Milfuegos: 2006-11-19

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Gore Vidal: Living Through History

Posted on Nov 21, 2006

Iconic author and historian Gore Vidal speaks with Robert Scheer about his new memoir, “Point to Point Navigation,” and the events that shaped his life and his country, from war with Hitler to the “waking nightmare” of Iraq.

Partial Transcript:

Scheer:

Let me begin, well, first of all, it’s kind of depressing the way you begin this book. You say you’re headed for the exit.

Gore Vidal:

I’m not serious.

Scheer:

Oh, you’re not serious. OK. Because I got a little worried. I’m not far behind, you know.

Vidal:

No, my exit is headed toward me. I’m not running toward it.

Scheer:

But you make a point, that you’ve lived through one-third of the history of this country...

Vidal:

Most of the 20th century.

Scheer:

Yeah.

Vidal:

Three-quarters of the twentieth century.

Scheer:

And it started out, I don’t know, from the book it sounds like it was a lot more exciting, vital and fun-filled than it is now.

Vidal:

I’m now a creationist. Because the distance from George Washington to George W. Bush makes a monkey out of Darwin.

Scheer:

[laughs] Now you’ve been—you’ve seen a lot of scoundrels in your time. You’ve been in, you know, you’ve been through some periods when we’ve been ruled by liars. You’ve exposed a number of those lies...

Vidal:

There’s a difference between that and having, uh, and having systemic lying—which is the only way these people know how to govern. The president says, “Look, look in New Orleans in no time at all, everything’s gonna be cleaned up and, uh, [imitating Bush] I’ve given orders, and when I told you, last time I was here in, uh, whatever square this is ... it’s got a church here, isn’t it? It’s a cathedral square! I told—what I told you then, I meant. And that’s what your gonna get.” He was telling the truth. They got nothing, and they got nothing the second time around. Everybody knows that about him. There are a few crazies who want to cheer the flag and this yappy little terrier as though he were a real president. Well, he’s not a real president. He’s a thing, a chimera who was put together by the Supreme Court, first time around, and reelected by, uh, Diebold, Sequoia and some other interested parties. Everybody knows he isn’t there. Or what is there isn’t for us—it’s not our president. We do have a real, uh, a shadow president in Vice President Cheney, whose wife is a famous novelist given to tales of unnatural love… . But Lynne, more power to you. She’s my kind of novelist.

Scheer:

I mean, you witnessed the Third Reich. You grew up at a time when people—you were in the military ... . Your generation, as you say in the book, was cannon fodder in fighting the third Reich. Young cadets who thought they were taking language training and then they end up...

Vidal:

They ended up in the Battle of the Bulge.

Scheer:

So how did we get to this point?

Vidal:

I think it’s a sort of waking nightmare I’m in. I get up in the morning. I get the newspapers. I start to open them up and I see Iraq. What happened there? I’ve just ... during my sleep I block it out. And because I thought in 1945—‘46 I got out of the Army—I thought, well, I’ve had my war, my father had his war, my grandfather’s generation had the Civil War, and I thought, well, that’ll do for now. That’ll do for the next century or so. Then we had what I call the golden age, which was from 1945 to 1950. All the arts in America exploded. Unlikely arts like ballet. We had been nowhere—we’d never heard of toe-dancing before, and suddenly we had the ballet theater. We had some of the best ballet dancers in the business. Suddenly in music there’s Lenny Bernstein ... comes along—a one-man orchestra, really. We were producing many first-rate poets, starting with Robert Lowell ... and Tennessee Williams in the theater. I mean it was a burst. In five years this happened. Everybody came along at the same time. Why? Because we’d lived through depression. We’d lived through World War II. Most of us had not been too frightened to get into the war, and so we went, and got frightened once we were there, naturally, but we felt that was what you had to do. So our reward was a golden age of five years in all the arts. And those of us who were in the arts, I mean it was a magical time. Then what happened? Korea. And the evil genius of our country, which I will chat about another time, is Harry Truman, and Dean Acheson, who was the brain for him. But Truman was ... he wanted a war. Preferably cold, but he’d settle for a hot one. Why? He had one good motive, which he would explain to you all the time. And that was, the depression had not ended by 1940. We were still deep in depression. It had returned. The New Deal had not solved it. He was terrified, and when Franklin Roosevelt put $8 billion into the economy to rearm America in 1940, it was the end of the depression. Everybody had a job. The country was prosperous. And then we won the war. We’re very good at war, by the way. We must tell the Republicans, remind them. World War II was ours, Vietnam was theirs, and certainly this mess in the Middle East is theirs. So we did know how to win them, not that I approve of war, but if you’re going to have one, you better win it. And then suddenly by 1950 we’re in Korea, we’re losing. And then the wars begin. Many of them for the same reason: that the people who own the country thought it was good for business. Politicians saw it was a way to rise, play the patriotic card. And so there we were, with a golden age aborted on our hands. It’s often been mentioned, the amount of melancholy that can be found in the novelists of the ‘50s and ‘60s. Well, it was—we’d lived through the thing once. And it was all coming back again. Here we are, contesting with Cuba, threatening to throw missiles. Here we are, fighting the Viet Cong in Southeast Asia—we don’t belong there. We had a good excuse for the other wars—for the real wars—but not for those. But it did us in. So this election, coming up, although it’s a mere off-year, this is the on-year election of all our lives. And if we don’t turn it around the right way, we’re not going to have representative government. We’re not going to have the people’s voice ever again expressed quadrennially in the presidential election, because they can falsify it each time now. So now’s the time to use a new Congress, hoping we get one, to tidy up.

Scheer:

What happened to the center in America? I mean you ... you’ve lived through this period where you say they’re thugs now. What, you know ... I don’t know if you were there at Stanley [Sheinbaum’s] house when [George] Soros was there recently?

Vidal:

No, I wasn’t.

Scheer:

I asked him this question because he has this book, again talking about fascism—and he lived under fascism in Hungary. And I asked him, I said, “Where are your buddies on Wall Street? Where are the ... ”

Vidal:

Good question.

Scheer:

“... Where are the people who worry about the world their grandchildren will inherit? You know, what happened to that notion of responsibility?” And he said, you know, it was greed. And I said, “But greed is always there, but they’re somehow still worried about the outcome.” And he said the big problem is they are innocents. They simply do not believe it will happen.

Vidal:

In the late ‘30s, early ‘40s, I forget the exact year—my generation—I went in the Army when I was 17. I had read, by then, a book called “It Can’t Happen Here” by Sinclair Lewis, which was a very chilling account of just ordinary middle America, which goes fascist, and how it will come about. I wouldn’t say he was a great prophet, but we all knew it could happen here. We watched Hitler; I mean it was just fascinating. Every other day, if you read the papers regularly, a new country had fallen. It was suddenly up—there he is in Finland, or wherever it was he ended up—he’s all over the place! He’s got Poland; he’s going to get Czechoslovakia. He can’t get France. Hmm, he got France. We were quite used to the—there’s a wonderful song from the Revolution: “The whole world upside down” was the lyric of it. Well, we knew about the whole world upside down from having watched the newsreels of Adolph Hitler. What could happen there could certainly happen here. And we had enough home-grown Nazis anyway, who were in favor of his tactics, if nothing else. Many of them high in the Army. And I used to listen to some generals, because my stepfather was an Air Force general—not a Nazi—but he ... I can remember him, he was a very right-wing general, and he and the other generals would sit around and ... they were just sort of chuckling about how we were fighting the wrong enemy—we should be fighting Stalin, not Hitler. And then somebody would always pipe up: “Yeah, well, let’s go down to the White House and send him home.” And, of course, the American Legion had tried to do that with President Roosevelt when he first came into office. They tried to organize—it was General Smedley Butler, formerly of the Marine Corps, who turned out to be too much of a patriot, but they offered money, would he overthrow FDR in his first term. So ... it was in our air. Fascism was in the air, obviously, between Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin’s repressiveness. And no one I know ever thought we would be exempt from it. As time passed, I began to watch things we were doing which were totally imperial, totally mindless. And I thought, uh-oh, you know, we’re taking some wrong turns here. So you do your best to warn about it, and everybody does their best to pay no attention. And then suddenly you are faced with the fact that we have lost habeas corpus. So we are—900 years of Anglo-American law has been swept aside by a mere whim, and this attorney—oh, Attorney General Gonzales—every time I look at him I see Truman Capote. [Imitating Gonzales/Capote] “Well, I just don’t know ... the Constitution’s really quaint.” And he yammers away in that nasal voice of his. And I thought, my heavens, how could you have found that? I think of our ruling junta. Why not get a real lawyer or a better lawyer? Or someone at least conversant with the Constitution. But I think the loss of habeas corpus—“Oh, Abraham Lincoln did that”—all the non-history these people come up with. They don’t know why Abraham Lincoln did it—they don’t know if he did do it. It’s a talking point: “Lincoln did it, FDR did it, this one ... oh, and George Washington, oh, yes, George Washington imprisoned everybody.” All you have to do is give them a suggestion and they will cascade lies.

