At least one in four refugees locked in indefinite detention on the basis of secret ASIO findings has attempted or threatened suicide, a new analysis has revealed.

Several of the 44 refugees have now been incarcerated more than five years without charge in Melbourne and Sydney, and none are allowed to know the detail of the secret assessments used to justify their detention.

The heavy psychological toll has led to extraordinary rates of depression, anxiety and self-harm, including one man repeatedly beating his head with a toilet door.

Before the end of this year Ukraine "will spend billions of hryvnas" to upgrade military hardware of the country's armed forces, President Pyotr Poroshenko said at a military parade on the occasion of the 23rd Ukrainian independence anniversary on Sunday.

"Warplanes, helicopter gunships, warships and motor boats will be bought and this is just a moderate start," he said, adding that right from Kreshchatik "the column of troops will be dispatched in the combat action zone" in east Ukraine.

Spurred on by 9/11 and the War on Terror, America has become a feared military force of terror but the prime target has always been the American public which is becoming increasingly aware of their Government sponsored militarized police who see and relate to them as Middle East terrorists until proven innocent such as in Ferguson, Missouri. The military-style occupation of Ferguson, Missouri has ripped aside the thin veneer of democracy to expose a budding police state. This is what martial law looks like.

As I watch, with alarm, the rapidly growing American militarized Police State as well as George W Bush and Dick Cheney's recent book tours - where they rationalize their illegal wars and economic rape of Iraq and Afghanistan as well as justify torture as a means to this criminal end - I am immediately reminded of Milton Mayer's classic They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45.

Mayer's book describes the slow but sure seduction of the German people as their civil liberties, freedoms and moral values were gradually stripped away by Hitler's fascist government while waving the flag of national security and patriotism.

The Russian-Chinese strategic partnership (RCSP), indoctrinated in 1996, is Eurasia's geopolitical anchor in the 21^st century, shaping its evolution and entrance into the Multipolar World. No other political relationship between the two continents' actors even comes close, with the RCSP's only formidable rival being the US via its privileged military alliances with NATO, the Gulf Kingdoms, and Japan. In this century's struggle for the supercontinent, the interplay between the RCSP and the US will come to define global politics.

Detractors or Distracters?

Much ado has been made in the Western media about the RCSP, with some highlighting its significance in challenging the Washington Consensus and others brushing it off as nothing more than Moscow's increasing dependency on Beijing. The views of the former are often trumpeted to scare Americans and justify their government's aggression against Russia and China, while the latter serves to feed a disinformation campaign meant to split Russia and China apart. Only rarely is the RCSP mentioned as a cautionary warning for the US to moderate its policies, which is the most responsible way to present this development to the Western voter.

The article's intent is to provocatively argue that the RCSP is already a worldwide reality in the making, the manifestation of Washington's nightmare, and that it extends beyond Eurasia and even into North Africa and Latin America. It does seek to challenge the Western order, but only to help guide the transition to the Multipolar World, a goal which both countries pledged their solidarity to in 1997. The US' reluctance in recognizing the tectonic shifts that have occurred in the world since then and its insistence on prolonging the fading unipolar moment are the largest sources of global destabilization today. Despite what the detractors try to achieve by fear mongering and the distracters by divisionary tactics, the RCSP is peaceful, defensive, and more unified than ever. By exploring the confluences of Russian-Chinese policy in key areas of Eurasia and beyond, the article will prove that the RCSP is alive and growing, actively working to steer the world closer to multipolarity.

The French government has resigned despite being formed just 4 months ago. They quit after ministers slammed President Francois Hollande's plans for taxation and cuts, while also being critical of Germany's austerity program.

The statement published on Monday said the new office would be formed on Tuesday and would be in the "direction he (the president) has defined for our country."

Following the 2008 financial crisis, Germany has taken the lead to try and resurrect the EU's economy. This has been marked by cutbacks and taxation, which have not proved to be universally popular within the eurozone. Economics Minister, Arnaud Montebourg, an outspoken critic of Germany, believes that country has hindered France's development.

Montebourg said it was time to resist Germany's "obsession" with austerity and work out some alternative ways to promote household consumption. He said that measures that had been introduced since the financial crisis were not doing anything to help the country's economy grow. He also blamed Germany for factory closures in France.

"You have to raise your voice. Germany is trapped in an austerity policy that it imposed across Europe," the Socialist minister said in the interview with the French newspaper Le Monde on Saturday.

The U.S. military is banning and blocking employees from visiting The Intercept in an apparent effort to censor news reports that contain leaked government secrets.

