Archivo de la etiqueta: Irán

B61 nuclear bombs in Turkey

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B61 nuclear bombs in storage

Turkey’s Future (American) Nuclear Weapon

If everything goes to plan, Turkey will receive the United States’ newest nuclear weapon in 2019. Turkey currently hosts between 60 and 70 B61 gravity bombs at Incirlik air force base. During the Cold War, Turkish aircraft were on full nuclear alert status – meaning that Turkish aircraft were loaded with nuclear weapons and ready to take to the air in minutes, should NATO give the order. Now Turkish F-16 are only nuclear certified and would have to fly to Incirlik and pick up the bombs.

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Turkish Addictive Soaps Operas: The Unstoppable Boom

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Turks Bewitch The Balkans With Their Addictive Soaps

Turkish soaps have replaced Latin American shows as must-sees for many TV viewers in the Balkans – tapping into nostalgia for a system of family values that people in the region have lost, and lament.

Amina Hamzic, Maja Nedelkovska, Donjeta Demolli and Nemanja Cabric in Belgrade. BIRN Sarajevo, Skopje, Pristina, Belgrade

Balkan Insight,  May 1, 2013

Turn on the TV in any part of the Balkans today and you may well tune into a Turkish soap opera.

Booming in popularity across the region, according to media research agencies, dozens of these imports are being screened daily on televisions from Albania to the Black Sea.

Sociologists explain the phenomenon, in part, as a sentimental reaction on the part of viewers in the Balkans to an old patriarchal family model that appears dead in the Balkans but which is still alive in Turkey – at least in TV shows.

Viewers that Balkan Insight talked to say they love the shows for their realistic characters, intriguing plot lines that include whole families and the lack of violence and obscenities.

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What’s behind the conflict on the Korean Peninsula?

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panmunjom.si South Korean soldiers stand guard in fog at the truce village of Panmunjom in the demilitarized zone dividing North and South Korea (AFP Photo / Jung Yeon-Je)

What’s behind the conflict on the Korean Peninsula?

Alexei Fenenko, Valdai, April 19, 2013

This spring has been marked by an unprecedented escalation of tensions on the Korean peninsula. The crisis began when North Korea launched the Kwangmyongsong-3 satellite on December 12. The UN Security Council accused North Korea of conducting a covert ballistic missile test and imposed fresh sanctions on the country. North Korea responded by testing its third nuclear device: a roughly 5 kiloton bomb was detonated on February 12. On March 11, Pyongyang announced its withdrawal from the 1953 armistice agreement. On March 30, North Korean leaders declared that the country was entering a “state of war” with the South. While there is no imminent threat of armed conflict between the two Koreas, it is now much more likely than it was one and a half or two years ago.

The present situation differs from the “nuclear alarms” of 1994 and 2003. In those cases, it was the United States who threatened North Korea with air strikes on its nuclear facilities, whereas now the United States, as well as their allies in the region, Japan and South Korea, are reacting to Pyongyang. Our understanding of when a nuclear weapon could be used, formed in the second half of the 20th century, is less and less relevant in today’s political reality.

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Ospreys to Israel in Major Arms Deal

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Ospreys to Israel in Major Arms Deal

by RICHARD SISK, DT – Defensetech,  April 19, 2013

Israel will receive the MV-22 Osprey in the first foreign sale of the tilt-rotor aircraft as part of major arms deals with Mideast allies to guard against the threat from Iran, senior Defense Department officials said Friday.

The Ospreys were the “most significant” assets in the total arms package and were “for the first time being made available for Israel to purchase,” a senior DOD official said in a background briefing on Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s upcoming Mideast trip.

Israel has not yet decided on how many of the troop-carry Ospreys, made by Bell Boeing of Fort Worth, Texas, will be purchased, DOD officials said. Bell and the Marine Corps have been negotiating with the United Arab Emirates for more than a year on Osprey sales, and the discussions were continuing, the officials said.

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Repairing U.S.-Russia Relations

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U.S. President Obama laughs while talking with Russian counterpart Putin before the first session of the G20 Summit in Los Cabos

Repairing U.S.-Russia Relations

Interviewee: Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia
Interviewer: Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor – Council on Foreign Relations
April 18, 2013

Diplomatic relations between Washington and Moscow have chilled markedly over the past year, beset most recently by U.S. legislation known as the Magnitsky Act, which imposed sanctions on a list of alleged human rights abusers in Russia. Moscow, in turn, retaliated with a series of measures that, among other things, ban U.S. citizens from adopting Russians. Despite these tensions, Jack F. Matlock, Jr., a former envoy to Moscow, says the two powers have many shared interests that require cooperation. “On issues that are extremely important to the United States, like dealing with North Korea, dealing with Afghanistan, and dealing with Iran, our policies are very close and tend to be mutually supportive,” he notes. Presidents Obama and Putin are scheduled to meet twice over the next several months, and Matlock holds hope the pair can reengage on these important topics and others, including the conflict in Syria and arms control.

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