which Castro polemicized in his March 13 speech of this year.
[The plenum also voted formally to expel the guerrilla leader Douglas Bravo, even though the Cuban leadership and some Communist parties and guerrilla groups in Latin America had come out in support of his stand.
(But one would hardly guess from the Soviet press that such major political disputes were embroiling the Latin- American Communist parties. The Soviet chiefs in charge of press information reaching the Soviet people are careful to screen out such news of the world revolutionary movement.
[The May 11 item then is typical. It doesn't indicate what the expelled Bravo stands for (although it explains who the bourgeois politician Caldera is). It does not mention Castro's speech or the Cuban party's stand on the issues, or any other international positions on these important questions.
(A full translation of the item in Pravda is printed below. Entitled "For a Free Venezuela; On the Eighth Plenum of the CC of the PCV," it seems to have been written by a Venezuelan, although no byline is given.]
* * x
In connection with the appearance in the Venezuelan press of tendentious reports on the decisions adopted at the Eighth Plenum of the CC of the CP of Venezuela, the assistant general secretary of the PCV, Comrade Pompeyo Marquez, sent a letter to the newspaper El Nacional [it appeared there on April 23 -- W.0.], in which he explained some of the plenum's decisions. In P. Marquez' letter it is stated in particular that the CC of the PCV reaffirmed the revolutionary line laid’ down at the Third Congress of the party in March 1961.
The CC of the PCV called for a struggle to create a broad national front of civilian and military personnel with the aim of achieving progressive changes which would open the path for the independent development of the country. The Communist party summoned the people of Venezuela to the struggle against police terror, kidnapping of people and despotic acts of military tribunals, for the restoration of civil liberties and democratic freedoms, for the struggle against the government of Leoni and his repressive, and antinational policies.
In the letter it is noted that the policies of the Communist party are aimed at preserving, regrouping, organizing, and developing the nationalist and revolutionary forces in the struggle against the government, which is maneuvering behind the back of the country and bears the responsibility for the difficult situation and the sufferings of the people. To remove the Betancourt "gorillas" from power, to have done with the hegemony of the Accién Democratica party -- this is the most vital task of the people of Venezuela. The Communist party will work by all mear toward a successful resolution of this task.
The CC of the PCV defined the position of the party in relation to elections. The party does not foster any illusions about the results of elections, but it will not stand aside from the electoral process. On the contrary, it will make its contribution to the struggle for ending the continuing predominance of the Betancourt gorillas' policies and for preventing the possible victory of Caldera. (Note Coy Pravda] -- Caldera has been put forward by the Social Christian party, COPEI, as its candidate for president of the country.) The party will struggle against isolation, will work toward the construction of a broad, progressive united formation that will make it possible to come out against the two dangers threatening our people: against the continuation of the present politics and against Caldera.
In the letter it is pointed out that the Eighth Plenum of the party CC was new proof of the unshakeable unity of the PCV leadership headed by the party's general secretary, Comrade Jestis Faria.
At the plenum a decision was adopted by a unanimous vote to expel Douglas Bravo from the party. The basis for this decision was D. Bravo's factional activity, his attempts to split the party, his violations of party discipline and of party ideology.
In conclusion Comrade Marquez expresses his readiness to answer all possible questions "regarding the unalterably revolutionary politics of the PCV, which carries on the struggle for the liquida-
tion of the dependence and backwardness of the country, for the conquest of democracy, for a free Venezuela. The PCV will not refuse or evade such battles; it will not renounce its conception of the development of the Venezuelan revolution, which obliges us to master all forms of struggle." [Emphasis added. "All forms of struggle" is the formula used by the Soviet bureaucrats to cover up and justify all forms of- departure from the strategy of genuinely revolutionary struggle. ]
NEW YORK COLUMNIST DESCRIBES PETRICK CASE
(Murray Kempton, for many years a featured columnist of the liberal New York Post devoted his column of May 19 to the case of Howard Petrick.
[Kempton's account, carried under the ironic title, "The Bad Soldier," is as follows. ]
* * *
Howard Petrick has been in the Army of the United States since last July and has 13 months still to go. So far as his performance of duty is concerned, none of it is likely to be bad time. He is one of those young men with glasses whom M.P.s never bother to ask to show their passes.
At Fort Hood, Texas, they made him a cook, and he was such a model of discipline and containment that he could even get along with his mess sergeants.
Last April, this model career was suddenly interrupted; and Howard Petrick now a PFC, was transferred to an inactive unit, for which he goes on about his duties as a cook.
In the meanwhile, the army wonders whether to carry through the courtmartial which could bring him five years in prison.
Howard Petrick was a public member of the Socialist Workers Party awaiting trial for distributing antiwar literature without a Minneapolis peddler's license when he was inducted into the army. He told the army that he had no objection to being drafted, but that he could not take the oath of allegiance and that, on his own time, without disobeying any order, he intended to go on expressing his objections to the war.
The inducting officer answered, "There'll be no infringements on your rights; you'll have the same ones you do in civilian life." The oath was waived.
His infantry basic training was normal, although the drill instructors were pleasanter than usual and franker in saying that most of it was useless.
