Russia: #39;NATO expansion will meet with Russian response #39; - FM spokesperson
Further eastward expansion by NATO will force Russia to provide an "adequate response," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Alexander Lukashevich said in M...
By: RuptlyTV
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Russia: 'NATO expansion will meet with Russian response' - FM spokesperson - Video
Russia says Kiev #39;s move to join NATO dangerous for Europe, Pushing for World War 3
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Ukraine #39;s pursuit of NATO membership posed a danger to European security and that the West was using Kiev #39;s bid t...
By: Ricky Scaparo
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Russia says Kiev's move to join NATO dangerous for Europe, Pushing for World War 3 - Video
Czech AF L-159 - 2014 Nato Days - Ostrava - Arrival
Czech Air Force L-159 arrival.2014 Nato Days.
By: LucasAgainstTheWorld
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Bomb something that looks valuable - Norwegian NATO pilots told in Libya - historian
Liberalism and secularism are considered to be cornerstones of Western civilization, though many feel that their overemphasis has led away from traditional values and ethics into exceptionalism,...
By: RT
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Bomb something that looks valuable - Norwegian NATO pilots told in Libya - historian - Video
Russian military doctrine cites NATO threat | Journal
Russia #39;s President Vladimir Putin has signed a new military doctrine, identifying NATO expansion as the key threat to his country #39;s security. The move is likely to deepen what #39;s already the...
By: DW (English)
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Russian military doctrine cites NATO threat | Journal - Video
nato-goria jamis 2014 We are the reason
Alubijid, Misamis Oriental last December 25, 2014.
By: Blue Daposala Generalao
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NATO formally hands over to new Afghanistan mission
NATO has formally ended its war in Afghanistan with a ceremony in Kabul, 13 years after its combat mission began. The alliance leaves behind a new mission called Resolute Support, to help...
By: euronews (in English)
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Afghan and International Security Assistance Force officials mark the end of the American-led coalition combat mission in Afghanistan. (Reuters)
KABUL The 13-year NATO combat mission in Afghanistan formally ended Sunday with a ceremonial retirement of its green flag and a pledge by top officials of the U.S.-led coalition to remain reliable partners in Afghanistans unfinished war against the Taliban and other militant groups.
Scores of Afghan and foreign officials gathered to witness the symbolic shift to a new, much smaller NATO assistance and training mission. The event was held in a basketball gym inside NATO headquarters here in the Afghan capital and accompanied by a brass band and a color guard.
Our commitment to Afghanistan endures.... We are not walking away, promised Gen. John F. Campbell, the U.S. commander of the outgoing International Security Assistance Force mission. He will lead the new NATO support mission, which technically begins at midnight Dec.31.
Campbell and other Western officials stressed that their chief function under the new mission, named Resolute Support, will be to advise, train and assist Afghan security forces. They said, however, that a separate non-NATO contingent of U.S. forces will participate in force protection, logistical support and counterterrorism activities.
The Taliban responded to the transition event with glee. In a lengthy statement issued Sunday night by a Taliban spokesman, the insurgent group gloated at the final departure of a haughty superpower that thought it had already won the war and that the Mujaheddin would never . . . think of putting up a fight.
Security is tight on the streets of Kabul ahead of a ceremony to mark the end of NATO combat missions in Afghanistan. (Reuters)
The statement said the NATO withdrawal was proof that the infidel powers who thought they would turn Afghanistan into their strategic colony had been pushed to the brink of defeat.
The total number of international troops here, which peaked in 2009 at about 142,000, has gradually shrunk to about 17,000. Under Resolute Support, officials said, 12,500 to 13,500 NATO forces will remain in 2015, including about 5,000 American troops. Twenty-eight NATO allies and 14 partner nations will contribute in different ways, the alliance said. Officials said about 5,500 U.S. forces will be part of the second contingent, which will be based in Kabul.
Western and Afghan officials at the event described the shift in upbeat terms. They praised the dedication and bravery of Afghan security forces, now numbering about 350,000, and predicted that the Afghans will continue to wage a strong fight on their own against Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents.
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Pull back: A soldier for the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) salutes during a ceremony at the ISAF headquarters in Kabul. Photo: AP
Kabul: The 13-year NATO combat mission in Afghanistan formally ended with a ceremonial retirement of its green flag and a pledge by top officials of the United States-led coalition to remain reliable partners in Afghanistan's unfinished war against the Taliban and other militant groups.
Scores of Afghan and foreign officials gathered to witness the symbolic shift to a new, much smaller NATO assistance and training mission. Sunday's event was held in a basketball gym inside NATO headquarters in the Afghan capital and accompanied by a brass band and colour guard.
"Our commitment to Afghanistan endures ... we are not walking away," promised General John Campbell, the US commander of the outgoing International Security Assistance Force combat mission. He will lead the new NATO support mission, which technically begins at midnight on December 31.
