From Cold comfort by Katherine Heerbrandt
22 Apr, 2009
The Criminal Investigation Division at Fort Meade has been investigating USAMRIID at Fort Detrick since at least early February. Meade's CID pursues investigations of serious crimes and sensitive subjects of concern to the Army at regional bases like Detrick, which has no internal investigative arm.
A News-Post story in February reported that USAMRIID was shutting down most of its bioresearch while it tried to match its inventory to its records, citing an "overage" of BSAT, biological select agents and toxins.
Meade's CID, however, isn't concerned with overstock. Instead, agents are looking for what may have gone missing between 1987 and 2008.
"It's possible there are some viral samples missing," at USAMRIID, Fort Meade public affairs officer Chad Jones confirmed in a phone interview Monday.
"I don't know anything else. The investigation is ongoing," he said.
The investigation into possible missing pathogens began about the same time Col. John P. Skvorak issued a "stand down" memo halting research operations until an updated inventory is complete. The memo made no mention of missing samples.
A retired support staff employee who worked in the BSL-4 labs received a visit from Fort Mead's CID agents in February. Agents wanted to know if he'd taken anything out of the lab between 1987 and 2008, and how easy it was for others to remove samples.
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Thursday, April 23, 2009
Meade's CID investigates possible missing pathogens
Norwegian lawyers to accuse Israeli leaders of war crimes
AFP (21 Apr, 2009) Israel's former prime minister Ehud Olmert and other top officials could face legal action in Norway over the Gaza offensive after six Norwegian lawyers said Tuesday they would accuse them of war crimes.
The lawyers, who plan to file their complaint with Norway's chief prosecutor on Wednesday, said they will call for the arrest and extradition of Olmert as well as former foreign affairs minister Tzipi Livni, Defence Minister Ehud Barak and seven senior Israeli army officers.
Under the Norwegian penal code, courts may hear cases involving war crimes and other major violations of human rights.
The lawyers released a statement accusing Israel of "massive terrorist attacks" in the Gaza Strip from December 27 last year to January 25, killing civilians, illegally using weapons against civilian targets and deliberately attacking hospitals and medical staff.
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(Greece) Attack against British educational institute, Thessaloni'ki (15/4)
From Greek mainstream media (Newspaper Makedonia):
THESSALONIKI Masked group attacks an information engineering college
A masked group caused chaos in the center of Thessaloniki yesterday afternoon.
About ten people smashed the windows of an information engineering college and damaged computers without being traced by the police. The foray by the masked group took place at the junction of Tsimiski str. and Ethnikis Aminis str. a bit after 3pm in the afternoon, at the school that is on the ground floor of the building which accommodates the British Council. Police deems that the college became a target because of its collaboration with a private english institution.
The fact that makes impression is that the police that were patrolling the city's center saw the moves of the anti-authoritarians before they arrived at the college but only after the damages were done they mobilized to chase them without catching them, since they managed to disappear from the surrounding narrow streets of Ippodromiou and Navarinou square.
April16, 2009
From http://bellumperpetuum.blogspot.com/ (Greek direct action blog)
Monday, 20th of April 2009
Attack against British educational institute, Thessaloníki (15/4)
communique:
The return to normality will never ever exist
Daily life in the metropolis gains a meaning. It's the daily life of the new city-guerrilla warfare. The attacks follow one another, the whole city and its symbols are mapped as targets, the plans are alternated, sabotages are organized, and promises are given that nothing will remain the same.
The strategy of tension now passes on to our areas. There is no time to lose, never there was, silence and indifference will now take position. Or they will deny their selves and become an attack, or they will remain dull on the couch of their living room being passed on to the enemy's camp.
The opponent from its side realizes that right across there is not simply the reflections and the leftovers of December's insurrection, nor dissected moments of optional riot as an expression of youthful dispute. The opponent begins to distinguish more and more clearly the permanent threat of direct action in all its dimensions.
