Hugh Thompson Jr. A hero dies

/ good guys /
I learn about this only today. Twenty five days after the fact. Hugh Thompson Jr:

"...a former Army helicopter pilot honored for rescuing Vietnamese civilians from his fellow GIs during the My Lai massacre, died Friday. He was 62.

Thompson, whose role in the 1968 massacre did not become widely known until decades later, died at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Alexandria, La., said hospital spokesman Jay DeWorth."

During the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, Thompson:

...on March 16, 1968, with door-gunner Lawrence Colburn and crew chief Glenn Andreotta came upon U.S. ground troops killing Viet Namese civilians in and around the village of My Lai. They landed their helicopter in the line of fire between U.S. troops and Viet Namese villagers and pointed their weapons at the soldiers to prevent more killings. They also evacuated civilians who had been hiding in a bunker, then landed again to pick up a wounded child. Andreotta was killed in battle three weeks later; Colburn is still living and was with Thompson when he died in the Veterans Affairs Medical Center outside New Orleans. The three were honored in 1998 with the Army's Soldier's Medal, the highest award for bravery not involving conflict with an enemy.

Lawrence Colbourn gave the account of what happenned that day in an interview a few years ago:

"... As we lifted off, we heard automatic weapons fire. Glenn said, "My God, he's firing into the ditch again." Wounded people were climbing out of the ditch and they were shooting them. We checked other people we'd marked and sure enough, they'd been finished off. It felt like by marking these bodies, we were indirectly killing them ourselves.

They raped the women with M16s, bayonets. They sodomized children. They decapitated people. They killed a monk, threw him down a well with hand grenades. It was so obscene. They did everything but eat the people.

I didn't join the Army to do that sort of thing, even if they were sympathizers...

...WE SAW SOME people in a bunker. There was a squad coming their way. We could see the kids peeking out, little kids with Prince Valiant haircuts, black bangs, black pajamas and sandals.

...Thompson landed again. Glenn and I got out of the aircraft, took out the guns. Hugh walked over to this lieutenant (Brooks), and I could tell they were in a shouting match. I thought they were going to get in a fist fight. He told me later what they said:

Thompson: Let's get these people out of this bunker and get 'em out of here.

Brooks: We'll get 'em out with hand grenades.

Thompson: I can do better than that. Keep your people in place. My guns are on you.

Hugh was outranked, so this was not good to do, but that's how committed he was to stopping it.

He walked back to the aircraft. He said: "I'm going to go over and get them out of the bunker myself. If the squad opens up on them, shoot 'em." And he walked away.

Glenn and I looked at each other. We looked at the GIs we were supposed to protect, we looked at Thompson....

... Hugh went to the entrance of this little earthen bunker and motioned for the people to come out. It took a few minutes.

He kept his body in between Lt. Brooks and the people he'd gotten out of the bunker, got them over to our aircraft, and got on the radio with his buddy, the gunship pilot who was circling above: "Danny, do me a favor. Can you come down here? Can you shuttle some of these people out of here before they get killed?"

They landed. This is unheard of, to land a gunship and use it as a medivac. Makes you a sitting duck. Breaks all kind of military rules. But Hugh had thrown caution to the winds.

We passed over the ditch one more time and Glenn said: "I saw something move." Hugh landed again and Glenn charged in there, mired above his knees in what was once human beings. Maybe 175 people stacked three or four high. He picked this little fellow up but couldn't get out of the ditch because it was hard to get footing so he handed the child up to me and I grabbed him by the back of his shirt. I remember thinking: I hope the buttons are sewn on well because they're going to have to support his weight...

This is an act of bravery and moral conviction that is truly impressive. It requires not just the guts to stand off a squadron of blood-drunk goons, but to stand off a squadron of your comrades-in-arms, whom you are conditioned to depend on for your life in a war zone, despite the nagging suspicion that if someone got into trouble over this it probably will be you.

That indeed, was the case:

...On returning to Chu Lai military base Thompson reported everything to his commanding officer. The allegations were passed on to brigade and divisional commanders but a local inquiry whitewashed Thompson’s complaints, claiming that the civilians deaths had been caused by artillery fire.

