Nobel Peace Prize Winner - Nelson MANDELA - On USA Terrorist Watch List

[kpete]

U.S. has Mandela on terrorist list

By Mimi Hall, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — 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.

Because of this, Rice told a Senate committee recently, her department has to issue waivers for ANC members to travel to the USA.

more at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-04-30-watchlist_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip

[DrDan]

1. gosh - I am surprised condi even knows who he is . . .

must give her credit for that . . . perhaps she can explain to junior who he is . . . I have no doubt there is a gap there

[saltpoint]

2. Look, if the government doesn't protect us from Nobel Peace lauriats and

British novelists, who will?

[leftofcool]

3. and singers........don't forget about Cat Stevens

we don't want that Moon Shadow coming into the US

[saltpoint]

5. Cat Stevens indeed! A man who could write and sing a song like

"How Can I Tell You" should be kept from U.S. shores forever!

I shudder to think what would become of us if we let people like that inside our society!

[leftofcool]

7. And that "Peace Train" terrorist song too!

[saltpoint]

8. Damn straight. With a song like that he's promoting both peace AND

mass transit.

The lobbyists over at Exxon-Mobil won't like that one bit.

[leftofcool]

9. LOL! Good one!

[0007]

12. Didn't cheney once vote to keep Nelson Mandela in prison?

[saltpoint]

22. I may hunt for confirmation of that, 0007, but yes, that rings true to me.

If I can find a reliable source later I will come back to this thread and post it.

UPDATE: Here's confirmation, and it wasn't hard to find. CNN has one, etc.

http://www.issues2000.org/askme/mandela.htm

[wryter2000]

17. They're a menace

I heard Mandela once tried to bring shampoo onto an airplane. What'll it be next, nail clippers and other weapons of mass personal hygiene?

[peace13]

4. I say put Condi on the list and we'll all be safer. n/t

[leftofcool]

6. Dickless Cheney too

[underpants]

18. Dick Cheney,as a Representative, voted FOR apartheid

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1004-07.htm

[bdamomma]

14. we should put the whole bush cabal on the terrorist list

cause we all know that is what they are.

[malaise]

10. The peacemakers are the new terrorists

since the warmongers are writing the rules. Up is down - life today is a complete inversion of reality.

[northzax]

11. well, he is strongly affiliated with a terrorist group

it's really tough to call the ANC much else. True, he was on Robben Island when the group got violent (and it was only wings of the group that did, google 'necklacing' if you have a strong stomach, or check out Umkhonto we Sizwe)

seems logical to me that if you are strongly affiliated with such a group, your name should go on the list and then be taken off, if it's irrelevant. Personally, as much respect as I have for MAndela, I think his Nobel was BS, since he didn't actually renounce the violence of the ANC. in fact, he could have been released from prison if he had renounced violence, and chose not to. Armed resistance can be perfectly justifiable, and most likely was in this case, futile as it was, but that's hardly 'peace'. it would be like giving George Washington a peace prize for leading the American Revolution. it was a perfectly justified act, but hardly 'peace'. Mandela's prize was specifically for negotiations with De Klerk (who shared the prize) for a transfer of power (especially after the assassination of Chris Hain.) Not for his leadership of or association with the ANC.

[HamdenRice]

19. This is a bit skewed reasoning

I think one point of the OP is that the entire concept of terrorism is meaningless. All political violence creates terror in some target -- whether that violence is a suicide bomber or a fighter pilot dropping a bomb from 20,000 feet.

Terrorism is a way to label the political violence of unfavored groups illegitimate -- as it was when the ANC was labelled a terrorist group.

I'll go further than you with respect to Mandela. He wasn't just connected to a group that later became involved in political violence; Mandela was largely the founder of the ANC's "armed struggle," going underground within South Africa to organize it, while the organization strategically sent other leaders overseas.

That's why he was so popular when he was imprisoned.

They called it "armed struggle"; the government called it terrorism. Which it was, was entirely a political value judgement.

At the time Mandela began organizing armed struggle, the organization limited its targets to non-human targets -- mostly power lines and the like. After Mandela was imprisoned and after the ANC was in exile for many years, and after South Africa's border wars with neighboring states escalated to hyper-violent levels, the ANC began to target people associated with the regime.

Mandela was offered release if he renounced violence and he refused. The concept of armed struggle was extremely popular with the South African population, especially after internal state violence escalated into a covert civil war, and the ANC could not renounce violence and maintain political legitimacy, nor for that matter effectively protect the population in the townships without the use of political violence.

But in 1989 the government and the ANC entered an agreement whereby the armed struggle was theoretically suspended but not ended, and in fact, political violence continued to escalate right up until the elections.

How you can argue that Mandela's role in armed struggle disqualifies him from a "peace prize" -- a "peace prize" that has been awarded to Henry Kissinger and North Vietnam's Le Duc Tho; to Teddy Roosevelt; to Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, and Yitzhak Rabin; to Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin; and to Woodrow Wilson?

You are confusing a "peace prize" with a "non-violence prize" which it manifestly is not intended to be.

[northzax]

20. and if the ANC

had made a habit of striking against police or government targets, 'armed struggle' would be a better arguement. alas, that wasn't usually the case.

[HamdenRice]

21. Who do you think they are targetting?

We seem to have different histories of the era.

[Wizard777]

13. Some people are damned afraid that Peace might break out.

They are doing everything in their power to prevent that from happening.

[bdamomma]

15. sadly, for these thugs peace does not make money.

I hope they choke on that greed.

[hunter]

16. Remember Bush's bizarre Mandela comment last September?

"Well, Mandela's dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas..."

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/09/20/gwb-saddam-killed-mandelas

Behind closed doors the Bush Administration is probably laughing about this.