Ceremonial exit: US General John Campbell (right), commander of NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Photo: Reuters
General Campbell and other Western officials stressed that their chief function under the new mission, named Resolute Support, will be to advise, train and assist Afghan security forces. They said, however, that a separate "non-NATO" contingent of US forces will participate in force protection, logistical support and activities.
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The Taliban responded to the transition event with glee. In a lengthy statement issued by a Taliban spokesman on Sunday night, the insurgent group gloated at the final departure of a "haughty" superpower that "thought it had already won the war and that the Mujaheddin would never ... think of putting up a fight."
The statement said the NATO withdrawal was proof that "the infidel powers who thought they would turn Afghanistan into their strategic colony" had been "pushed to the brink of defeat".
The total number of international troops here, which peaked in 2009 at about 142,000, has gradually dwindled to about 17,000. Under Resolute Support, officials said, 12,500 to 13,500 NATO forces will remain in 2015, including thousands of American troops. The alliance said 28NATO allies and 14 partner nations will contribute in different ways. Officials said about 5,500 US forces will be part of the second contingent, which will be based in Kabul.
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The Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, came to power in September and faces the challenge of tackling insurgents without Nato military assistance. Photograph: Aref Karimi/AFP/Getty Images
After 13 years of war, Nato formally ended its combat operations in Afghanistan on Sunday, leaving the Afghan army and police in charge of security in a country plagued by continued fighting, a ferocious insurgency and a rising tide of both military and civilian casualties.
Against a backdrop of violent clashes in a number of provinces and several weeks of deadly attacks on the capital, military leaders lowered the flag of a mission conceived in 2001, and hoisted the colours of a new one under which Natos role will largely be restricted to training, advising and assisting the local army and police.
Our Afghan partners can and will take the fight from here, said General John F Campbell, the commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) at a ceremony in the capital.
As insurgent attacks have increased in many parts of the country in 2014, Afghan forces have already been leading the fight in recent months but at a high price.
More than 5,000 local security forces have been killed this year alone, the highest toll since the war began. In comparison, the international coalition has suffered a total of 3,485 deaths since 2001.
The Afghan national security forces had to suffer losses this year that are too high, ISAFs deputy commander Lieutenant General Carsten Jacobson said, speaking to reporters after the ceremony. Now that [the Afghan forces] have taken over the tactical fight, losses lie on them.
Between 17,000 and 18,000 international troops will remain in Afghanistan after 2014, of which 12,000 - including approximately 470 British troops - will form part of the new Nato mission, named Resolute Support.
An additional 5,500 US soldiers will perform different roles, including counterterrorism and logistical assistance. At their peak in 2011, international forces numbered close to 150,000.
The international coalitions biggest achievement has been to help build a 350,000-strong security force in Afghanistan from scratch. But they are still ill-equipped, particularly when it comes to air support and intelligence gathering.
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Moscow Russia identified NATO as the nation's No. 1 military threat and raised the possibility of a broader use of precision conventional weapons to deter foreign aggression under a new military doctrine signed by President Vladimir Putin on Friday.
NATO flatly denied it is a threat to Russia, and accused Moscow of undermining European security.
The new doctrine, which comes amid tensions over Ukraine, reflected the Kremlin's readiness to take a stronger posture in response to what it sees as U.S.-led efforts to isolate and weaken Russia.
The paper maintains the provisions of the previous, 2010 edition of the military doctrine regarding the use of nuclear weapons.
It says Russia could employ nuclear weapons in retaliation for the use of nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction against the country or its allies, and also in the case of aggression involving conventional weapons that "threatens the very existence" of the Russian state.
But for the first time, the new doctrine says Russia could use precision weapons "as part of strategic deterrent measures." The document does not spell out when and how Moscow could resort to such weapons.
Examples of precision conventional weapons include ground-to-ground missiles, air- and submarine-launched cruise missiles, guided bombs and artillery shells.
Among other things, the paper mentions the need to protect Russia's interests in the Arctic, where the global competition for its vast oil and other resources has been heating up as the Arctic ice melts.
Russia has relied heavily on its nuclear deterrent and lagged far behind the U.S. and its NATO allies in the development of precision conventional weapons. However, it has recently sped up its military modernization, buying large numbers of new weapons and boosting military drills. It has also sharply increased air patrols over the Baltics.
Earlier this month, Russia flexed its muscle by airlifting state-of-the art Iskander missiles to its westernmost Kaliningrad exclave bordering NATO members Poland and Lithuania. The missiles were pulled back to their home base after the drills, but the deployment clearly served as a demonstration of the military's readiness to quickly raise the ante in a crisis.
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New Russian military doctrine names NATO as No. 1 threat (+video)
Is Santa Claus the NSA?
He knows when you are sleeping... He know when you #39;re awake... Is Santa the NSA? Check out our new holiday special about Santa. Also a very Happy Holidays an...
By: LITFOR
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NSA Head Cracking Down On Whistleblowers
By: THEINFOSWARRIORS
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Ho, ho, ho! NSA reports on its spying naughtiness - CNET
Ho, ho, ho! NSA reports on its spying naughtiness - CNET.