According to multiple military sources, a notice has been circulated to units within the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps warning staff that they are prohibited from reading stories published by The Intercept on the grounds that they may contain classified information. The ban appears to apply to all employees - including those with top-secret security clearance - and is aimed at preventing classified information from being viewed on unclassified computer networks, even if it is freely available on the internet. Similar military-wide bans have been directed against news outlets in the past after leaks of classified information.

A directive issued to military staff at one location last week, obtained by The Intercept, threatens that any employees caught viewing classified material in the public domain will face "long term security issues." It suggests that the call to prohibit employees from viewing the website was made by senior officials over concerns about a "potential new leaker" of secret documents.

The directive states:

We have received information from our higher headquarters regarding a potential new leaker of classified information. Although no formal validation has occurred, we thought it prudent to warn all employees and subordinate commands. Please do not go to any website entitled "The Intercept" for it may very well contain classified material.

As a reminder to all personnel who have ever signed a non-disclosure agreement, we have an ongoing responsibility to protect classified material in all of its various forms. Viewing potentially classified material (even material already wrongfully released in the public domain) from unclassified equipment will cause you long term security issues. This is considered a security violation.

A military insider subject to the ban said that several employees expressed concerns after being told by commanders that it was "illegal and a violation of national security" to read publicly available news reports on The Intercept.

"Even though I have a top secret security clearance, I am still forbidden to read anything on the website," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject. "I find this very disturbing that they are threatening us and telling us what websites and news publishers we are allowed to read or not."

Dear Friends: I am pleased to be able to share with you this revealing article written for our website by the editor of an important website in Germany.

Washington's lies echoed by the presstitute media that serves Washington are destroying Washington's credibility and that of the Western media among Europeans, especially Germans who understand that the threat to peace comes from across the Atlantic, not from east of the Oder River.

The success or failure of Vladimir Putin's bet that reasonable diplomacy and unprovocative behavior on Russia's part will contrast favorably with the shrill provocations by Washington depends upon whether European politicians respond to their own citizens or continue in their role as Washington's whores.

Paul Craig Roberts

Anyone attempting to return to the UK from visiting Iraq or Syria "without a good reason" should be classified as a potential terrorist and arrested, Boris Johnson has said.

The Mayor of London, who will be standing as a Tory MP next year, wants the law to be reversed so there is a "rebuttable presumption" of guilt until people are proved innocent.

"Do nothing now, and the tide of terror will eventually lap at our own front door," he wrote in the Telegraph.

The parents of James Foley, the American journalist murdered by Isis, have released a letter written by their son during his captivity.

All letters "Jim" wrote to his family were confiscated by the jihadists in Syria - but last June he asked a fellow hostage, who was about to be released, to commit a letter to memory.

In the dictated message, which his family posted on the Facebook page Find James Foley, the journalist speaks about how he is coping with being held hostage and his yearning desire for freedom.

Russia does not intend to block U.S. and NATO military transit routes to Afghanistan, President Vladimir Putin said, in spite of the recent spike in tensions with the West.

The U.S.'s Northern Distribution Network has been the quiet success of U.S.-Russia relations over the past several years; as of last year 100,000 containers of U.S. and NATO had been shipped to and from Afghanistan through Russia (and Central Asia and the Baltic states). The U.S. set up the route so as to not be dependent on its volatile relations with Pakistan, a decision that was vindicated in 2011 when Pakistan -- shut down its territory to U.S. and NATO military cargo. And even while NATO and Russia have suspended nearly all cooperation, the NDN keeps operating.

Putin spoke last week in Yalta and took questions from members of the Duma. And one was an implicit criticism of the Russian government's decision to continue cooperating with the U.S. and NATO on transit to Afghanistan. Leonid Kalashnikov of the Communist Party, asked Putin why Russia wasn't responding like Pakistan did: "When the U.S. military accidentally bombed a [Pakistani] checkpoint a few years ago ... they [Pakistan] immediately shut down the transit of U.S. forces and equipment," Kalashnikov said. "We have the same sort of transit with respect to members of NATO, which we entered into on a bilateral basis. Maybe it's time to also suspend this transit, as it doesn't serve our interests. In 2014, when the Americans leave there [Afghanistan], will will get one more flashpoint -- which is their fault -- in the south."

In his answer, Putin defended the agreement with the U.S., but also made a curious defense of his policy of letting NATO set up a transit facility in the city of Ulyanovsk in 2012, a decision that exposed him to some nationalist criticism. Putin essentially says, 'it wasn't a bad decision because no one ended up using it.'