UK Ministry of Defence blocks Wikileaks

·Whistleblower site made off-limits to personnel after publishing operations manuals used by troops.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jun/25/wikileaks-blocked-ministry-defence

The Ministry of Defence is trying to block all internet access to the whistleblowing site Wikileaks from thousands of its own computers after discovering that dissidents have been using it to leak copies of British military manuals.
Newly obtained MoD emails reveal alarm over the discovery that Wikileaks is freely publishing manuals that are used by patrols in Iraq.
One email says: "There are thousands of things on here, I literally mean thousands. Not just UK MoD but other places as well. Everything I clicked on to do with MoD was 'restricted' ... It is huge."
[...]
A Wikileaks source said yesterday: "Wikileaks has many alternative names. MoD site blocking has not prevented dissident MoD staff providing us with material exposing the UK involvement in Iraq and elsewhere."
Asked why it had blocked access to Wikileaks, an MoD spokesman told the Guardian: "MoD staff are unable to access Wikileaks because there is no compelling business reason to have the facility."

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MoD guilty of repeated nuclear safety breaches

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/apr/27/nuclear-mod-clyde-saftey-breaches

[Faslane HM Naval Base on the River Clyde in Scotland]

Britain's nuclear submarine fleet has been hit by a series of serious safety breaches involving repeated leaks of radioactive waste, broken pipes and waste tanks at its home base on the Clyde, the Ministry of Defence has disclosed.
In a confidential report released under the Freedom of Information Act, the MoD has admitted that safety failings at the UK's main nuclear submarine base at Faslane, near Glasgow, are a "recurring theme" and ingrained in the base's culture.
The worst breaches include three leaks of radioactive coolant from nuclear submarines in 2004, 2007 and 2008 into the Firth of Clyde, while last year a radioactive waste plant manager was replaced. It emerged he had no qualifications in radioactive waste management.
The repeated safety breaches, which have been revealed in documents released to Channel 4 News, are so serious that the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) has warned that it would consider closing the base down if it had the legal powers to do so.

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British Government secretly studies crop circles & UFOs

http://www.disclose.tv/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3421


[Crop formation at The Ridgeway-nr Averbury, Wiltshire. Reported on April 14th, 2009. Photo by Lucy Pringle.]

At a conference in the Washington DC metropolitian area, famed crop circle researcher Colin Andrews revealed that the UK government has covered up the extent of official and Royal family interest in the crop circle phenomenon. There were also efforts to suppress any investigation into a connection between UFOs and crop circles. Finally, Andrews revealed how the 1987 crash of a British Harrier jet was caused by it passing through an unknown energy field created by crop circles. While the British government has released various files concerning its investigations of the UFO phenomenon, it has not released files showing the extensive investigations it has conducted on the crop circle phenomenon.

Andrews was presenting at the 2009 X-Conference which has brought together over 30 researchers and activists interested in the policy implications of UFOs and extraterrestrial life. Presenting on the first day of the conference located in the Washington metropolitan region, Andrews said he was replying to a number of mistaken claims in an article by a former British Ministry of Defense employee, Nick Pope, who previously ran the UFO desk from 1991 to 1994. Pope said:

While there certainly has been interest and involvement over the years, this has often been misinterpreted, perhaps deliberately or perhaps not. As individuals, military and MOD personnel can be as intrigued by crop circles as anybody else, but where such interest has been expressed it has been mistakenly interpreted as implying greater corporate involvement than is actually the case.

In contrast, Andrews showed official documents dating from the first crop circles that appeared in England in 1985 to prove the government interest in crop circles has been sustained and comprehensive. He showed how they were initially related to the UFO phenomenon in official government documentation. Though UK government authorities and police denied any official interest in crop circles, he showed photos and documents that clearly displayed a sustained interest. As a former local government employee (1974-1990), Andrews shared insights into how he was able to see at first hand the level of official investigation by different government agencies into crop circles.

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