India world's biggest arms importer: think tank

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - India has been the world's biggest weapons importer over the last five years, Swedish think-tank SIPRI reported Monday, naming four Asian countries among the top five arms importers.

The report also highlighted how the world's major arms supplying countries had in recent years competed for trade in Libya, and in other Arab countries gripped by the recent wave of pro-democracy uprisings.

"India is the world's largest arms importer," the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said as it released its latest report on trends in the international arms trade.

"India received nine percent of the volume of international arms transfers during 2006-10, with Russian deliveries accounting for 82 percent of Indian arms imports," it said.

Its arms imports jumped 21 percent from the previous five-year-period with 71 percent of its orders being for aircraft.

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Murdoch the Media Monopolist

By Charles Glass, Taki's Magazine

Evidence is mounting that Rupert Murdoch’s British media empire conspired illegally with private investigators to tap telephones and hack into computers. A recent murder trial disclosed that Murdoch’s editors paid $150,000 a year to private investigator Jonathan Rees, previously convicted of planting false evidence to frame an innocent woman.

It may be mere coincidence that the British government recently decided toapprove Murdoch’s expansion of his media ownership. Many contend that Murdoch’s increase from a 39% to 100% share in Britain’s largest satellite television provider, BSkyB, does not matter. They are mostly members of the Conservative Party, who won Murdoch’s support in last year’s general election. Opponents tend to come from the Labour Party, which Murdoch backed in their victorious election campaigns of 1997, 2001, and 2005 before dropping them in 2010. Sour grapes?

Should any company control as much of the British media as Murdoch’s News Corporation does? And is News Corporation worthy of the national trust to provide so large a share of its information and cultural output? There is no doubt that granting Murdoch complete control of BSkyB will enable him to use it as a platform to bundle his newspaper, Internet, and television products into cheap packages that will give it a greater advantage over its competitors than America’s railroads enjoyed over horse-drawn wagons in the late 19th century. Neither the left-of-center Guardian nor the right-of-center Daily Telegraph could compete with such offerings, particularly in an era of declining newspaper readership.

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Slaughter in Bahrain – Nerve Gas Used against Protesters by Finian Cunningham

By Finian Cunningham, Dandelion Salad

They turned over the limp, lifeless body of the young man,. His back was riddled with bullet wounds. His skull flopped open revealing a bloody mess and a gaping hole where the brain used to be before it was blown out by a high-velocity weapon at point-blank range.

A surgeon at Salmaniya Hospital in Manama said helplessly: "We could do nothing to save him."

Ahmed Farhan was just one of several Bahrainis killed yesterday by state forces that went on a murderous rampage in mainly Shia towns and villages deemed to be supportive of the popular uprising against the autocratic US-backed regime headed by King Hamad al-Khalifa.

Another doctor said: "This is all-out war against civilians who are simply demanding democracy."

As hundreds of injured were ferried along the corridors of the hospital, there was an atmosphere of dread among medics that the Persian Gulf island regime had lost all restraint under international law.

This was less than 24 hours after a large convoy of Saudi-led troops arrived in Bahrain, with the ostensible aim of "restoring stability". At the same time, the Bahraini rulers declared: "The government will never tolerate any disruption of social peace."
Doctors said that the hospital at Salmaniya and elsewhere, such as Sitrah and Isa Town, have been labeled "disloyal" to the regime. They claimed that their personal details are being circulated on the internet and that they are now fearing for their lives.

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Pakistan's Jewish Problem

By Tufail Ahmad, MEMRI

Table of Contents
Introduction

I. Brief Historical Background: The Jews and Pakistan

II. Main Characteristics of Antisemitism in Pakistan
a) Antisemitism in Pakistan is Interconnected with Pakistan's Other Perceived Enemies: The "Three Satans" – India, the U.S. and Israel (i.e. Hindus, Christians and Jews)
b) Antisemitism is Used Instrumentally by the Pakistani Military
c) Antisemitism is Used to Designate Threats to Pakistan, Such As the Taliban
III. Range of Motifs in Antisemitic Attacks
a) Sports – Jews and Indians Lobby against Pakistani Cricketers
b) Polio Vaccination Campaign – A Dangerous Jewish Conspiracy
c) Pakistan-India Water Dispute – Israel's Hand
d) The U.N. – A Jewish Conspiracy
e) Pakistani Interests Abroad Harmed by Jews/Israel
f) Valentine's Day and April's Fool Day – Used by Jews and Hindus against Muslims
g) Ahmadi Muslims – Agents of Israel/India
h) Video of Taliban Flogging Woman – Made by Jews to Smear Pakistan
i) Facebook – A Jewish/Israeli Conspiracy
j) Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons – Targeted by Jews/Israel
k) Faisal Shehzad's Times Square Attack – A CIA/Mossad Plot to Implicate Pakistan
IV. The Jews and the West Undermine the Identity of Pakistan
Conclusion
 
Introduction

This paper examines: a) the history of Jews in Pakistan; b) violence against Jews and their synagogues following the creation of the Islamic nation of Pakistan in 1947; c) contemporary protests by Pakistani Muslims against Jews and Israel; and d) Pakistani political and religious leaders' penchant for blaming most problems facing Pakistan on a U.S.-India-Israel axis.
Looking at Pakistani media reports over the past few years, this paper outlines how Pakistani opinion makers – barring a small segment of liberal intelligentsia – are deepening the anti-Jewish mindset that is typical across the Islamic world. For the purposes of this analysis, this paper does not include statements, protests, editorials, cartoons or viewpoints of Pakistani leaders and the government that are deemed to be justified criticism of Israel over its policies regarding the Palestinian problem and the occupied territories.
This paper does discuss the narrative of antisemitism in Pakistani society, examining how Israel is seen by Islamic scholars and political leaders in Pakistan as representing the Jews rather than the state and government of Israel in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In the context of this paper, a definition of antisemitism means political/religious/cultural attacks on Jews and Israel that are not related to the Palestinian problem but over supposed Jewish-Israeli involvement in international conspiracies.

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March Mega Quake Warning Issued For United States

By Sorcha Faal, What Does It Mean?

A new report released today in the Kremlin prepared for Prime Minister Putin by the Institute of Physics of the Earth, in Moscow, is warning that the America’s are in danger of suffering a mega-quake of catastrophic proportions during the next fortnight (14 days) with a specific emphasis being placed on the United States, Mexico, Central America and South American west coast regions along with the New Madrid Fault Zone region.

This report further warns that catastrophic earthquakes in Asia and the sub-continent are, also, “more than likely to occur” with the 7.3 magnitude quake in Japan today being “one of at least 4 of this intensity” to occur during this same time period.

Raising the concerns of a mega-quake occurring, this report says, are the increasing subtle electromagnetic signals that are being detected in the Earth’s upper atmosphere over many regions of the World, with the most intense being over the US Western coastal and Midwest regions.

Important to note are that Russian and British scientists are at the forefront of predicting earthquakes based on these subtle electromagnetic signals and have joined in an effort to put satellites in space to detect more of them.

More ominously in this report are Russian scientists confirming the independent analysis of New Zealand mathematician and long-range weather forecaster, Ken Ring [photo 2^nd left], who predicted the deadly Christchurch quake and this week issued another warning of a quake to hit on or about March 20^th.

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