I rarely pay attention to what is going on around me in the outside world. but I am so sad to hear of the passing of nelson mandela. we have so few real hero's amongst us anymore.
a quiet man, a peaceful man, a forgiving man who spent his life to heal a nation.
such a loss.
Leila, I only read the one article on censorbugbear because I was only looking for info on mandela's association with the ANC. the practice of "neclacing" was very real and multiple photos of its victims can be found all over the web. so even if one is to ignore all that, why was he on the terrorist watchlist for 9 years and why didn't he chose to get himself out of jail when all he had to do was renounce terrorism against civilians in order to do so?
The link to weaselzippers is not working but I did look at the censorbugbear site. This website seems to be geared heavily to racist thinking towards non whites so I have a hard time believing there is no agenda behind what is written. In other words it is far from being unbiased. No one is perfect and I am sure Mandela wasn't as neither Gandhi or Mother Theresa but I think all three are human animals that we can say rose higher than few of us can ever hope to rise.
i have been debating with myself since I read this whether or not to rain on your mandela parade, carol. I don't know what your news is like in Canada, but here in the US it is all leftist spin so all the news agencies here are trying to put mandela up there with Ghandi and Mother Teresa when he was anything but. he bombed innocent civilians see here: http://www.censorbugbear.org/black-racism/terror
he did not want poor blacks to vote, see here:
http://weaselzippers.us/2013/12/10/racistmandela
and his organization, the ANC, and his wife Winnie dealt with dissidents by a practice called "necklacing" whereby an auto tire soaked in gasoline was put around someone's neck and set on fire. it usually took them 20 minutes to burn to death. He was also on the US Terrorist watch list from 1989 till 2008.
the whole time he was in jail he could have gotten out if he would have renounced terrorism of civilians but he refused to do that.
peaceful... not really
Regarding your blog yesterday about where people are standing when they comment on rescue, a Theodore Roosevelt quote seems in order.
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs... [And] if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly." -Roosevelt
This makes me think of you, Carol, as you are definitely in the arena fighting for the animals. (although you are probably marred with poo and pee as well as dust, sweat and blood).
Pay no heed to those standing outside it.
Hi Suzanne. I have never seen anything written about "necklacing" associated with Nelson Mandela. I have never seen anything associated with Nelson Mandela (not his wife) and criminal activiites. In regards to Mandela being on a terrorist watch list, there are many people who are clearly not terrorist who are on that watch list. That watch list has little meaning to me personally. I won’t get into the politics of what a terrorist is as I believe we all have very different definitions based on our world views. From my perspective, I would hope I had the same courage and guts as Mandela and not negotiate with a government that clearly were unjust, cruel and just plain wrong in the way the treated non white people. From my perspective, Mandela took a stand for his people and the world by remaining in jail rather than negotiating with a criminal government. I believe the government that put Mandela in jail were the real terrorists. I also believe this is a topic we both must agree to disagree on Suzanne as I think we both come from this from opposite view points based on who we are as people. I suspect we will probably never understand each others view point on some one like Mandela. But we can both support a wonderful organization such as SAINTS.