ကမာၻ့စစ္အသံုးစရိတ္ အၾကီးမားဆံုး ၁၀ နိုင္ငံစာရင္းကို စေတာ့ဟုမ္း အျပည္ျပည္ဆိုင္ရာ ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးႏွင့္သုေတသန ဌာန (SIPRI) ကထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကညာတြင္ အေမရိကန္က ထိပ္ဆံုးမွေျပးေန

4. Saudi Arabia
> Military expenditure: $62.8 billion
> Expenditure as pct. of GDP: 9.3% (2nd highest)
> 1-yr. spending change: 14.3% (16th highest)
> Total arms imports: $1.5 billion (4th highest)
> Total arms exports: N/A

Situated in an increasingly unstable region, Saudi Arabia hiked its military budget by 14.3% in 2013. Saudi neighbors include Iraq and Yemen, which are currently in turmoil. Saudi Arabia has also had historically poor relations with another neighbor, Iran, which could become an even bigger threat if it acquires nuclear capabilities. The large increase in military outlays is likely a direct response to these threats. The House of Saud aims to replace its current 20-year old weapon stores, including a heavy investment in missile defense systems. Like many of the countries with the biggest military budgets, Saudi Arabia benefits from one of the world’s largest oil reserves. At 9.3%, the country’s spending as a percentage of GDP was second only to Oman, another oil-rich nation in the Middle East.

ALSO READ: Companies Profiting the Most from War

3. Russia
> Military expenditure: $84.9 billion
> Expenditure as pct. of GDP: 4.1% (10th highest)
> 1-yr. spending change: 4.8% (48th highest)
> Total arms imports: $148 million (33rd highest)
> Total arms exports: $8.3 billion (the highest)

Russia leads the rest of the world in military exports, with more than $8 billion worth last year, well above the U.S.’s $6.2 billion in exports. While total military spending in Russia remains a fraction of what it was in the late 1980s, it has been on the rise in recent years as a result of Russia’s involvement in various regional conflicts. With the more recent ongoing Crimean crisis, this spending trend may likely continue. The country’s military expenditure was roughly $85 billion last year compared to just $64.5 billion in 2009. Russia now spends 4.1% of its GDP on its military, exceeding that of the U.S. for the first time in over a decade. The dramatic increase is likely due in part to Russia’s stated plans to invest more than $700 billion to modernize its weapons system by 2020. According to some onlookers, making these improvements may be difficult given Russia’s low birth rates, poverty and lingering soviet-era corruption problems.

2. China
> Military expenditure: $171.4 billion
> Expenditure as pct. of GDP: 2.0% (45th highest)
> 1-yr. spending change: 7.4% (36th highest)
> Total arms imports: $1.5 billion (3rd highest)
> Total arms exports: $1.8 billion (3rd highest)

Military spending often mirrors economic growth, and this is especially true in China where military spending has increased in each of the past five years roughly in line with economic growth. Military expenditure grew 7.4% last year alone, far more than any other country in the region, and among the larger annual growths worldwide. The value of China’s military exports trails only the U.S. and Russia, at around $1.8 billion last year. Unlike most other countries, China imported nearly as much in military goods as it exported, at $1.5 billion last year. According to Dr. Perlo-Freeman, a combination of increased Chinese military spending and rising regional tensions have encouraged higher military expenditures among neighboring countries like Vietnam, the Philippines and Japan.

ALSO READ: The World’s Most Content (and Miserable) Countries

1. United States
> Military expenditure: $618.7 billion
> Expenditure as pct. of GDP: 3.8% (14th highest)
> 1-yr. spending change: -7.8% (12th lowest)
> Total arms imports: $759 million (8th highest)
> Total arms exports: $6.2 billion (2nd highest)

The $619 billion military expenditure in the U.S. nearly outpaced the combined spending of every other country on this list in 2013. At the start of 2013, the U.S. had nearly 8,000 nuclear warheads in reserve. Since 2001, U.S. defense spending has risen from $287 billion to $530 billion. In recent years, however, U.S. military outlays fell from 4.8% of GDP in 2009 to 3.8% in 2013. Reduction in military expenditures was due to a greater emphasis on fiscal austerity and the winding down of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, military expenditure fell nearly 6% in 2012, followed by a 7.8% reduction in 2013. Despite efforts to curtail the size of the military, the U.S. supplied nearly $6.2 billion in arms to foreign allies, a figure second only to Russia. The U.S. was also a large arms importer, bringing in $759 million worth of arms, among the higher rates worldwide.