An elaborate cover-up ensued which involved falsifying brigade documents and included Thompson being awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for saving the lives of Vietnamese civilians “in the face of hostile enemy fire”. The citation omitted to mention that the hostile fire was coming from his own side. He threw the medal away, believing that his commanders wanted to buy his silence...

...Thompson later appeared as a witness at the courts martial of several men involved in the massacre or cover-up. The only person convicted was Calley, who served a few months in jail before having his life sentence reduced and being given parole.

During his time in Vietnam, Thompson was shot down five times — finally breaking his spine. He received a commission, but back in America some of his uninformed colleagues regarded him as a turncoat. The full extent of the carnage at My Lai had been deliberately hidden from the American public. Returning to Fort Rucker he went to the officers’ mess for a drink. All 12 men there got up and walked out. One anonymous postcard he received asked: “What do you think war is? ” Calley meanwhile — facing a trial — was being regarded as a hero. Even Jimmy Carter, Governor of Georgia, held a “Rally for Cally”.

The My Lai experience and its aftermath affected Thompson badly. He grappled with alcohol and had several failed marriages. After service in South Korea, Thompson returned to the US, dropping the name Hugh and calling himself by his family name Buck, trying to distance himself from past events. He left the army briefly and then re-enlisted, flying with medical evacuation units, and instructing trainee pilots...

His and his friends' bravery was recognized thirty years later after determined efforts by admirers. The My Lai massacre was far from the only US army massacre in Vietnam. The difference with My Lai was that there were people around brave enough to report and publicize the events. So some sort of sham trial was set up and people's (killers') hands were slapped. Indeed, this particular publicized massacre of 500 people in cold blood, resulted in a scapegoat being sentenced to less than what he would have been for manslaughter in the US.

As Vietnam era level atrocities kill again in Iraq, Thompson's heroism offers a heartening example of moral clarity - and shows that no "harsh realities" of war deprive a person of their ability to act as moral agents.

There are no excuses.

May he be remembered lovingly by the people he saved, their children and their chidren's children. May he always serve as an anti-Rambo of sorts, the symbol of everything good an army isn't.

Surfer notes

/ stuff / notable /

Bernard Chazelle: France's Colonial Blowback: This seems brilliant to me, it's certainly well written and to the point, corresponding to (and certainly expanding) my impressions and what I hear from France. The riots, equality and rap. The author: Bernard Chazelle, computer scientist, good sense of humor and politics (judging from his home page and essays at least).

My kind of cabinet, Bolivia:

Among the Cabinet members is a former miner who wears his helmet to all public functions, including his swearing-in. A former domestic worker who suffered abuse at the hands of her employer will be justice minister. And a peasant organizer who specialized in fostering small and family businesses will be in charge of economic development.

Morales also hired a coca grower in charge of anti drug trafficking and halved his own salary. What's not to like? Plus: an interview with Bolivia's new energy minister

Nearby, another storm brewing?

And, finally, it's always news when Chomsky [pdf] makes the World Economic Forum's magazine.

Calculating the Risk of War in Iran

/ gone nuclear /
A detailed analysis of the Iranian nuclear reactor saga, including a presentation of the major actors and their goals, strengths and limitations. Pretty scary stuff...

"Were the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld axis to risk launching a nuclear strike on Iran, given the geopolitical context, it would mark a point of no return in international relations. Even with sagging popularity, the White House knows this. The danger of the initial strategy of pre-emptive wars is that, as now, when someone like Iran calls the US bluff with a formidable response potential, the US is left with little option but to launch the unthinkable-nuclear strike.

There are saner voices within the US political establishment, such as former NSC heads, Brent Scowcroft or even Zbigniew Brzezinski, who clearly understand the deadly logic of Bush’s and the Pentagon hawks’ pre-emptive posture. The question is whether their faction within the US power establishment today is powerful enough to do to Bush and Cheney what was done to Richard Nixon when his exercise of Presidential power got out of hand."

Also: a rather relevant analysis on China, Iran and the axis of whatever...

Cheap Kills

/ misdemeanors / torture /

Ah! Justice:

A US officer who faced up to three years in jail for killing a captured Iraqi general has been punished with a reprimand and a $6,000 fine.

Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jr was convicted last week of the negligent homicide of Maj Gen Abed Hamed Mowhoush in 2003.

Prosecutors said Gen Mowhoush was tied, placed headfirst in a sleeping bag and died with an officer sitting on him.

