raymond Lohier agreed to intervene and place a hold on the injunction.

The stay will remain in effect until at least September 28, when a three-judge appeals court panel is expected to begin addressing the issue.

On December 31, 2011, US President Barack Obama signed the NDAA into law, even though he insisted on accompanying that authorization with a statement explaining his hesitance to essentially eliminate habeas corpus for the American people.

"The fact that I support this bill as a whole does not mean I agree with everything in it," President Obama wrote. "In particular, I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of suspected terrorists."

Debate on committee report starts today, bill heads to Senate next
A bill that would make it illegal to wear a mask during a violent demonstration is nearing its final hurdle in the House of Commons, with just two hours of debate left.

Bill C-309 would make it a crime for people rioting or at an unlawful protest to conceal their identities. It's already illegal to wear a disguise when committing an indictable, or more serious, offence, which includes rioting. Unlawful protests, however, don't fall under that law because they're classified as a summary conviction, or less serious, offence.

An unlawful assembly is a gathering that causes fear. It's up to city officials to decide what constitutes a riot.

Last May, MPs on the House justice committee increased the penalty in the bill to 10 years for rioters who conceal their faces and five years for those at an unlawful protest. The maximum sentence for rioting is two years.

As I reported yesterday, the Obama administration snapped into action in their effort to overturn the decision of Judge Katherine Forrest which blocked the indefinite detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (NDAA).

In a disturbing yet not all too surprising move, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals quickly stepped in and gave Obama exactly what he wanted in striking down Judge Forrest's ruling that the White House claims is "dangerous" and a threat to national security.

Judge Raymond Lohier granted an interim stay based on the emergency petition (PDF courtesy of Threat Level) filed by the Obama administration yesterday; and as you can see in the one page decision (PDF courtesy of Threat Level), the decision took less than 24 hours.

One would think that a longer period of deliberation would be required to come to a decision allowing the Obama administration to continue to operate in direct conflict with the Constitution of the United States of America, but apparently that was not the case.

I must wonder if that could have anything to do with the fact that Judge Raymond Lohier was nominated for the position by Barack Obama himself in 2010. After all, Obama said Lohier has "an unwavering commitment to fairness and judicial integrity," according to a White House press release.

Is it just me, or are the signs of consumer collapse as clear as a Lowes parking lot on a Saturday afternoon? Sometimes I wonder if I'm just seeing the world through my pessimistic lens, skewing my point of view. My daily commute through West Philadelphia is not very enlightening, as the squalor, filth and lack of legal commerce remain consistent from year to year. This community is sustained by taxpayer subsidized low income housing, taxpayer subsidized food stamps, welfare payments, and illegal drug dealing. The dependency attitude, lifestyles of slothfulness and total lack of commerce has remained constant for decades in West Philly. It is on the weekends, cruising around a once thriving suburbia, where you perceive the persistent deterioration and decay of our debt fixated consumer spending based society.

The last two weekends I've needed to travel the highways of Montgomery County, PA going to a family party and purchasing a garbage disposal for my sink at my local Lowes store. Montgomery County is the typical white upper middle class suburb, with tracts of McMansions dotting the landscape. The population of 800,000 is spread over a 500 square mile area. Over 81% of the population is white, with the 9% black population confined to the urban enclaves of Norristown and Pottstown.

The median age is 38 and the median household income is $75,000, 50% above the national average. The employers are well diversified with an even distribution between education, health care, manufacturing, retail, professional services, finance and real estate. The median home price is $300,000, also 50% above the national average. The county leans Democrat, with Obama winning 60% of the vote in 2008. The 300,000 households were occupied by college educated white collar professionals. From a strictly demographic standpoint, Montgomery County appears to be a prosperous flourishing community where the residents are living lives of relative affluence. But, if you look closer and connect the dots, you see fissures in this façade of affluence that spread more expansively by the day. The cheap oil based, automobile dependent, mall centric, suburban sprawl, sanctuary of consumerism lifestyle is showing distinct signs of erosion. The clues are there for all to see and portend a bleak future for those mentally trapped in the delusions of a debt dependent suburban oasis of retail outlets, chain restaurants, office parks and enclaves of cookie cutter McMansions. An unsustainable paradigm can't be sustained.

Three British warships joins 30-nation minesweep exercise, seen by military analysts as warning to Tehran to toe the line

British warships have joined a major naval exercise in the Persian Gulf as tensions between Israel and Iran over Tehran's nuclear power programme increase.

British forces are taking part in a joint operation conducted by the navies of more than 30 countries to sweep the area - a major transit point of maritime trade - clean of mines.

"The UK is committed to a standing presence in the Gulf to ensure freedom of navigation in international waters such as the Straits of Hormuz," said defence secretary Philip Hammond.

"Disruption to sailing in the strait would threaten regional and economic growth. Any attempt by Iran to do this would be illegal and unsuccessful."

The show of strength in exercises that include naval deployment by Saudi Arabia, the US and France was designed to warn off Tehran from contemplating disrupting trade routes in the ongoing diplomatic poker game over its nuclear ambitions and Israel's threat of a strike.

The Strait of Hormuz between Iran and Oman is one of the most heavily used trade waterways in the world. Some 35 percent of the world's oil shipments - about 18 million barrels a day - pass through the 21-mile-wide channel.