"Ice-Pick That Killed Trotsky Found in Mexico"

Jo Tuckman, London Guardian

Mexico City — One of the most notorious murder weapons in modern history, the
ice-pick that killed Leon Trotsky, appears to have been found, 65
years after it was apparently stolen from the Mexican police.

The daughter of a former secret service agent claims she has the
steel mountaineering instrument, which is stained with the blood
of the Russian revolutionary.

Exiled by Joseph Stalin, Trotsky lived a relatively settled life
in a suburb of Mexico City until his death in 1940.

Trotsky was always fearful of assassination attempts organised by
Stalin. He was finally caught off guard by Ramon Mercader, who on
August 20, 1940 gained access to him on the pretext of needing
help.

Once in the study, Mercader struck the creator of the Red Army in
the head from behind with the shortened pick he had hidden under
his clothes.

Murderer and ice-pick were taken into custody but the weapon
later disappeared.

Now Ana Alicia Salas says her father, Commander Alfredo Salas,
stole the pick because he wanted to preserve it for posterity.

Trotsky's grandson Seva Volkov, who lived with his grandfather at
the time and still lives in Mexico, is willing to provide samples
for a DNA test against the blood on the handle only if Ms Salas
donates the pick to the museum in the house where the murder took
place.

But she said: "I am looking for some financial benefit. I think
something as historically important at this should be worth
something, no?"

The New York Times Supports Thought Control:
The Massad Case

Edward S. Herman, ZNet

The New York Times has never been a very courageous newspaper in times of
political hysteria and threats to civil liberties. When Bertrand Russell was
denied the right to fill his appointment at CCNY in 1940, following an ugly
campaign by a rightwing Catholic faction opposed to his positions on divorce
and marriage, the paper not only failed to defend him, its belated editorial
called the appointment "impolitic and unwise" and criticized him for not
withdrawing when the going got hot ("The Russell Case," April 20, 1940).
Russell pointed out in a published reply something the editors had missed:
that there was a serious matter of principle at stake; that a withdrawal
would have been "cowardly and selfish" and would have "tacitly assented to
the proposition that substantial groups should be allowed to drive out of
public office individuals whose opinions, race or nationality they find
repugnant" (April 26, 1940).

During the McCarthy era also the Times failed to stand by its ex-Communist
employees who were willing to tell all to the Times officials, but not turn
informers. They were fired, and in its news and editorials the paper failed
to oppose the witchhunt with vigor and on the basis of principle. Publisher
Arthur Hays Sulzberger himself wrote an editorial assailing the use of the
Fifth Amendment in appearances before the House Committee on UnAmerican
Activities (August 6, 1948).

We are in another period of escalating attacks on civil liberties, with the
Patriot Act, a lawless rightwing administration, open threats to retaliate
against judicial failures to follow rightwing dictates, and perpetual
aggression to create the justification for repressive policies at home. An
important additional factor is the steadily increasing aggressiveness of
pro-Zionist forces, both in the United States and elsewhere, who have fought
to contain criticism of Israeli policies by any means, including harassment,
intimidation, threats, boycotts, claims of "anti-semitism," occasional
resort to violence, and other forms of pressure. While sometimes allegedly
based on the need for fairness, balance and truthfulness, these campaigns
are completely one-sided and are invariably aimed at suppressing alternative
views and inconvenient facts.

"Noam Chomsky, Still Furious at 76"

Alan Taylor, Sunday Herald, UK

On my way to meet Noam Chomsky in Boston, I pick up a copy of
The American Prospect, whose cover features snarling
caricatures of US Vice-President Dick Cheney, and of Chomsky:
the man dubbed by Bono 'the Elvis of academia'.

Cheney is
presented as the proverbial bull in an international china
shop, Chomsky is portrayed by this 'magazine of liberal
intelligence' as the epitome of high- minded dove-ish,
misguided idealism. Chomsky, of course, is well used to such
attacks. For every cloying article by a disciple, there is a
rocket from the enemy camp revelling in his perceived
failings and undermining his reputation, denigrating his
scholarship as a linguist and joyfully repeating statements
which, when taken out of context, seem tinged with
fanaticism.