So you kill a prisoner of war (and the victim was a general in the Iraqi army, so the usual claptrap about the Geneva Convention not applying, is certainly not an excuse here), in the process of torturing him, and you get a reprimand and a fine? What do you have to do to spend a couple of months in jail, commit genocide? These people can't even set up scapegoats (for a scapegoat this guy certainly is) properly.

Actually the LA Times have more details:

The jury apparently agreed with defense arguments that Welshofer had believed he was following orders to use creative interrogation techniques when he put Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush face-first in a sleeping bag, wrapped him in electrical wire and sat on his chest in November 2003. The 57-year-old general died after 20 minutes in the bag.

"When you're going to send our men and women over there to fight and put their lives on the line, you've got to back them up, you've got to give them clear rules and you've got to give them room to make mistakes and not treat them like criminals," Spinner said after the sentence was read.

Yes, why would anyone even think of considering a "creative torturer" a criminal is beyond me. I might note that since the jury decided that sociopath wasn't to blame, as he "thought" he was following orders, the question arises, who is? I mean you have a glaring breach of the Geneva conventions, not to mention a heinous murder, and someone along the chain of command should be held responsible. It is possible, nay it is overwhelmingly likely, that the final responsibility of the crime does not rest with this grunt - yet where is the real investigation of the circumstances of the Iraqi General's death and who was actually ordering the torture of detainees? Who was responsible for the General's prior abuse? Oh wait. We might have a clue...

This is so blatantly shameless that it's almost comical.

As bad as the murderer's lawyer was, the prosecution wasn't really out for blood:

...prosecutor Capt. Elana Matt asked the jury for a two-year prison term and said Welshofer did not deserve to remain in the military.

"The reputation of the Army has been eroded by Mr. Welshofer's action … and society needs to know that that will not be tolerated," she said. "Now's your chance to tell society that when we say it, we mean it."

Note: two years in jail and being kicked off the military for the "erosion" of the Army's reputation. And that's the prosecution. Nowhere is there the slightest hint that there might be more to erode that reputation than a "bad soldier".

The full story of the events was presented in a Washington Post report this past August. There's certainly more information there than was allowed out of the sham trial.

BTW this is not the first Iraqi CIA related death case that leads to nothing.

Deregulating the slave trade

/ abolition / impractical /

Now this is something I read twice to make sure I understood correctly:

A proposal prohibiting defense contractor involvement in human trafficking for forced prostitution and labor was drafted by the Pentagon last summer, but five defense lobbying groups oppose key provisions and a final policy still appears to be months away, according to those involved and Defense Department records.

The lobbying groups opposing the plan say they're in favor of the idea in principle, but said they believe that implementing key portions of it overseas is unrealistic. They represent thousands of firms, including some of the industry's biggest names, such as DynCorp International and Halliburton subsidiary KBR, both of which have been linked to trafficking-related concerns.

So in other words, "please don't bother us with actually demanding from our contractors that they don't practice slavery, Christ, what's next? we'll have to make sure they're not cannibals?"

Yes, these guys are for real, pay attention now:

Alan Chvotkin, senior vice president and counsel for the Professional Services Council who drafted the contractors' eight-page critique of the Pentagon proposal, said it was not realistic to expect foreign companies operating overseas to accept or act on U.S. foreign policy objectives.

"This is a clash between mission execution [of the contract] and policy execution," Chvotkin said. "So we're looking for a little flexibility."

He said that rather than a "requirement that says you have to flow this through to everybody," the group wants the policy to simply require firms to notify the Pentagon when their subcontractors refuse to accept contract clauses barring support for human trafficking.

Still, Chvotkin said, "We don't want to do anything that conveys the idea that we are sanctioning or tolerating trafficking."

Yes, you see, such outlandish "US foreign policy objectives" (doesn't one wish it were so) as not encouraging human trafficking are completely impractical, really. That trafficking happens to be a gross breach of human rights, and thus one could argue a rather self-evident responsibility, is secondary. Heck why not work with the Russian mob while you're at it... Oh, never mind.

This is BTW a proposal that was already full of holes, as human rights lawyers point out:

In a joint memo of their own, Mendelson and another Washington-based expert, Martina Vandenberg, a lawyer who investigated sex trafficking for Human Rights Watch, told the Pentagon its draft policy "institutionalizes ineffective procedures currently used by the Department of Defense contractor community in handling allegations of human trafficking."

