About fifty years ago in colonial Algeria Frantz Fanon (pictured), a black man born in Martinique in the West Indies and a cadre of the liberation movement, was working for the French government as a psychotherapist. Some of his patients were servants of the French colonial authority whose work was to torture Algerians. Naturally, their work affected their mental health, sometimes severely. It drove them mad. Fanon wrote about it, and published the stories. Some of them are in Fanon’s “The Wretched of the Earth”.The USA government must also now treat the mental health problems of its torturers. For the most part the therapists that it uses appear to be “active duty”, or in other words military officers who are in authority over the patients. In such circumstances the torturers refrain from confessing their full stories.
But in at least one instance the US military “outsourced” some of this work to an eminent and experienced psychiatrist, Dr. John R. Smith. The patient “opened up” to him. Like Fanon half a century before him, Smith wrote up the story of the torturer and his mental problems and published it for the first time yesterday, on Counterpunch. The short account is linked below.
[Students of the history of the South African struggle will know that the adoption of outright torture techniques by the old regime, and the subsequent descent into outright brutality, began after Special Branch members went to Algeria to be trained within the French torture apparatus]
Willie Madisha has been dismissed from his position of President of COSATU by its Central Executive Committee. The short preliminary Press Release is linked below. The full Commission Report can be read by clicking here (76 KB PDF download).
The COSATU CEC has also pronounced on the Special Browse Mole Consolidated Report affair, which is damning of the Scorpions and should lead to prosecutions and to a realisation by even the most reactionary whites that this was a treasonous subversive body that was set up and paid for by the post-apartheid state, but was out of anyone’s control, and is still riddled with old-regime Special Branch and other such types. The sooner it is dissolved, the better. See COSATU’s statement below.
Business continues. The ANC National Working Committee has met, and so has the SACP North-West Provincial council. Read their important statements in the documents linked below.
The MDC has got its election campaign well of the ground at Sakubva Stadium with a fine, large rally. See the report linked below, and pictures here.
Space and other temporary difficulties mean that it is not going to be possible to deal with the unspeakable Free State University racism video atrocity here today.
Click on these links:
Confessions of a Gitmo Guard, Debbie Nathan, Counterpunch (861 words)
Willie Madisha, COSATU Media Release (242 words)
Special Browse Mole Consolidated Report, COSATU Media Release (283 words)
ANC National Working Committee Statement, 25 February 2008 (280 words)
SACP North-West PEC Media Release, 26 February 2008 (1016 words)
Huge crowd attends MDC election campaign launch (593 words)
Coming Events
I continue to see allegations that the Scorpions is full of Apartheid era security operatives and yet strangely have never ever seen an actual name of one mentioned, despite the fact that such a revelation backed by evidence would be most welcome in the media. In fact you don't even have to go to the media simply list the names here.
ReplyDeleteA simple list will suffice describing who each Scorpions member is and which Apartheid era security apparatus he/she worked for.
I would advise everyone to not click on the above link posted by doum as it is for spyware.
ReplyDeleteSecond Anonymous:
ReplyDeleteI delete these things as soon as I see them (the blog notifies me with an e-mail, if I am on-line). Each one is posted from a different pseudonym. I don't know how to stop them. I'm getting about one a day. If they get more numerous, I may have to kill the comments altogether on the blog.
First Anonymous: I'll try to reply on the blog. Suffice it to say for now that I fully expect that your wish will be fulfilled in due course.
I won't be holding my breath. These allegations have been flying thick and fast from various SACP/ANCYL/COSATU mouth pieces and yet no names have been mentioned, not a single Scorpion investigator has been 'named and shamed'.
ReplyDeleteIt's time to put up or shut up.
You're not very patient, are you?
ReplyDeleteWhy don't you go to Politicsweb and read the report headed: "DSO’s ‘Browse’ report illegal – JSCI"
You may think that's as far as it is going to go. I don't think so. I think you are going to have your wish fulfilled.
Where did you suppose these alleged "Super-cops" magically appeared from in 1998? What was it that made the whites of this country to bond with them so tightly, and so quickly?
Come to that, why are you anonymous? By all means be anonymous, but don't get on your high horse in that case, demanding names.
The Scorpions have a web site. Go there and see what you can find. If you want to make a case for the magical pristine disinterestedness of the Scorps, then do your own research, please. But do it honestly!
Now now let's not be ignorant here, I'm not the one making accusations.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to accuse the Scorpions of being agents of Apartheid, you better have some evidence, ANY evidence to back it up.
So let's have a name. Just one name. It's a simple request is it not?