Terrorist or Freedom Fighter

Image via Wikipedia

 A long time ago when I used to work, for what the BBC termed a secret spy station, I was a reporting officer tasked with producing dossiers, not dodgy ones, on a few countries in southern Africa. One of the dilemmas that I faced was that whilst people such as Nelson Mandela , in his gun running and money laundering days, was classified as a terrorist by the South African government in the eyes of many he was a freedom fighter.
 So I sought advice from the then Foreign Secretary, Sir Alec Douglas Home, as to what terminology I should use. Being a decent Tory, of the old patrician school, back came a missive to say that I should refer to them as guerillas which he, and I, took to be an entirely neutral term.
 It is strange that many terrorists, from the American rebels who fought the British through to the likes of the ANC who now form the South African government and even to the IRA who are now in a power sharing administration,  eventually become entirely repectable organisations rather than the hated enemy that they once were.
It is a great pity that most of them indulge in killing entirely innocent civilians along the way which is why I have always been a great admirer of Gandhi's passive and peaceful resistance. The current new crusades between Muslim and Christian (religion is the cause of all evil) is to be regretted and will not be resolved until the Palestinian question is settled. This seems unlikely to happen given that the USA and the United Kingdom prop up and support the terrorists who run the Israeli administration.
 Whilst Mossad and the Israeli armed forces are  free to pop into hotels, ships  and anywhere else for that matter to kill people, as freedom fighters, the Taliban and Al Qaeda are firmly in the terrost camp. I despise both but they do seem to be equally inefficient, using forged British passports and sending e-mails, downloading bomb making manuals and using mobile phones whilst there is a whole network of  intelligence organisations tapping into everything they say and do. You can be sure that this innocent blog is being assessed and scrutinised by an analyst or a computer somewhere as I type the words. And these intelligence organisations are not to be trusted either what with their previously referred to dodgy dosssiers and dirty covert activities which even their governments know nothing about.

Nelson Mandela via last.fm