U.S. has Mandela on terrorist list

U.S. has Mandela on terrorist list

www.usatoday.com

Nobel Peace Prize winner and international symbol of freedom Nelson Mandela is flagged on U.S. terrorist watch lists and needs special permission to visit the USA. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calls the situation "embarrassing," and some members of Congress vow to fix it.

The requirement applies to former South African leader Mandela and other members of South Africa's governing African National Congress (ANC), the once-banned anti-Apartheid organization. In the 1970s and '80s, the ANC was officially designated a terrorist group by the country's ruling white minority. Other countries, including the United States, followed suit.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Has there ever been a clearer example of "one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter"

Just to put this into perspective, Mandela led the ANC into armed conflict and the use of indiscriminate bombings, and other terror tactics, and yet he is lauded as a hero for spending time in jail during apartheid.

Now personally, I think apartheid was abhorrent BUT Mandela WAS a terrorist by any definition of the word - except because of the fight against apartheid he ended up being a "hero"

A hero whose wife had a penchant for giving "pirrelli necklaces" to those who "betrayed" her.

A hero who helped plant bombs and murder innocents.

A hero who advocated violence against innocents.

See any hypocrisy here?

So whilst bush&co label those who fight against the aggression of the US as terrorists, they laud another former terrorist as a freedom fighter and hero.

www.usatoday.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

So whilst bush&co label those who fight against the aggression of the US as terrorists, they laud another former terrorist as a freedom fighter and hero

Nobody wants to be pissing off the "African American" voters in an election year

You are quite correct though. The fact that Nelson Mandela was a terrorist always seems to get overlooked in the interests of political expediancy and correctness.

If you can call Nelson Mandela a terrorist, then Geronimo is also a terrorist. ANd I think we can find many more of those in the history of civilized west colonizing the rest of the world. Sometimes certain people just will not bow down to the opression and will stand up and fight for their freedom and their right to live in the land, which was once theirs. Almost every man and woman on this planet would not like to live in a apartheid system which once ruled South Afrika. And even Nelson Mandela wanted just to live in peace. But the apartheid system created him to act as a guerrilla leader. To me apartheid is the terrorist system - Mandela was just saying, he shall not take it anymore. If that is the definition of a terrorist, then I guess many people can be labeled that today.

reply to post by Souljah

Not seen you on here for a while Souljah... if you've been away then welcome back

You are quite correct. Many of the people / groups that our leaders label as terrorist are in fact the creation of our own misdeeds. By "our", I mean our leaders and their corporate backers as I think most people would be appalled at a lot of the stuff they do that doesn't make the headlines
Most of us probably qualify as people of interest or potential terrorists just for discussing governmental misdeeds and their hoped-for demise. Of course, controlled media and selective reporting also helps to demonise people and groups as the public are only fed one side of the story. The reported acts of the terrorists are often retaliation for attacks against them or their families, something we see all the time in reporting of the Israeli / Palestinian conflict.
The Internet has probably helped to bring about an awareness that not all we are told by our leaders is true and that there is always another side to every story. But, it's still down to the people to get of their arses and examine / question what they are being told.

[edit on 2-5-2008 by Britguy]

reply to post by Souljah


Fair points, but doesn't this also apply to the mideast where the west has, in effect, created terrorism.

Like they saay, one mans freedom fighter is another mans terrorist.

It's become very PC to laud Mandela - what exactly did he do differently from those fighting against what they see as oppression in the mideast?

reply to post by Britguy


You are right... Mandela was a terrorist, because he scared the living daylights out of wrong doing white folks.

He forced them to ponder on a deep moral level....?

"If I let this guy free... and he waltz's around telling his story of endless mental torture, bull whip beatings, cattle prod's, starvation, rape, and mind control tactics just because he wanted rights in his own African country.... he might not like us anymore... and may convince others by exposing us for who we really are!"

reply to post by budski


Apparently a Peace Prize winner is a terrorist. Right, that makes sense. I guess Einstein and Edison were also terrorists. Damn inventors.