Gore Vidal: Living Through History

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Olbermann: Lessons from the Vietnam War

When History Becomes Chopped Liver by Carolyn Baker

“Nixon had no readiness at all to see Saigon under a Vietcong flag after a ‘decent interval’ of two or three years -- or ever… And so it meant that the war would essentially never end. His campaign promise of ending the war was a hoax.”

-- Daniel Ellsberg, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and The Pentagon Papers

On Friday, George W. Bush arrived in Vietnam with the intention of strengthening business ties with that nation and used his photo op to make one of the most jaw-dropping statements of his presidency regarding the subject of history. “History has a long march to it,” he banally proclaimed as we all yawned, recalling that his major at Yale, where he barely managed to maintain a 2.3 average, was history. Then came the clincher as Bush was asked if any lessons from Vietnam apply to the war in Iraq: “One lesson,” he babbled, “is that we tend to want there to be instant success in the world, and the task in Iraq is going to take awhile. It’s just going to take a long time for the ideology that is hopeful, and that is an ideology of freedom, to overcome an ideology of hate. We’ll succeed unless we quit.”

Oh really, the “lesson” of Vietnam is that we shouldn’t “quit”? There it is again, that Orwellian mindset that has pervaded this administration; war is peace, and evil is good. No one should be shocked that Bush has no sense of history, that he has never read anything beyond the Reader’s Digest version of it, and that he willfully ignores the genuine lessons of the Vietnam era, but every American should be outraged by this statement, but one of the myriad reasons the vast majority of Americans have allowed the most criminal administration in the history of this nation to continue unabated, with nary a peep of indignation, is that they themselves have so little knowledge of their history.

Listen further to Daniel Ellsberg: “What I was hearing was not just that the war was going to go on, indefinitely, but that it would get larger, eventually larger than it had ever been.” In his memoir, Secrets, we are shown incontrovertible evidence that what drove the former Rand Corporation economic analyst to hide top-secret, classified documents, which became the Pentagon Papers, in his brief case upon leaving the Defense Department every night and thereby risk serving decades in prison, was moral outrage over the appalling reality that the Nixon administration had no intention whatsoever of ending the Vietnam War, but in fact, was actively engaged in continuing it for as long as possible. Are we shocked that the Bush administration lied us into war? Almost all U.S. presidential administrations have lied into war, but never as blatantly as this one has.

As noted in my new book, U.S. HISTORY UNCENSORED: What Your High School Textbook Didn’t Tell You, in the early 1960s, a decade prior to Ellsberg’s employment at the Defense Department, Air Force Colonel, L. Fletcher Prouty worked in the Pentagon as chief of special operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Kennedy administration. His experience corroborates seamlessly with Ellsberg’s as Prouty observed that in the early days of the Vietnam conflict, the U.S. was not only financing the French against the North Vietnamese, but was also financing the North Vietnamese. Why? Because the military-industrial complex is amoral and doesn’t quibble over “sides” but how to most effectively bloat the profits of war. “War is the best business in town,” opines Prouty, echoing the words of the World War I hero, General Smedley Butler and his famous indictment that “War is a racket.” In my book I recount the story of an attempt by pro-fascist corporate capitalists in the 1930s to enlist Butler into leading a coup against Franklin Roosevelt in order to implement a fascist government. Pretending to go along with the coup, Butler later disclosed its details to Congress, but no action was taken against the coup plotters.

Lest my inbox become glutted with e-mails reminding me that Prouty was a Scientologist, I hasten to add that his religious beliefs pale by comparison with the documentation he provided us regarding the JFK assassination and the Pentagon’s Vietnam policies. My point is that we can pick an administration -- any administration, Democratic or Republican, since the end of World War II, and despite its rhetoric, it will upon investigation, reveal itself as subservient to the war machine, doing whatever it takes to feed that mechanism, either during the infinite wars it has fueled or in between them.

Moreover, another lesson of history that the Bush administration ignores is that asymmetric wars cannot be “won” but merely endured, and while that serves the strategy of infinite war, history is replete with examples of how it decimates a citizenry and its resources. Stan Goff, Ret. U.S. Army Special Forces, former West Point instructor, and author of Full Spectrum Disorder, describes asymmetric warfare as “When they retreat, pursue. When they attack, retreat. Match your strengths to their weakness.” A stunning example of asymmetric warfare is Hezbollah’s victory over the Israeli occupation forces in Lebanon in the summer of 2006. Asymmetric warfare is a gradual wearing down of the enemy and his resources and morale. Furthermore, Goff writes, “The U.S. inflicted a terrible empirical toll on Southeast Asia and ultimately lost the Vietnam War. The U.S. never grasped the political character of that war.” Nor did the U.S. grasp the will of traditional peoples to use non-conventional means to fight conventional wars. For example, even though the U.S. military had highly sophisticated weapons technology in the Vietnam War, hundreds of Vietnamese people were willing to rip up railroad tracks with their bare hands, dealing strategic blows to American forces as sectarian violence in Iraq, a textbook example of asymmetric warfare, is now doing.

Try as you may, Mr. President, you cannot “pretzelize” history to fit your political and war machine agenda. Distort it however you wish, it will have the last word. Goff said it best in his recent article, “Reflecting On Rumsfeld:

The United States is not suffering from some collective personality disorder called compassion fatigue. We are suffering from the most well-funded thought-control experiment in history, more sophisticated and deadly by many orders of magnitude than anything contrived by Kim Jong Il -- the latest bete noir of American public discourse, and we are suffering from the complicity of journalistic hacks like Judith Miller and the anodyne intellectual narcotics of policy think tanks.

It is our empathy that is under attack, because if it is aroused to a point where Iraqis or Afghans or even our own imperial soldiers become real people (and not a yellow-ribbon magnet), the jig is up.

So here is a simple reminder. This war is wanton cruelty in our name; there is no rationalization that can mitigate or excuse it; “we” will not win it and somehow transmogrify a swine into a swan ... and it is not over.

What Vietnam teaches us, Mr. President, is that war is the “health of the state” as described by World War I progressive Randolph Bourne, and as long as the American people allow you or any other president to lie us into wars, you will do so, perpetuating the Iraq War as long as possible -- as long as the Nixon administration attempted to perpetuate Vietnam: forever. And, in order to justify your crimes against the world and the American people, you and your military industrial complex must turn history into chopped liver.

Carolyn Baker, Ph.D. is author of U.S. HISTORY UNCENSORED: What Your High School Textbook! Didn’t Tell You which can be ordered at her website www.carolynbaker.org where she may also be contacted.

An Open Letter to the People and Government of the US (And a Reply to the FARC) by James Petras

November 20, 2006

On November 9, 2006, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-Peoples Army, (FARC-EP) sent an “Open Letter to the People of the United States.” It was specifically addressed to several Hollywood producers and actors (Michael Moore, Denzel Washington and Oliver Stone) as well as three leftist academics (James Petras, Noam Chomsky and Angela Davis) and a progressive politician (Jessie Jackson). The purpose of the open letter was to solicit our support in facilitating an agreement between the US and Colombian governments and the FARC-EP on exchanging 600 imprisoned guerrillas (including two on trial in the US) for 60 rebel-held prisoners including three US counterinsurgency experts.

