Asian nations are world’s largest arms importers

Why are Asian nations stockpiling all sorts of armaments? Will Asia continent be the next flashpoint?

These questions come on the heels of a new revelation by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), an independent international organization dedicated to research into conflict, armament, arms control and disarmament, saying that the five biggest arms import countries are now all in Asia.

The report reveals that the volume of worldwide arms transfers was 24 percent higher in the period 2007 to 2011 than in 2002 to 2006, with Asia and the Oceania states (Australia and region) accounting for 44 percent of all global arms imports.

Next was Europe at 19 percent, the Middle East at 17 percent, the United States, Canada and South America with 11 percent and Africa at 9 percent.

According to SIPRI, among the Asian nations, India was the world’s biggest importer of arms, accounting for 10 percent of the global total. The next four biggest arms importers in 2007 to 2011 were South Korea, which accounted for 6 percent of arms transfers, followed by Pakistan (5 percent), China (5 percent) and Singapore (4 percent).

India’s emergence as top rank importer can be gleaned from a statement given by Siemon Wezeman, a senior analyst with SIPRI, who said that India’s defense spending reflects its regional security concerns and Delhi’s global aspirations.

This was of course referring to India’s neighbor and sometimes foe Pakistan, which happens to be the third largest in the list, and how the Hindus increasingly sees China as a potential threat.

While China may be seen as having reduced its armament orders, after having been the biggest importer of arms in 2002 to 2006, it does not mean however that it is not building up anymore its arsenal. On the contrary this economic power is now more reliant on home-grown arms production and has been so successful and reliable in doing it that the nation has now become a source of war materiel. It has also increased its overall defense budget and is investing in major projects such as the development of a stealth fighter jet and an aircraft carrier program.

“The decline in the volume of Chinese imports coincides with the improvements in China’s arms industry and rising arms exports,” the SIPRI report states. Since 2002, the volume of Chinese arms exports has increased by 95 percent. China now ranks as the sixth largest global supplier of arms, behind the U.S., Russia, Germany, France and Britain.

What is making India more leery about China is the fact that it is the biggest supplier of arms to Pakistan.

“While the volume of China’s arms exports is increasing, this is largely a result of Pakistan importing more arms from China,” said Paul Holtom, director of the SIPRI Arms Transfers Program.

At a glimpse, some notable 2007-11 acquisitions by India are combat aircraft that included 120 Su-30MKs and 16 MiG-29Ks from Russia and 20 Jaguar Ss from the United Kingdom, according to SIPRI.

Pakistan, on the other hand, received deliveries of combat aircraft during the same period of 50 JF-17s from China and 30 F-16s from the U.S.

“Mental torture” of men by women in Pakistan

 

This, sure, will raise a lot of eyebrows from men. How? Why? When? Where?

Looks like I am already sensing some apprehensions in men! C’mon. Relax. It was simply a bad joke that happened in the provincial assembly of Sindh in Pakistan.

The assembly was actually resolving an issue on violence against women, which is very common in the rural areas of Pakistan, by creating a panel to investigate it.

Violence against women in this part of the world is said to be mainly blamed to patriarchal attitudes and lax law enforcement.

Patriarchal attitudes may be referred to as that cluster of collective values, beliefs, and ideas that deem rural women to be subordinate to rural men.

It does not mean to say that these attitudes do not exist in urban communities, but they are, perhaps, more extreme and less tempered against issues of women’s right in the rural areas.

A strong presence of sexism, which is defined as man’s ideology of  male supremacy or male superiority may also be an added reason to the prevalence of battered women.

So, after the resolution was passed creating the panel to probe the violence against women, Jam Tamachi Unar, an assembly member stood up suggesting, in turn, to form a committee to stop the “mental torture” of men by women.

While this was made in jest, as Unar admitted later, it, however, drew shouts of “Shame’ from female assembly members, followed by a walkout by some from the seesion.

Unar told the press that he was only joking but that it’s a “bitter truth that the same way women are tortured in rural areas, men are the victims of mental torture in urban neighborhoods.”

One cannot help, but wonder, however, what “bitter truth” Unar was talking about.

No food on the table? No sex? Sleeping outside the mosquito net? Wife excelling husband whichever way you look at it?

Keeps you thinking, doesn’t it?

Sources link Pakistan to Fort Hood shootings

 

The Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people at America’s biggest army base had been found to have links to Pakistan.

Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, a member of the House Homeland Security Intelligence Subcommittee, said “independent sources” had confirmed the link.

According to a senior security figure Major Nidal Malik Hasan made or accepted a number of wire transfers to or from Pakistan.

Hasan, was shot several times by civilian police officers after he allegedly opened fire on a crowd of his fellow soldiers. More than 100 bullets were said to have been fired, injuring 43 people, 34 of which suffered gunshot wounds.

His attorney, John Galligan, has said prosecutors have not yet told him whether they plan to seek the death penalty. Hasan has been charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder.

Mr. Galligan described his client’s medical condition “extremely serious” especially when doctors told Hasan that he may be permanently paralysed from the waist down.

Gates: Obama to decide more troop deployment after top-level meetings

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the decision to send as many as 40,000 more US troops to Afghanistan needs time and whatever strategy President Barack Obama decides on will be supported by the US military.

Barack Obama was said to have met with Gen Stanley McChrystal, the top US and Nato commander in Afghanistan, on Air Force One in Copenhagen last week, who had described the situation in Afghanistan as “serious” and is believed to have requested up to 40,000 additional troops.

At issue is whether U.S. forces should continue to focus on fighting the Taliban and securing the Afghan population, or shift to more narrowly targeting al-Qaeda militants believed to be hiding in Pakistan, using unmanned spy planes and covert operations to kill them.

Gen McChrystal is believed to favor the strategy of protecting the Afghan people and carrying the fight to the Taliban.

President Obama has made it clear that he wants to make sure that the top-level meetings he will be having this week on the evolving direction of the war will be one that will have the consensus of all civilian and military advisers and that means it is the right thing to do.

CONVICTED BRITISH MUSLIMS COULD HAVE MADE ANOTHER 9/11 ATTACK

Three British Muslims were convicted today by a London jury of plotting to commit what security officials in the U.S and U.K describe as mass murder on a par with the 9/11 attacks. The plan they made in 2006 was to blow up planes en route from London to cities in the U.S. and Canada.

It was the arrest of the trio that led to restrictions on taking liquids on flights and long queues at airport security checkpoints across the world.

The plan was uncovered by a huge counter terrorism investigation, involving the biggest ever surveillance operation in British history. There was an instance when law enforcement officers broke into the London flat being used as a bomb factory, and set up a hidden camera. The payoff resulted when police were actually listening as two of the plotters recorded their suicide videos.

All the plotters are second generation British Muslims with strong ties to Pakistan. Senior counter-terrorism sources claim however that the plot originated from Pakistan, and was directed by Al Qaeda from that country. During the trial the prosecution presented evidence that the so-called “homegrown” terrorists had travelled from Britain to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

It is believed that the convicted terrorists were making their evil plans with the help of Rashid Rauf, a shadowy British man, via e-mail as the evidence showed.  Rauf who made an extraordinary escape from custody after appearing in court in Islamabad has since been unheard of  especially when it was rumored that he had been killed in a CIA predator missile strike.