Best We Forget

 

Warning…contains graphic photographs

 

At an International Council meeting in Canterbury, UK, Amnesty International debates and rejects the proposal to recognize as prisoners of conscience people who use or advocate the use of force in opposing oppressive regimes.

This means people like Nelson Mandela are not recognized as prisoners of  conscience.

 

 

Amused to hear Nelson Mandela put into the same category as Nick Griffin this morning (08:58) by one of Mandela’s oldest friends, who knew him for 63 years, and who told us that Mandela was angry with the Whites, for obvious reasons, but also angry and suspicious of the Indian immigrants in South Africa in the context of the new African nationalism that was being propagated….Justin Webb said that’s interesting…that’s a side of him we don’t hear much about..and oh we ran out of time.

Yes…there’s a lot we don’t hear about Mandela these days.

 

The BBC rarely misses a chance to mention that Mrs Thatcher thought that the ANC was a terrorist organisation and a bunch of Communists….the intention explicit…to demonstrate just how bad a woman Thatcher was…because Mandela was a saint….today on Any Questions we had some good lady, Jeanette Winterson, mention it (1 min 30 sec)…adding  ‘Lest we forget‘….amusing really because as she condemns Thatcher she is telling us how we should adopt Mandela’s virtuous values of inclusiveness, standing against prejudice, and his ability to meet his enemies around the table….no such inclusiveness when it comes to Margaret Thatcher then?  Mandela, who used extreme violence to serve his purposes, is a latter day saint, Thatcher who disliked his methods, and opposed Apartheid, is evil…funny old world.

I can’t think why Thatcher thought that about Mandela and the ANC:

 

 

It must be because Thatcher is Thatcher…because it is hard to argue with her point……indeed even Amnesty International thought along the same lines….something all those pious worthies grandstanding and basking in the reflected glory of Nelson Mandela seem to forget or are ignorant of:
At an International Council meeting in Canterbury, UK, Amnesty International debates and rejects the proposal to recognize as prisoners of conscience people who use or advocate the use of force in opposing oppressive regimes. This means people like Nelson Mandela are not recognized as prisoners of conscience, although campaigns continue against the inhumane conditions of his imprisonment.

 

Mandela never renounced violence nor apologised for it…in fact he still supported killing long after his release:

 

 

 

The BBC has repeatedly told us in the last two days that South Africa is a nation at peace…the legacy of Nelson Mandela…..ignoring the government sponsored murder campaign against whites…and indeed Black opponents of the government.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fzRSE_p1Ys

 

 

Around 3000 white farmers have been killed, and many more other whites, and the number of farmers reduced from 60,000 to half that number as they flee the country.

 

And of course this method of dealing with political opponents was invented by Mandela’s ANC:

        

 

 

It is remarkable how a man who, though admittedly having a good cause, adopted terrorist methods is being whitewashed, sanitised, scourged of his past sins.

 

How might that have happened and who rewrote history?

 

This might be one angle on that:

“This is how we turned Mandela from a black terrorist into a black leader.”

The anti-apartheid hero was on a US terror watch list until 2008 and while still on Robben Island, Britain’s late “Iron Lady” Margaret Thatcher described his African National Congress as a “typical terrorist organisation.”

That Mandela’s image has been transformed so thoroughly is a testament to the man’s achievements, but also, in part, to a concert that took place in London 25 years ago this week.

For organiser Tony Hollingsworth the June 11, 1988 gig at London’s Wembley Stadium had very little to do with Mandela’s 70th birthday, as billed.

It had everything to do with ridding Mandela of his terrorist tag and ensuring his release.

“You can’t get out of jail as a terrorist, but you can get out of prison as a black leader,” he told AFP during a visit to Johannesburg.

Many insisted the focus remain on sanctions against the apartheid regime.

“A lot of people were criticising me for sanitising it,” Hollingsworth remembered.

Eventually Terry convinced the ANC and Hollingsworth convinced Simple Minds, Dire Straits, Sting, George Michael, The Eurythmics, Eric Clapton, Whitney Houston and Stevie Wonder into the 83-artist line up.

With that musical firepower came contracts for a more than 11 hour broadcast.

“We signed with the entertainment department of television (stations). And when the head of the department got home and watched on his channel that they were calling Mandela a terrorist, they called straight to the news section to say, don’t call this man a terrorist, we just signed 11 hours of broadcasting for a tribute about him.”

“This is how we turned Mandela from a black terrorist into a black leader.”

 

 

Aah yes….TV executives.

 

And where have we heard that attitude before….‘we can’t say that about him…because we have a tribute show to go out?’

Oh yes, from the BBC, Newsnight, and Jimmy Savile.