FARC-EP: Terrorist Band or Resistance Movement?

Contrary to the US government position characterizing the FARC-EP as a ‘terrorist organization,’ it is the longest standing, largest peasant-based guerrilla movement in the world today. Founded in 1964 by two dozen peasant activists, as a means for defending autonomous rural communities from the violent depredations of the Colombian military and paramilitary, the FARC-EP has grown into a highly organized 20,000 member guerrilla army with several hundred thousand local militia and supporters, highly influential in over 40% of the country. Up until September 11, 2001, the FARC-EP was recognized as a legitimate resistance movement by most of the countries of the European Union, Latin America and for several years was in peace negotiations with the Colombian government headed by President Andrés Pastrana. Prior to 9/11 FARC leaders met with European heads of state to exchange ideas on the peace process. Numerous prominent business leaders from Wall Street, City of London and Bogotá and notables like Queen Noor of Jordan met with FARC leaders in the demilitarized zone during the aborted peace negotiations (1999-2002).

Under heavy pressure from the White House, particularly its leading spokespersons, the right-wing extremists like the notorious Otto Reich, Roger Noriega and, John Bolton, the Pastrana regime abruptly broke off negotiations and in less than 24 hours sent the Colombian Army into the demilitarized area, in an attempt to capture the FARC leaders engaged in negotiations. The ‘surprise’ attack failed but did set the stage for the escalation of the conflict.

US Role in Conflict

Beginning with President Clinton in 2000 and continuing with Bush, the US has poured over $4 Billion dollars in military aid to the Colombian regime in order to destroy the guerrilla army and its suspected social base among peasants, urban trade unions and professionals (especially teachers, lawyers, human rights activists and intellectuals). Washington vigorously pushes a military solution by subverting any peace negotiations, through a substantial number of military advisers, contracted mercenaries, Drug Enforcement operatives, CIA agents, Special Forces commandos and a host of other undercover personnel. From the early 1980s to the late 1990s, Washington maintained the fiction that its military programs were part of an anti-narcotic campaign, though it failed to explain why it concentrated most of its efforts in FARC-influenced regions and not in the vast coca-growing areas controlled by the Colombian military and paramilitary forces. With the launching of Plan Colombia in 2000, Washington explicitly underlined the counter-insurgency nature of its military aid and presence. Profoundly disturbed by President Pastana’s acceptance of peace negotiations and the advances of the social and guerrilla movements, Washington backed a rightwing politician with a history of ties to Colombia’s death squads for President, Álvaro Uribe. His electoral victory inaugurated one of the bloodiest extermination campaigns in the violent history of Colombia.

US military officials and their Colombian counterparts funded a 31,000 strong death squad force which ravaged the country, killing thousands of peasants in regions where the FARC was influential. Hundreds of trade unionists were assassinated by hired killers (sicarios) in broad daylight in the towns and cities occupied by the military. Human rights workers, journalists and academics who dared to report on the impunity of the military involved in village massacres were kidnapped, tortured and killed; not infrequently they were decapitated or disemboweled to sow even greater terror. Over two million peasants were forced off their land into squalid urban slums, their lands seized by prominent paramilitary chiefs or large landowners. The ‘class cleansing’ of the countryside was right out of the counter-insurgency manuals of the Pentagon, instructing the Colombian military to destroy the ‘social infrastructure’ of the guerrilla movements -- especially the FARC which had longstanding and extensive family, community and social ties with the peasants.

President Uribe embodied the classical authoritarian South American ruler: At the throat of the poor and on his knees before his Washington patron. His perpetual large-scale offensive campaigns decimated the countryside but failed to weaken the guerrillas or even capture any of the FARC general command. After six years of massive and costly extermination campaigns, top US and most Colombian military officials conceded that a military victory over the FARC was highly improbable. The best that could ensue, military strategists argued, was a severe weakening of the FARC, forcing them to negotiate a ‘peace agreement’ favorable to the regime.

Peace Negotiations: A Brief History

During the Presidency of Belisario Betancourt (in the mid 1980s), the FARC agreed to a cease-fire and many joined the electoral process. Thousands of guerrillas, their sympathizers and many independent leftists formed a political party, the Patriotic Union (Unión Patriótica) and ran candidates at all levels of government. In less than 5 years, 5000 activists, candidates and elected officials were murdered by the military and their death squads, including two presidential candidates, several congresspeople, scores of mayors, hundreds of city councilors and local party leaders. The survivors rejoined the guerrillas, fled into exile or went underground. Contrary to claims by the government, Colombia was not a ‘democracy’ in the usual sense, but a ‘death squad democracy’ in which the most elementary conditions for electoral campaigning and political norms were absent. Less than two decades later, when the FARC had extended its influence within 40 miles from the capital Bogotá, the government of Andrés Pastrana agreed to another round of ‘peace negotiations’ in an extensive demilitarized region under FARC influence.

While the negotiations proceeded, hundreds of ‘visitors’ from all sectors of Colombian society as well as foreign political and business notables participated in public forums. Open debates organized by the FARC covered fundamental social, economic and political issues. For the first time in recent memory, issues of land reform, public investment in job creation programs, foreign investment and public ownership, economic alternatives to coca farming, education and health were debated without fear of death squad reprisals. The image of the FARC as a ‘militarist narco-guerrilla force’ was challenged; many former hostile observers from Europe, Latin America and North America, while not necessarily agreeing with some of the FARC’s proposed reforms, nevertheless came away with the impression that they could be negotiated with and agreements could be reached to end the civil war.

The radicalization of the Bush regime following September 11, 2001 served as a pretext to force a break in the peace negotiations. Subsequently with the election of Álvaro Uribe, the FARC was included in the list of ‘terrorist’ organizations. The European Union, which had publicly met and consulted with the same FARC leaders, followed the US lead. Soon afterward, FARC negotiators and international representatives were arrested in Bolivia, Brazil, Venezuela and Ecuador. The latter two countries handed FARC representatives over to the notoriously brutal Colombian political police (DAS). Under cover of Washington’s ‘War on Terrorism,’ President Uribe proceeded to severely repress trade union general strikes and massive rural protests by the major agricultural organizations against his signing of a ‘free trade’ agreement with the US.

In the midst of government-sponsored carnage, the FARC pursued a strategy of tactical withdrawal to its jungle and mountain strongholds and issued offers for mutual prisoner release as a ‘confidence building’ step toward future peace negotiations.

The FARC held over 60 Colombian politicians and military officers prisoner, including a former presidential candidate, Ingrid Betancourt and three US self-described ‘military contractors’ engaged in an intelligence collecting mission. The Colombian government holds over 600 guerrillas. The US currently holds two FARC members. The FARC proposed a meeting to arrange a prisoner exchange in a demilitarized zone. The families of the FARC prisoners were naturally unanimously in favor of the proposal as were most civil society organizations, humanitarian, church and human rights groups. The US has opposed any prisoner exchange and Uribe echoed his master, at least during his first term of office. Their slogan was that through military action they would liberate the prisoners. No prisoners have been ‘liberated’ in the past five years. On the contrary in a recent failed military incursion, 10 prisoners were killed, including an ex-minister of defense, a governor and eight military officers. Under enormous pressure from Colombian civil society, the European Union and most Latin American governments, President Uribe declared, on his re-election, that he would be willing to enter negotiations for an exchange. Within a month, however, he reneged using as a pretext a bomb set off in a military installation, which he attributed to the FARC despite its denials. Experts suspect this was a covert operation by Colombia’s secret service to undermine any move toward a prisoner exchange.

Prospects for Peace Negotiations

Outside of Washington and President Uribe’s immediate entourage, everyone agrees that the beginning of any peace process should begin with confidence building measures, specifically the prisoner exchange.

