---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2002 12:40:42 -0800
From: radtimes <resist@best.com>
Subject: "Sara Jane Olsons" Pathetic Tears
"Sara Jane Olson's" Pathetic Tears
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 24, 2002
By: Jamie Glazov
SARA JANE OLSON, the former Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) terrorist, has
just been sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. She had pleaded guilty
to 26-year-old charges of conspiring to plant bombs under two Los Angeles
police cars. She was also arraigned on separate murder charges related to a
California bank robbery in 1975.
The best part of this drama for me personally was the picture in the
newspaper that showed Olson bawling her eyes out after her sentencing.
I don't think I have grinned with such ecstatic glee for a long time. To be
sure, Olson's laughable agony brought particular joy and warmth to my heart.
I just hope that her suffering in incarceration will be particularly acute.
I still can't figure it out: am I supposed to feel sorry for this
55-year-old stupid bitch?
First of all, her name isn't even Sara Jane Olson. It's Kathleen Soliah.
But Soliah, you see, has been living in a little Wizard-of-Oz fantasy world
for the last 26 years.
Soliah changed her name to "Sara Jane Olson" in the mid-1970s because she
had to hide from who she really was -- and what she really did. She
remained a fugitive for some 24 years.
And then, on June 16, 1999, Soliah's fairy-tale world came to an abrupt and
sudden end. She was arrested near her home in the Highland Park
Neighborhood of St. Paul, Minnesota.
Finally, the deranged psychopath who, in 1974, placed pipe bombs beneath
two randomly selected Los Angeles police cars, was in custody. The deadly
explosives she planted would have killed the occupants of the vehicles, and
any man, woman, or child walking by, had they not failed to detonate.
Soliah engaged in this terrorism because she wanted a revolution. In her
outlook, the police represented the fascist oligarchy's military machine.
And any Leftist can explain to you why police officers must be the first to
go if the utopian revolution is to be achieved.
Soliah's Leninist odyssey began in the early 1970s, when she joined the
SLA, which was led by ex-convict Donald DeFreeze. The defining slogan of
this terrorist gang was: "Death to the fascist insect that preys on the
life of the people." On November 6, 1973, three SLA "soldiers" gunned down
one of the "fascist insects" -- Dr. Marcus Foster, the first
African-American superintendent of schools in Oakland, in a parking lot
behind the Oakland School District office.
Foster had to be killed because, as the official SLA death warrant
explained, he had been found "guilty" by a "Court of the People." His
crime? He followed a school board directive to issue ID cards to students
to protect them from drug dealers and gang members who entered their campuses.
The SLA became famous for kidnapping Patricia Hearst from her Berkeley,
California, apartment in February 1974. The gang repeatedly raped the
19-year-old girl to break her will, and, as we know, Hearst ended up being
involved in a SLA bank robbery.
Unlike the SLA's other victims, Hearst lived to talk about the ingredients
of the SLA's crimes. She has confirmed that Soliah participated in the 1975
bank robbery in a Sacramento suburb. During that episode, SLA member Emily
Harris gunned down Myrna Lee Opshal, an innocent bystander who had come to
the bank to deposit church funds. Later, when SLA members found out that
Opshal had been married to a doctor, they were ecstatic. As Harris
explained the political importance of the killing to her comrades: the
victim was "a pig" because "she was married to a doctor."
The SLA never achieved its revolution; De Freeze and five other SLA members
were killed in a shootout with police in Los Angeles.
Poor Kathleen was devastated. She led a rally for the "victims" of the
"fascists" in her favorite place: Berkeley's "Ho Chi Minh Park." Her stance
was that the six martyrs were "viciously attacked and murdered by 500 pigs
in L.A."
Surrendering was not on Kathleen's mind. After trying - unsuccessfully --
to kill L.A. police officers by putting pipe bombs under their cars, she
went into hiding. She renamed herself "Sara Jane Olson," married a doctor,
and conveniently moved on to be an upper-middle-class mother who raised
three daughters. Needless to say, she saw no problem in her marriage to a
physician, even though Myrna Lee Opshal deserved to die because she had
been "a pig" for being married to one.
And then, 24 years later, justice came calling.
Throughout her trial, Olson cried repeatedly while watching her friends and
family, including her mother, husband and daughter, testify about what a
model mother and citizen she had been throughout the years in the suburbs
of St. Paul. "She is one of the best mothers anybody would ever want," her
daughter sobbed aloud on the witness stand.
