Posted on 01/10/2006 8:06:15 AM PST by Cindy_Cin
CNSNews.com) - Calypso singer and liberal political activist Harry Belafonte was speaking for himself, not UNICEF, when he called President Bush a terrorist during a visit to leftist Venezuela, the U.N. children's advocacy group says.
Belafonte was quoted as telling Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Saturday, "No matter what the greatest tyrant in the world, the greatest terrorist in the world, George W. Bush says, we're here to tell you: Not hundreds, not thousands, but millions of the American people...support your revolution."
Belafonte made the comment on Chavez' radio and TV broadcast.
The U.S. Fund for UNICEF told reporters that Belafonte -- a UNICEF goodwill ambassador since 1987 -- made the comments "as a private citizen and was not speaking as a UNICEF ambassador, nor acting in an official capacity on behalf of the organization."
Belafonte led a group of Americans, including actor Danny Glover and Princeton University Professor Cornel West, to Venezuela over the weekend.
The Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, a conservative black leader, is among the Americans questioning Belafonte's sanity.
"Harry Belafonte's hatred of President Bush is causing him to embrace America's enemies," the Rev. Peterson said in a press release. "I also believe that his actions are treasonous as described by Article Three, Section Three o the U.S. Constitution, which says that 'adhering to our enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort' constitutes treason."
Peterson called Chavez a "brutal, paranoid dictator with nuclear ambitions who wants nothing more than to destroy the U.S."
Peterson said it's time to take U.S. laws seriously - by classifying Belafonte and his delegation as "domestic enemies of the United States."
In a Tuesday morning interview with Fox & Friends, Professor Cornel West said that he, Belafonte and the other Americans went to Venezuela so they "could see for themselves "the ways in which poor people are gaining a voice in a democratic process."
Hugo Chavez, elected in 1998, is an authoritarian, populist leader who rejects democratic principles and has allied himself with Cuba.
But West said the American delegation recognizes that President Chavez is "trying to lead a country and a region out of the immense poverty," and he said the delegation is "concerned about the kind of hostility that the Bush administration has manifested" toward the Chavez administration.
West said his friend Harry Belafonte on Saturday was "not so much" trying to bash the Bush administration - but to let people in Venezuela and Bolivia and other countries know "that there are Americans that care about them as fellow human beings, and are concerned about their poverty and democratic ways of overcoming that poverty."
As Cybercast News Service has previously reported, Belafonte's senior years have been marked by controversy.
In August, during a civil rights march in Atlanta, Belafonte referred to prominent African-American officials in the Bush administration as "black tyrants," and he also compared the Bush administration to Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany.
In 2002, Belafonte described then-Secretary of State Colin Powell as a "house slave."
"Harry Belafonte's hatred of President Bush is causing him to embrace America's enemies," the Rev. Peterson said in a press release."
That could be said about many on the left. Their hate of Bush is blinding them to what is best for America.
Flirting?? I'd say he crossed the line long ago but, hey, in his age of 'Freedom of speech' Treason and Sedition are outmoded concepts.
Belafonte, Glover, and West......
Sounds like an answer for Carnac, but I'm not sure what the question should be. 'Name a has-been singer now Unicef shill, an actor who wants to be a political activist, and an academic fraud?'
Useful idiots is too kind a description....
I will not watch a movie with Dan Glover in it.
Calypso Harry, Calypso Louie: like Mr. Potatohead, they're fully interchangeable.
I called AARP & gave them an ear full~!
If he hates the US so much, he really shouldn't come back here
hahahahahahahaha Thank You for the laugh!
UNICEF and the AARP had better wake up to the fact that a traitor to the USA will not reflect kindly on their missions. I'm getting old but my parents taught me as a youngster that I could be guilty of things just by association.
Flirting?!? It's an all out courtship!
Is Belafonte even an American citizen? I thought he was from the Caribbean.
Yeah...but apparently daylight never came...or at least he's never seen it.
What am I missing...what's the AARP tie-in?
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