Immediately complicating those negotiations, the US extradited two FARC prisoners held by the Colombian government on December 31, 2004 and has confined them to solitary confinement, shackled 23 hours a day. On October 16, 2006, one of the FARC political prisoners, Ricardo Palmera -- whose better known ‘nom de guerre’ is Simon Trinidad -- was put on trial for ‘drug trafficking’ and ‘terrorism’ as well as ‘kidnapping’. This is a classic ‘political show trial’ in which an illegal seizure, fabricated evidence and prejudicial judicial procedures have been mounted to secure a guilty verdict.

The most suspicious aspect of this political charade is the characterization of Trinidad’s role in the FARC. He was their principal peace negotiator, as was evident when he was recognized as the FARC’s principal interlocutor with Colombian President Andrés Pastrana during the peace negotiations of 1999-2002. There are numerous photographs, news reports and interviews in the Colombian and European media of the time clearly identifying Trinidad as a key peace negotiator. Equally important, Trinidad was the principal FARC peace intermediary dealing with United Nations Human Rights representative, James Lemoyne, appointed by the US Government and a former New York Times journalist based in Latin America.

Recognizing that Trinidad’s status as a FARC peace negotiator concerned mainly with diplomatic missions severely compromised Washington’s case, the Federal prosecutor modified the charges from direct involvement in the ‘kidnapping’ of three US counter-insurgency officers held as prisoners of war by the FARC, to ‘association’ with kidnappers and ‘conspiracy’ to commit the crime of ‘hostage taking.’ The Federal prosecutor has taken advantage of the language of the new anti-terrorism legislation passed by Presidents Clinton and Bush to indict Trinidad. This legal framework has been denounced by all leading US civil liberties organizations and the American Bar Association as violating the US Constitution.

The charge of ‘association’ is based on the unsubstantiated charges that Trinidad ‘met’ with the three US counter-insurgency officers, subsequent to their capture, an accusation which lacks any concrete proof -- the Prosecution has neither witnesses nor documents of such a meeting, not does it specify time, date or place of the alleged meeting. In fact, Trinidad was in another province directing a FARC educational program at the time. The charge of ‘conspiracy’ is based on Trinidad’s membership in the FARC, which was labeled a ‘terrorist organization’ by President Clinton in 1997, a characterization which was rejected by the European Union which played host to a touring group of FARC leaders and peace negotiators shortly thereafter. Moreover, Colombian President Pastrana, who was engaged in peace negotiations with the FARC between 1999-2002, rejected the ‘terrorist label’ considering Trinidad a legitimate interlocutor.

The long political history of the FARC, its historic ties with a large segment of the Colombian countryside, its political program of social reforms, its targeted use of force in its conflict with the armed forces of the Colombian state, its continued pursuit of peace negotiations based on reforming society and the military are in strong opposition to any and all definitions of a ‘terrorist’ organization.

The entire notion of ‘kidnapping’ three US intelligence or military personnel engaged in a military surveillance operation in a combat area against an insurgency targeted by the US is absurd. As captured combatants, they are, by the definition of the Geneva Conventions, prisoners of war and, as such, subject to possible prisoner of war exchanges if the warring parties should agree. The Federal Prosecutor charged that Trinidad was engaged in the prisoner exchange when he was illegally seized in Ecuador and transferred to Colombia and later extradited to the US. In court, Trinidad rebutted that allegation by demonstrating that he was in Ecuador to set up a meeting between Lemoyne and a top guerrilla leader. The prosecution presented no written or taped evidence linking Trinidad to any ‘prisoner exchange.’

The Illegal Seizure and Arrest of Simon Trinidad
Any juridical process worthy of its name would throw out the prosecution’s case on the most elementary basis of wrongful arrest. In late December 2003, Trinidad traveled to Quito, Ecuador to contact James Lemoyne about possible peace negotiations with the Colombian government, beginning with confidence building, humanitarian measures related to prisoners and captives. During the earlier peace negotiation Lemoyne had been a decent peace mediator, rejecting pressure from the US Embassy to scuttle the proceedings. Given the massive military escalation undertaken by President Uribe, there was no opportunity for Trinidad to meet with Lemoyne in Colombia. Word reached the FARC that Lemoyne would be available for conversations in Quito.

Under CIA direction, a joint Colombian-Ecuadorian squad illegally seized Trinidad. The entire operation violated Ecuadorian sovereignty, judicial procedures and the rights of political appeal. Extra-territorial seizures of opposition leaders and their transfer to imperialist courts resemble the practices of the Roman Empire and not contemporary international law.

While in captivity, Trinidad has been denied access to translations, documents and writing materials. He was manacled in an isolation cell for 23 hours a day for over 21 months without access to legal counsel. The Federal Judge, Thomas Hogan, and Federal Prosecutor have acted to prejudice the trial even before its start. Over 30-armed police in a caravan of police vehicles accompanied by helicopters bring the chained Trinidad to court. He has been denied any selection of attorney and assigned a team of court-appointed lawyers. When his attorneys attempted to provide a relevant historical context including the FARC’s attempts to participate in electoral politics and the subsequent massacre of 5,000 activists and candidates, including two presidential candidates, the Prosecution objected. The Prosecution also objected to the defense’s description of the massive, sustained State violence in Colombia and the role of the US counterinsurgency forces in alliance with the paramilitary groups.

In this Kafkaesque nightmare of a courtroom, the judge was asked by the Prosecutor to withhold the names of the jurors to protect them from ‘retaliation from Trinidad’s ‘terrorist organization’ (deep in the Colombian jungle) -- further prejudicing an already frightened jury and biased judge.

The court-appointed defense attorneys have failed to challenge the most elementary prejudicial statements by the Prosecution’s key witness, a Colombian Army Colonel, who referred to Trinidad as a ‘terrorist’ despite the obvious fact that he has yet to be convicted. Judge Hogan has refused to allow jurors to take their notebooks containing trial notes from the court and denied them access to transcripts, preventing them from rationally evaluating the evidence.

Trinidad’s refutation of the Prosecutor’s chief Colombian witness and the outrageous nature of this political show trial were evident from the first day the jury reported to the judge. The jury declared that they were deeply divided on all charges and asked the court to declare a mistrial. After 18 days of highly charged prosecution, demagogy and inflammatory political rhetoric, the jurors spent a little over seven hours deliberating before reporting that they were deadlocked. A note from the jurors to US District Judge Thomas Hogan stated: “We believe our differences based on deep thought are irresolvable.” Judge Hogan rejected Trinidad’s request for a mistrial and told the jurors to keep deliberating, stating he would declare a mistrial if the jurors repeated their declaration of a deadlock a second time.

Conclusion
The ‘political show trial’ of Simon Trinidad is a striking example of the threats to constitutional freedoms, which we and the citizens of the world face before the unbridled power of the American President to overrule all the rights of sovereign states and their citizens, international law and constitutional freedoms.

Equally important is the current reality of extraterritorial, lawless seizures, abductions and kangaroo proceedings at the service of bloody imperial policies and client rulers whose actions have devastated Colombian society. More than 2.5 million Colombian peasants and urban slum dwellers have been displaced by the savage counter-insurgency program called ‘Plan Colombia’; the number of displaced persons is second only to Afghanistan. The counterinsurgency programs, variously called ‘Plan Colombia,’ ‘Plan Patriótica’ and ‘Democratic Security’ are financed and directed by the United States and promoted by its client President Álvaro Uribe. The US AFL-CIO documents over 4,000 trade unionists assassinated between 1986-2002; the Colombian government has only investigated 376 of which only five cases led to a conviction of the killer. According to Colombian human rights groups, between 2003-2006 Uribe’s military and paramilitary allies have murdered nearly a thousand more trade unionists. Over the past five years, 30,000 peasants, rural teachers, and peasant and indigenous leaders have been killed with impunity. State repression (‘Democratic Security’) has been directed at weakening trade union resistance to the US-Colombian Free Trade Agreement, not at countering guerrilla armies. With over 68% of the Colombian people living under the poverty line of $2 dollars a day, and land seizures by paramilitary leaders, cattle barons and military officers concentrating land ownership to an unprecedented level, it is no wonder that the guerrilla resistance is recruiting and successfully countering Government-sponsored military campaigns, each bearing a triumphalist title and all ending in abysmal failure. Without fundamental political and social reforms and lacking an economic model that integrates the millions displaced, terrorized and excluded, there is no military strategist or strategy, no matter how well funded and directed by Washington which will end the civil conflict.

