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Major Defense Contractor Blocks Anything With 'WikiLeaks' In URL

By Ryan J. Reilly, TPM

The nation's biggest defense contractors, who employ thousands of people with security clearances, are taking steps to restrict their access to Wikileaks, including one company which is blocking employees from accessing any website, including news stories, with "wikileaks" in the URL.

An employee of one major defense contractor told TPM that she wanted to read our report on the Library of Congress blocking access to WikiLeaks, but was unable to do so because the company blocked the webpage.

"I've clicked on a lot of headlines on many different news sites and any link that includes the dreaded letter sequence ends up displaying the company's 'Access Denied' page," the employee wrote.

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From New York Minute - A 6-part miniseries.

Sarah Palin: Hunt Assange Like Bin Laden

From Newser:

If Sarah Palin becomes president, Julian Assange may want to keep an eye out for CIA drones. The Alaskan, in aFacebook post, lambasted President Obama's handling of the WikiLeaks release of diplomatic cables and suggested that the site's founder be "pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders," the Huffington Post reports.

"Assange is not a 'journalist,' any more than the 'editor' of al Qaeda's new English-language magazine Inspire is a 'journalist,'" Palin wrote. "He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands." The administration's "incompetent handling of this whole fiasco"—as seen in its belated order for federal agencies to take steps to avoid leaks—displays "a strange lack of urgency," she writes.

Foreign Contractors Hired Afghan 'Dancing Boys', WikiLeaks Cable Reveals

John Boone reports for the Guardian:

A scandal involving foreign contractors employed to train Afghan policemen who took drugs and paid for young "dancing boys" to entertain them in northern Afghanistan caused such panic that the interior minister begged the US embassy to try and "quash" the story, according to one of the US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks.

In a meeting with the assistant US ambassador, a panicked Hanif Atmar, the interior minister at the time of the episode last June, warned that the story would "endanger lives" and was particularly concerned that a video of the incident might be made public.

The episode helped to fuel Afghan demands that contractors and private security companies be brought under much tighter government control. However, the US embassy was legally incapable of honouring a request by Atmar that the US military should assume authority over training centres managed by DynCorp, the US company whose employees were involved in the incident in the northern province of Kunduz.

There is a long tradition of young boys dressing up as girls and dancing for men in Afghanistan, an activity that sometimes crosses the line into child abuse with Afghans keeping boys as possessions.

Although rarely discussed or criticised in Afghanistan, it is conceivable that the involvement of foreigners could have turned into a major public scandal. Atmar himself warned about public anger towards contractors, who he said "do not have many friends" and said they needed far greater oversight.

He also said tighter control was needed over Afghan employees of such companies as well.

"He was convinced that the Kunduz incident, and other events where mentors had obtained drugs, could not have happened without Afghan participation," the cable said.

Two Afghan policemen and nine other Afghans were arrested as part of investigations into a crime described by Atmar as "purchasing a service from a child", which the cable said was against both sharia law and the civil code.

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