TOP SECRET: Nato using invisible cloth - New technology makes troops invisible like the Predator VIDEO

 

Russian Special Forces (Spetsnaz) in action VIDEO

Swedish Marines Lip-Sync 'Greased Lightning' And Change Your Life VIDEO

       

You've seen U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan perform "Call Me Maybe" and "Telephone," but you ain't seen nothing until you've seen these Swedish marines' lip-syncing "Grease's" systematic, hydromatic, ultramatic show-stopper "Greased Lightning."

Orthodox church celebrates cleansing feast of Sylvestrov Den

 

Sofia. The Orthodox Church celebrates on January 2 St. Silvester, Pope of Rome with a cleansing feast. According to the traditions, the remains of Christmas are ''cleared away'' by male carolers who arrive to the rich homes with music and songs to pick up a bag filled with meat and wine left for them in the barn.

Drug production in Afghanistan grows 40 times during NATO operation

  

The global illegal drug trade is annually estimated at $800 billion, Federal Drug Control Service head Viktor Ivanov told a conference in Moscow.

Santa Barbara - Her memory is celebrated on December 4 of the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Church and the Artillery of many countries

  

Saint Barbara was the extremely beautiful daughter of a wealthy Greek heathen named Dioscurus, who lived near Nicomedia in Asia Minor.

Greek coastguard halts ship carrying 20,000 Kalashnikovs, places Turkish captain in custody

 

The Greek coastguard on Nov. 9 intercepted a Sierra Leone-flagged cargo ship in the southeastern Aegean Sea with around 20,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles on board, officials said.

Seal team survival Mount Athos - VIDEO

  

TURKEY: Erdogan and his generals (a sex-for-secrets)

 

 

IMAGINE a country with NATO’s second-largest army that counts Iraq, Iran and Syria as neighbours and is encircled by the Aegean, the Black Sea and the Mediterranean—but has nobody to command its navy. Just such a situation looms in Turkey after this week’s resignation of Admiral Nusret Guner, the number two in the navy who was expected to take over when its incumbent head steps down in August. There are no other qualified candidates, not least because more than half of Turkey’s admirals are in jail, along with hundreds of generals and other officers (both serving and retired), all on charges of plotting to oust Turkey’s mildly Islamist Justice and Development (AK) government.

Admiral Guner’s resignation came after prosecutors claimed that 75 naval officers being tried for allegedly running a sex-for-secrets ring had planted a spy camera in his teenaged daughter’s bedroom. In an emotional speech the admiral said he believed in his colleagues’ innocence.

The series of cases known as Ergenekon has left Turkey’s once omnipotent armed forces weak and divided. At last count one in five Turkish generals, including Ilker Basbug, a former chief of the general staff, was behind bars. This ought to be a triumph for Turkish democracy. But the trials are dogged by claims of spiced-up evidence and other discrepancies.

The families of over 250 defendants given long prison terms in September 2012 in another alleged coup plot, Sledgehammer, are taking their case to the UN Human Rights Council. They insist the evidence was doctored. Independent forensic experts back their claims. Jared Genser, a lawyer based in Washington, DC, who has worked for such luminaries as Vaclav Havel and Desmond Tutu, says he agreed to act for the Sledgehammer defendants because he “firmly believes” in their innocence and because the evidence against them “was demonstrably forged”.

Some point fingers at a powerful Muslim group led by Fethullah Gulen, a moderate Turkish cleric living in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania. The generals hounded the Gulenists after they ejected Turkey’s first Islamist prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan, in 1997. The Gulenists have made a comeback under AK and are said to have infiltrated the police and judiciary.

Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, shares some doubts, even though he has cut down the generals’ influence during his decade in power. “These operations against the army are affecting morale. There are 400 serving and retired officers in jail. 

At this rate we will have no officers left to appoint to command positions,” he complained in a recent interview. As clashes with the Kurdish separatist PKK continue despite new peace talks and the conflict in Syria threatens to spill over the border, Mr Erdogan is right to be worried.