The first step toward a resolution of this half-century conflict is the recognition that Colombia is in the midst of a civil war, not a ‘war on terror.’ The second is to release the protagonists of the peace process, Simon Trinidad and his comrade ‘Sonia’ as a concrete move toward a humanitarian prisoner exchange and confidence building measure opening the way to full-scale peace negotiations.

Paradoxically, the end of the Colombian blood letting could begin in Washington, in a Federal Courtroom, or possibly in the US Congress with the recognition that the US is an armed party in Colombia’s civil war, that their combatants are prisoners of war and that their ultimate release depends on recognizing the limits of US military power (and that of its Colombian client) and that a diplomatic, negotiated agreement is the only realistic option.

I look forward to joining with such artists and intellectuals as Denzel Washington, Oliver Stone, Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky and Angela Davis, named in the FARC appeal in a common effort to pressure the US government to agree to exchanging imprisoned guerrillas (both here and in Colombia) for rebel-held prisoners, including the three American combatants.

James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50-year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless in Brazil and Argentina, and is co-author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed Books). His latest book is, The Power of Israel in the United States (Clarity Press, 2006). He can be reached at: jpetras@binghamton.edu.

Blockades Close Chiapas in Defense of Oaxaca

November 20, 2006
Please Distribute Widely

Dear Colleagues,

Today thousands of indigenous civilians from Zapatista communities
successfully stopped traffic on all major roads and highways in the
highlands and jungle regions of Chiapas.

Giordano reports:

"Narco News has confirmed that the blockades, begun at 5:00 a.m. on
Monday, November 20, have stopped traffic along the following routes:

Tuxtla Gutiérrez - San Cristobal (toll highway)
Tuxtla Gutiérrez - San Cristóbal (old route)
San Cristóbal - Comitán
San Cristóbal - Chamula
San Cristóbal - Tenejapa
San Cristóbal - Simojovel
Ocosingo - San Cristóbal
Palenque - Ocosingo

"Yet unconfirmed: As of last night, plans had been made to blockade
the coastal routes, including the Pan-American highway, at various
points from Tapachula to the Oaxaca border.

"At each of the blockade points, hundreds to thousands of masked
Zapatista civilians stand silently in formation across the road or
highway...

"The blockades are kept for intervals of 45 minutes, then allowing 15
minutes for traffic to pass.

"A national holiday commemorating the Mexican revolution of 1910,
November 20 is normally a date of extraordinary travel, especially to
tourist meccas like the mountain city of San Cristóbal de Las Casas.
But there, this morning, many businesses that would normally be open
at these hours were closed; a result of employees either deciding to
respect the 'national strike' in defense of Oaxaca called for today,
or simply unable to get to work due to the blockades. The streets of
the former state capital are uncharacteristically quiet with little
traffic."

Visit the Narco News Bulletin for developing news on today's
blockades as well as other news, including updates on our coverage of
Oaxaca and the DEA/DOJ "House of Death" report:

http://www.narconews.com

From somewhere in a country called América,

David Briones
Webmaster
The Narco News Bulletin
http://www.narconews.com
webmaster@narconews.com

Monday, November 20, 2006

Challenges for Venezuela's Revolution - An Interview with Michael Lebowitz

Global Research, November 20, 2006

Michael Lebowitz, professor emeritus of the department of economics at Simon Fraser University, is a director of the Centro Internacional Miranda (CIM) in Caracas, and author of the newly published book Build it Now: Socialism for the Twenty-First Century. He was interviewed by Coral Wynter and Jim McIlroy for the Australian newspaper Green Left Weekly.

"There is a fascinating process happening here", Lebowitz explained. "The process began with the [1998] election of [President Hugo] Chavez, but took significant form with the establishment of the [Bolivarian] constitution [in 1999]. There are enormously unique elements in this constitution: in particular, the focus on human development, the focus on the full development of everyone's personality, and the clear recognition that this can only occur through practice.

"Only through meaningful practice in struggle are people able to develop themselves: these are not just the abstractions of the constitution, but there are concrete references to self-management, self-government, these kinds of institutions.

"The constitution itself, however, was a contradictory document. At the same time as you had these aspects, you also had the elements of support for private interests, private capital, the maintenance of the independence of the central bank and so on. So, it was a snapshot at that point of the stage of consciousness, and of the coalitions that had emerged at that time.

"Which way it would have gone is unclear to me. But, as Marx explained, slaveholder revolts put the sword in the hand of the social revolution, so it moves faster as a result. That's precisely what happened in Venezuela, with the opposition [from the right wing] to the laws that would put some teeth into the process [of implementing] the constitution.

"Then there was the [April 2002] coup, which was reversed relatively quickly, and even more important was the bosses' lockout, which went on for months [from December 2002 to February 2003]. The consciousness of people expanded enormously in that period, even more so than at the time of the coup and reversal of the coup, because that happened so fast. That longer period [of the lockout meant] coming together and struggling together, with new groups emerging.

"So the revolution began to move significantly forward at that time, after those developments in 2002 and early 2003. And the kinds of things that Chavez started to talk about then, the social economy, meant that it wasn't a gigantic leap when he began to talk about socialism, because he had already been saying those kinds of things about the social economy. But it was important because, when he began to talk about socialism, it was a whole process of beginning to change the consciousness of people. That's the role Chavez plays, as teacher and leader, in terms of developing the consciousness of the masses.

Chavez and Chavistas "One of the problems, of course, is that there is a gap between the promises and the rhetoric and what is actually realized in practice. Partly that gap is the result of the state that Chavez inherited, a state that was filled with people on a clientalistic basis, by the old regime, by the Fourth Republic.

"Another part, though, is that all the supporters of Chavez are not necessarily in agreement with the socialist direction. In the concluding chapter of my new book, one of the things I talk about is that there is significant opposition within the Chavez camp to the advance of the revolutionary process. Some people talk about Chavism without Chavez. Far more significant is the group of people who want Chavez without socialism; who don't want to see self-management and co-management within the enterprises; who don't want to see communities making decisions at the local level; who want to retain the power to make decisions from above, both because of their own economic interests — and corruption is a major problem here, it is part of the tradition — but also because they don't want to lose the power to engage in clientalism.

"The Chavez parties are engaged in this sort of activity — they want credit for everything; they want to engage in these activities, to make the decisions. So, you have this tension, between people in the local communities and the Chavez parties, the functionaries, who want the power and control within the communities — thinking, like so many people on the left, that if we don't have the power, everything will go wrong. And that is precisely contrary to the conceptions in the constitution, which talk about the fact that people develop through their own activity.

"Rosa Luxemburg said the working class demands the right to make its own mistakes and learn in the dialectic of history. If they're going to be prevented from making mistakes, you won't have the continuing advance of the revolutionary process.

"This is a tension right now, which is reflected in the current [presidential] election campaign. If we remember the [2003-04] referendum campaign [an opposition attempt to use the provisions of the new constitution to hold a referendum on whether Chavez's term should end prematurely and a new election be called], Chavez had turned first to the Commando Ayacucho, bringing together the parties and the party leaderships to conduct the campaign against the opposition before the signatures were actually achieved. And the way they functioned was by making grand speeches, macho speeches, and did very little at the grassroots. They were completely lost, they were ineffective.

"The opposition did get the signatures. The response from the parties was, well, it's a fraud, don't go with this. Chavez had better sense. He concluded it was necessary to accept those signatures, take on the referendum campaign, and turn it into a positive thing. He then went around the parties to create Commando Maisanto. The leadership was all picked from civil society, rather than the parties. He went to the people in the neighborhoods, formed local committees. It was a struggle for the parties to figure out, where do we fit into this process."