When he settled down at Fort Hood, Petrick put his antiwar and socialist books on open shelves next to his bunk and kept a large pamphlet file in his footlocker. He does not seem to have thrust the war into his conversations with the other enlisted men. "It was," he recollects, however, "very hard to find anyone who'd argue in favor of the war."
One morning at inspection, a new officer checked Howard Petrick's footlocker and saw his pamphlets. He picked up a "Bring the boys home" leaflet and showed it to the first sergeant. "Yes, I know about that," said the first sergeant hastily. "Come on, sir." That was the end of the matter.
In April, Howard Petrick took his leave to serve as a voting delegate to the convention of the Young Socialist Alliance. When he came back, he found that his barracks had been subject to a shakedown inspection and the contents of his locker confiscated.
Howard Petrick was called to the orderly room and put to the questions. The investigators were vaguely apologetic about having emptied his footlocker; not being able to find him and tell him, they had just gone ahead in his absence. Some of his pamphlets were found in the footlockers of five other soldiers, who were thereupon segregated and put under guard for a day.
Then everybody seemed to forget the whole matter; Petrick was sent off to an inactive company to cook. He is being treated with correct indifference for the moment; any day now, of course, the charges could be brought against hin.
In logic, to be sure, he will have to be tried. His thoughts, although not his conduct, are disloyal by the standards of the army. Last week, he was granted another leave and went to Chicago to speak against the war. He wore his uniform. "I figured," he says, "that if General Westmoreland can wear his uniform and speak for the war, I can wear mine and speak against it."
And, in Washington, the Defense Department wonders about court-martialing him. It is understandably slow to decide. To try Howard Petrick will be to confess that the war has turned us into a country where a man can be a criminal not for what he does, but for what he thinks and says when asked.
Book Review
"WHITEWASH II"
By Arthur Maglin
WHITEWASH II: The FBI-Secret Service Cover-Up, by Harold Weisberg. Published by Harold Weisberg, Hyattstown, Maryland 20734. With photos and documents. 250 pp. $4.95.
Harold Weisberg is one of the Warren Commission's best-known critics. Besides his first book, Whitewash: The Report on the Warren Report, Weisberg has now written a companion volume. This constitutes the most recent full-length critical analysis of the work of the Warren Commission.
Whitewash II is unique in being the first book to be based on that section of the Warren Commission files which were secret until recently.
Formerly those seeking to analyze the Warren Commission's version of the assassination of Kennedy had available only the 26 volumes of evidence and testimony which the Warren Commission selected for publication. Last year a vast amount of other material was declassified and made available at the National Archives. A great deal of material still remains secret.
It seems that Weisberg's work on the assassination mystery has caught the attention of the New Orleans grand jury which is now investigating the circunstances leading up to Kennedy's death. Weisberg testified before this body on April 28. There has been no public disclosure as yet of what he said.
It will be interesting, then, to take a look at Weisberg's conclusions at the end of his extensively documented book. Weisberg writes:
"Further investigation made possible by evidence not available when Whitewash was written proves that the minimum standards for dime-store murdermystery fiction were not met by the various police. This extends to the simplest investigatory functions, as with the bullets and their number and the fingerrints and their presence and absence twith Oswald's missing where they must have been for him to have been an assas-— sin and present only where his employment placed them). The competitive FBI foreclosed the work of the Secret Service. There is further evidence of illegal searches, the suggestion of the planting of the evidence and the proof that it was possible. There were strangers crawling undeterred all over the evidence at the alleged scene of the crime....
"The indispensable man in the attempt to place Oswald at the scene of the crime, Officer Marrion L. Baker, actually proved Oswald's innocence, if he proved anything. Baker accommodated with a string of statements consistent only in their disagreement with each other and the story he recounted under oath. That story is supported by none of his many statements, each equally official, and is disputed by all of them. Not once did he ever tell anyone what he swore to before the Commission. That untested and uncontested account proves the opposite of the interpretation placed upon it in the Report, but it was tortured, twisted and corrupted by the staff into a semblance of possibility. The staff was without public qualms about false statements under these and many other circumstances. Why?
"How can the suppression from the Report of the fact that 'Oswald was all right' to the FBI before the assassination be anything less than sinister, especially because of his defection and redefection and the indications of his clandestine government connections?...
"Or how can honorable interpretation be placed on the suppression of the knowledge that Ruby, who was known to carry a gun, managed to be near Oswald and was seen there by police officials who knew him, prior to his murder of Oswald and again at the moment of it?
"Did the exalted, the indispensable, the infallible, the all-wise J. Edgar Hoover booby-trap the Commission with his creation of a false identity for 'The False Oswald'? (The 'false Oswald' theory held by many critics of the official. version of the assassination holds that an effort was made to incriminate Oswald before the assassination by the use of an impostor who kept drawing attention to himself in a variety of suspicious circumstances, at times when the Warren Report concedes that Oswald was elsewhere. ] Can his failure to correct his own ‘error' when there was time be explained?
"Or can he explain the inference of CIA involvement with those men of whom 'The False Oswald' was one?...