Yet even as the prime minister seeks to distance himself from the Ergenekon case, some claim that he has struck a cosy alliance with the army. The chief of the general staff, Necdet Ozel, who owes his rise to the resignation in 2011 of his predecessor in protest at Ergenekon, is fiercely loyal. Mr Erdogan rushed to his defence in December 2011 after the Turkish air force had rained bombs on Kurdish civilians who were apparently mistaken for PKK rebels as they slipped into Turkey from Iraq. Some 34 Kurds, mostly teenagers, died. A parliamentary commission investigating the affair has run into claims of a cover-up. Not a single head has rolled.

It may be that the still-popular Mr Erdogan feels that the army is fully under his control. The National Security Council through which the generals used to bark orders to nominally civilian governments has been reduced to a symbolic role. After constitutional reforms were approved in a 2010 referendum, soldiers began to be tried in civilian courts. “Erdogan sees the army as his boys,” comments Henri Barkey, a professor of international relations at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.

Yet for all their recent setbacks the generals still retain considerable sway. The defence budget remains largely immune to civilian oversight. The chief of the general staff is not subordinate to the minister of defence. And an internal service law that allows the army to intervene in politics remains in place.

Indeed, the idea that some officers may have been conspiring to topple the AK government is not far-fetched. In 2007 the army tried unsuccessfully to stop Abdullah Gul, a former foreign minister, from becoming Turkey’s president because his wife wears the Islamic headscarf. In 2008 the generals egged on the constitutional court to ban AK on flimsily documented charges that it was seeking to impose sharia law. In the event the case was dismissed by a single vote. As for Ergenekon, “even in the absence of tampered evidence, there is sufficient proof of coup plotting to send scores of generals to jail,” argues Orhan Kemal Cengiz, a human-rights lawyer who has studied the case.

Turkey’s army has overthrown no fewer than four governments since 1960. The bloodiest coup came in 1980, when 50 people were executed, 500,000 were arrested and many hundreds died in jail. Yet millions of Turks, who have long revered the armed forces as custodians of Ataturk’s secular legacy, cheered the coup. Its leaders are now at last facing trial; opinions are belatedly shifting amid gruesome revelations of the army’s misdeeds. A recent poll suggests that, for the first time, the presidency has supplanted the army as the country’s most popular institution. And a report by the Platform for Soldiers’ Rights, an advocacy group, detailing abuse of conscripts, has dealt a further blow. Some 934 soldiers are said to have committed suicide over the past decade, surpassing the number killed while fighting the PKK. Were the conscripts killed by their superiors? Their parents want to know.

 

USA: Ex-Navy SEAL 'American Sniper' Author Shot and Killed in Texas

GLEN ROSE, Texas — A former Navy SEAL and the author of "American Sniper," Chris Kyle, was shot and killed along with another man Saturday at a Texas gun range, a county sheriff has told the Texas news media.

The sheriff of Erath County, Tommy Bryant, said Mr. Kyle, 38, and a second man were found dead at Rough Creek Lodge’s shooting range west of Glen Rose, according to The Fort Worth Star-Telegram and The Stephenville Empire-Tribune. Glen Rose is about 50 miles southwest of Fort Worth.

 Mr. Kyle wrote the best-selling book, "American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History," detailing his 150-plus kills of insurgents from 1999 to 2009.

Investigators did not immediately release the name of the second victim, according to the newspapers.

Witnesses told sheriff’s investigators that a gunman opened fire on the men around 3:30 p.m. Saturday, then fled in a pickup truck belonging to one of the victims, according to The Star-Telegram. The newspapers said a 25-year-old man was later taken into custody in Lancaster, southeast of Dallas, and that charges were expected.

Lancaster police did not immediately return calls for comment.

The motive for the shooting was unclear.

Mr. Kyle was sued by the former governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura, over a portion of the book that claims Mr. Kyle punched Mr. Ventura in a 2006 bar fight over unpatriotic remarks. Mr. Ventura says the punch never happened and that the claim by Kyle defamed him.