Organizing the grassroots "In this current election campaign", Lebowitz continued, "one of the things that has happened is that it has returned to the Commando Ayacucho concept. It's back to the parties at the top making the decisions, organizing everything. That is a concern that I have."

Most opinion polls show that Chavez has a crushing lead over right-wing candidate Manuel Rosales, the governor of the state of Zulia, in the presidential election campaign. Lebowitz said his sense is that it would be very difficult for Rosales to defeat Chavez "but you never know what imperialism has planned".

"I'm sure they have lots of plans", he explained. "One of those may be to have Rosales withdraw to discredit the process. They are probably sitting in back rooms on a daily basis [discussing this].

"One of the options that was written about in Green Left Weekly was building on Rosales's campaign to create a process of separation, separatism [in Zulia]. Chavez is very conscious of that, and will throw a lot of resources into Zulia, to keep those [opposition vote] numbers down. It's certainly seen as a critical place for the electoral struggle. But anything is possible. Vigilance is essential."

Lebowitz described the election as "crucial", adding that "one of the critical questions is what way will the election campaign be carried out". "There needs to be a mandate for the revolution to proceed. Everywhere, you hear people say that 2007 is going to be a qualitative difference, and how it will [signify] the deepening of socialism. If these questions of socialism are raised increasingly in this campaign, then that will create the conditions for a significant advance next year."

On September 9 Chavez called for the creation of a "great party of the Bolivarian revolution" to unite the groups that support the revolutionary process in Venezuela. Lebowitz believes that the proposal for a "unique party" is a good one in principle, "but it depends on its content".

"If its content is just more of the same [an amalgam of the existing parties], it will in fact be a way of reducing democracy from below. If its content is going to be one that strengthens people within the communities for the ability to struggle, and also strengthens the ability of people to organise in the state sectors, where there has been an incredible campaign against co-management, then it [can be positive]. If it doesn't strengthen people from below, the unique party will be a blockage on the way to revolutionary change, to socialism, rather than an advance.

"That is something I discussed about in my book, which talks about the need for a revolutionary party that can unify those people in the communities and the workplaces, to create people power from below."

GLW asked Lebowitz about the role that organisations created as part of the Bolivarian revolution — the social missions, the Communal Councils — have played in the revolutionary process.

"I wouldn't lump them all together", he replied. "The missions command enormous loyalty from the people. But all the missions aren't the same. Health, education, the food mission Mercal, those have been very successful. Mission Vuelvan Caras [a cooperatives- based training and employment mission], though, is another question. It is not clear whether it's delivering on its promises. There has been some disappointment, and pressure on the government to move faster.

"I look at these kinds of institutions, and say, this is what is unique about the [Venezuelan] process. There is a process whereby people are developing their right to make decisions, and it's not easy to do that in any country. But people have been poor, and apathy has been part of the pattern. So, it is exciting to see the awakening of people, and their sense of `this is our right, to go and demand this'. That is the future of the revolution. The question is, will it be nurtured, or will it be cut off?

Revolutionary democracy "I gave a talk recently to a meeting in Vancouver. There was an Iranian militant who said that it was like this in the early days of the Iranian revolution. We had these factory committees, he said. We worked closely with the communities, but it didn't last. There were all these processes set in motion, but it was cut off. I said, it was similar in Cuba. In the early days of the revolution, there were these workers' committees in the factories, there was a sense of active workers' power …

"These things can be part of the fervor of the early days of a revolution. The problem is how do you institutionalize them, how can you create the means by which they can, in fact, not be transitory? Things like the Communal Councils are extremely important, because they institutionalize something here that is not present elsewhere. If they can work, if they can get, for example, the money from those who have it for their own projects, then you can achieve a symbol for revolutions everywhere.

"In Cuba, there is a process where there are neighbourhood committees, there are local councils, but their power is really limited. One of the things I hope that the Venezuelan revolution can succeed in is to stimulate the possibilities in Cuba as well. This is a real dialectic, which is very healthy."

Chavez has declared the Bolivarian revolution's goal to construct a "socialism of the 21st century." Lebowitz explained, "One of the things that Chavez has been very good at in his statements on this is that we are not going to repeat the [previous] process. We don't want to worship machines, the state; we want a humanistic socialism that starts from human beings, and that's what the constitution is saying. I think that those are central characteristics.

Socialism "The link between socialism and democracy is an ideal that is being pursued here. And that means democracy, not just as, every four years you vote, and not as a form, but democracy as practice. Democracy as a process by which people take control over their lives, make collective decisions at every level of their societies. And I think that is a unique conception.

"Compare Yugoslavia [under Josip Broz Tito]. For a whole period, you had the process of self-management in the enterprises, functioning within the market, competing against each other, but no sense of responsibility for a community. Everything was self-interest there [in Yugoslavia].

"That is something Chavez is very sensitive to. I know he´s been very interested in this. We talked about the problem of Yugoslavia, and the problem of self-interest there. That is why he has insisted on a focus, not on exchange of commodities, but on a process in which, as Marxists like Istvan Meszaros [author of Socialism or Barbarism: From the `American Century' to the Crossroads and Beyond Capital: Toward a Theory of Transition] talk about, there is exchange of human activity based on communal needs and purposes.

"Chavez talks about the need to create a new socialist morality — socialist consciousness, which is based on solidarity. That's why he has been focusing on the Empresas de Produccion Social [Enterprises of Social Production], the EPSs. The idea is that these would be enterprises that would be oriented to satisfying people's needs. That was his conception of it.

"And why not cooperatives? Isn't that sufficient? Because cooperatives are self-interested — collections of producers who have their own goals. And what Chavez was stressing was the need for these groupings of people to internalize their responsibility to the communities in which they function.

"Now, with the EPSs, again there's always this gap between the conception and the way in which that conception is realized. The way the EPSs are going right now is horrible. They're not realizing this conception … they're creating institutions that see their responsibility to the community as [providing] 10% of their income. We call that taxes! So, that shows the possibility of the perversion, the distortion of the concept.

"There are a lot of potential problems. And, to quote my book, in describing the situation before the revolution, before the election of Chavez, talking about the corruption, clientalism, and bureaucracy of the state, it stated that Venezuela `required an economic revolution, a political revolution and a cultural revolution'. And, as I go on to say later, the economic revolution is underway, but the political revolution has only just begun. [The political revolution] made a leap forward with the constitution, but it requires a real transformation of the state.

"And, furthermore, the cultural revolution, which requires a strong attack on corruption and clientalism, has hardly begun. So, without those other two, the revolution cannot help but be deformed. That is the central question.

"People keep saying, the problem in Venezuela is, how can you talk about socialism there because they still have private capital, private ownership of the media, private banks, etc. That is not the problem of the Venezuelan revolution. The problem of the Venezuelan revolution is from within. It's whether it will be deformed by people around Chavez."

Sunday, November 19, 2006

Did the CIA kill Bobby Kennedy?

In 1968, Robert Kennedy seemed likely to follow his brother, John, into the White House. Then, on June 6, he was assassinated - apparently by a lone gunman. But Shane O'Sullivan says he has evidence implicating three CIA agents in the murder

Monday November 20, 2006
The Guardian

At first, it seems an open-and-shut case. On June 5 1968, Robert Kennedy wins the California Democratic primary and is set to challenge Richard Nixon for the White House. After midnight, he finishes his victory speech at the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles and is shaking hands with kitchen staff in a crowded pantry when 24-year-old Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan steps down from a tray-stacker with a "sick, villainous smile" on his face and starts firing at Kennedy with an eight-shot revolver.