By Thomas C. Frohlich and Alexander Kent

10 Countries Spending the Most on the Military

Global military spending continued to decline last year. Although arms expenditure has actually increased in much of the world, military spending in the United States — which still accounted for 37% of total global military spending in 2013 — has declined in recent years. The Stockholm International…

247WALLST.COM

ေတာ္လွန္ေရးအသြင္ေဆာင္ေသာ လြတ္လပ္ေရး

ichard (RJ) Eskow Become a fan 

Senior Fellow, Campaign for America's Future; Host/Managing Editor, The Zero Hour

Revolutionary Independence

Posted: 07/03/2014 11:55 pm EDT Updated: 07/04/2014 2:59 am EDT

Print Article

• 

The event we celebrate on the Fourth of July is not America's victory over Great Britain. The British weren't defeated until September 3, 1783.

က်ေနာ္မ်ား ဆင္ႏြဲေနေသာ ဇူလိုင္လ ၄ ရက္ေန့သည္ အေမရိကန္ကျဗိတိန္ကို အနိုင္ရခဲ့ျခင္းမဟုတ္ပါ။ အမွန္စင္စစ္ စက္တင္ဘာလ ၃ ရက္ေန့ ၁၇၈၃ ခုႏွစ္အေထိ ျဗိတိသ်ွေတြ အေရးမနိမ့္ခဲ့ေသးပါ။

July 4, 1776 is the day the Continental Congress ratified the Declaration of Independence.  That's the day we formally declared ourselves independent and laid out the egalitarian principles on which our country was founded. This date marks a triumph of awareness, the realization that freedom and justice are our human birthright.

Why is July 4, not September 3, called Independence Day? Because independence begins with an insight, a realization so powerful that it allows us to achieve the seemingly impossible. The insights in the Declaration of Independence allowed the colonists to defeat an empire.

Victory was born when we realized our natural state and claimed it for ourselves.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident ..."

We became free when we discovered the self-evident truth of our freedom. In the Declaration of Independence, this realization is presented as inseparable from the knowledge that all human beings are created equal. The principles of individual freedom and social justice are indivisible and inalienable.

What does that mean today? In the age of corporatized politics, it means we can't depend on leaders or parties. We're paying the price for not having yet fulfilled Thomas Jefferson's desire to "crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."

Our country resisted Britain's state-sanctioned monopolies in 1776. Today's government-sanctioned corporations are found on Wall Street, not by the chartered Thames. The spirit of the East India Company lives in the five banks which now control nearly 96% of the derivatives market in this country today, and in the media monopolies which distort our perception of reality and limit our vision of the possible.

Economic injustice and personal bigotry will persist as long as wealthy contributors corrupt our political process. Politicians in this post-Citizens United, post-McCutcheon world are either limited by corporate power or prostituted to it.

Some of those politicians will help in the struggle to reclaim our democracy. But they can't lead it. We have to do that. We must work around, as well as within, the electoral system. That means getting the truth out, speaking for the majority's viewpoint, and outlining the real challenges before us.

Leaders? There are some inspiring new ones out there, And if when we build the movement we need more will come. But it starts with us.

In the end, the obstacle we face is dependence itself. If we depend on politicians or anyone else to do what needs to be done, we have lost our independence. If we go too far in the other direction -- if we reflexively dismiss all political action as pointless or irrelevant -- we've become dependent on an escapist fantasy whose sole goal becomes the maintenance of our own sense of moral superiority.

True independence begins with a state of mind which says that our rights are ours to uphold and defend, a state of mind which rests in the field of action while remaining unattached to smaller allegiances of self-identification or self-justification.

On July 4 the Founders declared that governments must "derive their just power from the consent of the governed." Only we, the governed, can ensure that this consent is given in a democratic and knowledgeable way.

There are those who remain attached to the idea that revolutions, and independence itself, are the fruits of violence. But profound revolutions are born of insight, not violence. We need a revolution which renews and restores the insights of the Founders, not one which overthrows it in a media-induced mob frenzy.

Their dream is not yet fully realized. Today's system must change. That begins with a vision of something better. "Revolution is not the uprising against preexisting order," said the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset, "but the setting up of a new order contradictory to the traditional one."

We have to imagine what our leaders can't or won't imagine, then work to bring it into being. "What is now proved," said William Blake, "was once only imagined."

We need the kind of independence the Founders had, the kind that is felt deep in the marrow and calls the independent spirit into action. Because we need action -- independent action, action which doesn't depend on leaders or parties, action which rejects even the most well-informed pessimism or the deepest despair.

That's how this country came into being. The spirit of independent action conquered slavery, created the labor movement, expanded voting rights, and launched the ongoing fight for economic justice.

The challenges have never been greater. The planet itself is in peril. Global wealth is endangering the well-being of the human majority and corporations are more powerful than ever.

Independence from the corporate state seems impossible to achieve. Victory seems unthinkable, almost revolutionary. But we've done great things before, and we can again.

We can. We must. We will.

Happy Independence Day.

(Some portions of this essay were revised and adapted from past years' Fourth of July commentaries.)