By: Sun Shine2
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Ho, ho, ho! NSA reports on its spying naughtiness - CNET - Video
NSA employees spied on spouses, collected data on Americans
On Christmas Eve, the National Security Agency released a trove of documents detailing 12 years #39; worth of illegal activity by the spy agency. Included in the files are stories of employees...
By: RT America
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NSA employees spied on spouses, collected data on Americans - Video
A few hours before Christmas Eve, the National Security Agency released more than a decades worth of damning reports on its website. The reports, which had been submitted by the NSA to the Presidents Intelligence Oversight Board from 2001 to 2013, purport to cover any activity that could be considered unlawful or contrary to government policy. They included incidents in which individual employees abused their security clearances to target a current or former romantic partner as well as dozens of breaches that resulted from overly broad database queries, along with a lack of rigor in determining whether a foreign intelligence target had entered the United States or held US citizenship or permanent resident status. There were also numerous breaches related to poor data security.
In the documents, which were released in response to a FOIA lawsuit brought by the ACLU, NSA analysts are revealed to be all-too-human bumblers, mistakenly searching on their own information, improperly using colleagues credentials, sending highly classified information to the wrong printer, and mistyping email addresses.
There is no evidence in the reports of systematic lawbreakingnot a surprise considering the reports author. Instead, the NSA attributes most of its lapses to unintentional human error or technical mistakes. In a handful of cases, the agency points out, investigations have led to discipline or administrative action. Even so, the reports raise serious questions about the NSAs ability to protect the vast amount of personal data that is vacuumed up by its surveillance apparatus.
Courtesy: Cory Grenier
I became interested in the NSA spying program almost a decade ago when I learned about a large order AT&T had placed for Narus Semantic Traffic Analyzers. The equipment made it possible to inspect Internet traffic in real time, which made it a great tool for spying. A source had told me that the analyzers had been deployed in secret rooms around the country on behalf of the NSA. I looked into the story, but ultimately my editors chose not to pursue it. Even if I could prove it, they werent sure anyone would be interested in the specific details of how telecoms like AT&T were cooperating with the NSA. It was an era of limited newsroom resources, and we had other stories to pursue.
There was also a key question that I wasnt sure I could answer even if I confirmed my tip. Had any Americans been hurt by NSA spying? This is a concern that comes up again and again. Its raised by judges presiding over lawsuits brought by public advocates and civil libertarians. The lack of an affirmative answer is used to justify ongoing surveillance.
Yet, we still dont know if any individual has been hurt or what potential exists for someone to be hurt in the future. A lot depends on what the NSA does with information it collects on those it refers to as US Persons, or USPs, and most of that information is withheld from the public. The NSA claims it takes great pains to comply with the U.S. Constitution, as well as U.S. laws and regulations. The Christmas Eve reports are interesting because they showed where the agency, in its own opinion, has fallen short.
The agencys reports, which emphasize incidents in which US persons were improperly targeted, dont appear at first to correlate with a cache of 160,000 intercepted communications that the Washington Post obtained via Edward Snowden. The Post reporters claimed ordinary Internet users, American and non-American alike, far outnumber legally targeted foreigners in the communications intercepted by theNational Security Agency. The story, published in July, raised new questions about the collateral harm to privacy from NSA surveillance.
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With little fanfare, the National Security Agency dropped hundreds of pages worth of surveillance reports into the dead of night before Christmas Evesome of which detailed U.S. citizens that were "inadvertently" swept up in the government's data dragnet.
As Americans were preparing to open holiday gifts, the agency quietly published a trove of declassified data spanning more than a decade of intelligence gathering. Those documents, required by the President's Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB), were heavily redacted to protect disclosures of sensitive information.
Read MoreMeet the NSA's hacker recruiter
Entire swaths of text were blanked out, making it nearly impossible to determine specific names, programs or occurrences of privacy violations. However, the documents detailed a number of instances where analysts "erroneously" gathered information on U.S. citizens, or were at least guilty of shoddy practices.
In a 2012 quarterly report, for example, an analyst "forwarded in an email to unauthorized recipients the results of a raw traffic database query that included terms associated with "an unidentified U.S. citizen. The email was recalled, the report said, without providing further information.
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Incoming NSA chief Admiral Michael Rogers has moved to downplay the significance of Edward Snowden's revelations about the spy agency.
Ex-CIA worker Snowden exposed the organisation's controversial PRISM programme, which involves the collection of phone and email data, before fleeing the US.
Getty Images / The Guardian
However, Admiral Rogers insists that Snowden's whistleblowing has not damaged the NSA's anti-terrorism operations.
"I have seen [terrorist] groups not only talk about making changes, I have seen them make changes," he told the New York Times.
PA Images / Andrew Parsons/PA Archive
The White House, Washington DC
Admiral Rogers went on to say that tighter controls are in place to ensure that future leaks do not occur, and promised to offer more transparency about his organisation's practices by engaging in "public dialogue".
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NSA head Admiral Michael Rogers downplays Edward Snowden leaks