** Please visit our website: http://www.africanassociation.org **
Hi Mathew,
See the CIA's definition of terrorism
(http://www.cia.gov/terrorism/faqs.html):
QUOTE
How do you define terrorism?
The Intelligence Community is guided by the definition of terrorism
contained in Title 22 of the US Code, Section 2656f(d):
—The term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence
perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or
clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.
—The term “international terrorism” means terrorism involving the territory
or the citizens of more than one country.
—The term “terrorist group” means any group that practices, or has
significant subgroups that practice, international terrorism.
UNQUOTE
Who decides which group is "national" and which is "subnational"? Who
decides what a "clandestine agent" is? The fact that their definition of
terrorism is dependent on a group makes it highly subjective. This
definition was crafted to absolve the US of her terrorist activities in
Vietnam (killing innocent civilians) and Japan (annihilating more than
100,000 civilians in seconds). Recall that during the struggles in apartheid
South Africa, the ANC was labeled a terrorist group by the US State
Department.
Today, the suicide bombing orchestrated by Palestinian groups is promptly
labeled "terrorist activities", however, the massacre of Palestinian
civilians by Israeli helicopter gunships is labeled "self-defense". I
believe that if the apartheid regime in South Africa was still in force
today, Nelson Mandela would be called a terrorist master-mind by the blokes
in the US State Department.
A more accurate definition is given by Merriam-Webster's online dictionary
(http://www.merriam-webster.com/):
Terrorism: "the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion".
Terror(4): "violence (as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate
a population or government into granting their demands".
Regards,
Uche.
----Original Message Follows----
From: mathew jallow <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Terrorist for a teacher?
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 12:46:42 -0800
Hi,
It is evident to me that the word terrorist is being overused and
misunderstood. First, who decides who is a terrorist? What is the defination
of a terrorist? Does everyone agree to accept a particular defination? Does
one country has the right to define and decide what a terrorist is for the
rest of the world? These are the questions we must ask ourselves, and must
find an answer to. Why are people engaged in liberation struggles called
terrorists when all they are doing is fight oppression and for freedom in
all its forms? As far as I understand the meaning of the word, The Weather
Underground, The Black Panthers and like-minded organizations were struggles
for liberation from oppression. I cannot determine whether the methods they
employed were acts of terror or not, and I do not think anyone or any
government has the right to so either.
The real terrorists were those groups that organized lynchings in the South
and other places and state sponsored terrorists that enforced the Jim Crow
laws. These groups are still alive and well today in many parts of America,
glorified by the press, yet no one is talking about them.
There is a whole history about the 60s and 70s freedom movements that needs
to be taught and understood. The Weather Underground and The Black Panthers
changed America for the better forever, and there is no denying that.
I have followed the activities of these groups since I was in high school,
and our student organization did invite Stokely Carmichael to visit The
Gambia where he spent a week with us. I was a personal penpal relationship
with him even before he came with wife Mariam Makeba and went everywhere
with both of them.
VERA R CROWELL <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
** Please visit our website: http://www.africanassociation.org **
From the Opinion Journal of the Wall Street Journal:
Meet the Newest Member of the Faculty
Clinton pardons a terrorist, and now she's teaching in Clinton, N.Y.
BY ROGER KIMBALL
Friday, December 3, 2004 12:01 a.m.
At Hamilton College--an elite liberal arts institution in Clinton,
N.Y.--you can take courses in Roman civilization, Shakespeare and the
"Emergence of Modern Western Europe, 1500-1815." All well and good. You
can also take something called "Resistance Memoirs: Writing, Identity
and Change." That last course--a month-long, half-credit seminar--is
scheduled to begin next month. Its teacher is Susan Rosenberg, formerly
of the Weather Underground.
Remember the Weather Underground? Its self-described revolutionaries,
mostly middle-class, dedicated themselves to supporting radical black
causes and tearing apart American society in the 1970s and early 1980s.
In 1970, they blew up a townhouse when a bomb detonated prematurely and
killed a few of their troops. Kathy Boudin, Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn
and other high-profile members of the group spent the next decade or so
running from the police and, some of them, continuing to pursue careers
in criminal violence.
Ms. Rosenberg did her part. In October 1981, in an operation code-named
"The Big Dance," several black radicals and members of the Weather
Underground held up a Brinks armored car in Nanuet, N.Y. In the course
of that act of domestic terrorism, they murdered Peter Paige, a Brinks
guard, and police officers Edward O'Grady and Waverly Brown, the only
black officer on the Nyack, N.Y., force. Ms. Rosenberg, then still at
large, was indicted as an accessory.
According to John Castellucci's "The Big Dance," an account of the
Brinks robbery, Ms. Rosenberg's role in the Brinks job was performing
surveillance, driving a getaway car and transmitting orders. "Any white
who had taken part in the robbery," Mr. Castellucci writes, "would have
received orders from her."