Mr. Kyle had asked that Ventura’s claims of invasion of privacy and "unjust enrichment" be dismissed, saying there was no legal basis for them. But a federal judge said the lawsuit should proceed. Both sides were told to be ready for trial by Aug. 1.

Norway: No hijab for female police officers

The Norwegian army allowed Hijab as a part of the uniform in November 2008

Female police officers in Norway will not be allowed to wear the hijab -the Muslim headscarf - as part of their uniform, the minister of culture said Monday, rejecting a proposal from a government-appointed commission.

   

Culture Minister Hadia Tajik's remarks were made at a news conference after she accepted a report from the 15-member panel that had proposed allowing religious headwear to be used, reversing the current policy.

   

"The commission has had a broad mandate," Tajik said. 

"They have raised the issue of religious symbols and uniforms. 

The government dealt with this issue in 2009 and decided that religious symbols would not be allowed to be used in connection with police uniforms," she said.

   

The Labour Party, the main force in the ruling red-green coalition, also rejected changing the current policy at its party conference in 2011.

   

Tajik said she did not envision a change "in the foreseeable future."

   

Most political parties have said they opposed changing the police uniform rules. The Norwegian Police Federation in 2009 said it opposed any form of religious headwear, saying the police force had to be viewed as neutral.

   

The issue was raised in 2008 when a young Muslim woman asked if it was possible to wear the hijab during police training and as a trained police officer. Police in neighbouring Sweden have since 2006 been allowed to wear the headgarb.

   

Commission head, Sturla Stalsett, who is a pastor, said he and a  majority of the 15-member panel believed that police officers and judges should be allowed to wear religious headwear or symbols like  the cross.

   

The commission, which was appointed in 2010, has reviewed various faith issues in society and how international conventions affect Norwegian legislation.

   

Other proposals called for civil marriage ceremonies to be recognized as the legal marriage ceremony in Norway, Stalsett said.

   

"This would show that marriage is a legal institution," he said.

   

After such a ceremony, the newlyweds could also opt to be blessed in their church or faith community.

   

Rigmor Aasrud, minister for church affairs, was sceptical about the proposal saying she feared "more bureaucracy," news agency NTB said.

   

Labour Party deputy leader Helga Pedersen said she wanted the faith communities to "keep the right to marry, but also wanted to introduce a more general civil ceremony," NTB said.

   

The opposition Christian Democrats did not support changing the status of church marriages, leader Knut Arild Hareide said.

   

The commission's proposals were to be discussed in the coming months.

Military in Greece Is Spared Cuts

The euro crisis has not been good for NATO’s secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Mr. Rasmussen has used every occasion to cajole alliance members into investing and collaborating more in defense. He said recently that allied defense expenditures had declined by more than $56 billion compared with 2009. Practically all of those cuts happened in Europe, reducing defense spending there by an average of 15 percent.

Speaking at a meeting of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Prague, Mr. Rasmussen added that among the European allies, “only two devoted more than 2 percent of the gross domestic product to defense.”

One of those countries was Greece.

That seems astonishing given that Greece is in a deep economic and financial crisis. Greece’s economy has shrunk by 25 percent over the past two years.

During that time, the middle and lower classes — not the rich business community — have been hit hardest. The International Monetary Fund and the European Commission have imposed stringent austerity measures in return for loan guarantees. As a result, pensions and health care, transportation and education have all been cut drastically.

The armed forces, so far, have gotten away relatively lightly. During the height of the global financial crisis of 2008, Greek defense expenditures accounted for 3.1 percent of gross domestic product. Over the past two years, Greek defense spending still amounted to 2.1 percent of G.D.P.

“In relative terms, defense expenditure has been reduced given how much gross domestic product has fallen,” said Alexander S. Kritikos, an economics professor at the German Institute for Economic Research in Berlin.

“But the defense budget is still very high. It has been largely insulated from the huge cutbacks borne by the middle classes and poorer people,” he added.