"Instead of solving the case of 'The False Oswald,' the FBI leaves for history the inference of complicity of a federal agency in the President's murder and a monument to its own classic incompetence or its deviousness in the investigation of the assassination."
SARTRE'S OPENING ADDRESS AT WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL
[The record compiled by the International War Crimes Tribunal at its hearings in Stockholm consists of direct testimony, reports of investigators, statements by interested parties, declarations by members of the tribunal, descriptions of physical evidence placed before the body such as parts of weapons used by the U.S. in north Vietnam, photographs and films. The material would make a thick printed volume.
{The tribunal made this material available to the press during the hearings insofar as translators and mimeographs could keep up with the proceedings.
[World Outlook plans to reproduce a sampling of this evidence of the crimes being committed by the U.S. armed forces against the people of Vietnam.
[The document below is the opening address made by Jean-Paul Sartre, the executive president of the tribunal.]
* * *
Our tribunal was formed on the initiative of Bertrand Russell, with the aim of deciding whether the accusations of "war crimes" made against the government of the United States and against the governments of South Korea, of Australia and of New Zealand, in connection with the war in Vietnam, are justified. On the occasion of this inaugural session, the tribunal wishes to make known its origins, its functions, its aims and its terms of reference. It intends to make its position quite clear on the question of what has been called its "legitimacy."
In 1945, something occurred which was entirely without historical precedent: the setting up in Nuremberg of the first international tribunal called on to judge crimes committed by a belligerent power. Up till that time, it is true, there had existed certain international agreements, such as the Briand-Kellogg pact, aimed at limiting the "jus ad bellum"; but, since no organ had been created to apply them, relations between the powers continued to be governed by the law of the jungle. It could not be otherwise: the nations which had built their wealth upon the conquest of great colonial empires would not have tolerated that their activities in Africa and in Asia should be judged according to these criteria.
After 1939, the mad rage of Nazism placed the world in such danger that the Allies, horrified, decided to sit in judgment on.and to condemn, if they were victorious, wars of aggression and of conquest, cruelty to prisoners, tortures and those racist practices which can be termed "genocidal," without realizing that they were thereby condemning themselves for their conduct in the colonies.
As a consequence -- that is to say, both because it condemned Nazi crimes, and because in a more universal sense it opened the way to a genuine jurisdiction permit-— ting the denunciation and condemnation of war crimes wherever committed and whoever the authors -- the Nuremberg tribunal remains the demonstration of this vitally important change: the replacement of the "jus ad bellum" by the "jus contra bellum."
Unfortunately, as always happens when a new organism is created by the exigencies of history, that tribunal was not exempt from serious failings. It has been criticized as having been nothing but a diktat of the conquerors to the conquered and, which amounts to the same thing, as not having been truly international: one group of nations judging another.
Would it have been better to have chosen the judges from among the citizens of neutral countries? I do not know. What is certain is that, although its decisions were entirely just from an ethical point of view, they are far from having convinced all Germans. And that signifies that the legitimacy of the judges and of their sentences continues to be challenged; and that it has been possible to claim that, if the fortunes of war had been different, an Axis tribunal would have condemned the Allies for the bombing of Dresden or of Hiroshima.
That legitimacy, however, would not have been difficult to establish. It would have been enough if the organ created to judge the Nazis had remained in existence after having carried out that specific task, or if the organization of the United Nations had drawn all the consequences from what had just been done and had, by a vote in its General Assembly, consolidated the body's existence as a permanent tribunal empowered to take cognizance of and to judge all charges of war crimes, even if the accused should happen to be the government of one of those countries which through the agencies of their judges delivered the Nuremberg verdicts. In this way, the implicit universality of the original intention would have been made clear and explicit.
Well, what happened is well-known: hardly had the last German war criminal been judged than the tribunal disappeared into thin air, and nobody has heard anything about it since.
Are we then so innocent? Have there been no further war crimes since 1945? Since then, has nobody resorted to violence, or to aggression? Has there been no "genocide"? Has no strong country attempted to break by the use of force, the sovereignty of a small nation? Has there been no occasion to denounce, anywhere in the world, Ouradours or Auschwitzes?
You know the truth. In the last twenty years, the great historical event has been the struggle of the Third World for its liberation: colonial empires have collapsed and in their place sovereign nations have come int» existence, or have recovered a lost traditional independence, destroyed by colonization.
All this has taken place in suffering, in sweat, and in blood. A tribunal such as that of Nuremberg has become a permanent necessity. Before the judgment of the Nazis, war had no laws, as I have said. The Nuremberg tribunal, an ambiguous body, was no doubt born of the right of the strongest; but at the same time it opened a perspective for the future by setting a precedent, the embryo of a tradition. None can go back on that, prevent Nuremberg from having happened, prevent people from thinking back to its sessions whenever a small, poor country is the object of aggression, prevent them from saying to themselves: "but it is this, precisely this, which was condemned at Nuremberg."
Thus the hurried and incomplete provisions made by the Allies in 1945 and then abandoned have created a real lacuna in international life. There is a cruel lack of that institution -- which appeared, asserted its permanence and its universality, defined irreversibly certain rights and obligations, only to disappear, leaving a void which must be filled and which nobody is filling.