Remember to take everything the US government says with a grain of salt, well many grains of salt. Mandela fought apartheid. As someone said above, that scared the crap out of white people. He has a power to reach the masses unlike many these days. Bushie manipulated the American people for a while, but we soon realized we were taken for fools in another "holy war."

He was considered a terrorist by the South African apartheid government, but maybe for good reason. He was part of the African National Congress and possibly involved with the militant wing. The word "terrorist" from the government's standpoint is anyone changing the way they operate. My definition of terrorist is anyone who creates fear in the people, whether through violence (threat or real) or propaganda.

One could call the US government terrorists in their own country as well as the world. How many dictators have we installed? How many acts of terrorism have we been a part of? How many regimes have we overthrown? The list is endless. We claim to be protecting national security, when in the end its all about our "interests" or business opportunities. The US government is in fact a corporation out to gain profit for its shareholders in the Federal Reserve.

Gandhi was also considered a terrorist by the British Raj. While both these men were peaceful, some of their followers were not. I would not call them terrorists personally, but one can see how a government would call them that.

One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist.

[edit on 5/2/2008 by biggie smalls]

reply to post by budski

This word terrorist is always carefully picked by the strong nations, to paint black those, who oppose their regime and their social structures. If you look at things from their glasses, everybody can be a terrorist! Yes, even strong countries use forms of terrorism - and as mister Noam Chomsky once said, terrorism is not the weapon of the weak, but the weapon of the strong. And these strong nations and superpowers can label certain people as terrorists - but in fact they are the biggest terrorist in the world by their own definition. In any case, the semantics here can play for any team. And that is the beauty of it.

Originally posted by budski


Has there ever been a clearer example of "one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter"

Just to put this into perspective, Mandela led the ANC into armed conflict and the use of indiscriminate bombings, and other terror tactics, and yet he is lauded as a hero for spending time in jail during apartheid.

Now personally, I think apartheid was abhorrent BUT Mandela WAS a terrorist by any definition of the word - except because of the fight against apartheid he ended up being a "hero"

A hero whose wife had a penchant for giving "pirrelli necklaces" to those who "betrayed" her.

A hero who helped plant bombs and murder innocents.

A hero who advocated violence against innocents.

See any hypocrisy here?

So whilst bush&co label those who fight against the aggression of the US as terrorists, they laud another former terrorist as a freedom fighter and hero.

www.usatoday.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

So are you saying that people and groups labelled by the US as terrorists are not actually terrorists but freedom fighters like Mandela, or are you saying that Nelson Mandela is actually a terrorist every bit as much as plane hijackers and suicide bombers and should be regarded as such?

All the tactics you described earlier used by Mandela&co are definitely terrorist tactics so I would venture that if it walks and quacks like a duck...

I definitely do see the hypocrisy here: Nelson Mandela was a terrorist regardless of the cause he was fighting for.

As for Gandhi... I guess he was a terrorist in the strictest sense of the word in that his actions did scare people...but his tactics for instigating change had more impact than all the suicide bombings put together: today people revere him and identify with his cause while suicide bombers are regarded as lunatics and their causes are largely dismissed as...filled with lunatic fringe. Dissenters everywhere could stand to learn from the Mahatma.

Which is exactly my point souljah, wonderfully expressed.

I posted the article in the hope of getting the point across to some of our members who seem to think that just because bush says some people are bad, doesn't mean they are.

But the people I am thinking of are being strangely quiet.

A great example of this would be NI - throughout the 70's, 80's and some of the nineties the IRA were always a terrorist group, whilst the protestant terror groups were called "loyalist gunmen" or "paramilitary's" by the MSM and the government.

We then saw a swing towards less rhetoric, and then the NI peace process really kicked off, and was eventually successfull.

Then the hypocrisy (or maybe just realpolitik) came in - whilst denouncing "islamic terror groups" Tony Blair was releasing from prison those who had been called terrorists just a few years before.
It seems the war on terror no longer applied to those who had been labelled as terrorists for 30 years - but he still needed someone to fight in order to engender that feeling of danger in the public consciousness.

So he made peace in NI and then embarked on his own terror campign in the mideast.

Funny that...