Mr. Castellucci reports that the Brinks robbery was only one of several
violent episodes that Ms. Rosenberg was involved with in the late 1970s
and early 1980s. She was finally apprehended in November 1984 while
unloading a cache of weapons--including 740 pounds of explosives--at a
storage facility in Cherry Hill, N.J.
As it happens, a key witness in the Brinks case refused to testify as
the trial approached. Prosecutors dropped their earlier charges against
Ms. Rosenberg, figuring that she could serve a long prison term anyway
for weapons possession. At the time, she was quoted in the New York
Times saying: "We're caught, but we're not defeated. Long live the armed
struggle!" When she was indeed sentenced to 58 years, she announced that
"we were busted because we vacillated on our politics. . . . Our own
principles were not strong enough to fight to win." According to Mr.
Castellucci, one of the officers who apprehended her interpreted this
statement to mean that "she regretted not shooting them." Given the
context, Mr. Castellucci notes, "he was probably right."
So why isn't Susan Rosenberg still in prison? Because in January 2001,
Bill Clinton commuted her sentence. The outcry at the time was loud and
furious. And no wonder. Just as important: Why is Hamilton College
opening its doors to her?
Ms. Rosenberg is coming to Hamilton under the auspices of the Kirkland
Project for the Study of Gender, Society, and Culture, a left-wing
enclave run by Nancy Rabinowitz, a professor of comparative literature
(and, incidentally, the daughter-in-law of Victor Rabinowitz, of the
radical law firm Rabinowitz, Boudin, et al., which defended, among
others, Kathy Boudin). It was Ms. Rabinowitz who invited Ms. Rosenberg.
And it was she who rechristened an "artist/scholar-in-residence program"
as an "artist/activist-in-residence program." According to Ms.
Rabinowitz, Ms. Rosenberg is "an exemplar of rehabilitation" whose
"story is about how you can make something productive out of something
that was really awful."
It is by no means clear that Susan Rosenberg is "an exemplar of
rehabilitation." In an interview on Pacifica radio soon after she was
released, she tentatively renounced individual violence. But nowhere in
her evasive circumlocutions did she renounce collective violence, what
she described in 1993 as "the necessity for armed self-defense" in the
pursuit of "revolutionary anti-imperialist resistance." She still denies
having taken part in the Brinks job and likes to call herself "a former
U.S. political prisoner."
And what is Ms. Rosenberg going to teach students? In a statement,
Hamilton administrators described her as "an award-winning writer, an
activist and a teacher who offers a unique perspective as a writer." In
fact, her "writings" consist of political doggerel and radical
exhortation, while her awards are PEN commendations for prison writing.
Here is a representative passage from her poem "To Mumia Abu-Jamal," the
convicted cop killer now on death row:
Their message so clear
Do not be Black
Do not be radical
Do not be a political prisoner
There is still time to
SHAKE IT LOOSE."
As for offering a unique perspective--well, so might Osama bin Laden.
Robert Paquette, a professor of history at Hamilton, was quoted by the
Post Standard of Syracuse, N.Y., saying: "If you're going to bring Susan
Rosenberg here . . . why not bring in David Duke on race or O.J. Simpson
on the sociology of sports?" Mr. Paquette is not the only unhappy
faculty member. Steven Goldberg, a professor of art history, noted that
"there are nine children today who will never see their father . . .
three women who are widowed" because of the crimes with which Ms.
Rosenberg is associated.
Edward Moore, the Saratoga Springs, N.Y., chief of police, is the father
of a Hamilton student. He recently e-mailed Joan Hinde Stewart,
Hamilton's president, to express his distress that "a convicted
terrorist having a violent criminal background is welcome at Hamilton
College."
Under fire, Hamilton administrators have wrapped themselves in the
mantle of free speech. "As long as public safety and the rights of
others are not compromised," they stated, "the college does not normally
put limits on which voices can be heard and which cannot."
Well, that depends. In 2002, it is true, when Annie Sprinkle, a
pornography star and performance artist, came to Hamilton to regale
students and members of the local community about the proper use of
sexual appliances, Hamilton administrators stood high on the pedestal of
free speech. But when Brendan McCormick, a Hamilton alumnus and official
class representative, sought to alert his classmates to the Rosenberg
appointment, the college's development office refused to send out a
letter from him, as it normally would. "I pointed out the hypocrisy of
sending out a press release claiming that you do not censor speech and
then turning around and doing just that," Mr. McCormick later said.
Ah yes: Free speech for me, but not for thee. Hamilton College is set to
kick off an ambitious capital campaign today in New York. Mr. McCormick
suggests that alumni consider withholding contributions. Call it the
right kind of resistance.
Mr. Kimball is the author of "The Rape of the Masters" (Encounter).
Copyright © 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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