I feel for Soliah's children. But at least they have had the gift of having
a mother - a luxury that Myrna Lee Opshal's four children couldn't afford,
seeing that certain scum believed they had to take human life for the sake
of revolution.
The more I look at that pathetic picture of Soliah bawling with her ugly,
scrawled-up face, the more I can't help pondering: how many tears did she
shed the last 26 years for Dr. Foster and the children he left behind? How
many tears did she shed for Opshal and her children? How many tears did she
shed for the part of Patty Hearst's spirit and identity that was shattered
by the repeated rapes that she suffered at the hands of the SLA? How many
tears would she have shed for the police officers that would have died if
her pipe bombs hadn't malfunctioned? How many tears would she have shed for
their grieving families?
How many tears would Kathleen have shed if she hadn't been caught?
Right, you got it: now that she faces years in prison, Kathleen suddenly
gets all teary-eyed for the cameras.
I don't know how many times washed-up Leftists have lectured me about how
Soliah needs to be exonerated because she did what she did during
"different times." Mmm-hmm. The 1930s were different times too, and Hitler
gassed six million Jews during those times because he wanted a racial
utopia. Do we excuse him because he existed during "different times?" Or do
we excuse radicals like Soliah because they kill for class hatred and not
racial hatred?
What the Left really means about the "different times" is that people like
Soliah perpetrated their crimes during the 1960s and 1970s - a time during
which the counter-culture hoped to destroy capitalism for the sake of
building their vision of a better and fairer world. In other words, if you
kill human beings in the name of social justice, you should be forgiven; if
you perpetrate crimes against humanity because you assert you are doing it
for the poor, the oppressed and the downtrodden, there will always be a
Leftist milieu to defend you.
This Leftist charade has been discredited long ago. The history of the 20th
Century has taught a profound lesson: the moment anyone starts talking
about "eliminating" poverty and inequality, we must immediately recognize
that person to be as dangerous and evil as a Nazi that talks about the
importance of a "Final Solution."
Indeed, the moment a Leftist begins to imply that humans can be their own
redeemers, and that the perfectibility of human institutions and of the
human race is possible, it must be recognized that another re-enactment of
Pol Pot's killing fields is in its starting stages. That's why I have a
dream that one day the verbal articulation of class hatred will be
criminalized - just as racist hate speech is criminalized now. But in that
context we have a long way to go, since the Left clearly controls our
society's political language.
Oh yes, I forgot: Soliah has articulated some real tear-jerking apologies.
But if you deconstruct her "apologies" carefully, you will find that they
are directed at her family members for the "pain" she has caused them.
Nowhere has she yet to utter one mea culpa for the murderous ideology that
she upheld - which, when imposed by her ruthless comrades, snuffed out the
lives of people who wanted to live and who wanted to see their children
grow up. Never has she apologized for perpetuating ideas that are complicit
in the mass genocide that has been practiced throughout the 20th Century.
This is no surprise, of course, because being a Leftist means never having
to say you're sorry.
The bottom line is that "Sara Jane Olson" is much more than just a mutation
of the Ted Bundys and Jeffrey Dahmers of this world. She is the
representative of the 100 million deaths that communist regimes perpetrated
in the previous century. She would have gladly participated in those
murders had she had power in the regimes that she adored - and still
adores now. Her attempt to murder L.A. police officers represented only a
small symbolic act in this illuminating context.
My last hope in connection to this saga is that a form of human justice,
and not just criminal justice, will prevail. I am referring to the
inspiring unwritten law that exists in prison populations, where inmates
who have transgressed sacred ethical rules confront their justified fates.
For instance, if child molesters and rapists do not sign themselves into
protective custody, their stay in prison begins to consist of ingredients
that I need not illustrate here. Suffice it to say that severe beatings are
a starting point.
My hope is that Soliah will be recognized by her fellow inmates for being
who she is: a perpetrator who is no better than a child molester or a rapist.
So let's get the ball rolling. Let human justice, for the sake and memory
of the SLA's victims, begin.
------------------------------
Jamie Glazov holds a Ph.D. in History with a specialty in Soviet Studies.
He is the author of 15 Tips on How to be a Good Leftist and of Canadian
Policy Toward Khruschev's Soviet Union which will be published by
McGill-Queens University Press in March 2002. Born in the U.S.S.R., Jamie
is the son of prominent Soviet dissidents, and now resides in Vancouver,
Canada. He writes the Dr. Progressive advice column for angst-ridden
leftists at EnterStageRight.com.
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