This is what old age does to Great Ones.... Newsweek has an interview with Nelson Mandela. It kind of disturbed me. Check out some of my excerpts....

If you look at those matters, you will come to the conclusion that the attitude of the United States of America is a threat to world peace. Because what [America] is saying is that if you are afraid of a veto in the Security Council, you can go outside and take action and violate the sovereignty of other countries. That is the message they are sending to the world. That must be condemned in the strongest terms. And you will notice that France, Germany, Russia, China are against this decision.

1) The world is at peace as thousands die. Tutsis in Rwanda died when the world was at peace. Serbs, Croats and Muslims died in Bosnia when the world was at peace. Dissidents are jailed and executed in China while the world is at peace. Don't speak to me of peace-the peace of nations is a different thing than the peace of peoples or the peace of humanity. 2) What was the rest of the world doing when it imposed sanctions on South Africa? What was the rest of the world doing to the sovereign state of South Africa forcing its government to release those considered criminals in the eyes of their courts? Where was the ideal of the sovereignty of other countries then? 3) Germany, should we listen to a country that liquidated the most productive portion of its country in an orgy of violence and malice? Russia, was Stalin's great terror so much less cruel? What about the soft authoritarianism that Russia engages in now? And China, oh yes, the Chinese with their lack of respect for popular sovereignty or individual rights, with their executed poisoners for organs and population control. And France. Between the bloody orgy of the Jacobin Terror and the later bigoted trial of Dreyfus what have the French to teach us about Enlightenment now? No one is an angel. Saddam is a craven monster. And the United Nations is that, nations, not peoples. The Iraqi people have no representation in that body, nor do the Chinese people or a host of others. Shut your mouth Mr. Mandela. Other people yearn to breathe free, if American geopolitics-with all its sometimes duplicitous talk of freedom and democracy driven by lust for oil and "stability"-is the means to that end, live with it and applaud. There are no angels.