SELLING DEMOCRACY & PEACE TO THE WORLD :

US arms sales hit record levels

Published on Aug 26, 2012 by AlJazeeraEnglish : US weapons sales hit a record high in 2011, according to a congressional report. The country sold $66bn worth of arms last year, tripling the number it sold in 2010. The previous record was $31bn in 2009. The report said that the sales were driven by countries in the Gulf region, where tension centred around potential military action against Iran has been building. The biggest customer for the US arms industry was Saudi Arabia, according to the report. All in all, the US sold 78 per cent of the world's arms in 2011. Russia was a distant second, with $4.8bn in arms sales. Al Jazeera speaks to Richard Weitz, the director for the Centre for Political-Military Analysis at the Hudson Institute in Washington DC, about the significance of the latest revelations.

Caught : American culture is so obsessed with celebrity and fame!

Published on Aug 21, 2012 by WorldTalkLIVE : fool thousands of pedestrians

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RAPE - -- in relation to Julian Assange

Published on Aug 23, 2012 by WomenAgainstRape : Lisa Longstaff on Sky news interview 21 August 2012

India gears up to order 22 Apache helicopters for $1.4 bn

India is getting ready to order 22 heavy-duty Apache helicopters for around $1.4 billion, in what will be yet another big defence deal to be bagged by the US.

The US has already made military sales worth over $8 billion to India over the last few years, despite it having lost out to France in the almost $20 billion MMRCA (medium multi-role combat aircraft) project to supply 126 fighters to IAF, which is in the final commercial negotiations stage.

In the battle for the attack helicopters, Boeing’s AH-64 D Apache Longbow met all air staff qualitative requirements during the field trials conducted by the IAF, while the Russian Mil Moscow Helicopter Plant’s Mi-28 Havoc failed to pass muster.

“It’s just a matter of time before the contract is inked for the Apaches after final commercial negotiations. Most of the hurdles have been cleared,” a defence ministry official said. The US and Russia are also locked in battle to supply 15 heavy-lift helicopters to IAF, with the Boeing-manufactured Chinooks pitted against the Russian Mi-26 choppers.

As first reported by TOI earlier, Indian armed forces are looking to induct as many as 900 helicopters in the coming decade, including 384 light-utility and observation, 90 naval multirole, 65 light combat, 22 heavy-duty attack, 139 medium-lift and 15 heavy-lift, among others, many of them from abroad.

The impending $1.4 billion deal for the 22 Apaches will also include the supply of 812 AGM-114 L-3 Hellfire Longbow missiles, 542 AGM-114 R-3 Hellfire-II missiles, 245 Stinger Block I-92 H missiles and 12 AN/APG-78 fire-control radars.

Among the other military aviation deals already bagged by the US are the $4.1 bn contract for 10 C-17 Globemaster-III strategic airlift aircraft, $2.1 billion for eight P-8 I maritime patrol aircraft and $962 million for six C-130 J ‘Super Hercules” planes.

original >>

Armed men attack Al-Ikhabrieh Syrian TV channel ‎

Published on Aug 11:

US developing genocidal bio-weapons: Prominent author

The Pentagon

A prominent political analyst says the United States has proposed a bio-weapon that would destroy the part of the human brain associated with spirituality.

“An apparent Pentagon video, leaked by the hacker group Anonymous, details US military plans to develop and deploy a biological weapon that would destroy people's receptivity to religion in targeted Muslim populations,” Dr. Kevin Barrett wrote in an article on Press TV website.

Barrett went on to say that the proposed bio-weapon would be distributed in flu vaccines >>and would “alter human genomic expression to produce a sort of chemical lobotomy.”

The analyst further described the Pentagon project as a clear act of genocide under international law.

“The culture of Islamic societies is an intensely religious culture; indeed, it is strong religiosity that holds these societies together. The murder of the central feature of the culture of 1.5 billion people would be by far the worst genocide ever attempted or even contemplated,” he added.

Barrett further argued that the Pentagon plan is a threat to all of humanity as religion and spirituality demand work towards justice. Therefore, the US plans to erase all the religious and spiritual resistance in the world in order to gain more power and invade nations.

“The Pentagon, whose job is to massacre the just on behalf of the wicked, would be happy - even ecstatic - if there were no-one left on earth who cared about justice. If they cannot kill off the just, the Pentagon psychopaths will be happy to give everyone a bio-chemical anti-spirituality lobotomy so that nobody will ever again work for justice in this world. This would, of course, signal the end of humanity,” he concluded.

read more : 9 Aug 2012  >>

A year after the riots : Like a bad dream

Unrest that seemed epoch-making a year ago has changed little. That is surprising—and worrying

Aug 4th 2012 | BIRMINGHAM AND LONDON

ONE of the worst incidents of last year’s riots took place at the Bartons Arms, an ornate Victorian pub in the Aston district of Birmingham. Criminals set it alight, then shot at police officers on the ground and in a helicopter; six people have been jailed for up to 30 years for the ambush. But, with the help of its punters, the pub soon opened again. A scorch mark on the bar is the only reminder of the carnage.

Virtually the only trace in central Birmingham is a marketing ploy. After the windows of Cyber Candy, a sweet shop, were smashed, its hoardings were daubed with the words “Keep Calm and Candy on”. The slogan now adorns balloons in the window. The unrest “feels a little bit like a dream,” says Casey Rain, a local musician who chronicled the tumult on his blog. “Once all the damage was cleaned up, people just tried to forget about it.”

The riots that began in London on August 6th last year, soon spreading to Birmingham and other cities, seemed at the time to be an outbreak of mass lunacy. Now those few anarchic days feel instead like a mass hallucination. The closest analogy in recent history may be with the death of Princess Diana. Like the fevered week of mourning in 1997, the riots seemed set to be epoch-making; yet, a year on, so slight has the impact on politics and policy been that it almost seems as if they never happened at all.

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Syrian insurgents threaten to kill Iranian media staff

Insurgents clash with Syrian Army forces in the center of Syria's restive northwestern city of Aleppo on July 25, 2012

Syrian insurgents have publicly threatened to target Iranian media staff in the crisis-hit country over their factual coverage of ongoing clashes in the restive northwestern city of Aleppo, Press TV reports.

Top insurgent leaders on Thursday made death threats against the director of Arabic-language Al-Alam news network in Syria, Hossein Mortada, and gave similar warnings to Maya Naser, who is the local correspondent of English-language Press TV news network in Aleppo. 

The death threats come as Syrian insurgents and their advocates are angry at the channels' coverage of the events in Syria.

Meanwhile, Syrian security forces are preparing to launch a massive operation to clear the northwestern city of Aleppo of insurgents. 

Three reinforcement teams are being sent to Aleppo in order to eliminate the foreign-backed insurgency and restore security to the restive Syrian city. 

Syria has been experiencing unrest since mid-March 2011, with many people, including large number of security forces, killed in the turmoil. 

While the West and the Syrian opposition accuse the government of the killings, Damascus blames outlaws, saboteurs and insurgents for the unrest, insisting that it is being orchestrated from abroad. 

Original news  |  3 Aug 2012 

Syria Spin Machine: UK mainstream lies exposed.

Published on Aug 1, 2012 by RussiaToday : While Syria's still locked in bloody confrontation on the ground, another war is also being waged - the media one. And as RT has discovered, even the world's most respected media outlets who have huge influence in shaping public opinion, resort to distorting facts.