Toronto Star: Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka aren't murderers, they're freedom fighters

The Toronto Star puts these two on the same moral plain:
One fought to defend Osama bin Laden and to keep women from the right to education
and the other fought for racial equality

What's that?  The Star hasn't quite bestowed the term `freedom fighter` on Bernardo and Homokla yet?

It's probably just a matter of time. I always thought The Star's columnist Thomas Walkom was an idiot and now the element of doubt has evaporated. 

Because Nelson Mandela used violence, apparently in Walkom`s tiny bubble of comprehension, any bloodthirsty murdering maniac or moral imbecile who supports killing, as long as that killing is for a cause, is potentially a freedom fighter.

And because Mandela supported totalitarian dictators like Ghaddafi and Castro and terrorists like the PLO, they're probably pretty good too, because after all, Mandela was an infallible god, wasn't he?

Removed from Walkom's thought process, such as it is, is any moral compass or standard of values, to say nothing of tactics, that differentiate terrorists from people legitimately fighting for liberty. Also removed from that equation is the heresy that while Mandela was a man of courage, dignity, and determination, and exhibited great wisdom in many instances, in many others he was emotionally and philosophically married to some reprehensible ideologies and individuals.

So, just so it's easy, here's a simple rule-of-thumb that even someone so thoroughly stupid and morally bankrupt as a Toronto Star editorial columnist should be able to understand:

If you kill and commit violence against innocent people for political purposes, you're a terrorist. Similarly, if you're fighting to support or aiding people who do that, you're a supporter of terrorism. 

It's pretty easy. The old, vapid, banal saying 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter' is something idiots say to try to justify their moral bankruptcy and intellectual limitations.

George Washington was not a terrorist, because he never ordered or condoned the killing or systematic mistreatment of civilians. The government of Iran are terrorists because they have ordered and executed the killings of innocent people with no connection to any military or political role, far from any combat area, for political ends. And if, like Castro, you throw someone in jail or have them executed for publicly disagreeing with you, then you're on that same sunken moral plain.

See? It's simple.

I don't really expect anyone at The Star to actually follow a rule as straightforward as this though. Because with it, there's just no way Rob Ford can fall into that terrorist category.

Nelson Mandela lied about Communist Party membership

The former South African president, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, has always denied being a member of the South African branch of the movement, which mounted an armed campaign of guerrilla resistance along with the ANC.

But research by a British historian, Professor Stephen Ellis, has unearthed fresh evidence that during his early years as an activist, Mr Mandela did hold senior rank in the South African Communist Party, or SACP. He says Mr Mandela joined the SACP to enlist the help of the Communist superpowers for the ANC's campaign of armed resistance to white rule.

His book also provides fresh detail on how the ANC's military wing had bomb-making lessons from the IRA, and intelligence training from the East German Stasi, which it used to carry out brutal interrogations of suspected "spies" at secret prison camps.