As Kennedy lies dying on the pantry floor, Sirhan is arrested as the lone assassin. He carries the motive in his shirt-pocket (a clipping about Kennedy's plans to sell bombers to Israel) and notebooks at his house seem to incriminate him. But the autopsy report suggests Sirhan could not have fired the shots that killed Kennedy. Witnesses place Sirhan's gun several feet in front of Kennedy, but the fatal bullet is fired from one inch behind. And more bullet-holes are found in the pantry than Sirhan's gun can hold, suggesting a second gunman is involved. Sirhan's notebooks show a bizarre series of "automatic writing" - "RFK must die RFK must be killed - Robert F Kennedy must be assassinated before 5 June 68" - and even under hypnosis, he has never been able to remember shooting Kennedy. He recalls "being led into a dark place by a girl who wanted coffee", then being choked by an angry mob. Defence psychiatrists conclude he was in a trance at the time of the shooting and leading psychiatrists suggest he may have be a hypnotically programmed assassin.

Three years ago, I started writing a screenplay about the assassination of Robert Kennedy, caught up in a strange tale of second guns and "Manchurian candidates" (as the movie termed brainwashed assassins). As I researched the case, I uncovered new video and photographic evidence suggesting that three senior CIA operatives were behind the killing. I did not buy the official ending that Sirhan acted alone, and started dipping into the nether-world of "assassination research", crossing paths with David Sanchez Morales, a fearsome Yaqui Indian.

Morales was a legendary figure in CIA covert operations. According to close associate Tom Clines, if you saw Morales walking down the street in a Latin American capital, you knew a coup was about to happen. When the subject of the Kennedys came up in a late-night session with friends in 1973, Morales launched into a tirade that finished: "I was in Dallas when we got the son of a bitch and I was in Los Angeles when we got the little bastard." From this line grew my odyssey into the spook world of the 60s and the secrets behind the death of Bobby Kennedy.

Working from a Cuban photograph of Morales from 1959, I viewed news coverage of the assassination to see if I could spot the man the Cubans called El Gordo - The Fat One. Fifteen minutes in, there he was, standing at the back of the ballroom, in the moments between the end of Kennedy's speech and the shooting. Thirty minutes later, there he was again, casually floating around the darkened ballroom while an associate with a pencil moustache took notes.

The source of early research on Morales was Bradley Ayers, a retired US army captain who had been seconded to JM-Wave, the CIA's Miami base in 1963, to work closely with chief of operations Morales on training Cuban exiles to run sabotage raids on Castro. I tracked Ayers down to a small town in Wisconsin and emailed him stills of Morales and another guy I found suspicious - a man who is pictured entering the ballroom from the direction of the pantry moments after the shooting, clutching a small container to his body, and being waved towards an exit by a Latin associate.

Ayers' response was instant. He was 95% sure that the first figure was Morales and equally sure that the other man was Gordon Campbell, who worked alongside Morales at JM-Wave in 1963 and was Ayers' case officer shortly before the JFK assassination.

I put my script aside and flew to the US to interview key witnesses for a documentary on the unfolding story. In person, Ayers positively identified Morales and Campbell and introduced me to David Rabern, a freelance operative who was part of the Bay of Pigs invasion force in 1961 and was at the Ambassador hotel that night. He did not know Morales and Campbell by name but saw them talking to each other out in the lobby before the shooting and assumed they were Kennedy's security people. He also saw Campbell around police stations three or four times in the year before Robert Kennedy was shot.

This was odd. The CIA had no domestic jurisdiction and Morales was stationed in Laos in 1968. With no secret service protection for presidential candidates in those days, Kennedy was guarded by unarmed Olympic decathlete champion Rafer Johnson and football tackler Rosey Grier - no match for an expert assassination team.

Trawling through microfilm of the police investigation, I found further photographs of Campbell with a third figure, standing centre-stage in the Ambassador hotel hours before the shooting. He looked Greek, and I suspected he might be George Joannides, chief of psychological warfare operations at JM-Wave. Joannides was called out of retirement in 1978 to act as the CIA liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) investigating the death of John F Kennedy.

Ed Lopez, now a respected lawyer at Cornell University, came into close contact with Joann-des when he was a young law student working for the committee. We visit him and show him the photograph and he is 99% sure it is Joannides. When I tell him where it was taken, he is not surprised: "If these guys decided you were bad, they acted on it.

We move to Washington to meet Wayne Smith, a state department official for 25 years who knew Morales well at the US embassy in Havana in 1959-60. When we show him the video in the ballroom, his response is instant: "That's him, that's Morales." He remembers Morales at a cocktail party in Buenos Aires in 1975, saying Kennedy got what was coming to him. Is there a benign explanation for his presence? For Kennedy's security, maybe? Smith laughs. Morales is the last person you would want to protect Bobby Kennedy, he says. He hated the Kennedys, blaming their lack of air support for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.

We meet Clines in a hotel room near CIA headquarters. He does not want to go on camera and brings a friend, which is a little unnerving. Clines remembers "Dave" fondly. The guy in the video looks like Morales but it is not him, he says: "This guy is fatter and Morales walked with more of a slouch and his tie down." To me, the guy in the video does walk with a slouch and his tie is down.

Clines says he knew Joannides and Campbell and it is not them either, but he fondly remembers Ayers bringing snakes into JM-Wave to scare the secretaries and seems disturbed at Smith's identification of Morales. He does not discourage our investigation and suggests others who might be able to help. A seasoned journalist cautions that he would expect Clines "to blow smoke", and yet it seems his honest opinion.

As we leave Los Angeles, I tell the immigration officer that I am doing a story on Bobby Kennedy. She has seen the advertisements for the new Emilio Estevez movie about the assassination, Bobby. "Who do you think did it? I think it was the Mob," she says before I can answer.

"I definitely think it was more than one man," I say, discreetly.

Morales died of a heart attack in 1978, weeks before he was to be called before the HSCA. Joannides died in 1990. Campbell may still be out there somewhere, in his early 80s. Given the positive identifications we have gathered on these three, the CIA and the Los Angeles Police Department need to explain what they were doing there. Lopez believes the CIA should call in and interview everybody who knew them, disclose whether they were on a CIA operation and, if not, why they were there that night.

Today would have been Robert Kennedy's 81st birthday. The world is crying out for a compassionate leader like him. If dark forces were behind his elimination, it needs to be investigated

· Shane O'Sullivan's investigation will be shown tonight on Newsnight, BBC2, 10.30pm.

"An American Killing Field" - Dr. Dahlia Wasfi speaks at Iraq forum

"An American Killing Field"

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi, speaks of the reality of life in Iraq under U.S. occupation.

Wasfi graduated from Swarthmore College in 1993 with a B.A. in Biology, and from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1997. Her latest trip to Iraq was a 3-month stay during the spring of 2006, when she traveled to see her family in Basrah. Based on her experiences, she is speaking out against the negative impact of the U.S. invasion on the Iraqi people and the need to end the occupation.

Dr. Wasfi described her experience in Iraq and discussed the life of Iraqis under occupation on April 27, 2006 before a US Congressional Committee in Washington, DC.

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi was born to a Jewish mother and an Iraqi father. She recently put her medical career on hold to visit with family members in Iraq, and recently returned from a three-month stay in Basrah and Baghdad. Dr. Wasfi described her experience in Iraq and discussed the life of Iraqis under occupation on April 27, 2006 in Washington, DC.

Video Runtime 6 Minutes

Bring back Kfar Darom By Gideon Levy

Bring back Kfar Darom

By Gideon Levy

The settlements must be returned to Gaza. Anyone who cares about the fate of those living in the Gaza Strip should wish for the re-establishment of Netzarim and Kfar Darom. If I were a Palestinian, I would dream of seeing Dugit and Nisanit resurrected. They could serve as the last human shield for a million and a half residents who now comprise one of the most helpless populations in the world. Incarcerated, without any assistance, they are liable to starve to death. Exposed, without any protection, they fall prey to the Israel Defense Forces' operations of vengeance.

Burying its 350 dead since the summer, Gaza threatens to become Chechnya. There are thousands of wounded, disabled and shell-shocked people in Gaza, unable to receive any treatment. Those on respirators are liable to die due to the frequent power outages since Israel bombed the power plant. Tens of thousands of children suffer from existential anxiety, while their parents are unable to provide help. They are witnesses to sights that even Gaza's old-timers have never seen before.

