Utah National Guardsmen Face Sanction Over Bikini Calendar Shoot on National Guard Property

A number of Utah National Guardsmen and State Troopers are in trouble after allowing a racy calendar shoot to take place at one of their facilities with scantily clad British models firing automatic weapons- some of which were the property of the state of Utah.

British bikini models fired guns owned by the state of Utah as an on-duty state police officer stood by, according the early findings of an ongoing investigation.

A second officer from the Utah Department of Public Safety was off-duty, according to a statement the department issued late Thursday.

DPS is investigating the two officers’ roles in the models’ photo and video shoot for the 2015 bikini calendar called "Hot Shots."

Meanwhile, the Utah National Guard also is investigating how the models entered Camp Williams and used resources there, including riding in a tank and other vehicles, as part of the shoot.

Logs from that day show that one of the officers was on duty and another off. Both belong to the department’s SWAT team.

While part of the photo shoot was at the Utah National Guard's Camp Williams, videos and stills of some of the barely dressed models were filmed at the privately operated Big Shots Ranch in Grantsville, UT.

Although policy for the Utah State Police allows for officers to serve as firearms instructors or display weapons in the department's armory to public officials or groups like the Boy Scouts, such events have to be pre-approved by the chain of command. Some of the guns used by the British models include the Heckler & Koch MP5 9mm submachine gun, a select fire 9mm Glock 18 [which means the gun can fire semiauto of full auto- NANESB!] and the M4 Carbine, the current US Army and National Guard issue rifle which is essentially a scaled down M-16 rifle. Although a Utah State Police spokesman said three of the weapons are believed to be agency-issue, the ammunition was reportedly provided by Big Shots range.

The two Utah State Police officers identified in the video were identified as members of the agency's SWAT team and logs indicate that one of them was on-duty at the time. Both of them were reportedly in uniform at the time, as well.

Meanwhile, the Camp Williams segment of the photo shoot may end up costing some National Guardsmen their jobs.

Maj. Gen. Jeff Burton told lawmakers Thursday that the handful of Guard members involved could face fines, demotions or forced retirements when an investigation is complete. Those involved, which include combat veterans and Purple Heart recipients, didn’t follow guidelines for private use of military equipment at Camp Williams, he said.

The Hot Shots calendar is available in early November and a portion of all sales will go to the UK-based Help for Heroes charitable organization.

Spanish Moms: Mothers of Spanish Schoolchildren Attempt to Counter Austerity Measures with Sultry Calendars

Apologies to The Clash, of course.

I realize it's a touch late [or REALLY early- NANESB!] for another 'amateur women strip for calendar to raise funds' blog entry replete with some gratuitous eye candy, but I came across this story from December lurking in a sidebar during an unrelated search for an article about Russia's partially privatized GAZPROM of all things and since the fruits of these women's labor is apparently still available I figured it would be worth a mention.

With an unemployment rate topping 26% and austerity measures in place thanks in to the ongoing Eurozone crisis, some women in rural Spain are getting creative when it comes to ideas for raising funds to restore services that were cut.

In the eastern village of Montserrat, regional authorities decided to suspend school bus services to children that lived within 1.8 miles of the school. But due to the mountainous terrain and twisting roads in the area, some children end up having to walk more than twice that distance from school to home even if they only lived a mile and a half from the school as the crow flies.



After some brainstorming, Maria Gilabert and other local moms came up with the same idea that certain out-of-work stewardesses in Mexico came up with- take off their clothes for a sexy calendar.

The calendar, which shows the mothers in various states of undress posing along the bus route, has already sold thousands of copies and raised awareness of the cuts to the education system across Spain.

In September authorities cut public school bus services for students living within a 1.8 mile radius of the school but parents argue that has left many students having to walk almost four miles over unpaved roads to get to class.

The project aims to raise some of the 43,000 euros (£35,000) needed to restore the bus service and has already raised enough to pay for three months of daily buses.

This isn't strictly a Latina or Iberian phenomenon, as there are a number of fundraising calendars featuring amateur pinups in the UK designed to raise funds for everything from cancer research to the Royal Marines Charitable Trust.

The women decided to incorporate some of the terrain that their children had to negotiate on the walk to school with the bus services slashed. Included with some of the images of the saucy, lingerie clad Iberian cougars are spanish-language slogans such as "Scale the mountains of Montserrat to go to school".

The calendar emulates earlier fundraising calendars that feature amateur models posing nude or topless, such as the laid off stewardesses at Mexicana airlines or University Equestrian clubs in England. However, similar efforts have backfired- in 2008, a group of housewives in the rural Spanish village of Seradilla del Arroyo embarked on a similar effort as the moms of Montserrat. However, the women in the mountainous region along the border with Portugal quickly found themselves owing a printer roughly €10,000 and stuck with 5000 unsold copies after sales of the calendar quickly dried up.