The new measures, the anti-mask laws, the employment of thousands of new cops, the re-function of cctv cameras, the much advertised Delta group, the cooperation with the secret services of Scotland Yard are for us pleasant reasons to hit them again and again. We are not complaining about the scarcity of freedom, nor we are claiming for rights against repression. We decided to form the domestic enemy front against their system, undertaking whenever needed the price of our choice. For now, the enemy will pay the price of its position.
That's why we claim responsibility for the attack against the British educational institution D.E.I. in the center of Thessaloniki on the evening of Wednesday 15/04. D.E.I. is one of the many businesses that are aiming to train the new think tanks of participation sovereignty in the sectors of science, technology, economy, marketing and repression. Thus, by producing the new images and models of shining smiles and happy faces, of much desired objects and of the professional success of graduates, they consist the proper motivation for the lamentable imitators and the equivalent bait for most of the excluded in order to mortgage their lives for their kids future. We are attacking not only the top british foundations but also the educational institution on a whole which disappears any sense of substantial knowledge and multi-shape growth of the individual by repressing every personal initiative.
Also, behind our idea for the attack against a company of british interest is the fact that few weeks ago in heavily-policed London the G20 summit took place. Thousands of people protested and some chose to attack. During the clashes, the pigs beaten and brought to death protester Ian Tomlinson.
Furthermore, on 14/04 in Nottingham, police raided a camp against climate change where 114 people were arrested facing charges of destruction of electricity power units.
The only substantial solidarity is the continuation of revolutionary action everywhere and always. Also, with our attack, we send our greetings to the sleuths of Scotland Yard, notifying them that from now on they are on our list. The many recent attacks, either in the darkness of night, either in the shadow of day, prove that the military supremacy of the state, orchestrated with consent of society and with the propaganda of fear, remains vulnerable. Because we are watching out and are searching for passages to attack the order and the ethic of this world. Even if we don't find the path of denial, we are convinced that with violence we will engrave them in the new map of city-guerrilla warfare, like the deepest scar in the face of captivity.
THINK TANK FOR THE OVERTHROW OF EXISTENCE
ORIGINAL VERSION:
( http://www.makthes.gr/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=37084)
~ Source: Indymedia UK ~
The legal case against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al., is murder one, not just war crimes
THE BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG
by Mark Karlin
BuzzFlash fully supports trying Bush, Cheney, and their band of fellow sadists for war crimes, but while they are in the courtroom, let's not forget Murder One. Apparently, many in the mainstream press and blogosphere already have.
The focus right now is on legal memos justifying the horrifying and numbing repetition of torture against "high profile" targets. We have a short memory in America -- and most of what was in these memos -- except for the diabolical excess of the waterboarding and the medieval torture by insects -- was, as President Obama has said, pretty much already known.
Also known, but not discussed at this time, is that less upper echelon Al-Qaeda figures were murdered as a result of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld torture jihad (euphemestically called in the mainstream corporate press "harsh" or "enhanced interrogation").
Uh, remember those photos of bludgeoned prisoners in body bags that came out of Abu Ghraib? (And we still have only seen a small portion of the visual evidence.) Those people were murdered as a result of the green light on torture. Even the Pentagon has declared some of the Guantanamo dead were victims of homicide. Then there are many "renditioned" individuals who disappeared into torture prisons around the world and have never reappeared.
In 2008, Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Colin Powell and a man who came over from the dark side to tell the truth, testified before Congress that a minimum of 25 people died in U.S. detention as a result of homicides -- and that the figure was probably higher.
Indeed, other estimates put the figure much, much higher -- and that doesn't include the prisoners who were sent to "black holes" and never reappeared. It doesn't include the hundreds of Taliban prisoners who were transported to a remote spot in Afghanistan (shortly after the U.S. invasion) and machine gunned to death in container tracks by Afghan soldiers with a green light from Rumsfeld.
The number of people murdered during torture ("harsh interrogation") will likely never be known, but as a governor in Texas, George W. Bush executed the highest number of people for far fewer murders each. Some of them just killed one person, unlike Bush, Cheney and their crew of arm chair executioners.
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image from http://www.spitting-image.net
