Monday, 13 September 2010

Military police are investigating claims that British soldiers may have trafficked heroin from Afghanistan.

The Ministry of Defence said they were aware of "unsubstantiated" claims that troops were using military aircraft to ship the drug out of the country.

The inquiry is focusing on service personnel at airports in Camp Bastion and Kandahar.

Security has been tightened, with additional sniffer dogs being used as part of the crackdown at the bases.

An MoD spokeswoman said: "We are aware of these allegations.

"Although they are unsubstantiated, we take any such reports very seriously and we have already tightened our existing procedures both in Afghanistan and in the UK, including through increasing the use of trained sniffer dogs.

"We regret any inconvenience this causes to our service personnel. Any of our people found to be engaged in trafficking of illegal narcotics will feel the full weight of the law."

Drugs and weapons

BBC Defence Correspondent Jonathan Beale said the Royal Military Police's Special Investigation Branch launched their investigation before the allegations were reported in the press.

Our correspondent added the increased security measures - such as the use of sniffer dogs at Afghan and British airbases - were introduced last month.

Afghanistan is the source of 90% of the world's opium.

The multimillion dollar trade in poppy production is used to fuel the insurgency.

It allow militants to purchase weapons with which they then attack the Afghan government and international forces, destabilising the region.

According to a 2008 UN report, 98% of the country's opium is grown in just seven provinces where there are permanent Taleban settlements and where organised crime profits from the instability.

@'BBC'

WikiLeaks Collaborating With Media Outlets on Release of Iraq Documents

Joe Raedle / Getty Images

A London-based journalism nonprofit is working with the WikiLeaks Web site and TV and print media in several countries on programs and stories based on what is described as massive cache of classified U.S. military field reports related to the Iraq War. Iain Overton, editor of The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, tells Declassified that his organization has teamed up with media organizations—including major television networks and one or more American media outlets—in an unspecified number of countries to produce a set of documentaries and stories based on the cache of Iraq War documents in the possession of WikiLeaks. As happened with a similar WikiLeaks collection of tens of thousands of U.S. military field reports on the Afghan war, the unidentified media organizations involved with the London group in the Iraq documents project will all be releasing their stories on the same day, which Overton says would be several weeks from now. He declined to identify any of the media organizations participating in the project.

Overton acknowledges that the volume of Iraq War reports that WikiLeaks has made available for the project is massive, and almost certainly more than the 92,000 Afghan field reports the organization made available for advance review to The New York Times, Britain's Guardian, and Germany's Der Spiegel. The material is the "biggest leak of military intelligence" that has ever occurred, Overton says. As we reported when stories on WikiLeaks' Afghan holdings first appeared, the site's stash of Iraq documents is believed to be about three times as large as its Afghanistan collection. After the Times, Guardian, and Der Spiegel published their stories based on the Afghan war documents, the site itself posted 76,000 of the papers. But after coming under criticism from both Pentagon spokesmen and human-rights activists for publishing information that could jeopardize the lives of Afghans cooperating with American and allied forces, WikiLeaks said it would not itself post the remaining 15,000 Afghan war documents until activists had taken some time to review, and, if necessary, edit sensitive information from the material.

WikiLeaks had signaled that the Afghan war documents might be posted on the site in the near future; its plans for the release of those documents are currently unclear. Overton says that in their work on the Iraq War documents, his organization and its media partners have "significantly learned from past experiences" regarding disclosure of material that could put lives in jeopardy. "We are hugely aware that this is an issue, and we're taking it very seriously," Overton says. He says that his organization itself would not be posting raw U.S. government reports on the Web, adding that he sees his group's job as digging stories out of the raw material, not simply publishing it in its original form. Overton says that his bureau's media partners are also "aware of the need to ensure that information is properly redacted."

Hacker on Alleged Wikileaks Source Adrian Lamo explains why he told authorities that U.S. Pvt. First Class Bradley Manning was the alleged source of the Afghanistan Wikileaks docs

Overton says that media organizations participating in the project will be making financial contributions to "help meet production costs" and that each media organization will likely come up with its own, at least partly original, take on the material because "everyone wants their exclusive." He declined to discuss in any detail what specific revelations the Iraq documents might contain. Declassified has previously reported that the Iraq material portrays U.S. forces being involved in a "bloodbath," but some of the most disturbing material relates to the abusive treatment of detainees, not by Americans but by Iraqi security forces.

It is unclear what role WikiLeaks frontman and cofounder Julian Assange is playing in the current project. Assange is currently facing an investigation by Swedish authorities related to allegations of rape and sexual molestation. Pentagon officials have condemned WikiLeaks' handling of classified defense files and have demanded that the Web site hand back all its holdings to U.S. authorities and destroy all its copies of the material.

Mark Hosenball @'Newsweek'

♪♫ Dan Bull - Dear Benny (an open letter to the Pope)

shucks

From my inbox this morning:

Hi:

I'm writing to you, first of all to compliment you on your blog, and secondly to say that, primarily as a result of reading your great material, I've been inspired to begin one of my own.

I live in Los Angeles, although I am Scottish by birth, and I have always been staggered by the lack of concern and, indeed, ignorance that you find here in regard to politics and its impact on each individual life. It would seem even more apparent these days - at a time when the threat from the extreme right is growing ever larger.

Hence the blog. I'm not deluding myself that it will become a talking point for thousands but take the position that, if one young person is moved to vote by reading it, then it's a success. That's why I'm trying to use music posts as the tease and intersperse them with opinion pieces and interesting news excerpts.

I'd like to ask you to have a look at the blog when you have a chance and, if you think it worthwhile and in accord with your views, whether you would be willing to mutually link each other's blogs so, hopefully, more readers can be directed to both. I would also like to ask whether you have any objection to me using pieces from your blog on mine.

My blog is still in its infancy and the design is still evolving. However there's enough content up there, I believe, for you to get the idea of where I'm coming from.

The blog is

www.groundsforappeal.ihookitup.com

Thanks. Hope to hear from you soon.

Well Neil,

you seem to be doing a fine job so far...

will keep checking back

Regards/

Bikeway in Austria

via verkehrt.net

Hey wingnuts

THIS is how Christians are supposed to practice their religion.
THIS is what the spirit of the first amendment is all about.
Please attempt to understand THIS!

HERE