Anyone who does not believe this can travel to Beit Hanun, an hour from Tel Aviv. The trauma is only intensifying there, in a town that lost nearly 80 of its sons and daughters within a week. The shadows of human beings roam the ruins. Last week, I met people there who are terrified, depressed, injured, humiliated, bereaved and bewildered. What can one say to them? That they should stop firing Qassams? But the vast majority of them are not involved in this at all. That they should return Gilad Shalit? What do they have to do with him? They only know the IDF will return and they know what this will mean for them: more imprisonment in their homes for weeks, more death and destruction in monstrous proportions, without them being guilty of a thing. In Israel's dark southern backyard, a large-scale humanitarian tragedy is unfolding. Israel and the world, including the Arab states, are covering their eyes and the last resort, as absurd as it sounds, might be to long for the settlements. The situation is that desperate.

The return of the settlements could also put the lie of the disengagement to a final rest. Perhaps only this can stop us from continuing to successfully spread the fabrication that the Israeli occupation of Gaza is over. There has not been such a prevalent lie since the "no partner" lie. As legend has it, Israel left Gaza, the occupation came to an end, and a liberated and free Gaza is launching Qassams at us in exchange for our generosity. There is no greater lie, yet look at how Israelis, almost all of them, buy it with eyes closed. "Instead of building up their country," the Israelis cluck with their tongues, "the Palestinians fire at us." The truth is completely opposite: Gaza continues to live under an inhumane occupation, which has only relocated its base of operation. The Qassams are a bloody reminder of this.

Brutal and dizzy ideas compete against each other, the defense minister suggests liquidations and the agriculture minister proposes tougher action; one advocates "an eye for an eye," the second wants to "erase Beit Hanun" and the third "to pulverize Beit Lahiya." And no one pauses for a moment to think about what they are saying. What exactly does it mean to "erase Beit Hanun"? What does this chilling combination of words mean? A town of 30,000 people, most of them children, whose measure of grief and suffering has long reached breaking point, unemployed and hungry, without a present and without a future, with no protection against Israel's violent military responses, which have lost all human proportionality.

Proportionality is also needed when examining the extent of suffering in the neighboring town, Sderot. It should be stated honestly: Sderot's suffering, as heart-rending and difficult as it is, amounts to nothing when compared to the suffering of its neighbor. Sderot is now mourning one fatality, while Beit Hanun is mourning nearly 80 dead. Sderot has the IDF and Gaydamak. Beit Hanun has nothing. And this is before saying a word about freedom and the economic situation. Should this console the residents of Sderot? Of course not. But did the futile killing of the people in Beit Hanun contribute anything to the security of Sderot's residents? The events of the past days clearly demonstrate that the answer is no. Therefore, it is a shame that Sderot is not issuing a courageous call: Leave Beit Hanun alone, because as long as people are being killed in Beit Hanun, people will be killed here as well.

Soon Gaza will look like Darfur, but while the world is giving some sort of assistance to Darfur, it still dares to play tough with Gaza. Instead of boycotting the one who is abusing the residents of Gaza, the world is boycotting the victim, blocking assistance that it so desperately needs. Tens of thousands of workers who are not receiving their meager wages because of the boycott are the world's gift to Gaza, while Israel is not only killing them, but also stealing their money, locking them in from all sides and not allowing them any chance to extricate themselves.

What does Israel expect? How have we failed to learn the lesson from the Lebanon war - that the firing of rockets at Israel only stops by reaching an agreement? And why is the world waiting? Instead of mobilizing and immediately sending an international force to protect Gaza's residents and cancel the boycott, the world maintains its brutal grip. On second thought, perhaps the return of the settlements is not such a great idea. But without this, who exactly is going to save the residents of Gaza?

Past Sins Might Keep Rumsfeld From Roaming World: By Ann Woolner

Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) -- As he packs up his office in the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld can look forward to more free time. Before he rings up his travel agent to book any overseas trips, he would do well to consult an attorney.

This week, human rights advocates from around the world filed a criminal complaint in Germany accusing Rumsfeld, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA Director George Tenet and nine other Americans of war crimes for the torture and abuse of prisoners in U.S. custody.

They are suing on behalf of 11 Iraqis who had been imprisoned at Abu Ghraib, and a Saudi held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. All say they were subjected to a range of torture, humiliation and abuse.

``There has to be some accountability for Donald Rumsfeld,'' says Michael Ratner, president of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, one of the groups urging prosecution. ``You can't have high-ranking U.S. officials doing this kind of stuff or the world is chaos, complete chaos,'' he said in a telephone interview from Berlin.

The mere complaint compels Germany's chief federal prosecutor, Monika Harms, to at least consider opening an investigation and, if she decides against prosecuting, to give a solid, legal reason for saying no.

And while she is deciding how far to take it, Harms has the power to secretly get an arrest warrant just in case any of the accused drops in.

Extradition Agreements

If Germany issues an arrest warrant, dozens of other countries with whom it has formal or informal extradition agreements could nab them, too.

Is it likely a longtime ally would arrest a former U.S. defense secretary? Nah. Is it possible under the law? Absolutely.

Of that, Rumsfeld is well aware. Less than two years ago, he told reporters he might miss an important NATO security meeting in Munich in part because a similar complaint was pending before German authorities.

It is ``something we have to take into consideration,'' Rumsfeld said on Feb. 3, 2005, explaining why he hadn't yet decided to go.

On Feb. 10, German prosecutors officially declined to pursue the matter. Two days later, Rumsfeld was in Munich giving a speech.

That time, the prosecutor announced there would be no prosecution in Germany because the U.S. was conducting its own investigations.

Higher Levels

But in the two years hence, investigations have wound down and only lower-ranking personnel have been prosecuted, though there is mounting evidence, even admissions, of involvement at higher levels.

You may wonder what gives Germany the right to prosecute non-Germans for conduct toward other non-Germans that occurred beyond German borders.

It is called universal jurisdiction, a concept with growing popularity for prosecuting crimes against humanity, such as torture and genocide. Human rights violators ranging from nuns to generals have been convicted in lands far from their crimes.

``The idea is that there are some crimes that are so offensive to mankind that any state ought to be allowed to prosecute them,'' Ratner says.

Often, the countries where the crimes occurred aren't independent enough from the perpetrators to prosecute them.

Sued in U.S. Courts

In this case, it's not as if human rights advocates have been sitting on their hands.

They have sued in U.S. courts on behalf of Guantanamo detainees and won in the U.S. Supreme Court, only to watch as the administration did everything it could to put off abiding by the rulings. Finally, in September, the administration persuaded Congress to deny detainees access to U.S. courts and to immunize U.S. personnel from prosecution for violating international anti- torture laws.

In the meantime, President George W. Bush has rewarded those now accused. He gave a Medal of Freedom to Tenant, who oversaw the rendition of certain detainees to secret locations for special interrogations. As for administration lawyers who advised Bush on how to get around anti-torture laws, he promoted then- White House Counsel Gonzales to attorney general and nominated two more lawyers to federal judgeships.

There are ways to get around the German law, too. Belgium had one similar to Germany's until it found itself with a complaint accusing then-President George H.W. Bush of war crimes from the 1991 Gulf War. The U.S. threatened to have NATO headquarters moved out of Brussels unless the law was changed, and it was.

As for this complaint, ``The German government would certainly like these kinds of things to go away because they're an irritant to bilateral relations,'' says Steven Ratner, an international criminal law expert at Michigan University law school and no relation to Michael Ratner.

No Investigation

``On the other hand, there has been no investigation of anybody of high command,'' the professor adds. ``That might convince a prosecutor that it's worth an investigation.''

The Defense Department says there have been plenty of investigations, and none have pointed to wrongdoing by those up the chain of command.

The human rights advocates who brought the case in Germany mostly just want somebody, somewhere to take seriously the idea that those in command had some responsibility for the torture and abuse that have blighted the name of the country that used to be a leader in human rights.

If U.S. authorities mounted such an investigation, ``the German case would be dropped in two seconds,'' says Michael Ratner.

And isn't accountability what last week's U.S. elections were all about?