Without tough provisions requiring referrals to prosecutors, they said, contractors could still get their employees on planes back to the U.S. before investigations commenced, as they allege happened in several documented cases in the Balkans. They said some local contract managers even had "special arrangements" with police in the Balkans that allowed them to quickly get employees returned to the U.S. if they were found to be engaged in illegal activities.

...but as the Halliburton subsidiary has a rather grim record, any sort of proposal seems a bit too demanding... To get an idea of the kind of abuse that KBR is easily capable of take a look at this old story:

More Indian workers are returning from Iraq with distressing tales of torture and human rights violations in the military camps of the United States.

"It is slavery there in the American camp. We are being treated worse than animals," Peter Thomas, a native of Mavelikkara in Kerala, who did odd jobs such as cleaning and laundry works in an American army camp, told rediff.com

Thomas along with two of his friends Anil Kumar and Justin C Antony reached Kerala this week, after the Indian government intervened to rescue them in the wake of escalating tension and violence in Iraq.

Thomas said that he was recruited for a cook's job in Jordan through a Kochi-Mumbai-based manpower agency. "But as soon I reached Jordan, I was taken to Iraq by road. I was not alone. There were at least 60 Indians who were with me. We were taken to different American camps," he said.

Anyway, one certainly can't accuse KBR of using different standards home and abroad:

...Martinez, 16, speaks no English; his mother tongue is Zapotec. He had left the cornfields of Oaxaca, Mexico, four weeks earlier for the promise that he would make $8 an hour, plus room and board, while working for a subcontractor of KBR, a wholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton that was awarded a major contract by the Bush administration for disaster relief work. The job was helping to clean up a Gulf Coast naval base in the region devastated by Hurricane Katrina...

...three weeks after arriving at the naval base from Texas, Martinez's boss, Karen Tovar, a job broker from North Carolina who hired workers for a KBR subcontractor called United Disaster Relief, booted him from the base and left him homeless, hungry and without money.

"They gave us two meals a day and sometimes only one," Martinez said.

He says that Tovar "kicked us off the base," forcing him and other cleanup workers - many of them Mexican and undocumented - to sleep on the streets of New Orleans. According to Martinez, they were not paid for three weeks of work. An immigrant rights group recently filed complaints with the Department of Labor on behalf of Martinez and 73 other workers allegedly owed more than $56,000 by Tovar. Tovar claims that she let the workers go because she was not paid by her own bosses at United Disaster Relief. In turn, UDR manager Zachary Johnson, who declined to be interviewed for this story, told the Washington Post on Nov. 4 that his company had not been paid by KBR for two months.

...[Martinez's] situation is typical among many workers hired by subcontractors of KBR (formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root) to clean and rebuild Belle Chasse and other Gulf Coast military bases. Immigrants rights groups and activists like Bill Chandler, president of the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, estimate that hundreds of undocumented workers are on the Gulf Coast military bases, a claim that the military and Halliburton/KBR deny - even after the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency turned up undocumented workers in a raid of the Belle Chasse facility last month. Visits to the naval bases and dozens of interviews by Salon confirm that undocumented workers are in the facilities. Still, tracing the line from unpaid undocumented workers to their multibillion-dollar employers is a daunting task. A shadowy labyrinth of contractors, subcontractors and job brokers, overseen by no single agency, have created a no man's land where nobody seems to be accountable for the hiring - and abuse - of these workers.

Nobody seems to be accountable. Period. And no one is planning to be.

Reaction times

/ iraq / journalists / credentials /
The intelligence abilities of the occupation forces in Iraq are breathtaking:

Two journalists working for Reuters in Iraq have been freed by the US military after being held without charge for several months.

Ali al-Mashhadani, a television cameraman who was arrested in August 2005, and Majed Hameed, a correspondent for Reuters and broadcaster al-Arabiya who was detained in September 2005, were released from Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison yesterday. Some 500 other detainees were released at the same time...
... In an interview with al-Arabiya, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt of the US military's central command, said of the detentions: "We have to make sure whether this person is really a journalist and whether he is a threat to Iraqi security or not."