Myanmar military ruler visits China, seeks support

By TINI TRANAP

BEIJING -Military-run Myanmar's top leader Gen. Than Shwe arrived in Beijing on Tuesday for a state visit to his country's closest ally ahead of contentious national elections this fall.

China strongly backs Myanmar internationally and provides it with key economic and diplomatic support. Myanmar's ruling junta has been largely shunned by the West because of its poor human rights record and failure to hand over power to the opposition party that won elections two decades ago.
Than Shwe is expected to seek China's support for plans to hold nationwide elections in early November that the junta is portraying as a key step in shifting to civilian rule after five decades of military domination. Critics have called them a sham and say the military shows little sign of relinquishing control.
Than Shwe will meet President Hu Jintao along with Premier Wen Jiabao and other senior Chinese officials in Beijing. He is scheduled to visit the Shanghai Expo and the manufacturing hub of Shenzhen in southern Guangdong province before he departs Saturday.
Though no details have been released about their agenda, experts expect talks to center on the upcoming elections as well as economic deals signed by Wen earlier this year.
"He needs to talk to China about how to further develop their mutual relations if he wins the election, and how China and Myanmar can go further in cooperating politically and economically," said Zhao Haili, associate professor at the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Xiamen University.
The countries have generally enjoyed strong relations in recent years, though there was some friction when factional fighting sent tens of thousands of Burmese refugees across the Chinese border last summer.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a regular news conference Tuesday that the election was Myanmar's internal affair. "We hope the international community can provide constructive help to the upcoming election and refrain from making any negative impact on the domestic political process and the regional peace and stability," she said.
Than Shwe's visit comes three months after Wen went to Myanmar, the first trip by a Chinese leader since 2001. Wen signed 15 agreements on cooperation in areas including a natural gas pipeline, hydropower station and development assistance, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
China is Myanmar's third-largest trading partner and investor after Thailand and Singapore. In 2009, bilateral trade totaled $2.9 billion, Xinhua said. By January 2010, China's investment in Myanmar amounted to $1.8 billion, accounting for 11.5 percent of Myanmar's then total foreign investment.
But this May, China made huge investments in hydropower, oil and gas, totaling $8.17 billion, Xinhua said, quoting Myanmar government statistics

ဂ်ပန္နိုင္ငံအာဏာရပါတီအုပ္စုမ်ား လံုျခံုေရးႏွင္ဆိုင္ေသာ အေျပာင္းအလဲ သေဘာတူညီမွ ုရရန္နီးစပ္ေန

Japan's Ruling Bloc Near Agreement On Major Security Shift

  | By By MARI YAMAGUCHI

Posted: 06/27/2014 7:24 am EDT Updated: 06/27/2014 11:59 am EDT

Print Article

• 

TOKYO (AP) — Japan's ruling party and its coalition partner are near agreement on a major shift in the country's restrictive defensive policy that would allow the military to help defend other nations.

The planned change is part of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's push to allow Japan to play a more assertive role in international security amid China's growing military presence and rising regional tensions.

On Friday, senior members of Abe's Liberal Democratic Party and its partner New Komeito were finalizing the wording of a draft security policy submitted by the government. The Cabinet is expected on Tuesday to approve Japan's right to exercise "collective self-defense" by reinterpreting the war-renouncing Article 9 of Japan's Constitution — a step opponents say undermines the charter.

The two governing partners have been discussing the change based on a recommendation in May by an Abe-appointed panel of experts. After 10 rounds of talks, Abe's party has largely pressured its centrist, Buddhist-backed partner into a compromise, though New Komeito initially opposed the idea.

Abe wants to allow Japan to fight for other countries when Japan isn't under direct attack. He says no single country can defend itself anymore and that Japan needs to keep up with the increasingly harsh security environment in the region, citing China's rise and missile and nuclear threats from North Korea.

The near-final draft Friday says Japan can exercise the right to collective self-defense only when there is a need to safeguard the people's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness when it is threatened by a foreign armed attack on Japan or "countries with close ties." It says the military measures should be "limited to the minimum amount necessary."

New Komeito leader Natsuo Yamaguchi welcomed the draft's limits on the use of collective defense.

Critics say the new policy leaves the door open for Japan's eventual participation in collective security activities such as the war in Iraq. Japan currently limits its participation even in U.N. peacekeeping activities to noncombat roles.

Written under U.S. direction after World War II, the 1947 constitution says the Japanese people "forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation," and that "land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained."

The interpretation of that ban has been relaxed over the years, allowing Japan to have a military to defend itself, dubbed a Self-Defense Force. A number of Japanese leaders have said in the past that the country has a right to collective self-defense but has chosen not to use it.

AV-8B no gear landing on USS Bataan

Hubble: Timelapse of V838 Monocerotis (2002-2006) [1080p]

Hubble: Timelapse of V838 Monocerotis (2002-2006) [1080p]