Symbionese Liberation Army

It’s simple enough at the bottom, and at the top. At the basic end would be a body – Brett Kebble’s murdered body, for example. Or a colossal bungle, like the Scorpions giving immunity to the killers, for the sake of fitting up the Commissioner of Police, Jackie Selebi, for example (see the linked article below). Whereupon the killers “do a runner”, i.e. disappear. Obvious things. At the top there is the generalised corruption of capitalism, bred in a metropolis whose original sin can only be fully purged by a permanent proletarian revolution. In between is where the action is. Dashiell Hammett wrote a book about a time like this, called “Red Harvest”. The title is a pun on blood and communism, and communism is the creed that Hammett followed until the end of his life. “Red Harvest” is one of four great novels that he wrote. The others are “The Maltese Falcon”, “The Thin Man”, and “The Dain Curse”. The biggest capitalist (the prime evil) in “Red Harvest” is “Elihu Willsson”, a fictionalised version of George Hearst, the Montana mine-owner whose son William Randolph Hearst (“Citizen Kane”) was the newspaper-owner who cabled the artist Frederic Remington, concerning Cuba: “You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war”. That war was the 1898 Spanish-American war, the twin of the 1899 Anglo-Boer war. These were the first two wars of purely capitalist Imperialism. Since then there has been no time without such wars, and they continue today. George Hearst’s great-grand-daughter is Patty Hearst, the woman who was kipnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army. The name 'symbionese' is taken from the word symbiosis, according to the SLA’s ideologue, a US black man called Cinque DeFreeze. Another member of the SLA was James Kilgore, otherwise known as John Pape, who holed out for many years in South Africa and worked for Khanya College and for ILRIG until he was discovered and renditioned to the USA in November 2002. In April 2004 he was sentenced to 54 months in prison. Was Pape/Kilgore the father of “social movements” in South Africa? Who knows? It would need a “Continental Op” to prove something like that. Concerning “symbiosis”, Hilary Squires in the Schabir Shaik case wrote as follows: “It would be flying in the face of common sense and ordinary human nature to think that he (Shaik) did not realise the advantages to him of continuing to enjoy Zuma’s goodwill to an even greater extent than before 1997; and even if nothing was ever said between them to establish the mutually beneficial symbiosis that the evidence shows existed, the circumstances of the commencement and the sustained continuation thereafter of these payments, can only have generated a sense of obligation in the recipient.” This is the foundation of Squires’ judgement, and is quoted as such by the registrar of the Supreme Court of Appeal, as well as by the editorial of last Friday’s Mail & Guardian. The trouble with it is that it relies, in the first place, not on the law or on the facts, but on presumed “common sense and ordinary human nature” – a fantasy of Judge Squires’. Likewise, “symbiosis” is a precise scientific term. Its meaning cannot be hi-jacked by judges any more than by crazy, violent, petty-bourgeois, ultra-left pseudo-revolutionaries like the SLA. Using scientistic jargon in this way is the familiar lie of the toothpaste and quack-medicine salesman. It is not different from nonsense like “clinically proven” or “scientifically tested”. It is junk law. At least the Shaik family has got its courage back. They are going to mount an appeal in the Constitutional Court. South Africa needs them to win, for the sake of proper law over junk law. The law itself needs the Shaiks to win. See the linked article from the Weekender, below. Swaziland Solidarity Network was disappointed to have its site declared second best to the one called Zimbabwe Fight On Don’t Mourn. But the SSN's in turn is bigger, more active, and better resourced than the Friends of Cuba’s. This is said, of course, only in the spirit of “socialist emulation”. Another site, the SA Palestine Solidarity Forum, has hardly any members at all as yet. All who wish to be on it and to support the Palestinians, please quickly reply to that effect to this e-mail. If there are enough acitivists to take part, there will also soon be a site for Western Sahara. The invitation and programme (linked below) for an event in Johannesburg on November 30th is a step in the right direction. Click on these links: Three witnesses gone including triggerman, Badat and Ajam, Star (387 words) Shaik makes final bid to clear his name, Mde and Brown, Weekender (792 words) Western Sahara Invitation 09h00 November 30th (Invitation) Western Sahara Programme 09h00 November 30th (Programme)