Well it took them, what, 4-5 months to figure out that these guys were really journalists when, within days of their capture, Reuters and the Al Arabiya, among others, were protesting their capture, which means that news travels very slowly in the occupation forces or that they don't read the news, I guess.

I note in passing that Al-Jazeera cameraman Sami Al-Hall is still in Guantanamo, despite Amnesty International's appeals, being tortured and abused by the monsters serving at the US concentration camp. A horrifying glimpse at what transpires in Guantanamo and american torture camps can be seen in Jumah al-Dossari's testimony, a long and depressing account of the horrors of Gitmo - a monument to the total and blatant dismissal of basic human rights and civility as a concern for the US government in the early 21st century.

More on the Athens abductions (part V)

/ investigations /

While the Greek government stands firm in its denial that nothing happened, or that if it did it knew anything about it, apparently there is an ongoing investigation regarding this matter (and the Uzbekistan documents) in Britain.

I received an email from a reader (who wished to remain unnamed) that informs me that:

...the Foreign Affairs Committee (FAC) is meeting tomorrow, Wednesday 11 January 2006.

One of the items on their agenda is the question of the lies told by Jack Straw to the FAC on two issues:

1. CIA flights landing in the UK - Jack Straw has denied that any CIA flights have landed in the UK. This has turned out to be untrue.

2. British Embassy Athens staff, including Nicholas Langman, involved in the interrogation of 28 Pakistanis in Athens - Jack Straw denied that any FCO staff were involved. This has also turned out to be untrue.

The reader has forwarded a response by the FAC's Chair, Mike Gapes, that states the following:

You ask two direct questions:

1. What can be done to ensure that action is taken against Mr Straw and that he does not lie in future? For example, would you please raise this issue at the next FAC meeting at which Mr Straw is present?

I will invite the Committee to consider Mr StrawÂ’s evidence in the light of the subsequent newspaper reports when it next meets, on 11 January.

2. From where can I obtain a) the truth about CIA flights which landed in the UK and b) the details of the interrogation and torture, by British Embassy staff, of 28 Pakistani citizens in Greece?

On (a) the Foreign Affairs Committee has been asking questions about the apparent use by US agencies of UK airspace and territory for the purposes of rendition for the last year, without obtaining satisfactory answers – see, for example, paras 88 to 98 of its Report of last April, at www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmfaff/36/3607.htm#a14. As for (b), I understand from press reports that the Intelligence and Security Committee, chaired by Rt Hon Paul Murphy MP, is likely to be examining these allegations.

Meanwhile back in Greece, it looks like the way this will be handled is through threats and coercions. Kathimerini reports that:

Some of the 28 Pakistani migrants living in Athens that claim to have been abducted and tortured by security forces are allegedly coming under pressure from their embassy to withdraw the accusations in what has become a sensitive issue for both Greece and Pakistan.

In fact the Athens daily Eleftherotypia suggests that both bribery and intimidation are being used to "close" this uncomfortable for the government case:

"The Pakistani immigrants [who claim to have been abducted] are alleging threats regarding the extension of their visas and their legal status in Greece, as well as tempting bribes in order to revoke their initial testimonies regarding their secret interrogations...
Their lawyer... intends to file a complaint... denouncing the attempt to tamper with evidentiary material an naming the persons who have tried to convince his Pakistani clients to revoke their testimonies..."

In related news, the Greek police and anti-terrorist services, allegedly acting on a tip by US intelligence sources, have detained and questioned a number of Pakistanis, about possible terrorist attacks against US targets in Athens. At the same time a member of an anti-racist and civil liberties group in Athens was arrested and threatened by police officers. It doesn't take much imagination to view all this as part of an intimidation effort. Whether it will turn out to bsuccessfulul remains to be seen.

And the Award for Europe'’s worst lobby goes to...

/ deceivers / prized /
...Campaign for Creativity aka C4C, which according to the Corporate Europe Observatory,

...pretends to represent artists, musicians, designers, engineers and software developers. The texts on the C4C website give the impression that the authors are part of the creative sectors (www.campaignforcreativity.org). In reality, however, C4C is orchestrated by Campbell Gentry, a London-based public affairs firm (www.campbellgentry.com). C4C is de facto run by Simon Gentry, a public affairs consultant who in the past also lobbied for biotech patents on behalf of SmithKline Beecham. The English language website vaguely mentions that the campaign is "supported by" corporations including software multinationals Microsoft and SAP, and industry association CompTIA. Simon Gentry, however, refuses to disclose how C4C is actually financed. Gentry claims that C4C has some hundred individual supporters, but these do not contribute financially. The companies, Gentry told LobbyControl, contribute to specific actions of the campaign, not on a fixed scheme.