Last August, the €10 billion, or $13 billion, defense budget was trimmed by €516 million. Even at that, Greece is the second-biggest defense spender among the 27 NATO countries after the United States, according to NATO statistics.

More than 73 percent of its budget is for personnel costs alone, making it one of the highest among NATO allies. Furthermore, military and civilian personnel account for 2.7 percent of Greece’s total labor force during, also making it one of the highest in NATO, according to alliance figures.

It is particularly hard to see how the armed forces can justify the current budget, as the money is not spent on supporting NATO or E.U. missions. According to the latest figures from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, Greece has 10 soldiers based in Afghanistan, out of a total of 102,011 troops from 50 countries.

In its neighborhood, Greece has 118 soldiers serving in NATO’s stabilization mission in Kosovo, out of a total of 5,565 troops from 30 contributing countries.

NATO does not publicly comment about any ally. But officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Greek government has not used the financial crisis to overhaul its armed forces by making the purchase of military equipment transparent, or reducing the personnel count of 136,000, of whom 90,000 are soldiers.

Curiously, the Greek public, which has often protested against the austerity measures, has yet to demand that the armed forces carry some of the burden. One reason, analysts say, is Greece’s residual fear of Turkey, a leading NATO member — despite the improvement of relations between the two countries over the past decade.

“It’s all very well calling for deeper defense cuts, but geography still matters. Certain fears still run deep,” said Tomas Valasek, president of the Central European Policy Institute, a security think tank in Bratislava, Slovakia.

Other analysts agree that the Greek armed forces can always resist big defense cuts by playing the Turkey card. “The generals will always have an excuse to keep the budget high,” Mr. Kritikos said.

Indeed, over the past several months, the Greek media have written that Turkey violated Greek airspace at least once. In response, the Turkish General Staff said its airspace had been repeatedly violated by Greece, Italy and Israel.

There is another political reason for exempting the army from cuts. Closing some of the 500 military bases and 17 training centers would mean sending tens of thousands of young soldiers into the ranks of the unemployed, adding a dangerous component to social unrest, according to Sipri, a Swedish research institute. Perhaps, analysts said, the Greek armed forces will have to wait for any major restructuring until the country’s economy picks up.

US deploying troops to 35 African countries

The United States Army will be deploying troops to nearly three-dozen African nations in the coming year.

 

Soldiers based out of Fort Riley, Kansas’ 2nd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division will begin training in March 2013 in order to prepare for a project that will send troops to as many as 35 African nations, the Associated Press reports.

Citing a growing threat from extremist groups, including those with ties to al-Qaeda, the Department of Defense (DoD) is hoping to install American soldiers overseas in order to prepare local troops there for any future crises as tensions escalate.

Earlier this month, DoD sources with insider knowledge told the Washington Post that US troops will soon be en route to the nation of Mali in order to thwart the emerging threat of Islamic extremists, including al-Qaeda aligned insurgents. With the latest news from the Pentagon, though, Mali will be just one of many African nations hosting US troops in the coming year.

According to the AP’s update this week, soldiers will be sent overseas in the new year to assist only with training and equipping efforts, and are not necessarily permitted to participate in military operations. Should the Pentagon ask the troops to engage in battle, however, the secretary of defense could sign off on an order that would allow as much.

 

“If they want them for (military) operations, the brigade is our first sourcing solution because they’re prepared,” Gen. David Rodriguez, the head of U.S. Army Forces Command, tells the AP. “But that has to go back to the secretary of defense to get an execute order.”

Additionally, the AP says that US troops will head specifically to Libya, Sudan, Algeria and Niger in order to prepare for any advances from al-Qaeda linked groups. Americans will also train and equip forces in Kenya and Somalia, reportedly, in order to stand up to al-Shabab militants. Despite the troops being deployed to more than half of the countries in Africa, though, the AP reports that Uncle Sam will try to avoid giving the impression that the United States is leaving a substantial footprint across the continent.