The C4C campaign was the winner of the EU Lobby Award, with a huge margin of victory over its competitors.

Also via spectrezine, another corporate top-list, Global Exchange's Most Wanted" Corporate Human Rights Violators of 2005, presents the 14 corporations that, during the past year most excelled in violating human rights around the world. These corporations (Caterpillar, Chevron, Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, Dyncorp CSC, Ford, KBR (Kellogg, Brown, and Root - a Subsidiary of Halliburton), Lockheed-Martin, Halliburton, Monsanto, Nestle USA, Philip Morris, Pfizer, Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux and Wal-Mart), are engaged, according to Global Exchange, in criminal practices. As Global Exchange concludes:

This list of "MOST WANTED" corporate criminals gives you information about the abusive behavior of this year's top fourteen worst corporations, tells you who is responsible, and how to connect with and support people who are doing something about it. The more you know, the less these corporations can continue their abuses out of public eyesight: so share this information with your friends, get on the phone with the CEOs themselves, and exercise your rights as a citizen and consumer today.

More on the Pakistani abductions in Athens (part IV)

/ photo / opportunities /
The abduction story is still developing. Today the Athens daily Eleftherotypia has published a photo of Nicholas Langman, the alleged MI6 station chief, from his participation in the Athens Marathon a couple of months ago- he finished 801st among men - not bad for his age eh? This is causing further embarrassment for the Greek government which insists that nothing happened. Ever.

The Eleftherotypia article (quickly translated and edited for brevity):

Athens chief prosecutor Dimitris Papangelopoulos, is in possession of the photo and intends to call all the Pakistanis involved to identify or not the "white-haired person", as the man is described in their lengthy testimonies.

The British official who is alleged to have headed the interrogations, was always driving around in a Green Cherokee with a "black' driver...

The abductees lawyer requested officially to have the Greek Intelligence Services make available to the prosecutor's office, "photos and license plates of the automobiles involved". The request notes that according to sources "during the abduction and transport of the Pakistanis from Ioannina to Athens apart from the British agents car (driven by a black Briton), there were five cars with conventional license plates, in which a Pakistani was held handcuffed to the car's door...

This document was submitted to the prosecutor's office by F.Ragoussis representing Chodry Giulnawaz Ahmed, Mohammad Munir, Azhar Nehmood, Khizar Hayat and Shoukat Nawaz.

Up to now, 18 witnesses, immigrant and local, have testified. This includes Greek employers. who have confirmed that they found their employees rooms in disarray after their abductions. All testimonies concur that the interrogators asked the immigrants about phone-calls they had placed to friends and relatives in London. The immigrants' cell phones were on during their captivity, obviously to identify those that were calling them.

The prosecutor of Greece's Upper Court (Arios Pagos) is being kept informed regarding the inquiries, and is attempting to tread carefully through the case, along with Mr. Papangelopoulos, since gathering information from the EYP (the Greek Intelligence Service) is problematic according to existing laws.

Soon Korantis, the head of EYP, will be called to testify, a person who, due to his diplomatic background, is considered as a very credible witness and institutionally accessible to the prosecuting authorities...

Meanwhile leaks from unnamed British officials admit to the MI6 officers presence (and thus concede that the "interrogation" has indeed happened), while the Pakistani victims have given a press conference (organized by anti-racist groups) where they gave details about their mistreatment (the title is utterly misleading and contrary to what the article actually says, brilliant eh?)...

Finally, in the taking-care-of-any-such-future-embarrassment department a new law is expected to be submitted for approval in the Greek Parliament that will severely penalize the outing of EYP agents, expand its authority and make testimony from EYP agents to courts impossible without written authorization from the Public Order Ministry.

Also the full text of the Proto Thema article, that first uncovered the British and Greek agents' names, is now posted translated in indymedia (click on the orange letters under the article, next to an indymedia logo)